Cars
Getting Young People Back Into Cars Is Auto Industry Job #1
While the choked parking lots at many suburban high schools might mislead you, young people today are less interested in driving and owning cars than their counterparts in previous generations. This is happy news for environmentalists and complete streets advocates, who see fewer vehicles on the road as key to a healthier, wealthier society. For the global auto industry, though, it is an existential threat not to be ignored.
November 28, 2011
Mapping the Consequences of Our Automobile Addiction
Leave it to the Brits to create an incredible tool for examining America’s own crisis of traffic fatalities. Behold this somber map, made by ITO World, a UK-based transportation information firm. Each dot on the map is a traffic-related death. The entire eastern United States is blanketed with them.
November 23, 2011
GM to College Students: Stop Pedaling, Start Driving
Car ads that try to appeal to the desire for social status are nothing new, but here’s one that just gets it wrong: GM is trying to convince college students that driving a Buick is hipper than riding a fixie.
October 12, 2011
Do We Treat Our Cars Better Than We Treat Ourselves?
Running Saturday morning errands, you may have found yourself in traffic, only to realize you’re stuck behind a line of vehicles inching into a car wash. Each month, nearly half of all American car owners head into one of the nation’s estimated 100,000 car washes to bathe their vehicles in some loving suds.
September 30, 2011
Another Shutdown Avoided
It's getting to be a little like the Boy Who Cried Wolf over on Capitol Hill. I mean, it's hard to get all revved up about an impending government shutdown when Congress always insists on taking negotiations to the edge and they always figure out something right before the deadline.
September 29, 2011
Would President Romney Build Roads or Rail?
All eyes are on Texas Gov. Rick Perry these days, the faraway frontrunner in the Republican race. But as the primary goes on (and on and on) more Republicans might take note of the fact that in a matchup with President Obama, only one candidate stands a chance of winning: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
September 27, 2011
Dealbreaker: Senate Rejects House Budget Due to Lack of Car Subsidies
What's keeping Congress from passing an extension to the federal budget? Democratic protection of automobile subsidies.
September 23, 2011
The Stranger: If Safer Streets Mean War, We’re Ready for Combat
Under the headline, "Okay, Fine, It's War,” Seattle’s weekly newspaper, The Stranger, this week published a manifesto “of and by the nondrivers themselves.” They’re sick of being called “militants” for caring about pedestrian safety, and they’re tired of the specter of a “war on cars.”
September 16, 2011
A Back-to-School Syllabus for Complete Streets Advocates
While Hollywood’s screenwriters, FX wizards, and product placers have contributed mightily to the idea of the automobile as the vehicle of freedom, joy, and rebellion, our literary lions have often taken a more gimlet-eyed view of car culture.
August 31, 2011