Distance is dollars. Congestion is cost. And, as the Europeans and Japanese know, walking, biking, and public transit lower costs. The urban axiom holds that the more public transit riders, the less the cost, and the more drivers, the higher. Talk about losing money. Public transportation gets rapped for low profits at best; automobile subsidies are ignored. A one-mile trip for a carload of rail passengers equals six to ten miles avoided by car. Over any given distance, the automobile expends more in terms of energy, amount of lane capacity, and capital. And that’s not calculating the environmental or land use exactions. The fact that rail transit is fixed means that it stabilizes the land, gives some permanence to place, defines how to locate buildings and services, and creates compact, less costly living. Its stability is at least as much a plus as the automobile’s vaunted flexibility.


Jane Holtz Kay, an author, journalist and architecture critic for The Nation, has written widely on the built and natural environment. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 1997. p. 135-36