My love of driving, of the simple, singular act of driving a car down the road, never mind where I’m going, or if I’m going anywhere in particular, believe it or not actually makes me an oddity in this country.  That’s right.  In a country where they say the automobile is god, a nation of car worshipers, when I tell people I regularly take cross-country drives to visit family out in California, that I’d Much rather drive it then fly because for me the road is the vacation, people look at me like I’m crazy.  You drove all the way to California…??? 

Oh yes…we love our cars.  More precisely I think, we love the independence they give us.  We don’t have to construct our lives around bus or a train schedules.  We can go where we want, when we want, live where we want, shop where we want, play where we want.  The car made the suburbs possible.  The car is an integral part of our economy.  And we make our own cars into statements about ourselves.  They are our status symbols, our tricked out souped up air conditioned chrome and burled walnut accented inner child.  We love our cars.  It’s driving we hate.  Mostly.

And to tell the truth I hate it myself when it’s heavy commuter or weekend shopper congestion I have to wade through.  I hate traffic so much I bought a home within walking distance of work, and two good supermarkets.  I could have bought a nicer one elsewhere in the city, but then I’d have to drive to work and I hate commuter traffic.  With a passion.  I don’t very much care for weekend shopper traffic either.

I’m just pondering all this because of a discussion I came across on another blog I visit often.  Brad DeLong writes, "Time to Whomp the Drivers!", riffing on Megan McArdle. riffing on James Joyner…

Megan McArdle: I think James Joyner is absolutely right here:

I’m now commuting into D.C. on a near-weekdaily basis. According to GoogleMaps, the office is 13.5 miles from the house. I can usually drive there in 45-60 minutes during off-peak hours, although it can sometimes take much longer if there’s an accident. I can park in the garage next to my office for the day for $12. Conversely, I can drive 15-20 minutes to a Metro station, pay $4 to park, wait as long as 15 minutes for a train, pay another $2.65 to get two blocks from the office 35-50 minutes later, followed by a 5-10 minute walk to the office.

So, in order to save $2.70 (plus a nominal amount of gasoline), it would cost me 30-75 minutes each day for the round trip, plus the privacy and autonomy I enjoy in my own vehicle. Given that I earn enough that $3 is poor compensation indeed for that much of my time, I drive unless there’s a really good reason not to.

And they’re about to raise the rates for Metro fares and parking, further skewing the calculus in the direction of “drive.”

The massive subsidy provided to drivers in the form of free roads is obviously producing highly inefficient outcomes, which is why DC feels like a prison from which it is impossible to escape unless one wants to spend four hours on the Beltway. We clearly need to institute comprehensive road tolls combined with a congestion pricing scheme. Plus, of course, a carbon tax to compensate for the negative externalities drivers are imposing on those of us who use primarily mass transit.

I have a suggestion.  Why not make cities more livable?   In fact…I made this suggestion in the comments, where I said in part…

Driving long distances, for many hours out of your life a year, in stress inducing commuter traffic, already makes driving unattractive. Weekend shopper traffic is equally ugly and stressful. But as long as where people work, where they shop, and where they live are kept in separate corners people will just keep driving, and keep absorbing the cost of it. 

My comment was promptly ignored, and a discussion of driving costs verses public transportation costs ensued.  It’s not just that I’m a boring conversationalist…I’ve seen this happen before whenever this topic comes up.  The obvious solution to traffic congestion, and the national gasoline bill, is to put jobs and basic needs shopping and housing within walking distance of each other.  For bonus points, add an enjoyable night life to the walkable mix.  Not everyone will want to live in the city, not everyone will want to be that close to work.  But as traffic keeps getting worse and worse, and the cost of oil keeps going up and up, people will begin migrating back to the cities, if the cities are made livable.  And that’s fewer cars on the roads, and less oil consumed.  But they’ll only do that if the cities are made more livable.  And this country doesn’t seem to want to have a conversation about doing that. 

Even in cities with a thriving economy it’s a problem.  My understanding is that D.C. doesn’t want to put housing, never mind affordable housing, near the major office zones.  One neighborhood in D.C. that approaches livability very nicely is (surprise, surprise) the little gay neighborhood near DuPont Circle.  It’s got housing (if you have to ask you can’t afford it housing, but still housing), shopping, and an active nightlife.  It’s streets are walkable and it’s atmosphere is casual and welcoming.  Metro is nearby.  It’s a nice enclave close enough to some of the major office spaces that you could conceivably work and live there.  I’m sure there are other enclaves like it elsewhere in the city, but not enough of them.  The big downtown office zone is dead at night, except for a few bars scattered around the fringes.  Anytime you see dead zones in a city, that almost certainly happened because some jackass city planners decided to make the area homogenized in some unnatural way. 

In an area with as much traffic congestion as D.C. has, there’s probably tons of people who would be interested in living in the city, and within walking distance or a short Metro ride from where they work.  But for one reason or another they feel they can’t.  The availability and cost of housing.  Fear of crime.  Nowhere to go and nothing to do evenings and weekends.  Streets that aren’t walkable.  Schools that are run down.  City services that are inadequate.  Few safe places for kids to play.  They don’t see city life as being viable.  That’s the problem.

Suburbanites for some reason though, want to complain about traffic, and greenhouse gases, and carbon usage, and gasoline taxes, and highway construction (pro and con) but they don’t want to talk about making cities livable.  Go figure.