A recent article in the New York Times is off-target when it calls automobiles “turbo-boosted engines of inequality.” The article points to some genuine problems, but those problems are not the fault of automobiles. Nor is “accessible public transportation” the solution, as the article claims in its conclusion.
The most egalitarian transportation since the first warlord tying a horse to the first chariot made fast transport accessible only to the elites. Image from 1985 Yugo brochure scanned by Tony DiGirolamo.
The truth is that automobiles are the most egalitarian form of transportation since walking. Horses, intercity trains, streetcars, you name it, were always used mainly by the relatively wealthy and were inaccessible to the poor, especially in cities. It was only when Henry Ford developed the moving assembly line that mechanized transportation became available to the vast majority of people.
The claim that “accessible public transportation” can produce greater equality ignores the fact that mass transit, whether private or public, has generally been used mainly by an elite. In 2019, the median income of people who commuted by transit to work was significantly higher than the median income of people who commuted by any other method. More people who commuted by transit in 2019 earned over $65,000 a year than those who earned under $25,000.
That changed when the pandemic led many high-income transit commuters to work at home instead, but that doesn’t make transit more equitable today. In 2021, only 5.0 percent of workers with incomes under $25,000 a year took transit to work, while the other 95 percent disproportionately have to pay the mostly regressive taxes that are used to support transit. That’s a good definition of injustice. By comparison highways are mainly paid for out of user fees which aren’t regressive because people pay for only what they use.
Here’s how egalitarian automobiles are. In 2019, 91.4 percent of U.S. households had access to at least one car, a figure that rose to 92.0 percent in 2021. In 2019, 95.7 percent of U.S. workers lived in a household with at least one car, a figure that rose to 95.9 percent in 2021. Whether you have a 1985 Yugo or a 2023 Mercedes E class, you have exactly the same access to highways and streets as everyone else.
Of the 4.1 percent of workers who lived in households with no cars in 2021, 25.1 percent drove alone to work in 2021 and another 9.5 percent carpooled. Only 24.7 percent took transit to work. That means that more people who had no car nevertheless drove alone to work (probably in employer-supplied automobiles) than took transit. It also means that more than 97 percent of workers actually had access to a car since a quarter of those who said their households didn’t have a car were nonetheless able to drive alone to work.
The Times article is correct that debt and the high cost of borrowing for people who have poor credit is a problem, but that is not the fault of the automobile. It’s partly due to unscrupulous auto dealers who talk low-income people into buying the most expensive cars they can afford. But mainly this is the fault of our educational system that allows people to remain ignorant of fundamental financial concepts such as interest rates and opportunity costs — the same kind of ignorance that leads political leaders to support insanely expensive light-rail projects when buses can provide as good or better transportation for far less money.
Nor are traffic stops that punitively focus on low-income drivers, which the article also cites, the fault of cars. If anything, this is the fault of local politicians who decide to finance a large portion of their municipalities out of ticket revenues.
As I’ve previously documented in this policy brief, numerous studies have shown that one of the best ways to get people who don’t have access to cars out of poverty is to give them access to an automobile. That is why I have supported programs that give low- or zero-interest loans to low-income people who lack cars so they can buy a decent used or low-cost new car. Non-profit groups that have offered such loans usually accompany them with educational programs to teach low-income people some of the basics of finance such as the meaning of interest rates and so forth.
In short, the solution to inequality problems associated with automobiles is more automobiles, not more subsidies to transit systems that don’t even work for most people who don’t have cars.
the solution to inequality problems associated with automobiles… might be reevaluate societal mechanisms make us need automobiles fir every little thing. There’s a 7/11 right across the street from me…. and hair place, Italian restaurant and flower shop, and adjacent a rental storage warehouse. Because it’s across busy road, crossing it is suicide…… except brief gaps. Instead of designing businesses to accommodate driving forth with whole isolating from residential areas, design businesses to accentuate residential areas.
Less stripmall surrounded by seas of parking,…..
Less this
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Strip_Mall_Troy.jpg
More…..
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/JYXB9M/parade-of-village-shops-in-suburban-centre-of-keston-bromley-JYXB9M.jpg
LazyReader,
I don’t see what the problem would be walking to Strip_Mall_Troy. You might need to walk slightly further across their parking lot but this shouldn’t be a big deal.
It is too bad you don’t have good good pedestrian access to the 7/11 across the street but most people would choose to drive to a larger grocery store regardless because of the 7/11’s extremely limitted choices and high prices.
LazyReader,
Most of a strip mall’s customers don’t live within walking distance. They tend to live in residential areas within a mile or so on either side of the busy road.
I once lived in Oak Lodge, Oregon, which would have been a city of 26,000 people if it were incorporated. The city was bisected by McLoughlin Boulevard, state highway 99, which local residents called the “superhighway” because it was the first four-lane road built in Oregon. It went through farm land when it was built but by the 1990s, when I lived there, it was a long row of strip malls surrounded by residential areas.
I did a census of the businesses on the boulevard and found that there were more of them, and a greater variety, and more densely packed, than at Clackamas Town Center, Oregon’s largest shopping mall. Shoppers at the town center could walk from one store to another while shoppers on McLoughlin had to drive, but the shops on McLoughlin were often unique: music stores, dog groomers, U-Haul, scuba diving, dance studios that also sold dance costumes and much more. You can read my full report at In Defense of Strip Malls.
McLoughlin was no fun to cross as a pedestrian but few people walked to any of the shops there. Instead, they drove, which gave them access to numerous stores including several major supermarkets all them hotly competing for their business. Consumers greatly benefitted from this competition.
good one.
the argument put forth by many urban transit advocates is nonsense, even if i interject my own reality in terms of the differences in costs and time to get to city center for a paying job. why on earth would we want to make jobs harder and more expensive to get to, where is the equity in that?
i have to say, due to the work of the antiplanner, i’ve mostly turned into being a libertarian on transportation.
the road system and the grid: two great pieces of egalitarian infrastructure we should be cherishing.
Many years ago a friend of mine had to take a job sell cars and learned really quick that most of the customers did not care what the interest rate was or how many years they would be paying and just wanted to know what the monthly payment was.
I was stunned by this fact.
The lack of understanding math is a real problem and is keeping many people poor.
My daughter lives in the Antiplanners old neighborhood and the strip malls on McLoughlin Boulevard on state highway 99 are much better than driving downtown or miles away.
Mostly too far to walk and a short easy drive and carrying groceries and other items in a car, beats carrying them home.
i guess oak lodge and oak grove are essentially the same place? sadly i didn’t see a grocer on the west side of 99 road so at the few signaled crossing points that would seem an unnecessary pain. on the east side of 99 its a piece of cake to get whatever one might need by car or bike.
It’s 2023 and the urbanistas still haven’t discovered home delivery.