What Will It Take for the U.S. to Kick the Car Habit?

An article by Gabby Birenbaum poses the question in the headline, first summarizing the pressing need for Americans to drive less.

Data from the EPA shows that the transportation sector is actually the biggest source of pollution in the US, and that light-duty vehicles (or passenger cars) are responsible for 58 percent of those emissions.

Residents in the most urban areas, which theoretically should reduce per capita emissions by delivering the benefits of density: alternatives to automobile transportation and proximity to jobs. "According to a 2021 study published in Frontiers, Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles have some of the highest per-capita emissions totals in the world," according to Birenbaum. "The study broke down cities’ emissions based on sector, using the most recently available data (from 2009 and 2010), and found a large portion of those emissions come from transportation."

Breaking the habit of driving to reduce carbon emissions is hard—despite the pressing need—because so many U.S. cities are built for driving. "Biking and walking are often not options, and public transit, where it exists, does not typically serve trips that do not involve going from a city’s outskirts to its downtown or back," writes Birenbaum.

Despite the depth and breadth of the challenge, Birenbaum focuses on the potential for local authorities to "create a safer, more democratized transportation ecosystem" and provide a significantly positive contribution to the effort to reduce carbon emissions. The prescriptions offered by Birenbaum, with more detail provided in the source article are: 1) Make streets safer for bikes and pedestrians, 2) end single family zoning to encourage mixed-use development, and 3) make drivers pay the cost of driving.

Notably, these prescriptions are seemingly diametrically opposed to the housing preferences of the majority of Americans according to the results of a post-pandemic survey by the Pew Research Center published earlier in the summer of 2021.