Cars are Killing us.

mrk.'s 469 and counting.... Reasons
We Must Eliminate Automobiles

(an ongoing project -- version 9.4 -- March, 2004)

visited by

drivers
Technology disclaimer ---- Urban vs. Rural disclaimer

Milwaukee, San Francisco, New York & Portland tore down central freeways and by all accounts, they have better cities! wound up with better cities! Tear It Down!
I spent 13 months travelling around Europe for the cost of one car for one year! What a trade off! Sell your car and travel for half the year!
Isolating the 'good' people in their personal little bubbles, leaving the streets to crime, gangs, and the homeless; thus making the cities more and more unappealing to most people.
Average speed of a horse cart, London 1909: 7mph. Average speed of an automobile, London 1999: 6mph. -- A goto B
The fuel efficiency of Fords MOST fuel efficient 2003 model, 36mpg, is ONE mile better than the 35mpg of the 1911 Model T. At this rate, Ford will hit 40 MPG by about the year 2350! Now that is technological innovation!
More people die every day in automobiles in the U.S.A. than in the single annual jetliner crash -- however there is not hours of sensationalized news coverage of this carnage!
"Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." -- Walter Kulash, a traffic engineer, Orlando, Fla.
"If we had 115 people die a day in aviation crashes, we wouldn't have a plane in the skies!" -- Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta
George H W Bush. (Oil millionaire who owns 100% of the oil concession for the country of Bahrain, which, as US president, he went to war to protect, which is treason.)
Crowded Is Good -- just as long as you are not in an automobile! [There is a] deep difference in travel philosophy. To the motorist, "cars are in the way, except mine." Thus the fewer other motorists encountered on the road, the better. But to pedestrians or bicyclists, a vibrant street or sidewalk filled with other people cycling or walking is much better than deserted block or creepily empty bus. We share a sense of community hard to convey to the isolated individual in his or her metal box. ... The thought of twice as many fellow car drivers on the road fills [car drivers] with horror.-- Fran Taylor in Tube Times
No punishment or consequences of any kind, for illegal, rude, unsafe anti-social behavior.
Approximately as many people die daily (250) in the U.S.A. from auto pollution as die from crashes. -- KUOW 13 September, 2001
Interacting daily with hurried, frustrated, people who have to squeeze driving between scheduled tasks (commuting to work by car) instead of calm professionals whose only scheduled task is to operate their vehicles knowledgeably and safely.
In the U.S.A. during the first two weeks of September 2001, more people were killed by automobiles, than by terrorism and AIDS combined!
Hiking trails in Mount Rainier National Park must be closed occasionally because the pollution levels, caused by autos in the nearby metroplex of Seattle, are too dangerous! -- KUOW 18 July, 1999
Human Scale transport (you can talk to your neighbor or people on the sidewalk).
The destruction of our life giving atmosphere.
Light rail is moving traffic calming!
Deaths by automobile in the suburbs exceed deaths by crime in the cities.
Government pays solo drivers to pollute. Solo driving is more heavily subsidized with tax dollars than commuter rail or subway travel.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
How to Impoverish Ourselves Without Really Trying: The Costs of Transportation, and Where They're Hiding -- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
George W Bush.
Providing transportation to and around the center of a city by transit is now comparatively inexpensive, and will become even cheaper if more people use the transit system. On the other hand, driving in high-density areas and during peak periods is now expensive, and will become still more expensive if people rely more heavily on cars-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Throughout cities and suburbs, a vast amount of valuable land is paved over and kept out of productive use so that it remains available for the storage of cars. In the heart of a major urban area, where land is particularly valuable, the cost is very high, for every mile of solo driving in the central part of the Boston region, the total cost of making parking available is 24¢. ... Government bears part of this cost. The cost of providing on-street parking is reflected in federal and state capital expenses ... and substantial cost to government consists of forgone tax revenues. ... The cost to government of subsidizing employer-provided parking through the tax code is 10¢ for each mile of solo driving.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
"The way we get around is destroying our towns and cities, damaging the countryside and even changing the weather of the planet" -- British Cabinet Minister 1999
The current way we pay for transportation is difficult to see and understand for most people, and as a result, travel choices are generally made without much consideration for what they actually cost. -- Maggi Fimia, King County Councilmember
Noise.
Banishing people from the city streets, in favor of dangerous machines.
The Last 7 miles of Interstate 90 cost taxpayers $1.7 billion. That's$242,000,000 per mile or $3800 per inch! (And that doesn't include the first bridge that sank!).
Transit costs drop if transit ridership goes up. In the case of every form of transit, if ridership increases, costs per passenger mile drop sharply: by as much as 43 percent. Driving costs increase if roadway traffic grows at a high rate. If growth in roadway traffic picks up, the cost for each mile a person drives will go up, in some cases quite sharply-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Bicycle commuting is a stress relieving (rather than stress creating) way to end the day!
The vast majority of road building for cars, and other public subsides for cars, come from local, state, and federal taxes which everybody pays regardless of how much, or how little you drive. Fuel taxes and the ever shrinking license plate fee pay for far less than 10% of the direct public cost of cars.
People refusing to stop for emergency vehicles.
Build more smaller streets and roads rather than huge limited-access interstate highways. I'm for choice. Travelers should be offered options. Government should invest in streets, sidewalks, transit, and bike paths instead of devoting almost all of its tax money to huge, highly engineered expressways. -- -- Walter Kulash, traffic engineer, Orlando, Fla.
The fact that we are unable to enforce law breaking to even 0.0001% should be considered a cost of our transit system.
Suburbia.
Three and a half states paved over!!!! (By 1991, 20,627 square miles of the U.S.A. had already been paved over for roads alone (no parking areas included!); That is larger than the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined with half of Vermont thrown in too!) --Alt-Trans index
Youth and the Elderly are excluded from the transportation system, and therefore from most of society.
15% of annual auto fatalities are bikers and pedestrians killed by cars -- but 97% of safety money is directed towards making the roads safer for cars!
Much has been written (ie Dune) about the damage to all facets of society when an economy is utterly dependent on one product. (Oil) It is foolishness.
Narrow Sidewalks. To make more room for automobiles, the sidewalks in Seattle are barely wide enough to allow 3 people across, not counting obstructions.
Sport-utility vehicles. (2000 more people die per year because of these monsters! -- Seattle P-I, 3 March, 1999.).
One of the highest costs of driving is the cost of parking spaces. The total cost of parking ranges from 11¢ to 24¢ for every mile of solo driving. The public's massive commitment of resources to parking should be reduced-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
To shelter us from automobiles, our living spaces focus away from the streets, thus severing us further from the people around us.
Extreme levels of stress throughout our daily lives.
Depending on a vehicle that is maintained, occasionally, by a distracted amateur instead of one that is maintained daily, by a trained, focused professional.
We say that you drive a car and ride a bike, when the reality is the exact opposite!
The automobile dependent suburbia is a failure. -- Paul Spinrad
Gas may only cost about $1.25 per gallon at the pump, but the government subsidy is at least $2.25 per gallon (Stephen B. Goddard) and may be as much as $16 per gallon (Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubio).
Idiots who use the cellphone while driving (statistics indicate that the a driver is as dangerous when talking on the cellphone as when legally drunk!!)
In the average American city, 40% of the land area is dedicated to cars instead of people. In Seattle, with it's tiny blocks and lack of transit, it is closer to 55%!
Over 40,000 people killed every year, in the U.S.A. alone due to car crashes.
In Seattle, for the cost of a bus ticket that will get you anywhere in the city AND BACK, you can drive the average car 20 blocks and the average Sport-Utility-Vehicle about 12 blocks. (And that does not include costs for parking, law enforcement, land use and road building! If you include those costs, you can only get about 2 blocks!)
Speed.
Moving people a step away from face to face contact, generating a false sense of superiority which causes people to reach a level of aggressive, angry, selfishness that they would NEVER ever reach if they had to take direct responsibility for their actions.
Over half of all water pollution comes from non-point sources-- sources that cannot be connected to one specific source are difficult to identify and control. Cars are the #1 source of non-point pollution, and every time we drive we add to Washington's water pollution problem.
The three largest corporations in America are GM, Exxon and Ford.
Exploding subdivisions far from the city center, carving asphalt and expensive houses out of the last 1% of The Earth's forests.
Some office developers now budget 200 square feet of space for each cubicle and 400 square feet for each car. So a person is now defined as simply half a car.
The huge amount of resources required to patrol the roads at even the meager current levels takes away resources from the law enforcement efforts at every other level of society.
Fifty years ago there were over 65 US automobile manufacturers. Today there are TWO.
Cars kill more than random crime: Counting ONLY pedestrian deaths, in Washington State you are 3.6 times more likely (85 vs. 24) to be killed by a stranger with a car than a stranger with a gun. -- Alt-Trans index
Aggression.
The widespread attitude that it is OK to break the law, as long as you're not caught.
Parking scofflaws who park in crosswalks, bus zones, sidewalks and other no-parking zones in the way of PEOPLE; and then whine like babies on the extremely rare occasion that they are ticketed.
To get from downtown Seattle to the Airport by private car it takes about than 35 minutes (and costs about $10) by taxi it takes about 30 minutes and costs about $45, by shuttle van it takes about 45 minutes and costs $18, by city bus it takes about 20 minutes and costs, at most, $1.75. And if they ever improve the decidedly poor transit system, light rail would get there even faster!
Giving millions of people, for the first time in history, access without education or preparation or responsibility to the vital wilderness areas, endangering themselves and virtually destroying the wilderness.
The death rate per 100 million passenger miles for cars is 1.05. The death rate per 100 million passenger miles for transit buses is 0.01.
The backward thinking of the new $73 million parking garage that the City of Seattle paid for (included over $23 million in kickbacks to private developers)! which slows transit and clogs the city by bringing more cars into downtown.
All the 'good' people are isolated in their little bubbles, because they find public transportation unpleasant because there aren't more people like themselves because they are all in their own bubbles. So the people encountered on the bus tend to be unappealing to most people.
Capitalizing on people's frustration with their devalued lives while giving them an outlet to feed their ego with a dangerous weapon.
The outrageous cost of building roads and highways.
Our current transit (and city) planning, which is done by people who wouldn't use public transit if you put a gun up to their head!
Styrofoam suburbs marketed as a 'community' when they are, in fact, the exact opposite.
New city policies in New York and Seattle which drastically reduce liberty of thousands of pedestrians in order to allow the easier flow of a few more automobiles containing generally the wealthy.
A very large portion of our Federal, State and Local tax money is spent on patrolling the almost lawless roads.
The essential gentrification of the outrageous cost of a car.
The frustration and inconvenience of having your schedule destroyed by a small thing such as leaving the lights on or getting a flat tire.
Over six thousand pedestrians are killed annually by motor vehicles in the U.S.A., accounting for 14% of all traffic fatalities. Only 1% of federal highway safety funds are dedicated to pedestrian safety.
6,800,000 crashes in 1995 (in the U.S.A. only). --Seattle Times 5/25/96
Paving was invented for bicycles, not cars.
If you build it, they will come! Ridership on the new MetroLink lightrail system in St. Louis has exceeded projections by 200% -- and 80% of these riders are new to transit!
People who's fragile egos are damaged by being behind anything!
Five auto corporations have recently (1999) been convicted of tampering with emissions equipment on millions of new vehicles. Honda, Ford and General Motors were each fined nominal amounts for secretly, consciously, altering millions of cars to violate the pollution laws. Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel were not fined at all when found guilty of intentionally setting the computers in every truck they built for years to lie on emissions tests. They weren't even caught by US regulators -- it was the European governments who figured it out!
Seventeen percent of households in Seattle do not own an automobile.
The city streets are no longer for people. When on radio, Larry King always talked about playing stickball on the streets in New York as a kid in the 1930s & 1940s. One night a caller challenged him, saying it couldn't be true because it would be too dangerous. Larry pointed out what this caller has forgotten: the streets used to be for PEOPLE. Only in the last 50 years have our primary public spaces, the streets, been given up to the machines!
"Driving is now one of the most stressful activities there is." -- Roland Maiuro University of Washington professor of psychiatry(Seattle Times April 1997)
Every day, twelve million Americans use transit to get to work, four million bicycle, tens of millions walk.
Over 25% of drivers ADMIT they drive aggressively. -- Seattle Times 7/1/98
The excessive wastefulness of building and maintaining many, many small vehicles as opposed to a relatively a few large vehicles.
Congress keeps trying to get rid of Amtrak, even though it has the smallest government subsidy of any passenger railroad in the world, but if passenger rail were subsidized by the government at the same rate that automobiles are, the U.S.A. would have the most elaborate, complete rail system the world has ever known!
People are beginning to think (and claim) that breaking traffic law is a Constitutional RIGHT!
Motion sickness. The unpredictable movement, especially side to side, of busses and cars is hundreds of times more likely to cause motion sickness than trains -- and it is impossible on a bike or walking!
The growing number of people who drive in a manner that depends on other drivers to avoid collisions based on their behavior.
$155 billion spent annually in the U.S.A. on medical and property damage caused by cars. -- NPR 8/8/96
Rails last much, much longer than pavement. Streets, roads and highways require constant repair and rebuilding, taking money away from improving the extent of infrastructure.
Battling with the police, playing cat and mouse and being scared, every single day.
Suburban flight -- every single negative quality of life factor in our cities is almost entirely due to automobiles and yet when people move to the suburbs, they exacerbate the problem!
Enclosing ourselves in little bubbles, utterly separated from the rest of the world while we drive to our isolated house cut out of a forest so we can pretend we are alone in the world and not have to deal with anything that might be unpleasant, even reality.
What is the dominant species on the planet? In this city we have more cars than people!? The number of registered vehicles in Seattle is 103% of the population (536,335 vehicles, 516,254 people)! And it is 1.6 cars for every licensed driver! And that's in 1990 -- it's worse today. If all of the registered vehicles in Seattle were put end to end they would stretch from Seattle to San Francisco, and back! In the Pacific northwest there are 1million more registered vehicles than licensed drivers.
The banal and egocentric practice of washing cars causes serious pollution and wastes enormous amounts of precious water.
Corridor/infrastructure problems must be reported by random, distracted, usually irrational and often irate motorists instead of trained professional vehicle operators who cover the same territory daily.
$6,389.16. The amount the average American spends per auto, per year (Sport Utility Vehicles average $8640!) not including subsided parking, enormous amounts of local, state and federal tax money for road building, maintenance and law enforcement, massive medical bills and increased rent/mortgages due to driveways and garages. --American Automobile Association Put that in a high yield CD for 15 years and you could retire at 35!!!
Auto wrecks are no longer called 'accidents', being neither accidental, nor uncommon, they are now referred to as 'incidents'.
General Motors, which posted it's highest profits in history the previous quarter, wanted to cut the pay and benefits in the UAW contract to 'streamline' the company and make it "more competitive". (6/98)
Several Washington salmon and fish species, including Chinook Salmon, are on the brink of extinction. The #1 cause of this is degraded water quality primarily caused by cars.
The U.S.A. spends over $1.3 trillion per year on imported oil. -- Alt- Trans index
For every 25 miles a car is driven, one pound of pollution is added to the air. -- Community Transit
The well documented increase in anger oriented incidents on our roadways in the last 5 to 10 years. -- Seattle Times 1/14/95
The number of automobile doors manufactured in the last 80 years is greater than the total number of humans who have EVER lived.
There is nothing in our world we give more power than the consumer product called the automobile: we see, hear, smell or feel them at all times throughout our life. They control every aspect of our lives.
Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pollutants that comes from cars, have been demonstrated to cause impaired growth, suppression of immune function and increased mortality in juvenile salmon populations.
'Freeways' are not free.
Motor Vehicle miles traveled in Washington State has grown 4 times faster than population since 1970. -- King County Councilmember Maggi Fimia, chair of the Transportation Pricing Task Force
The pinnacle of selfishness: pushing all aside for our own APPARENT convenience.
A typical us car requires over 50 times it's weight in water to produce -- ZPG website
The number of Americans killed in car accidents every year is greater than the total number of Americans killed in the entire Vietnam war.
The average American spends 8 hours a week in their car! (That is 3 hours more than the average American father of a four year old spends alone with his child each week.)
The average American spends more per year on their cars than on housing.
OPEC.
Traffic incidents involving guns are occurring at nearly a one-a-day rate this year in King County, according to the State Patrol. --Seattle Times April 1997
Allowing people to get away with a level of risk taking unlike any inhuman history -- Therefore weakening our gene pool by allowing the fearless to survive and reproduce.
General Motors founded Greyhound, National Motorcoach and National CityLines in order to run the street cars out of business. It was subject to four anti-trust investigations. In 1946 it was found guilty of doing $300 billion(in 1946 dollars) damage to the industry. The GM led Eisenhower administration fined It only $5000, the CEO was fined $1.
Oil drilling in the wildlife refuges.
The ratio of federal highway funding to federal transit funding in 1980was 2 to 1, in 1990 it was 4 to 1 and in the Republican led, May 1998 House appropriations bill it is 8 to 1. (Remember only 14% of Americans voted for the GOP in the '94 election).
Insurance companies.
Allowing the public transportation system to disintegrate, which causes ridership to decline even further, and that fact is used to discourage improving it, which causes ridership to decline even further...
Walmart.
The Alaska Way Viaduct -- a stupid, ugly double deck highway that is not earthquake safe and separates Downtown Seattle from it's waterfront.
Getting lost -- and always having to know, and interpret intricate directions (while operating a dangerous machine) to every place you must go!
People with physical handicaps (epilepsy, blindness, paralysis) are excluded from the entire transportation system -- quite the opposite would be true with a system centered around professionally driven multi-rider vehicles.
Between 1973 and 1990, in oil consumption the U.S.A. declined 9% in industry, declined 44% in buildings, declined 64% in power generation and increased 21% in transportation! -- The Going Rate: What it Really Costs to Drive, the World Resources Institute
Motor vehicles account for 43% of air pollution in Washington State and over 68% in the Puget Sound Region. Nationwide 50% to 60% of air pollution in the U.S.A. is generated by transportation. In Los Angeles it is 70% to 80%! -- American Lung Association of Washington
It takes 16 lanes of auto traffic to carry the same number of people as one commuter rail line.
Outdoor cafes, once a wonderful thing, are now miserable: sitting and eating only 2 or 3 feet from a loud, noxious street.
The annual personal savings in lower transportation costs experienced by residents of the nation's transit intensive areas: $20 billion.
The there are over 2000 new parking spaces built every year in downtown Seattle.
Transit usage in Seattle is dropping! (19.5% in 1980, 15.8% in 1990!)(The (Seattle) Regional Transit Authority's proposal would generate, by conservative estimates, 100,000 more transit trips everyday.)
Large portions of our cities (and countryside) that are devalued, both financially and socially, because we only pass through these decidedly non-people friendly areas in our speeding capsules.
The banal 'Low Fat' craze -- caused, in large part, by people not getting enough exercise because they drive everywhere.
The New Jersey Turnpike.
The only deterrent to dangerous driving is the threat of material damage to one's own property.
Sprawl.
In 1995 the [Puget Sound] region spent an average of more than $7,000 on transportation for every man, woman and child in the region. (More than a quarter of per capita income!) This is not including some hard-to-quantify costs included in other studies such as costs associated with global warming, land values, law enforcement, national security necessary to protect fuel supplies among others. --Puget Sound Regional Council10/10/96
Being constantly afraid of every rattle, squeak or smell.
People filling themselves with alcohol and other drugs and then encountering the reality that they have no other way to get home other than drunk driving.
Underpricing gives motorists and transit riders no economic reason to consider the lion's share of the public cost of travel. By establishing transportation habits without regard to their costs, individuals unwittingly drive up the cost of government, the cost of business for the private sector, and the cost of maintaining a certain quality of life for the public as a whole.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
The LA Times. (In the early part of this century the newspaper bought up huge tracts of land around Los Angeles and then for years passionately editorialized in favor of abandoning the street car, and even the bus, system and building a huge freeway network at an ENORMOUS cost to the taxpayers. The were then built... on land sold by the newspaper.)
They are now selling oxygen in Mexico City.
71% of King County residents say "the only way out of the traffic mess" is for more people to use public transportation. -- Seattle P-I 14 January, 1999 But instead we are cutting our public transportation and building more roads and parking lots.
Organ Donor Cards. Automobiles are the only machine we are asked to sign away our organs before we can operate it. No one asks you to sign an organ donor card before you operate a blender. --AltTrans
Interstate Highways.
When a car hits a pedestrian, or a bicyclist, the car is not hurt.
The irresponsibility of giving multi-ton guided missiles to people we wouldn't trust with a butter knife.
Being stranded by an automobile that won't run.
Ancient monuments (such as the Acropolis in Greece, Notre Dame in Paris the Coliseum in Rome) suddenly crumbling away to nothing due to automobile exhaust!
Junkyards.
Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors CEO in the 20s & 30s, whose successful plan for selling more cars was "Eliminate the alternatives."
People having heart attacks because they're choking on the carbon monoxide and can't walk 10 meters!
Suburbs without sidewalks. So much is spent on roads that no one pays for the sidewalks, which, of course, means suburbanites must drive everywhere
In downtown Seattle, bicycles are ticketed more often than cars and more pedestrians are ticketed than cars! Needless to say, there are far more cars than pedestrians and many thousands of times more cars than bicycles.
High carbon monoxide concentrations on crowded roads can restrict oxygen flow to the brain of a driver -- impairing driving performance as well as causing coughing, headaches, nausea, heart disease, and cancer. -- Deborah Gordon 1991
Los Angeles.
Irrational people who complain when the roads need repair, and/or demand the building of more freeways and then complain when the roads are closed for repair & construction.
Paving the planet. ...and all the national parks.
Driver going twice the speed limit on a city street kills four people and is given the maximum sentence allowed -- 2.5 years in jail with time off for good behavior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seattle P-I, 13 January, 1999
Almost one third of Washington State residents do not have a drivers license -- it is higher in most other states.
Constant time pressure (hurry! hurry! hurry!).
Potholes.
When The Seattle Freeway (I-5) was proposed, it was opposed by 94% of the people in the city. When the Aurora Freeway was proposed, fewer than 7% of Seattlites even owned cars -- most didn't even know what a freeway was! Both were built using 100% taxpayers dollars. But when public transit initiatives were opposed by 30% of Seattle VOTERS (a high of 68% in favor in 1994 ) the transit initiatives were considered "defeated".
Turning a benign drowsiness into one of the most dangerous events in our life.
People who live on a busy traffic street have, on average, 3.9 friends & acquaintances on their street. People who live on a light traffic street have, on average, 9.3 friends & acquaintances on their street. --AltTrans
Ford's new SUV gets less than 10 MPG. (The Twike electric gets over 300 mpg!)
Assholes who drive with one hand on the horn.
Sport-utility vehicles and the illusion that one can drive through wilderness with all the comfort of home, ignoring the destruction it causes.
The road is the major architectural form of this century. -- local architect quoted in The Seattle Time
The widespread unwillingness to obey traffic laws, and the complete disinterest by the police in enforcing traffic laws, has encouraged a terrifying lack of respect for ALL laws. -- Tom Malliozzi
A study determined that for the same cost of the new freeway around Eugene, Oregon, the city could build a public transit system that served the entire city, to within 3 blocks of every residence, make it fare free for 25 years, buy a bicycle for every man, woman and child in the city, install showers and bike racks at every place of employment and still give back $1500 to EVERY taxpayer in the city. -- Harpers Magazine
A huge military with an outrageous budget to protect the fuel supplies for automobiles.
Oil wars.
The average U.S.A. household ... spends nearly 20% of its total annual income on transportation. -- BankAmerica Newsletter, January 1991
People who drive without paying any attention to what they are doing!
Neighborhoods, and towns, and cities and countries that are built with the concept that walking is unnecessary and therefore it's more than eight miles to the closest grocery store.
A terrifying level of brazen lawlessness unheard of in any other part of our culture.
While transit ridership sharply increased in the first half of the 1990s in our sister cities where they built new quality rail transit (Portland up14.0% and Vancouver up 19.2%), in Seattle, with it's extremely poor bus system, ridership has actually has dropped slightly (down 0.3%).
The complete isolation from all other people.
Joseph Hazelwood.
You don't meet and become friends with the person sitting next to you in an automobile traffic jam.
Seattle driver is issued a measly $71 ticket for running a red light and blocking the box causing a huge rush hour back up and whines publicly about the unfairness of the punishment. -- Seattle Times
An astounding numbing to very real danger.
Filling our cities, and our lives, with parking lots.
Road Dust is terrible pollution. (It is the primary origin of the pollution causing it to be impossible to see across the Grand Canyon on most days.) -- NPR 6/15/96
Curbs. They are a great impediment to pedestrians. Anyone who has walked in a city with handicap ramps can see that PEOPLE to use the ramps, pedestrians prefer ramps to the curb!
Our health crisis. Tens of thousands of fatalities in the U.S.A. auto crashes every year, millions of injuries. Uncounted respiratory problems, obesity, the list goes on and on. And tax dollars pick up the bill for most of this!
Leaving people cowering on the sidewalks, while dangerous machines rule all but the margins of our public spaces.
Lots more big valuable stuff to steal lying around!
Malls, strip malls and mega-marts vs. downtowns, corner stores and community.
Acid Rain.
Our cities disintegrate as people who can afford to commute by auto abandon the city, and their responsibilities to society, for a false sense of security in a suburbia freshly built from forestland, happily leaving the rest to suffer.
Air pollution is estimated to cost the nation more than $40 billion a year in health care costs.
30,000 cancer deaths annually in the U.S.A. caused by motor vehicle air pollution. -- EPA
In 1950 there was 1 car for every 4.00 Americans. In 1993 there was 1 car for every 1.75 Americans. -- FutureScan, No. 781, Santa Monica, CA 9/27/93
The economic gentrification created by automobile propelled styrofoam subdivisions involves an inherent racial segregation.
Car Alarms.
The immensely, arrogantly, wasteful concept of having a great many vehicles that carry few (or one!) people, with most of them idle most of the time, instead of a few vehicles that carry many people and operate most of the time.
Only 43% of Americans SAY they obey the speed limit. --Seattle Times 5/25/96
In Sacramento 77% of the people who ride the new light rail system have the option of driving, but prefer transit instead.
Fat, tired, lazy people, who got that way because they think it's a good idea to drive to the corner store.
More and more the construction of automobiles is an effort to build completely effective isolation booths to block out all people and the rest of the world.
Oil wells.
On an annual basis, for an individual, riding transit costs 5% to 25% as much as driving, bicycling costs 1%, walking 0%.
People aren't as attached to their cars as the corporations will have us believe. People want USEFUL, DEPENDABLE transportation -- cars always leave people frustrated and often irrational.
Pavement covered cities.
Stressed out people spending hours in an secluded bubble, lulling them into a false sense of secure isolation that encourages them to not pay much attention to their actions while operating a very dangerous machine.
The average American spends more per year on their car than on food.
People casually tossing litter out the window, as if when it leaves their isolated little bubble it ceases to exist.
Between 1970 & 1990, Chicago's population increased 4%, while it's developed area increased by 46%! Other cities are similar, the farther west, the worse it gets! On the other hand, forty percent of developed space in Washington DC in the 1980's was constructed within walking distance of a Metro stop. -- Alt-Trans index
Even in transit poor Seattle, there are more people in busses on the downtown streets than people in cars! But of course there are more cars than busses!
The inconceivably enormous waste of natural resources required to build millions of new vehicles every year.
A daily commute among dangerous vehicles (operated by amateurs)instead of in controlled vehicles (operated by educated professionals).
95% of the energy goes towards moving the CAR -- not the cargo/passengers. On a bicycle, about 80% of the energy goes towards moving the cargo/passenger.
Idiots who leave their cars running at the grocery store, bank, etc.
The USA has more registerd vehicles than licenced drivers.
Cars kill more americans than guns or drugs.
Americans spend $200 billion every year on car repair! That's over $3000 for every licenced driver.
50% of all car trips in the U.S.A. are less than 6 miles -- and the caytletic converter does not start cutting emmissions until until the car is warmed up!
Over 40% of all cars in the U.S.A. drip hazardous fluids!
Mountainous Washington and Oregon both have more miles of roads than of streams!!
Bicycles do little or no damage to pavement. Less weight-less damage.
Almost 100% of bike metal is from recycled metal while only about 30% of car metal is recycled.
Building a car consumes 40,000 gallons of water.
70% of rubber made worldwide is for tires. 2 billon old tires are lying around in the USA alone (8 per person) 200 million are added each year, more than the number of drivers!
Long waits for car ferries (bikes and pedestrians go to the front of the line!)
Kemper Freeman Sr. & Jr. (Real Estate developers who for 35 years have poured millions of dollars in to the effort to defeat public transportation in the Seattle Metro area because they made millions more buying up forest and farm land, building huge houses in sprawling subdivisions and pressuring the government into spending taxpayers money building freeways near the houses.)
Millions mangled annually. (3,300,000 injuries per year!)
17% of Americans admit to drinking & driving. --Seattle Times 5/25/96
People refusing to walk farther than the nearest parking lot, and then complaining that they are in bad shape.
Private expenditures [for transportation in the Puget Sound Region in 1995] totaled more than $18 billion, including $13 billion to pay for costs associated with automobile ownership, operations, and parking costs. (That's over $3700 per person, including children!). -- Puget Sound Regional Council 10/10/96
Noisy streets, cities and houses.
A temporary insanity that causes even mild mannered people to risk their lives, and the lives of many others in order to save 2 seconds or less.
Less than three percent of all transportation spending [in 1995 in the Puget Sound Region] was on transit and ferries. -- Puget Sound Regional Council 10/10/96
Destroying the country, the quality of life, the resources, the nature, the cities, the community and the air, just so a few people can be superrich.
Iran & Iraq.
Exxon.
The development of roadways and automobiles was NOT a technological advancement or progress, nor was it an open and democratic process, rather it was a coup of powerful secret societies. The designer of the Interstate system in Eisenhower's cabinet was a Vice President of General Motors!
Automobile centered problems cause people to move to the suburbs which then creates even more miles driven, making the problem worse, not better.
The end of free speech -- Malls are privately owned and therefore exempt from the first amendment to the constitution. The Constitution still applies on downtown streets, but cars and car oriented development are eliminating them! Our PUBLIC space is becoming privately owned!
Oil drilling.
One car releases its weight in carbon dioxide every year, considerably screwing up the carbon cycle. And the changes in weather are then blamed, wrongly, on Nature.
The pathetically inefficient & expensive distribution of power and resources inherent in millions of small machines.
An average of 11 million gallons of oil is spilled in the U.S.A. annually, plus 20 million gallons of gas and oil leaks from half a million faulty the U.S.A. storage tanks and do-it-yourself mechanics dump an Exxon Valdez-worth of used motor oil every two and one-half weeks. -- The Going Rate: What it Really Costs to Drive, The World Resources Institute
Auto mechanics, who are widely mistrusted, wielding great power over our lives.
Giving up our streets completely to loud, smelly, dangerous machines.
While we would never consider riding transit with an untrained driver, and we expect every person who operates dangerous machinery to be well trained, we don't train car drivers at all; we give them a simplistic test one time, and then never even test them again.
Practically everything associated with cars-- including oil, gasoline, carbon dioxide emissions, leaks, and old tires-- finds its way into our water, usually through storm drains and the atmosphere.
Almost 100% of the danger when bicycle riding is from cars.
The scary General Motors VP on the Business reports (March 2004) complaining that $1400 of the purchase price of each car is a health care "tax", and claiming we should therefore allow them to treat the workers in their factories EVEN WORSE than they do! -- NPR 03/2004
Thousands and thousands of pets (and children and older people) who die every year because they are left in closed cars in the summertime.
Asphalt.
The few people who make decisions and control elections drive cars and therefore refuse to build useful public transportation for the rest of us.
The appallingly unfair practice of buying permission to break the law,(paying traffic tickets) thereby allowing the rich to break the law without hardship while everyone else suffers. Assuming of course ,that the law is enforced, which it rarely is.
56% of all cars and trucks built are involved in accidents.-- Seattle Times 11/21/96
The toxic runoff from paving everything everywhere.
Destroying what little is left of our planet (after the pavement, pollution and sprawl) with an infinite number of nasty rusting hulks that will stay there for at least 20 generations!
Over 17 million deaths in 80 years.
People running over other people, bashing into each other, knocking pedestrians around, bouncing bicycles.
The enormous, and still growing, lack of community in our lives and culture.
Using up the Earth's fossil fuels.
Used car lots.
A very large portion of our State and Local tax money is spent on road building and maintenance -- even the third of us that don't (or can't) drive must pay for it!
Millions and millions of pets killed or mangled.
Tire fires burning for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Being severed from society and therefore oblivious of the person next to you and of their plight.
The Exxon Valdez.
Lawsuits.
Millions and millions of barrels of crude oil spilled on Siberian tundra, Alaskan beaches, Canadian prairie, African Savannah, Welsh coastline, Scottish Islands... and every ocean and sea on Earth!
A society overwhelmingly controlled by decisions made in the horrible 1950's.
A widespread loss of respect for huge tracts of land -- roadways --creating nasty, dirty, littered, ugly swaths of land all over our world.
Adding even more categories of crime to our lexicon: The Hit & Run, Drive By Shooting, Road Rage, Car Jacking, Bicyclist Manslaughter, Grand Theft Auto, The Getaway Car, to name but a few.
Aggressive auto marketing.
The extremely high level of constant noise in our lives.
Driver speeding and looking in the back seat for a tape kills three bicyclists and the judge suspends her jail sentence and allows her to continue driving because "she has suffered enough"!!!!!
A July 1998 report from the University of Arizona determined that it DOES in fact rain more often on the weekends than during the week --a phenomenon caused by auto emissions from the daily commute during the week.
Paving was invented for bicycles, not cars.
Not only is a driver's license is required for identification -- but in many jobs require a driver's license 'just in case'!
The U.S.A. transportation network is currently 97% to 99% dependent on fossil fuels. 66% of all the U.S.A. oil consumption is for transportation. -- Alt-Transindex
Members of an average household in Pacific Northwest suburbs get in their cars twelve times each day -- 27% of the time for trips that are less than one mile!
You can read, use the computer, socialize, relax or sleep while commuting if you are on a train -- but when in the car, that time is wasted.
A great many of our very common medications adversely effect the ability to drive.
The preponderance of useless gyms and 'work outs'.
A massive industry, producing a technology which is so destructive to people, it simply would not exist without the profit motive.
Rerouting streams into concrete pipes, destroying the watershed and causing repeated flooding.
More than $21 billion a year is spent on transportation (more than 25percent of total regional personal income) in the four-county central Puget Sound region, but only $1.7 billion actually goes to maintaining and improving our region's transportation system and services. -- Puget Sound Regional Council 10/10/96
Having to become an expert in mechanics just to predict and diagnose problems with your transportation system.
Allowing people to live far from where they work, leaving them with no respect for the place where other people live.
Gasoline fumes cause cancer.
Due to the somewhat-justified paranoia about getting hit by cars, parents never let their kids play in the street anymore, justifying the huge, isolating backyards of suburbia
People are starting to walk the way they drive -- distracted and rude!
A selfish insanity that causes people to endanger themselves and others.
Dramatic corporate consolidation of the fuel supply. In 1981, seven oil companies controlled 72 percent of the retail market in the Puget Sound. By 1998, four companies controlled 94 percent of the stations, and almost all independents were gone. Four refineries now [1999] control the entire fuel supply -- Auto United Trades Organization
The Exxon Mobil merger, the largest corporate merger in history.
Fees and taxes paid by motorists cover only 9 to 18 percent of the total cost paid by the public for each mile of solo driving. Fares paid by bus, rail and subway riders cover larger shares 21 to 88 percent of total public costs for those forms of transportation.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
The government subsidy for solo driving is heaviest in the center of a metro region.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Development in the center of a metropolitan region results in low transportation costs, while sprawl imposes very high transportation costs-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Throughout New England and the rest of the nation, a treacherous gap has opened in recent years: a gap between our day-to-day perception that driving costs almost nothing, and the reality of the enormous cost we actually pay to drive. The price of gasoline has been at a post-war low. More efficient cars make fuel go farther than it did in the past. We are as likely as ever to have "free" parking where we work or shop, and rarely find ourselves paying tolls. In part because of our perception that driving costs so little, and our resulting willingness to drive great distances on a daily basis and spread office parks, shopping malls, and subdivisions across the landscape, the amount of driving we do has shot up. -- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
From 1970 to 1991, total annual motor vehicle mileage in Massachusetts increased nearly 80 percent, while the population grew just over 5 percent.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
While the costs of driving may not be obvious to us on a daily basis, they are high and growing. Insurance bills. Health care costs not covered by insurance, resulting from accidents as well as asthma and other respiratory ailments caused by air pollution. Housing costs which, due in part to the cost of land and garages for cars, price many people out of home ownership. Police, fire, and court expenses. Local road upkeep costs that divert scarce municipal dollars from schools, libraries, and parks. The U.S. trade deficit, roughly half of which results from sending massive sums abroad to buy oil.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
All costs borne by government that are directly attributable to driving should be billed to the transportation system. Roadway charges and transportation infrastructure spending decisions should explicitly take all costs into account. For example, roadway charges should cover the costs of local roadway upkeep and automobile-related police, fire, and court services, not just highway expenditures by state departments of transportation. Public officials should broaden their discussions of transit subsidies to include all transportation subsidies, including subsidies for driving. Subsidies for some forms of transportation or user groups may be appropriate. However, they should be confined to instances in which, by favoring transit or another mode of transportation, government can prevent air pollution or other non-governmental costs from being imposed on the public, or address concerns about equity. .-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Public officials need to broaden their discussions of transit subsidies and fare recovery ratios to include all transportation subsidies, including subsidies for driving. Costs borne by government agencies other than transportation agencies that are directly attributable to driving should be allocated to transportation, and transportation pricing and investment decisions should explicitly take those costs into account. Taxpayers either should not have to foot bills that are incurred by drivers and transit users, or should subsidize just those forms of transportation that deserve to be favored because they impose lower overall costs, including environmental costs, on the public.
Automobile technology has not improved significantly in 80 years -- it is basically the same. All the improvements have been in the passenger compartment. Imagine what we would have if we had focused that effort on rail transit!
A willingness to sacrifice every part of our life in the violent struggle to achieve prominence over others instead of an striving for a healthy world society.
General Motors, which bought up the streetcars in 83 American cities and dismantled them so that the people would buy more GM cars.
Further disempowering women in our society, by encouraging them to believe that they must be completely isolated and dependent on technology, or the presence of a man, to be safe.
People -- pedestrians, families, bicyclists, etc -- are not allowed to block the streets, but movie and TV film crews are!
A right of way 100 feet wide (12 lanes) cutting through a city is required in order to serve 40,000 automobiles per hour. An unobtrusive right of way of only 8 feet (1 lane) is required to service 40,000 bicycles per hour.
Between 1971 and 1994. 1 million people were killed in auto related accidents in the U.S.A.. During that same time period 63 people were killed in Amtrak accidents.
Automobiles are subsidized at a higher rate than any other product or service in our society.
The shockingly large numbers of people who DO use public transportation despite how miserably poor the systems are. (53.4% percent of workers use transit in New York City (1990). 134 million trips were made on transit in Washington state in 1994.)
An average bus needs only 7 passengers to exceed the fuel efficiency of a commuter driving alone.
Americans' gasoline addiction is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions ('Using European energy taxation rates as a benchmark, therefore, excess carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.A. represent roughly 5 percent of world emissions from fossil fuel combustion.' -- World Bank, 'Monitoring Environmental Progress' ch 5: http://www- esd.worldbank.org/html/esd/env/publicat/mep/mep09.htm)
Billboards -- (Over half a million of them!)-- the ultimate in-your- face advertising.
On average 13 bicycles can be parked in one car parking space. A bike rack costs $50 per bike. A single auto parking-lot space costs $2,200 to construct, one parking garage space costs $12,500 to construct.
Camaros.
Mining, drilling, refining, spilling, spoiling, destroying.
Turning a little snow into a terrible event that shuts everything down.
When measuring the size of economies, we discover that General Motors is6th largest country in the world.
The average American spends more per year on their cars than on education.
The unconscionable fact that we allow corporations to build and encourage people to use overpowered machines that easily break the law.
The isolation demanded by our transportation system requires a level of intimacy on first dates that most people, especially teenagers, are not ready for.
Auto air conditioners waste large amounts of gas, increase pollution, and destroy the ozone layer.
Spending less and less time in contact with the real world, weather and nature.
Extremely expensive auto repair.
Seattle is ranked 19th among U.S.A. major cities in pedestrian safety. Thirty six Seattle area pedestrians are killed yearly by motor vehicles, that is 19% of all motor vehicle related deaths. Percent of federal highway safety funds dedicated to pedestrian safety projects in Seattle area: 0% Alt-Trans index
Lousy used cars.
The annual cost of time and fuel wasted in traffic congestion in the U.S.A. is $40 billion -- Alt-Trans index
Chevron.

Transit vehicles contribute far less atmospheric pollution than cars.

MODE	Hydro- carbons	Carbon Monoxide	Nitrogen Oxides	TOTAL	Pollutant emissions in grams per passenger mile by Mode of Travel for typical work trips based on national average vehicle occupancy rates. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy
Single- Person Auto	2.09	15.06	2.06	19.21
Full Carpool	0.70	5.02	0.69	6.41
Bus	0.20	3.05	1.54	4.79
Vanpool	0.36	2.42	0.38	3.16
Electric Rail	>0.01	0.02	0.47	0.50
Bicycle	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Subsidizing free/cheap parking drives up the price of consumer goods, whether you used the parking or not!
Working in one place, shopping in another place and going home to yet another.
Automobile companies making and marketing astoundingly overpowered vehicles.
43¢ per mile. The amount it cost to operate the average auto in 1990. -- American Automobile Association
Sirens waking you up at night.
Automobile exhaust is deposited into water in the form of precipitation, gases, or solid materials causing acidification of the water. This can kill aquatic plants and reduce the ability of salmon and other fish to reproduce.
Entrenching a way of life reliant on cars, usually occupied by only one person. -- Seattle Times
Sixty one percent of transit agencies in the U.S.A. will have to more than double their fares to offset proposed (May 1998) cuts in federal transit funding. Pierce Transit would need to increase fares 27%, Yakima Transit would need to raise fares 82% to offset the cuts.
"An Automobile is an extremely complex assembly of a multitude of different moving parts. It is impossible to eliminate all of the annoying rattles and squeaks." -- a Ford Motor Company test engineer -- BBC World Service 11/21/98
While in Japan 15% of commuters bicycle, in the Netherlands 50% do and in China 77% bike, only 1.6% do in the U.S.A. --Washington State Energy Office Extension Services
Helping to fuel 'bright flight' out of city schools. -- Seattle Times
Traffic Laws are not enforced and since drivers know they have a true one in one million chance of getting caught (the average driver gets less than one ticket every 2 years!) at any violation, they have no interest in obeying the law!
A bicycle gets 10 miles to the burrito.
New bike commuters can expect to lose 13 lbs in the first year
Property values go up when car traffic goes down
1/3 of the typical American house is dedicated to the car, imagine getting 1/3 of the value of your house back! (or 1/3 more space for free)
Shop by bike!
Fresh air
Mechanic bills are far, far cheaper for a bicycle.
Co-workers are awed by bike commuters!
Exercise is good for your sex life, lethargy is bad for it.
Biking is fun!!!
An entire culture built around a blind refusal to care about people.
The U.S.A. has 104 million registered cars, with about 550,000,000 seats, more than double the number of people in the entire country.
Royal Dutch Shell.
Seattle's bus system is being cut drastically in the central city (starting when it was transferred to King County in 1995); every part of the city has experienced cuts in service. Dozens of routes have been eliminated and many key routes have been cut back to every 30 minutes or worse! They run late even more often than before (well over 65% of the time) and they have sold off rolling stock to Vancouver BC and Chicago! And after all of this the planners are still baffled at why ridership not increased, but has actually decreased!
Snowmobiles, motorboats, dirtbikes, jetskiis, lawnmowers and all the other unregulated, loud dirty, dangerous car-clone machines that have invaded human and wilderness spaces.
The inconceivability of actually developing a technology that is so destructive to PEOPLE.
The auto companies are bringing the average fuel efficiency of new(American) automobiles down not up (25.9mpg in 1988, 25.0mpg in1993)
Half of one percent of Washington State Department of Transportation construction expenditures go to paths and trails.
Eighty million Americans (30%) do not drive because they are too old, too young, disabled, or cannot afford a car. Even more don't drive because they choose not to.
The frustration of a complete dependence on extremely complex, esoteric mechanical devices.
Trashing the planet for profit: a profit driven refusal to take care of our home. (Also know as shitting in your own bed!)
Every 20 minutes enough cars are scrapped to form a stack as tall as the Empire State building. -- ZPG website
Sixty percent of the U.S.A. trade deficit is due to oil imports. -- Community Transit
Loneliness. The lack of personal contact in our lives.
Road construction crews have been shot at with handguns several times around Seattle recently!
The spaces under overhead freeways, especially in urban areas are very dangerous.
The opening of the new Seattle-Bellevue Interstate 90 bridge in 1989generated an increase of 40,000 vehicle crossings, per day. In other words, within MONTHS, not decades, after opening, traffic congestion rebounded to previous levels.
The number of cars & trucks recalled for repairs has risen steadily the past 15 years -- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
In 10 out of 39 counties in Washington state air pollution exceeds federal health standards.
It costs more to own & operate a car than to raise a kid.
We would save 30 to 40 million gallons of gasoline each day in the U.S.A. if average commuter occupancies increased from 1.1 passengers to vehicle to 2.1 passengers per vehicle.
1 car = 3 trees. On average, each car is responsible over its lifetime for three trees killed by acid rain.
Entrusting our LIFE to the hope that someone will pay attention to colored lights.
"A growing number of people on the road are not coping with the stress..." -- Roland Maiuro University of Washington professor of psychiatry (Seattle Times April 1997)
A light rail line can move the same number of people at peak travel time as a 12 lane highway, in a right of way 20% as wide at 30% of the cost.
The inherently cowardly act of driving a single occupant vehicle.
Millions of vehicles locked up on the street because they are each available to only a very limited number of people.
The frustration of repairing a broken automobile.
Allowing careless, out of shape, people to destroy the pristine wilderness areas and still sleep at home.
Adding $140 billion per year in medical care. -- Seattle Times 5/25/96
The lack of exertion, the wasted time and the isolation booth quality of cars encourage cigarette smoking while the physical effort, mental focus and active participation of bicycling and the public quality of transit discourage smoking.
The maximum amount of land that can be covered by impervious surfaces before salmon and amphibian populations will decline is 15%
Busses. Busses are unsuccessful, not by accident, but because the auto companies introduced them with the intention of making public transit fail. Bus systems assure a lack of public support for non-auto transit because busses are terrible. They are uncomfortable, inefficient, undependable and unpleasant.
Triple Trailer Big Rigs.
Taking (resources, tax dollars) from the old cities to build new suburbs. Sacrificing existing communities for new segregated enclaves is wrong.
The tax structure has always been set up to benefit cars -- to make it hard to support anything sustainable -- the slogan in Washington in the 60s &70s was "CLEARCUTS FOR CARS & KIDS" because that's where the revenue went.
17.1 deaths per 100,000 cars annually in Washington
Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in transit intensive metropolitan areas.
We're spending huge amounts [on transportation], nearly all on auto travel, and paying the price, to the tune of more than $680 million a year for the costs of congestion, nearly $270 million for the costs of air pollution, and nearly $100 million more for other environmental impacts. -- Puget Sound Regional Council
Depending on other peoples ability, mood, observance for our own safety!
Car dealers.
The first paved street in seattle was Interlaken Place, then, as now, a bike trail!
Essentially giving a bigger weapon to smaller people.
Metals from brakes and tire tread that are swept away and deposited into our waterways can be highly toxic to fish, even in small quantities.
Malls everywhere. Over 43,000 malls in the USA by 1998.
Sport Utility Vehicle advertisements!
Vastly increased general and specific light pollution due to lighting enormous parking lots.
It costs more to leave your car on Bainbridge Island (and avoid congestion in Seattle) than to take your car on the ferry!!!!
Driver kills three while driving 85 mph in pouring rain and heavy traffic on an in-city freeway and begs the judge for mercy claiming it was "an accident"!!
Stupid, backwards, transit people who think that "carrying air around the suburbs" in a bus or train is somehow worse than 'driving air' around the suburbs in a car!
The added stress of having a police car following you.
Americans account for less than 5% of the world's population, but own 37%of its cars. -- The Boston Globe, 9/90
The arrogance and wastefulness of cars, and micro- computers are really identical -- It's the idea of producing many, many small items which are used by only one person, available to a limited number, operated by amateurs in between scheduled tasks, sit idle most of the time, must be replaced often and are easy to steal, instead of a few large, powerful items which are used by many, many people, available to all, operated by professionals scheduled to do it, are secure, are almost never idle, and are easy to upgrade. Both are cases of vast overproduction, solely for the manipulation of the consumer and the profit of the provider.
Despite just about every agency in existence begging them to stop, The City of Seattle still requires new parking be built with every new construction!
The vicious circle effect of having to own a car to have a job so you can pay for your car.
Existing to be a consumer instead of being a person.
No matter how you vote on Election Day, if you drive an SUV, you are voting for the Republicans and the oil lobby.
Every single city bus in Washington and Oregon has a bicycle rack.
1,373 cyclists were officially counted in Seattle's Central Business District between 6:30 am and 9:00 am on 20 Sept, 1995, up 28% in 3 years.
A bicyclist burns about 500 calories an hour (at 14 mph), walking burns about three times that many, driving burns zero, other than the 8000 calories of gasoline!
Ratio of street to bike trail in Seattle: 45:1
There are 1300 miles of streets in Seattle and less than 50 miles of bike facilities (30 miles of trail and 15 miles of striped lane) -- a ratio of worst than 25 to 1.
It takes 31 minutes to get from Pike Place Market to the University by bike, including riding and parking. It takes 40 minutes by car. -- City of Seattle
Traffic-related injuries are the number one cause of death in the 6-33 year old age group nationwide.
The second leading cause of death for US kids under 15 is being hit by a car. The first leading cause of death for US kids under 15 is being killed inside of a car! -- Surface Transportation Policy Project
Instead of being too few parking spaces or too many people [in the cities] the real problem is too many cars. -- Todd Gee
If you build it, it will come. New public transit systems are virtually always filled to capacity years ahead of schedule. So are new roads. People use what the government are provides.
Absentee and turnover rates are lower among physically active employees
While motorists pay a substantial part of the cost of driving, nearly everything they pay is a "sunk cost" of car ownership and is not affected by the amount they drive. Costs that vary directly with mileage account for, on average 11 percent of the total cost of driving and account for a small fraction of motorists' own personal cost. Individuals thus cannot control the out-of-pocket cost of driving through their daily choices to any significant extent.-- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Bicycle commuters have lower health care cost -- saving their employers millions!
Parking constipation!
The health benefits of bicycling, even in insane car traffic, outweigh the risks by 20 times!!
The World Health Organization has discovered a 40% reduction in mortality for people who regularly commute by bike compared with those who don't.
Cars & trucks supply the dirty U.S. air with more than twice the pollution of industry -- more than ALL other sources combined!
Replacing the average 4 mile urban car trip prevents over 15 pounds of air pollution!!
An adult in Los Angeles to breathe in more air pollution than EPA guidelines recommend for a lifetime in 25 days.
Walking takes 3 times the energy to travel the same distance as bicycling. A full bus takes 8 times the energy of bicycling, per person, a single occupant car takes 12 times the energy and a SUV with one person in it consumes 28 times the energy to travel one mile as bicycling does.
US federal subsidy for gasoline, per gallon $4.60 to $14.00 depending on the calculation used.
Cars take up more than half of the space of all of our cities, towns and living areas!!
Seattle police officer speaking to a group of pedestrian activists that "We ticket pedestrians [and not cars] to protect the pedestrians and to protect the cars." When has a pedestrian hurt a car!!?!!?
Cars are constantly parked in terrible places, blocking sidewalks, doors, driveways, loading zones, green space, bike trails, and much more, not because those drivers are bad people but because you are stuck, you got to put the thing SOMEWHERE. It is a basic flaw in the system.
Italy. Polluted, dangerous, and overrun by cars and motor scooters.
The blatantly ridiculous idea of a "gas out" -- where car drivers "protest" the "high" price of gasoline by refusing to buy gas for ONE DAY. Clearly they don't get it at all.
The automobile based transportation system turns normal people into oil addicts, hardly distinguishable from opium or coca addicts.
The Sept 2000 British Petrol Crisis (caused by a tank truck drivers strike) which was wildly heralded in the media as a "disaster", yet everyone noticed that it created a much more pleasant, livable city.
Doing the parking lot derby.
Almost half of all fender benders are in parking lots.
Arrogant anti-social jerks who "protect" their beloved car by taking up two or three parking spaces.
Being stuck because the parking lot full. Some people turn around and go home!!
Stuck out of gas, or stressed because you are running low.
German city centers. In the 1970s governments suggested removing automobile traffic from the heavily used, historic city centers in Germany. Business owners were outraged, it would damage business they insisted. One by one, across the country, city centers were made pedestrian only, with great success, until even the smallest towns usually have a pedestrian center. In the late 1990s there was a suggestion in some towns to put cars back into the city centers. Business owners were outraged -- they did not allow it, it would have killed their businesses.
Because bicyclists pay almost all the same road taxes as cars (and most bicyclists also own cars and consequently pay the full amount) and because bicyclists ride fewer miles bicyclists wind up subsidizing cars, by paying far, far more than their fair share, ($1396 annually according to the Texas DOT) despite the fact that bicycles cause almost no damage to the roads.
Deaths from highway crashes are on the rise again. ... highway crashes are now the number one cause of deaths in the U.S. up to age 65. We pour billions of dollars into efforts to control the major medical causes of deaths while virtually overlooking the most frequent cause of death from birth to old age. -- Nick Jackson
In 2002, according to figures released by the NHTSA, 42,850 people were killed in highway crashes in the US, or about one every 12 minutes. That's the highest level since 1990 and represents an increase of 734 people over 2001. (Over half of the increase was the result of rollover crashes involving SUVs and pickup trucks.) -- Nick Jackson
We are so accustomed to being fatigued and tired and sleepy that it's part of our daily life and we think nothing of getting behind the wheel and driving despite the horrible ramifications of that act -- Marcia Stein, National Sleep Foundation
The best modes of transportation don't seek to master their world, but to fit into it, complimenting the myriad other activities that take place there and make up our lives. -- Nick Jackson
To sell their vehicles, automobile manufacturers have chosen to market a fantasy world where road and street space are limitless, aggressive driving has no consequences, and worst of all, the individual in the driver seat rules over all he or she surveys, including other road users. -- Nick Jackson
A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street, a deserted city street is a scary and possibly dangerous street. --Jane Jacobs writes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
On 09/22/2000, Camden Council closed the roads London's busy Covent Garden district to all motor vehicles (including delivery vehicles), and yet all the local businesses were able to receive their supplies and parcels delivery bikes. Fears that bikes could not cope with the Car Free Day were dispelled. This is a partial list of what was transported by human power on the day: 200kg of vegetables, 20 large cartons of shoes, bread, several cases of wine, boxes of CDs, many boxes of clothing, a fridge, cakes, sundry parcels, envelopes. http://www.eta.co.uk/tr/pj/cfd/towns.htm
Renting a car or sharing (FlexCar) is far cheaper than owning one.
Portland new light rail is so popular that they are adding many new lines ahead of schedule!!!
Imagine a society in which people became servants of a transportation system that made no sense. They were forced to spend much of their income on travel, and had little control over its cost. They spent more on transportation than on anything else but housing. Government subsidized travel heavily and taxed everyone to pay for it. In fact, government often promoted the most expensive form of travel by subsidizing it most heavily, and made cheaper alternatives inconvenient or almost impossible for many people to use. Bureaucratic agendas, rather than economics, determined what options people had. No one had any idea how much anything cost. Many people came to perceive the cheapest forms of travel as the most expensive. Above all, heedless of costs they didn't know they were paying, people used the transportation system indiscriminately. They became lazy and wasteful. This drove up their taxes and the price of things they bought, but no one knew what was going on. The system became overburdened and ran into trouble. The bureaucracies were less and less able to maintain things. Costs climbed relentlessly. Although the system ate up more money, it never seemed to function as well as it once had. The vast amount of foreign oil the system consumed and the pollution it spewed out hurt the economy, but the transportation bureaucracies denounced as extremists people who said they should do something. Things were out of control. Such a place exists-in the United States today. -- Stephen H. Burrington, Conservation Law Foundation, May 1994
Public Transit -- street rail -- was invented in the U.S.A.! Richmond Virginia had the first system in the world!
72% of registered King County Voters favor "stop new development until our transportation system and community services catch up"
83% of registered King County Voters favor "zoning to limit new dwellings in rural areas"
Less than 33% of car trips started during rush hour in Washington state or for commuting to and from work.
5% of our time is spent driving a car (but over 25% of our money!)
The number of pedestrians killed or injured by motor vehicles each year in Washington state: 1880. The number of drivers killed or injured by pedestrians each year in Washington state: 0 -- Alt-Trans
Making a few people extremely rich at the expense of the entire nation.
Of all the common (and uncommon) complaints about the city, the nasty things that cause people to leave (or avoid the city), almost 100% are attributable to cars. Our cities are not the problem. Cars are.

A note to anyone who may perceive this editorial as technophobic:

Automobile technology is benign, as is all technology. It cannot be bad, or good. People create technology and people make decisions about how to use it. There is not a predetermined path for technology, these are our choices -- choices that are being made, and if we are aware of it, we can make better choices. This is not about technology, good or bad, it is about the choices that people make.

In response to people who say this prejuiced towards urban areas at the expense of rural areas:

Changing from our expensive, destructive, dangerous and limiting transportation system to a safe, affordable transportation system more focused on freedom, will require some lifestyle changes by most people. These are not sacrifices at all, rather, in almost all cases the changes will involve dramatic increases in quality of life. However, as we change from our communistic method of paying for transportation to a more equitable one, people who currently utilize the largest quantities of resources will experience the most dramatic lifestyle changes.

© Copyright 1993 - 2004 by mrk. (Mark Canizaro) Please distribute widely, but do not alter.

This is a dynamic document, started 1992, posted 14 March, 2004; The most current version can always be found at: www.carsstink.org

Find more cool ideas at The Transportation Choices Coalition or Adbusters or even The Fraud Motor Company

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