NPR Asks: "Is There A War On Cars?"

Part of the NPR's "Cities Project", this report deals with the "relationship between cities and cars" with the focus being on city streets.

Franklyn Cater, standing near a 'bus-only' lane that has become the ire of some motorists, also interviews political consultant and Washington resident Chuck Thies, "who has written about what he calls the 'war on automobiles' for the Huffington Post, (who) says, ultimately, that war is over resources."

"It's easy to vilify the automobile, but it's not productive", he states.

Cater explores the history of the automobile's place on city streets with Peter Norton, a technology historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

Norton recalls a time when streets were for people, and cars where viewed as intruders.

Also interviewed is Harriet Tregoning, the director of Washington D.C.'s Office of Planning, "(who) says the nation's capital is shifting away from decades of car-focused transportation planning."

"We've begun more than a decade-long effort to rebalance our transportation system, in part because we just don't have the capacity in the city to accommodate everyone who wants to be here to work or to live if everyone was always in an automobile for every trip," Tregoning says.