Raise the Hammer

I've often thought of trying to tally the total costs of our car culture...it'd make a really good PHD thesis. Think about it - the cars themselves, financing, fuel, insurance, roadways, parking, health care (traffic deaths, air pollution and physical inactivity), urban sprawl, policing traffic and the millions of hours lost every year in traffic jams. It's one big massive pit, down which we throw as much money, land, fuel, natural resources and human effort as we, as a society, can muster. I highly doubt that when all was tallied that the benefits would truly outweigh the costs.

The cost of buying a new car are on par with university tuition (often a few times a decade), and even compare to the costs of a mortgage for many families. Yet, while all of the above can easily rack up massive piles of interest, nobody expects an engineering degree or a bungalow to lose 10-20% of it's value each year. Added to the costs of fuel, insurance, repairs (the high price of buying a cheap car), parking and other associated costs, automobile ownership is pulling many thousands of dollars per year out of the average family bank account. In many cases, this is food children can't eat (in lower-income families), levels of education they won't attain and inheritances which will never allow them to escape similar cycles.

Sure, a car will move more quickly than my bike (though not in any dense area), but unless you count the thousands of hours spent working to pay for it, versus the one-time cost of a bicycle and low cost of maintenance (with fuel, parking, insurance and financing being negligable in most cases), it is simply false economy to assume a car is more efficient. As one oft-cited study showed, when all of that is included, average speed of automobile transportation drops to around that of a brisk walk.

And don't give me that "rational actor" nonsense either (if any "scientific" theory outside of economics suggested such things, they'd be laughed right into scientology). The decision to own a car is made in the context of social and cultural pressures ("only kids, seniors, the disabled and dirt poor ride bikes or take the bus") and a geography which has been transformed into low-density, single-use neighbourhoods designed only for cars.

Take the Trans Canada out west...I did, recently (and before y'all point fingers, I hitched and bussed, and no, I didn't behead that guy). Virtually the whole country's highway, from Northern Ontario, through the praries, into the rockies, up to and including the Port Mann Bridge, is being twinned at the moment, extending well into smaller roads up to and in Northern BC (the notorious Sea to Sky highway, for instance) and god knows where else. How much is this costing us? Billions and billions, as Carl Sagan would say. But where are all the crews twinning train tracks?

Foresight, anyone?