Time and time again, you’ll hear libertarian and conservative types wimping and whining about planners being anti-car, out to destroy the American dream. If you delve deeper though you’ll see that most urban planners are not anti-car, in fact most of them own and drive cars. They don’t hate cars, they are simply responsible for looking out for the public good in a given town, city, or region. Cars, as helpful as they may be, are bullies. They’re the mean kid on the playground who will ruin recess for everyone else if he’s not kept in line.
You see, most modes of transportation are friendly. Pedestrians like busy streets full of other pedestrians. They tend to shy away from deserted, or empty streets. They like lively streets, the presence of other pedestrians only adds to their enjoyment of the street.
Cyclists like the company of other cyclists. As the number of cyclists on a road increases, it creates a positive feedback loop. The large number of cyclists on the road increases motorist awareness and biking tends to become safer, so more people ride their bikes on the street making it safer, and so it goes. In other words, bikes like other bikes. Just go to any critical mass ride, it’s a blast.
Transit riders, those citizens riding the bus or train are also social. Not quite as social as the pedestrian or cyclist mind you. Other transit riders can be a nuisance at times. See the smelly guy in the summer, or the crazy person screaming about the end of days on the subway. Nevertheless, transit rides benefit one another. As ridership increases, revenues go up and transit service (ideally) because more frequent and the coverage area becomes bigger, as new routes are brought on-line.
In the transportation world, most modes are friendly. The car is the big exception. This is the mean kid on the playground. Unlike pedestrians, bikes, and transit riders, cars don’t like anyone, not even other cars. The ideal day for a car is one where it’s the only one on the road. Each new car entering the scene only serves to delay and annoy its fellow autos. And when you get a lot of cars together, it’s an absolute mess. You get traffic jams - delays become unbearable and accidents skyrocket.
Cars don’t like any other transportation modes either. The pedestrians are like oversized squirrels getting in the way, cyclists are stupid hippies that the car needs wait to pass, and the bus is just a big dumb animal stopping every quarter mile or so to lick itself and impede the movement of cars.
This is where the planner comes in. One of the subfields of urban planning is transportation planning. The transportation planner is charged with developing, promoting and maintaining a transportation system that is safe, efficient, equitable and affordable. To do this, he/she needs to keep the car in check, basically prevent the mean kid on the playground from ruining recess for everyone else. Because cars hate everyone including other cars, a transportation system that relies almost exclusively on the car is bad for everyone, including drivers.
Everyone hates traffic-clogged roads. Drivers hate them, people on the bus hate them, and cyclists don’t have much love for them either. That’s the kicker, when everyone drives everywhere, drivers lose too. So when planners talk about reducing automobile use by promoting things like walking, biking and transit, they’re not trying to make driving worse, they’re trying to make it better.
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