Is Traffic Good for Us?

8/14/2019 Is Traffic Good for Us?

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IsTFfficC'oodforlls?Yes, i,f it doesn't kiLL us first.BY KEVIN BDRGER ILLUSTITATIONS BY ROBIIRT KOI'E('I{Y

he moment you sit in a car your centralnervous system lights up like a boule-vard of green lights. You fold your" fingers around the steering wheel and

neurons in your brain race off like tiny electricroadsters, colliding in your visual cortex. AII of asudden vou see yourself cruisin$ down an open


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road, white lines skating beneath you. Raised in theland of raw urban sprawl, you put your fbot on theaccelerator and feel the first rush of teenage free-dom, the pride of ownership, the thrill of speecl. Youimagine heat waves rising off the asphalt, ancl yougo, in the words of Robert Penn Warren, "whippingon into the dazzle."Then you pull out ofyour driveway and headonto Highway 24 in Concord or Interstate 580 inLivermore or Highway 17 in Los Gatos or InterstateB0 in El Cerrito or Highway 101 in San Rafael,and everything you've been conditioned to feelabout driving becomes gnarled like a knot in yourstomach. As vou grind to a halt in traffic, just as

we have tokl pollsters that traffic is the region'snumber one problem. But then we plrt down thephone and pack up the cassettes to listen to JamesEarl Jones recite Otlrc,llo while we drive to work.The way it looks now, we won't break our depen-dence on cars until our tires can't roll another inch.We won't construct a transportation system that'sI'ree of traffic and stress until our cities have spreadlike ink and blackened our remaining folestsand deserts all the way to the mountains. If we'retalking about an incentive to change, says Lr.C.Irvine's Raymond Novaco, a social ecolog), professorwhose stuclies of road rage are the trophies of histenure, "traffic is not bad enough."

"Ifeveryonebelievesthat equalifobtigeseveryone toown a Cadillac,we'll obviouslyencountersituationsas absurd asthey arecata.strophie."-Rc.n6.I)u,tx>s

you did yesterday and the day before, you f'eel inyour marrow that you should be moving, mouing.Your brain clouds in anger. Your hands shakeand vocal cords tremble as you yell at the yellowMiata that cuts you off. Your blood pressure sky-rockets. constricting your arteries. A heart attackis not out of the question.Is this any way to live? Of course it is. Just aslong as the Ford Explorer is filled with ChewonSupreme and the Pioneer car stereo soundslike Carnegie Hall.For as long as cars have clogpecl the veins ofAmerica, drivers have adapted to trafTic. First, werelieved the congestion by paving country roads,constructing ern interstate highway system, andwidening metropolitan freeways. Once we beganto run out of land, we designed cars as comfortableas waiting rooms, an effort that led to one of ourfinest technological achievements-the cup holder.Next we shifted our adaptive energies to ourphysical and mental states. In Bangkok, wherecommuters inch through downtown traffic at anaverage speed of 4 mph, parents save time byfeecling their children breakfast in the passengerseat. In the Bay Area, one commuter who drivesfrom Antioch to Redwood City views his dailycommute as a video gane, in which the challengeis to pass cars and take alternative routes. "Theearlier I get to the office," he says, "the morepoints I score in my mind."

Periodically, of course, we complain about traffic.For ten of the past fburteen years in the Bay Area,

n the beginning, or at least back r,vhen MarkTWain was reminding us that our fate asAmericans was to light out for the territorl', ittook a national crisis to spttr the conntrybeyond the dominant mocle of transportation.In the 1890s,30 million horses consumed 40 per-

cent of America's total grain crop. Each horse, eachday, then deposited about ten pounds of dung inthe street. When it rained, manure turnecl into anoozy yellow-green soup. City ctu,'ellers sludged aclossthe streets with skirts or pant cuff'"s raised. In NervYork City alone, 15,000 horses tlied a year; most ofthe carcasses were left to decompose in the gutters.The smell rvas horrendous. Flies were everl.u'here.When the Tin Lizzie finally conqucred the horse inthe 1920s, tuberculosis rates plummeted.

Half a century later, though, we realize that the atttomotive steed also stinks. In fact, since the early'60s"freeway revolt," when citizens blockecl constructionof an Embarcadero highway to link the Bay Briclgewith the Golden Garte Bridge, Bay Area activists har,ebeen instrumental in publicizing cars as r''ehicles ofthe apocalypse. "The car has transfbrmecl cities intosprawling structures helcl together by asphalt anrtgasoline," claims Richard Register, founcler of theBerkeley-based internationerl organization EcocityBuilders. "It has dismembered communities andcovered the best agricultural land in the world. It haspolluted the air and water, and since the first autoaccident in 1899, has killecl about 16 million people."All of that is true," responds Martin Wachs, director of the University of California Transportation


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where it was constantly watered down. Finally,the plan to ensure the Bay Area's "beauty, livability,and economic strength" in the 21st centuryvanished in a vapor of indifference.Rod Diridon, who convened the first Bay Vision2020 meeting and is now the executive directorof the Mineta Ttansportation Institute at San JoseState Universibr, traces the plan's failure to theheart of political culture. "Democracy is notdesigned to be efficient," he says. "Democracy isdesigned to be accountable." And right now nopolitician has the coura!e to rise above acrountabilityto his or her constituency and envision our urbanareas as one region, one network of roads and homes

and businesses, one community that serves allnine counties.Today, the failure to address traffic as a regionalproblem has granted the Bay Area the dubiousachievement award of having the third-worstcongestion in the country, just behind LosAngeles and Washington, D.C. Last year, Bay Areacongestion swelled by an annual margin notmatched since 1981, causing drivers to stewin traffic for a total of 90,000 hours a day.Curently, Bay Area residents own more cars(3.9 million) per capita than any populous countryin the world. By 2010, population growth will havejammed about 2 million more cars into the BayArea. (The September BART strike added a piddling100,000-plus to the roads.) Will traffic then

come to a my'thic standstill, the crisispoint that will cause us to endorsea regional plan that, finally.will end the gridlock and: , preserve our mental andspiritual health?"Well, no," says ChuckPurvis, senior analyst of

the Metropolitan Ttans-portation Commission, theresearch agency that dis-tributes public funds forBay Area transportation pro-jects. "People will just adapt-

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But than* ,::-rfstal powerballs, laughing bluedolptr,ros and a doll who said'1ife is just a chairof bowlies," I found myway home. Too bad.

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Is Traffic Good for Us?

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