Myths about Car-Crazy Suburbia
By Ted Balaker and Samuel R. Staley

In their new book The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, And What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield), Ted Balaker and Sam Staley examine the “10 Myths About Car-Crazy Suburbia.” What follows are summaries of some of the myths.

Myth: Americans are addicted to driving.

Journalists and politicians like to say that Americans are “addicted” to driving, but Americans are no more addicted to driving than they are to broadband Internet access. Both offer faster, more convenient service than the alternatives. For example, transit commutes are typically twice as long as car commutes. As other nations grow wealthier, their transportation habits become more like ours. In America automobiles account for about 88 percent of travel and in Europe the figure is about 78 percent. And the Europeans are gaining on us. In Europe per capita driving has been increasing more than twice as fast as in the states.

Myth: Transit can reduce traffic congestion.

In all but a few American metro areas, transit does not carry enough traffic to have a significant impact on congestion. Despite nearly a half-century of ever-increasing subsidies, transit’s share of commute trips continues to slide and now stands at less than 5 percent. Examine all trips (not just work trips) and transit’s impact shrinks even more. Nationwide it accounts for only 1.5 percent of trips. Some argue that traffic congestion would be much worse if it weren’t for transit. But even if transit systems were shut down (something virtually no one proposes), most former transit users would not add to traffic congestion because 70 percent of them do not have access to cars. Transit use tends to decline anywhere wealth increases. Transit is sliding even in Europe where gas prices are much higher and transit service far more extensive. From 1980 to 1995, transit fell by 14 percent in London, 24 percent in Paris, 19 percent in Stockholm, and 60 percent in Frankfurt.

Myth: The suburbs are soulless and superficial.

People move to the suburbs for reasons that are hardly superficial. They seek better lives for their families: improved job prospects, safer neighborhoods, better schools, affordable housing, and a plot of land for gardening or tossing the baseball with the kids. Today’s suburbs are very different from Ward and June Cleaver’s suburbs. For example, many critics regard suburbia as racially segregated, but a Harvard-Tufts research team discovered that “racial segregation is much lower in suburban census tracts than in urban census tracts.” Even the stereotype of suburbia as a cultural wasteland is misleading because our nation’s explosion of cultural offerings has coincided with the rise of suburbia. Indeed a National Endowment for the Arts survey found that suburbanites are slightly more likely to be readers of literature than city dwellers.

Myth: We can’t cut air pollution unless we stop driving.

Although surveys often reveal that Americans think air quality is getting worse, it’s actually been improving rather dramatically. More stringent regulations and better technology have allowed us to achieve what was previously unthinkable—driving more and getting cleaner. Since 1970, driving has increased 155 percent, and yet the EPA reports a dramatic decrease in every major pollutant it measures: “Since 1970 the aggregate emissions of the six principal pollutants have been cut 48 percent.” And not since 1980 have ozone concentrations been so low.

But good news is hard to take. Some may think the progress we’ve made is fleeting. We're growing so fast, adding so many new people and new cars, won’t growth soon overwhelm these air quality gains? The EPA doesn’t think so. “Over the next decade, federal, state, and local regulations are expected to further reduce ozone precursor emissions, and, as a result, ozone levels are expected to drop.”

There’s a simple explanation for why the air we will breathe in the future will be even cleaner: we’re cleaning the air faster than we’re soiling it. Driving is increasing by 1 to 3 percent each year, but average vehicle emissions are dropping by about 10 percent each year. In other words, emissions are declining at about 7 to 9 percent each year.

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