But as more cars entered the picture, their high speeds created new dangers for all present.Īs Norton documented in his 2008 book “ Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City,” different groups proposed different solutions to this problem. In the early decades of the 20th century, American streets regularly played host to a varied jumble of users, from pedestrians and cyclists to streetcar passengers, frolicking children, and horse-and-buggy drivers. The obvious solution … lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for. Norton can still recite the core of Mehren’s argument today: In the magazine, editor Edward Mehren outlined a proposed remedy for the high numbers of pedestrian fatalities being seen in U.S. “It stopped me in my tracks–it made my pulse race,” he said. transportation system was fundamentally shaken by a sentence he came across in a 1920s engineering magazine. He has spent years working to understand the role of cars in American society–and pushing back against truisms about the national love affair with automobiles.Įarly in his career, Norton’s perspective on the U.S. One prominent skeptic of transportation fixes that rely solely on cars is historian Peter Norton, a professor at the University of Virginia. Increasingly, many policymakers, transportation advocates, and urbanists are making the case that America’s future doesn’t need to be built around the car. Not everyone agrees with this assessment, however. and that Americans, with their innate love of car culture, wouldn’t have it any other way. The heavy emphasis on car-based climate solutions seems grounded in the assumption that driving is the only realistic form of transportation in most of the U.S. But this message is often lost in the excitement over electric vehicles, which overwhelmingly dominate the conversation about decarbonizing ground transportation. EPA and Department of Transportation say that people need to drive less. To reduce car emissions, authorities ranging from the UN to the U.S. Transportation is the largest source of planet-warming gases in the United States, and passenger vehicles are the top emitters within the sector.
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