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Tuesday Talk: Is the Car Culture Waning?
The most recent federal transportation bill continues an emphasis on auto-dominated infrastructure. However, consumers are demanding more transportation choices, including transit-oriented development, expanded bike-walk infrastructure, and more rail service. As environmentally conscience young adults start families and baby boomers’ driving decreases, we must engineer our communities—from packed St. Paul to vacant St. Vincent—to accommodate these demands and effectively deal with congestion in a growing state.
Do you think the car culture is waning? What policies will be most effective to move Minnesotans in the 21st century?
Comments:
July 24, 2012 at 2:16 pm
KJC
I agree with your comments about the common good. We lost that some time after the 1960s I think. Little will get done unless we can persuade, in some way, that we’re all in this together and we all pay.
And get over this notion that government is BAD.
July 24, 2012 at 11:14 am
I don’t think that the car culture is waning at all at least judged by the traffic jams that I encounter to and from work and other times as well. I think that the change may well be to more efficient and perhaps smaller cars is happening but that is just in the culture of what we expect from a car and does not represent a waning of the car culture in any way. I love my “Finnish Cadillac” (as we used to call them when growing up in northern Minnesota) Chevrolet Impala and hope to have it for many more years and hopefully, another one after that.
July 24, 2012 at 10:18 am
I certainly know a lot of couples who share a car and also have quite a few colleagues who commute by bike the majority of the time. I live in the city however, and it’s much easier to live this way in a place with good bike access and public transportation.
July 24, 2012 at 9:32 am
Waning? It may be over. I am saddened to learn the Boston (Cambridge) brothers will stop broadcasting new programs of Car Talk on NPR this fall. I better get a bike.
July 24, 2012 at 9:30 am
Here’s some good news for those of us who often use Lexington Avenue, Ellis.
While there is now no north-south bus route between Snelling and Dale (and between Snelling and downtown south of Grand Avenue), beginning in 2014 a new route, #83, will run from West 7th Street via Lexington Avenue to connect with the Central Corridor lightrail and to continue on to Roseville.
Rush hour traffic on Lexington should be dramatically reduced.
After eight years of annual budget cuts from Pawlenty, public transportation is at last getting attention and dollars. It needs to be easy to access and not be too expensive for low-wage workers to use every day. We are now heading in the right direction, especially with the addition of bike lanes and the already existing great areas for walking.
July 24, 2012 at 9:14 am
I think the car culture is definitely waning, though it is so ingrained in our society that it will take a lot of time to separate ourselves from the car-centric mindsets of the past half-century. Smart growth developments, transit-oriented developments, and walkable neighborhoods are performing really well economically right now, because the demand for them is far outstripping supply. Cars aren’t going away anytime soon, but there is a significant shift away from relying on them for everything.
The advantage for Minnesota is that things like walkable areas aren’t exclusive to our urban areas. We can build towns (or retrofit, more likely) that don’t necessitate car travel in the ‘frontier counties’ and Ramsey County alike.
In light of the waning car culture, we should prioritize maintaining the infrastructure we have, and expanding our transit system in the Twin Cities. If we spent less on building & subsidizing new (usually unnecessary) highways and bridges and more on rebuilding roads and using roadspace efficiently with HOV and bus lanes, the funding wouldn’t be as hard as many think. It would also be a wiser use of tax dollars.
I lived without a car in St. Paul for a while, but often had to borrow one. Living in DC, I don’t have to even think about having a car. There is more population density here, but the Twin Cities has led the way in regional planning and can lead peer cities in transportation too. Oh, and keep building bicycle infrastructure!
July 24, 2012 at 9:07 am
I certainly hope the car culture is waning. I actually like cars and admire the most elegant cars on the road and on the market, especially as depicted in tv ads, where there is only one car on a scenic mountain road. I also like to drive, and recently drove my 9-year-old car to Salt Lake City and back for a funeral—just under 3,000 miles thither and back (but our 9-year-old car now only has 64,000 miles on it).
In the day-to-day reality as well as on the freeways at various points, congestion is rampant. At several times each day, for instance, there is a solid line of cars on Grand Avenue from Lexington to Snelling in St. Paul.
Macalester College and the City have done a good thing by putting islands with trees and flowers in the middle of Snelling, a street I have been crossing on foot or by bike just about every day for forty-four years.
It’s the car culture that destroyed retail business in downtown St. Paul (there were three large dept. stores there when we came to town), and, of course it’s the car culture that is contributing massively to global warming.
Best,
Ellis Dye
July 24, 2012 at 9:04 am
Also, check out Conrad’s blog this AM about a new study from the University of Michigan. “Why Young Adults Aren’t Driving”
July 24, 2012 at 8:42 am
I think it’s undeniable that the car culture is “waning.” Just look at the increasing rate of teenagers NOT getting driver’s licenses. But? The “why” is important. It isn’t because we’re doing such a great job with transportation alternatives to the car, it’s because of cost increases and income stagnation.
The average transaction price for a new car is now just over $30K, up more than 20% in the last decade… and wages have NOT gone up significantly, much less 20%. Given that the car is often the second most expensive object after a home (yet another market still in disarray) it is logical that at least part of the squeeze would fall on car ownership. That despite the fact that most need a car just to get to work! Have you looked at the age of our car fleet? It is the oldest ever, the average car on the road in the USA is now more than 11 years old! That virtually shouts: Cost vs. Income squeeze!
I wish I could tell you that there’s an easy answer. But? When the underlying problem is money, it’s not merely a matter of making a new choice. Oh? Once you look at the current per-ride subsidy of mass transit, you’ll see why that isn’t the automatic answer that some seem to assume that it is. Your local taxes would skyrocket if this subsidy were multiplied by the commuter population.
This is why mass transit systems are so hard to build… the Feds pay such a high percentage of the construction cost up front, so that isn’t what stops them. What is it then? Nobody wants to be on the hook for the on-going operational losses, that’s where the trouble is. One thing you can’t do, is to be riding mass transit in Minnesota and think “I’m paying the full cost of my ride.” There are other positive effects, but the math is undeniable.
We have not made anywhere near enough investment in our own infrastructure… across the board. What if we had spent the money that went to overseas military adventures the last 1o years, back here at home?
The cost of all that reactionary “thinking” is coming home to roost. If we think of the Common Good, we will do a better job of this. If we/you think: “I’ve got mine, and I don’t want to pay for anybody else… so you’re on your own” that is exactly how we got into this mess.
The ugly “beggar thy neighbor” game eventually hits everybody but the super wealthy, it’s only a matter of when. We won’t fix our transportation issues properly until this underlying context is settled. Why? Because the will for the common good will have to be there, or it’s politically impossible to have sufficient public consensus to Get the Big Stuff Done. Which is to say that if you’re tired of legislative gridlock, please make sure you’re pressing for the Common Good.
Wish I had easier/better news, please know that I don’t “like” being in this mess any more than you do.
July 24, 2012 at 7:54 am
I think that the car culture is still there but I am a big believer in a balanced transit approach. I take the greenway (bike highway) at least twice a week to get to Minneapolis & look forward to the Southwest Corridor light rail to go to Minneapolis & St Paul year round without using the car. Probably 70% car transit & 30% walk/bike/bus transit mix for me now. Was probably 60% when lived in Minneapolis
Dyna says:
July 24, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Waning, yes: The scrappage rate is now matching and even at times exceeding new car sales. But will cars disappear? As we can see in Europe where cars survive en masse despite fuel prices double ours, the auto has quite an ability to adapt to more hostile environments and survive.