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What you're about to hear is a sample from the latest Patreon bonus episode of the War on
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Cars, in which we talk about some recent research into how our auto-centric transportation system
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makes us lonely, and how cars divide society.
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It's one of the major themes of our forthcoming book, Life After Cars.
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If you'd like to hear the rest of the episode, and get our take on David Byrne's subway take
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on bicycle etiquette, find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash the War on Cars pod.
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You'll get lots of other great benefits too.
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I think it gets at something I talk about a lot, which is that the answer to our
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problems is not to turn everything into Manhattan or Brownstone, Brooklyn or downtown San Francisco
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or the Loop in Chicago.
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It looks a little bit more like old-fashioned streetcar suburbs where you have main commercial
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shopping districts and just behind that you have apartment buildings and then behind
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that you have single-family homes so that you could walk to the grocery store.
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It doesn't mean you wouldn't have a car necessarily, but the life satisfaction
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that they're talking about in this study, where you wouldn't have to use a car
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for more than 50% of your trips, that becomes a little more possible.
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So, the study wasn't designed to get at the reasons for people's dissatisfaction with
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this problem of having to drive everywhere, but the researchers did have some ideas.
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So, Doug, you want to read this from The Guardian article.
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So, the lead researcher said the results were surprising and could be the result
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of a number of negative impacts as driving, such as the stress of continually navigating
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roads and traffic, the loss of physical activity from not walking anywhere, reduced engagement
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with other people, and the growing financial burden of owning and maintaining a vehicle.
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Some people drive a lot and feel fine with it, but others feel a real burden, she said.
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The study doesn't call for people to completely stop using cars, but the solution could
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be in finding a balance.
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For many people, driving isn't a choice, so diversifying choices is important.
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Diversifying choices is important.
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Well, this study got flagged right away because diversity was in there.
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You can say it to a British publication.
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But, you know, so this idea that diversifying choices is important, which I think is one
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of our main messages here, is like, we never say to people, like, we believe that you
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should just throw away your car and that you should just somehow then be able to
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Obviously, that's not possible, but imagine that you had a good bike lane infrastructure
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in your suburb that allowed for, you know, e-cargo bikes to take the kids to sports
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instead of having to get in the car every time.
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Imagine, you know, the buses came frequently to take you to school or to the hospital
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or wherever you have to go.
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Those things would give you choices.
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But in our country, despite all the talk of liberty, we're rapidly disinvesting in transit
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and bike lanes and sidewalks, all the things that would give people choices.
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It's really, to me, ironic that in a country that holds up the automobile as personal
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liberty, you know, the way we build things actually takes personal liberty and choice
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away and then we gaslight people about that and we tell them, what's the matter?
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You've got a car like a car improves your quality of life.
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Everybody knows that.
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You can almost look at this study and the effect forced car dependence has on
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individual happiness and sort of extrapolated out to the nation in that, you
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know, there probably was a period, I don't want to make it too rosy, but
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you could probably sort of make a case that like there was a use case for
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cars where you fold them into your life for like the driveout to the country to
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go do the big grocery shop or whatever it is, but that for the most part, you
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had your kind of traditional main street and your town square and your park and
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your school and those things were all in walking distance and you knew your
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neighbor and then you get to let's say the 70s, 80s, 90s where the real
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post-war suburbs start, you know, sprawl as we understand it today,
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shopping centers, lifestyle centers, things like that.
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And you can see that like not only is this bad for individual happiness, but
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it's just bad for our well-being as a nation.
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I mean, that's sort of the point we're making in the book too, is that like
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there is a reason a lot of people out there hate their neighbors because
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they're just in the way all the time.
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They're just another obstacle to them finding parking, to them getting
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home from work in the time that they're used to.
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And this sort of century long experiment with car development, like we
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have reached the more than 50% threshold that these authors are talking
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about in their study and it's killing us.
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And that actually leads right into the next study that I want to talk about.
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This actually came out last summer.
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It's from the Survey Center on American Life.
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It's part of their 2024 American Social Capital Survey.
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And the authors, Daniel Cox and Sam Pressler wrote up the findings
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in a piece called Disconnected the Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life.
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The study gets into how the way we've designed our communities specifically
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are increasingly limited access to public spaces like parks and libraries,
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even commercial spaces like coffee shops, restaurants, diners.
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How that has eroded our social and civic structure.
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The authors note a related decline in what they call associational life,
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which is essentially organized communal life that includes marriage
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and religious organizations and labor unions, among other things.
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What they found by looking at the data is that the erosion of these
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public spaces and of associational life has been profoundly inequitable.
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And the analysis looks at that inequity as it's measured by the level
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of educational achievement in communities and also racial disparities.
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So maybe, Doug, you could read some of this.
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I like that we were just joking about how you have the better voice.
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And now I'm reading all of this stuff, but I will do it.
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I'll take this one practice for reading.
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Americans with a high school education or less are more likely
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to live in civic deserts, lacking commercial places, for example,
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coffee shops and public places like community centers, parks
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and libraries that are the hubs of community connection.
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Partly as a result, these Americans are less likely to participate
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in associational life and more likely to be socially isolated.
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Carney writes in Alienated America, Why Some Places Thrive While Others
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Collapse, associational life has apparently become a high end good
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that most people can't access.
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So then there are some stats.
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Less than half of Americans report that people in their community
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can gather in restaurants or diners, 46 percent, coffee shops or cafes,
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41 percent, gyms or fitness centers, 37 percent and local markets
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or corner stores, 35 percent.
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So already that sounds not great, but what's really not great
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and what I think resonates when we look at the political divides
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that we're seeing in our country is the way that some of these
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assets in public life, some of these public goods,
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the way it breaks down between communities that have majority
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college educated population and those that don't
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because you see a real difference here.
