IN “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”Douglas Adams, author of the comic science fiction novel, muses on the nature of travel. A road bypass, he writes, “is a device that allows some people to dash from point A to point B very quickly while others can dash from point B to point A very quickly.” People at point C of the bypass between points A and B say, “I often wish that I could work where I want to go, even if it’s just once.” Adams had an idea. Humans spend a huge amount of time, money, and energy traveling by car. The average American spends almost an hour a day behind the wheel, or about two weeks a year, and travels about 11,500 miles (18,500 km).
How we move around determines what our homes and cities look like. When you understand that, it’s no wonder American cities tend to be spread out, with lots of road space and parking. In Japan, people drive far less and travel an average of 3,500km a year by train (this figure does not include trips on intra-city subways, etc.). In Japanese cities, there are many high-rise buildings surrounding stations. Some believe that the era of traditional cars is nearing its end. Entrepreneurs promise that self-driving cars, electric vehicles, and new forms of micromobility like scooters will soon transform even the most car-heavy places like America’s Sunbelt. Here are five of his books that explain why we avoid doing things the way we do now and what might happen in the future.
Street smarts: The rise of the city and the decline of the automobile. by Samuel I. Schwartz. Public relations; 312 pages. $26.99 and £22.99
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Sam Schwartz worked for the New York City Department of Transportation, rising from a fairly lowly position to becoming the city’s transportation commissioner. It was in his job that Schwartz coined the term for traffic jams, which he nicknamed “Gridlock Sam.” This book is partly a memoir. Mr. Schwartz tells the story of himself, from his childhood in the 1950s, to his sadness when his friends and beloved Brooklyn Dodgers moved to a car-friendly neighborhood, to his job as a top New York City government official who tried to discourage car use. Introduces the reader to the story of his life. . In the course of his work, he leaked information to environmental groups without telling anyone beforehand and banned cars from passing. “Street Smart” also argues that the economic importance of cities and changing habits among young people are reducing America’s dependence on private cars, and that that’s a good thing. In the sequel, “No one is behind the wheel””, Schwartz considers what self-driving cars will ultimately mean for cities and how officials should plan for them. Otherwise, new types of traffic jams will occur.
Driven: The race to develop self-driving cars. Written by Alex Davis. Simon and Schuster. 304 pages. $18 paperback and £25 hardcover
The book begins about 20 years ago with the story of a competition held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (also known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, while American troops were fighting in the Middle East, the country’s military leaders became interested in the idea of self-driving cars. In 2004, the agency offered a $1 million prize to the winner of a 132-mile (212 km) race through the Western Desert from Barstow, California, to Primm, Nevada. The idea, Davis wrote, was that if the vehicle could “traverse the Mojave River, it could travel through Afghanistan and Iraq.” None of his cars that year were able to complete this challenge. However, the following year, nearly 200 people entered. Five teams finished the race. The winner was Stanford University’s “Stanley,” who won in just under seven hours. From there, the “race” began to design a truly self-driving car. Davis’ book is a must-read for understanding why it is so difficult to develop truly self-driving cars that can navigate traffic anywhere as easily as humans. It’s also a compelling argument that it happens.
Paved Paradise: How Parking Lots Explain the World. by Henry Glover. Penguin Press; 368 pages. $30
In a rich world where cars are the default mode of transportation, one of the problems they pose is where to put them. Henry Glover explains how large tracts of land were given away for parking and American cities became what they are today. He explains how laws requiring businesses and developers to provide ample free parking have created a massive oversupply of space, making all other modes of transportation difficult . He relies on the work of Donald Shoup, a University of California, Los Angeles academic whose mission is to expose the economic insanity of free parking. Grabar includes lots of fun human details to make the technical content accessible. The book’s main drawback is its misleading subtitle: “How Parking Lots Explain the World.” In fact, only three pages are devoted to countries other than the United States.
The War on Traffic: The Dawn of the Automobile Age in American Cities. by Peter D. Norton. MIT Press; 408 pages. $35 and £33
Henry Ford invents the Model T, his employees buy it, and soon everyone is willing to leave behind their slow, clunky horses and carts for the shiny new free metal contraption. It is famous for its automobile history. Peter Norton’s history reveals that in reality the progress towards mass automobiles was fraught and political. In the early 1920s, as increasingly fast cars filled the streets, cars were widely seen as the playthings of the rich and hundreds of children were killed in accidents. In cities like St. Louis, monuments were erected in memory of the victims of the accident. Demonstrators led a parade demanding stricter rules for drivers. Norton describes how systematic organization by car manufacturers, sellers, and owners overcame these early regulations. They invented terms like “jaywalking” to blame pedestrians who dared cross the road for their own deaths. These controversies offer a hint at the challenges self-driving car sellers will face in dealing with a hostile public. “Fighting Traffic” shows how they were overcome before, and their downsides.
How bicycles can save the world. Written by Peter Walker. Penguin Random House; 288 pages. $16. Published in the UK as “Bike Nation: How Cycling Can Save the World.” 272 pages. £14.99
In this sharp debate, journalist Peter Walker guardian, Learn how cycling fundamentally improves transportation and more. Mr. Walker makes a point about wheels, two of which he claims are wheels. With reports from places like Copenhagen and Utrecht, he explains how having more people riding bikes can extend lifespans and make them more comfortable. This will reduce the number of deaths from car accidents. The amount of smog from fine particles produced by cars that pollutes people’s lungs. and deaths caused by a sedentary lifestyle. The more people use bicycles, the less traffic jams will occur. But getting there will be difficult. According to Walker, the world doesn’t need “Lycra-clad road warriors” like him whose identity is cycling, it needs more ordinary people who just ride their bikes every once in a while to get somewhere. Dew. “Fashioned cycling as a hobby, let alone an extreme sport, will never attract more than a small percentage of people who want to participate,” he writes.
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Our Midwest correspondent, Daniel Knowles, wrote “Carmageddon,” an argument against cars, in book form. Unlike him, our Free Exchange columnist praises America’s car addiction. In our special report, he argues that everything about car manufacturing is changing at once. Read more about the dangerous politics of parking here and here. This article was published by him in 2016. 1843Our sister publication explains how self-driving cars will change cities. ■