ATT agen ee CAE on 2 Wa — eee foe NET ed By Morris Zeitlin J ust how efficient is our urban transportation sys- tem? Within a city, the places we need or want to go to -and the means we have to get to them are intimately related. For utmost accessibility, people and places must either neighbor each other or be tied together by rapid and convenient transportation. In our modern metropolises, homes, workplaces and social facilities are spread over enormous areas, and the people travel between them increasingly by private automobiles. Is this a good arrangement? Of the several modes of urban transportation, the private automobile is the least efficient. A single sub- way track can carry between 40,000 and 50,000 people per hour, and a highway bus lane, about 25,000 people per hour. But an express-highway lane can carry at most 3,300 people, and a street lane only 900 people in private autos per hour. The low passenger capacity of automobiles and the predominance of private trans- portation in our cities explain the nerve wracking, air polluting traffic jams on major highways and streets during peak travel hours. In energy consumption, the private car is the most wasteful. Rails can move passengers for less than one-fifth the energy autos require. The diversion of © urban passengers from electric trains to private cars, transportation economists estimated, costs the ~ people over $18 billion annually in energy costs alone. Why, then, are private automobiles so popular? On the surface it seems that people simply prefer the automobile over public transportation. Automobile-monopoly propaganda has been drum- ming this message for decades until many people have come to accept it as gospel. When we examine the reasons for this preference, however, the answer is not at all simple. ’ Below the surface lie individual motivations con- ditioned by an economic order based on market deals between buyers and sellers — one not equipped to take into account the social costs of individual acts. Their cumulative ill effects on society rose to monstrous Bus breezes along a highway while motorists fight bottleneck in their priva ite cars. proportions in the era of state-monopoly capitalism. For monopoly capital has the enormous resources and power to manipulate the economy, government, © and communications media to condition the needs and desires of the people in ways that promote the sale of goods that maximize its profits and disregard social vite we better informed and able to rationally weigh the advantages against the disadvantages of private transportation, our proverbial “‘love affair with the automobile’ might have been less passion- ate. Let us take a look at pon ne benefits and draw- f the private automobile. DOES it eeeenrcd on the market at the turn of the century, the automobile gained popularity because it was an improvement over the horse and rail transpor- tation of the time. It played a progressive role in -urban transportation and development until its un- controlled proliferation began to negate its social Ss. Se eccomelid the automobile has contributed to. the well being of many. It increased the range of job opportunities, goods, services and recreation in the growing metropolis. To its owners, the auto holds many charms. It provides convenient door-to-door transportation, storage capacity, the comfort of pri- vacy, freedom to go at will to any destination at any time, and the sense of mastery and elation these pro- duce. Undeniably, in low-population-density areas, given a complex network of highways and ample free parking at destination points, no other mode of travel -ean match the convenience of the automobile. Moreover, the out-of-pocket per-mile travel costs to motorcar owners has been generally comparable to. that of public transportation. But to society, hence indirectly also to auto own-. ers, the cost of private transportation has been high indeed. The auto owner’s out-of-pocket costs seem low only because society subsidizes auto use through indi- rect, but no less real, social costs. Take, for example, the costs of the dense grids of highways and of parking facilities built and maintained to accommodate pri- vate motorcar traffic. They consume about 60% of our urban areas. By contrast, electric rail transportation would take one-thirteenth of the space — even less, if located underground. Add to that the costs that park- ing lots and garages inflict on central business dis- tricts by disrupting their essential compactness. Consider the heavy losses resulting from traffic disruption on highways in bad weather, from fuel. waste, and heavy air pollution. Each year scientific investigation turns up new evidence against air pollu- tion as a major contributor to cancer, heart, and lung diseases. Over half of our air pollution issues from the exhaust pipes of automobiles. The loss of life and limb in highway accidents has rivaled the carnage in wars. In 1976 alone, 25.4 million accidents on our streets and highways took a toll of 46.7 thousand killed, 5.3 million injured and $17 billion in damages. In social account- ing, such costs. represent an avoidable waste since more, efficient and safer transportation than au- tomobiles is available. Compared with 1.34 fatalities per 100 million passenger-miles in automobiles in 1976, the rate for buses.was 0.17 and that for rail cars only 0.05. Not the least social cost imposed by private transportation has been its impact on the quality of urban life. Destroying open space in metropolitan outskirts, the automobile-related spraw] of lily-white suburbs has turned the geographic distribution of " population in our metropolises into a pattern of racial apartheid. . : The proliferation of automobiles has had most de- _ structive effects on the:central cities. At peak hours, traffic jams slow private autos, taxis, buses and trucks to less than a horse’s pace; parking, loading and unloading grow difficult; street crossing, espe- cially for children, the aged and handicapped, be- comes dangerous; and air pollution builds up to dangerous levels. The impaired movement, working, and living conditions considerably reduce the benefits of the central city as well as the advantages of the private automobile. All attempts to improve traffic within central cities made matters worse. The more autos were ac- commodated in the center, the more of them came, and the more harm they did. The simple fact is that it will never be possible to accommodate all the motorists who want to drive to urban centers. That would require many times the number of highways leading to them and the number of parking spaces within them. Were they provided, there would be little else in them worth driving to. The proliferation of automobiles and highways has been as destructive outside central cities as within them. Inevitably, the wide use of autos led to disper- sion and fragmentation. The single-family house on a private lot in a suburb:is the twin of the family car. The want for one made the other necessary and desir- able. Both being voracious space eaters, they gobbled up precious rural land as metropolitan dispersion proceeded. In the unplanned private-property met- ropolis, highways tend to determine how land will be developed, how millions of people will live and where they will work. For under the dominance of auto and truck transportation, urban growth spread along new . highways and clustered around road interchanges. Where roads and highways go, there developers fol- low and extend the metropolis. Construction of more ‘highways, therefore, encourages greater auto use and dispersion. This dispersion in home-to-work patterns pre- cludes developing public transportation in the met- ropolitan outskirts. Individual homes scattered over large areas cannot be efficiently served by mass transportation. They do not provide economical pas- senger volumes on any line. Private-home develop- ment perpetuates dependence on the private auto; and private-auto transportation, in turn, generates scattered home and work-place locations. Thus reliance on the private automobile has be- come Self defeating. The car’s speed, flexibility, and low-cost per mile have been offset by traffic jams, metropolitan scatter, and ever rising capital and op- erational costs. Were the people in power instead of monopoly cap- ital and transportation were guided by social cost- benefit criteria.not maximum corporate profits, the use of private automobiles would, no doubt, be kept in check. Private cars would not be allowed to debase urban life. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 10, 1978—Page 9