Fighting Traffic is about the 1920s. Does it still matter?

I agree with those who say that a clear perception of the present depends upon a clear perception of the past. In our personal lives, our memories give us our chance to discover and escape old patterns that would otherwise confine us. I believe the same is true of our shared history.

A paradigm no longer serves those who cannot escape it. And in the twenty-first century we are challenged to escape old paradigms: that cities must be rebuilt to accommodate cars, that retailers need more land for parking than for floor space, that congestion necessarily indicates a shortage of road capacity, or that bicyclists and pedestrians are traffic nuisances.

Many people routinely ascribe our dominant traffic paradigm to Americans' "love affair" with the car. Because Americans love cars, they rebuilt their country (and especially their cities) to accommodate them. And because this love will not go away, we must continue on this course.

Of course the love affair is, in part, real. But it's a half truth. And if there's something more dangerous than a lie it's a half truth. Its true side lures people into accepting the whole thing.

The other side of this half truth is that Detroit invented the "love affair" thesis in 1961. (I'll tell this as-yet-untold story in a later post.) Automobile manufacturers used it to simplify and clean up a far messier story about Americans' adoption of the motorcar. There was sufficient enthusiasm for cars in the 1910s and 20s to give this story credibility decades later. But in 1920, hostility to cars was more evident than love.

Since about 1930, the prevailing view has been that an urban road that is clogged with automobiles needs widening. But just a few years earlier, a mainstream member of the first generation of traffic engineers would have regarded such a proposal as absurd. If a street was crowded with automobiles, the problem was the car’s prodigious demand for space. A typical recommendation was to give spatially efficient “trolley cars the right of way,” and to “place restriction on motor vehicles in their relations with street cars.”

The revolution in conceptions of traffic safety was just as total. In 1920 cars injured and killed pedestrians with astounding frequency. To most city people, newspapers, and judges, the car and its driver were almost automatically at fault in such cases. Why? In 1920, streets were regarded as public spaces (like city parks today), open to everyone who did not obstruct or endanger others. On these terms, the operator of a fast and dangerous machine carried a substantial responsibility.

The commonsense perceptions of 1920 were marginalized by 1930. In the vanguard of this revolution were those with a stake in the car’s urban future.

Today we must confront difficult problems. Do we have the room we need for everyone to use cars for nearly all transportation needs? Will we have enough affordable energy (in any form) to do so? Can we do so and still emit less carbon? To many, the most stubborn obstacle in change's way is Americans' love affair with the car.

History, however, demonstrates that apparently inevitable truths about people, roads and vehicles are not so inevitable after all. This is why Fighting Traffic is (I think) relevant today. It shows that the dominant paradigm was an invention, and that alternatives are possible. Our choices are not confined to those that will fit within the "love affair" paradigm. We need to know this if we are to adapt to the new conditions that face us in the twenty-first century.