We Can Have It All: Shorter Commutes, Less Traffic. Why Aren’t We Doing It?
By Doug Gordon, The New Republic
Western car culture, while promising the opposite, deprives us of our most precious commodity: time.
The time drivers waste in traffic disproves the idea that car culture maximizes individual freedom, social philosopher and journalist Andreas Gorz argued in his 1973 essay “The Social Ideology of the Motorcar.” “In the final analysis,” Gorz wrote, “the car wastes more time than it saves and creates more distance than it overcomes. Of course, you can get yourself to work doing 60 mph, but that’s because you live 30 miles from your job and are willing to give half an hour to the last 6 miles.”
