Curbing Car Dependency: How We All Benefit from Reduced Car Usage

As a University of Richmond student, I have generally been happy with my undergraduate experience so far. I have great professors, take amazing classes, and get to enjoy an incredibly beautiful campus. Such dismay for my experience is felt, however, during one particular occasion: when I have to get in my car and make the two minute drive to The Village on Three Chopt Road.

I’m from a major city, and where I live, the distance from Richmond’s campus to The Village wouldn’t even be thought of as a drive— it would be considered a short walk, if anything else. But the lack of sidewalks and perilous driving that makes me feel unsafe, even in my car, has deterred me from even attempting the trip in a vehicle that isn’t either my own or the bus.

This lack of pedestrian access isn’t just merely a fluke, however, or a coincidence. It’s the result of decades of policies from both the United States government and the automobile industry which have made walking nearly impossible in countless places throughout the country.

An article in the Harvard Crimson refers to the United States as a “motocracy”— a state in which cars reign supreme. In every single part of the United States, with the exception of some major cities, a car is necessary to access important and necessary services such as medical care, grocery stores, schools, outdoor recreation, and more. In 2021, 45 percent of individuals in the United States had no access to public transportation.

It’s nearly impossible to ignore car dependency once you become aware of the phenomenon. You notice the overwhelming number of parking lots and the underwhelming number of sidewalks. You notice the lack of buses, trains, streetcars, and other forms of public transportation which are prevalent in nearly every other developed Western nation. You notice the danger in cars, and the absurd expectation to make individuals as young as 16 operate a several ton hunk of metal to travel nearly everywhere. Car dependency does more than just make us have to travel in cars— it reinforces systemic racism and classism, damages the environment, and claims tens of thousands of lives every year. What is more tragic, however, is that American cities weren’t always this car dependent, and that car dependency is an intentional choice, funded by the automobile industry and signed off by elected officials. It’s time to reconsider how even policy choices such as cars have a deep impact on our society, and how we can imagine a better, more equitable, more safe America free from them.

Background

In the early 20th century, over 250,000 miles of railroad tracks were present in the United States. By 2023, this number has shrunk to just a little over 160,000 miles, with only 21,000 of those miles being devoted completely to personal travel.

What has happened in the past 100 years to turn a thriving railroad system, which was utilized for both freight and personal transportation, into a world dominated by highways?

The answer is typically American: the greed of corporations and their never-ending quest for profit in a capitalistic society. Beginning in the 1920s, not long after Henry Ford’s revolutionary assembly line process sped up the production of the car to levels never seen before, American cities began the slow but damaging process of making their cities more car oriented. One of the earliest examples of how policy decisions shaped cities around cars can be found in the 1920s, when the concept of jaywalking was invented. Before this time, pedestrians controlled the streets, with cars being second class citizens in this dynamic. With the introduction of jaywalking policies, however, it sent a subtle yet clear message: cars became the dominant force, forcing pedestrians to become secondary. It also changed the onus of blame in accidents, from reckless drivers themselves to individuals who shouldn’t have walked at the supposed “wrong” time.

Car-oriented policies ramped up during the postwar boom of the 1950s and 60s.

Policies such as “urban renewal”

(read: pushing Black and brown individuals out of their communities by destroying them all together), razed millions of blocks of previously pedestrian friendly communities in order to construct highways, places on which it is expressly forbidden for individuals to walk. Examples of how highways decimated communities are close to home: the once thriving Black neighborhood of Jackson Ward in downtown Richmond was bisected in the mid 20th century by the construction of I-64, destroying a cornerstone of Black culture in Richmond and displacing 10% of the total Black population.

What is more tragic, however, is that the process of highway building is one that was lobbied by automobile companies and further subsidized by the US government, making it not just difficult to travel places without cars, but the most economically viable option in many cases. The United States government matched the building of the National Interstate System by 90 percent. In the last 40 years, this subsidization has continued, with the government supporting up to 30% of highway and road system costs that aren’t covered by taxes and other fees. At the same time, privately owned public transportation systems affected by the war didn’t receive the same funding, allowing for an even further dependence on cars.

It is deeply ironic that while widespread car usage is often viewed as a sign of capitalistic freedom— a message propagandized by automobile companies— their mass usage in the United States has its roots in socialist policies.

The Racist, Classist, and Environmental Implications of Car Dependency

How does car dependency make all of us worse off— no matter where we come from? Let’s examine the many ways in which the motocracy decreases the quality of our lives, from the way it subjects us to unsafe conditions to even the way it perpetuates isolation, prejudice, and other discriminatory beliefs.

Car Dependency Makes The Environment Worse

It’s no secret that cars are one of the most detrimental sources of pollution to the environment— transportation is the largest pollutant in the United States, according to data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s also not a secret that the automobile industry works hard to keep environmentally-friendly restrictions on cars to a minimum, using their incredibly powerful lobbying abilities to save their multi-billion dollar corporations a few extra dollars. Particularly with climate change becoming a more prevalent issue, with billions of dollars being shelled out each year in the US on major environmental disasters, it’s time to think about a more viable solution to transport that is more environmentally safe and efficient.

Car Dependency is Racist and Classist

As we’ve already discussed, the history of car dependency in the United States has racist roots, with most major interstate highway systems destroying Black, brown, and low income neighborhoods. But while we talk about the racism of car dependency, we speak about it in the past— ignoring the very present car dependency racism that exists to this day. Traffic stops, which serve to police drivers on the road, are also one of the most common ways in which minorities have contact with police officers, leading to profiling, arrests, and even death at a far higher rate than white drivers. Furthermore, creating a car-centric environment without providing any sort of economic assistance to purchase a car or investing in public transportation leaves millions of individuals who can’t afford cars stranded. People of color in the United States are far less likely to own cars, the disparity being the worst in Black communities, which are two times less likely to own cars then the national average. This creates inequitable situations in which racial minorities are quite literally stranded within the vicinity of their own homes, forced to rely on public transportation, which is nationally inconsistent, or simply unable to access resources which might be further away from their house.

Car dependency also creates an “economic trap” in which low income drivers struggle to maintain the upkeep, costs, and necessary repairs that are required to keep their car safe and legal to drive on the roads. Despite low income drivers using various tactics to keep car costs low, vehicle maintenance still remains roughly the same even when accounting for the amount one drives. This creates a devastating phenomenon in which individuals are forced to drive without any alternative or financial assistance, burdening their own pockets for a lifestyle they didn’t choose. And this dynamic doesn’t even account for the elderly, who are incapable of driving after a certain age. What happens to individuals who live in car centric areas when they age? Our society fails to provide an answer, leaving our most vulnerable the most isolated.

Car Dependency is Dangerous

Lastly, car dependency relies on the premise that millions of individuals will drive incredibly powerful machines in a safe and competent manner. Car fatalities remain one of the highest causes of death in the United States each year, with over 40,000 people dying each year in crashes. This doesn’t even factor in the individuals who are injured by car accidents yearly, a number which stretches into the millions. Car dependency isn’t just racist or classist— it’s a phenomenon that is quite literally killing us.

For much of the last century, cars have been equated to freedom. Yet in reality, car dependency exacerbates detrimental systemic problems that plague our society, such as racism, classism, environmental destruction, and premature death. True freedom is not the ability to choose cars, but the ability to select a range of transportation options, whether that be bikes, high speed trains, streetcars, buses, or walking. Without dependency on cars, we gain back our safety, our time, our freedom, and most importantly, our sense of dignity in a democratic society. ***