On a recent trip to a nearby state, I was driving on a country two lane road near dusk. The road had some small hills and I was going about 55 mph. In the distance I could see something in the roadway. It looked short. It did not cast much of a shadow. What was it? I slowed down as I neared and then I recognized the unmistakable shape: turkeys!
The turkeys acted similarly in both situations: they stood there, not making much noise, blocking the way forward. On this road, I honked several times as I neared a stop. The turkeys finally looked up and then scampered off the asphalt and into the tall grass next to the road.
I do not know how much experience wild turkeys have with cars. They did not seem particularly interested in the presence of a vehicle. They were doing their thing and I until I was very near and made some noise, they did not look like they wanted to move.
I am now curious when I will again encounter turkeys in my way. I do not have many vehicle options left; I rarely, if ever, use a scooter or skateboard. I do not skate. Where will I next nearly run into a flock of turkeys?
The Chicago Department of Transportation reports it’s aware of 250 that appear on landscaping lists. The department is currently not clear on the likely sizable number of circles that require no landscaping.
One of the best features of traffic circles is that they force drivers to slow down and pay attention. They cannot blow through a stop sign or traffic light or unmarked intersection. If they can successfully yield and do not need to stop, they can keep their momentum going at a more reasonable speed.
This is an interesting way to count road features: those that need landscaping need to be on some list so that maintenance can be done. Those without the landscaping need would have to be on some other list to be counted. Is this the sort of task AI could do in the future with access to websites with satellite imagery?
Suburban teenagers and others have taken to e-bikes and electric scooters to get around communities which often require a vehicle to get from place to place. But now some suburbs have responded with new rules:
In passing the new rules, Elk Grove has joined a growing list of Chicago suburbs that have enacted tougher e-bike regulations due to growing safety concerns. Several communities — including Highland Park, Schaumburg, Glen Ellyn and Lombard — have recently imposed age limits on riders, while Burr Ridge has banned e-scooters from its streets.
Illinois law divides e-bikes into three classes based on their maximum assisted speed and whether the motor requires the rider to pedal. No one under 16 is allowed to ride a bike that can reach more than 20 mph under Illinois law.
State regulations also require riders to label their bikes with the motor wattage and classification type. Elk Grove Village officials, however, believe it’s more important for riders to follow the rules of the road, said Scott Eisenmenger, the deputy police chief…
Under the town’s rules, anyone younger than 16 can ride less powerful Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes without motor assistance, relying on pedal power alone. Like Illinois law, Roselle ordinance prohibits anyone under 16 from riding a Class 3 bike, which reaches up to 28 mph before the motor cuts out. Additionally, no one under 18 can operate a low speed electric scooter.
Suburbs are built around cars and driving. It is part of living in a single-family home, having a suburban lifestyle, and is often necessary from getting from place to place because of the size of communities and limited additional transportation options.
Teenagers are often in a particular predicament. Herbert Gans noted this in his book The Levittowners: in new sprawling suburban communities, what could teenagers do and where could they go? With subdivisions and homes structured around private family life and cars necessary to get places, what could teenagers seeing independence do? Americans see teenagerdom as a life stage of trying out independence but without viable transportation this may be hard to do.
Enter e-bikes and electric scooters. They are now widely available. They are easy to operate. The local infrastructure is set up for cars, not pedestrians, bicyclists, or others. Vehicles are large. Safety can be an issue for anyone else trying to use a roadway.
Perhaps the bigger question is not about e-bikes and scooters; it is about possibilities for transportation options across suburbs. Teenagers may have their own interests but they are not the only ones limited in suburbia if you do not have a car.
She noted the county’s division of transportation takes care of 220 miles of county highways and 92 miles of multiuse trails. It also maintains 650 vehicles in the countywide fleet and is responsible for snow removal on county roads.
This sounds like a lot of vehicles and I do not know if it is a lot or a little compared to similar-sized counties. At least in this story, the county is looking for a bigger transportation facility to meet all its need for space.
So in one suburban county, there are multiple actors responsible for the roads: the state for interstates and other highways, townships for some roads, municipalities for some roads, and the county for some roads. Is this the best way to approach things? Does each government body have similar vehicles? How close are each other’s roads to each other? If starting suburbia from scratch from this point on, would it be better to have one body address all the roads?
Roads are near sacred in the United States so I understand the attention paid to them. Yet the resources and energy required to maintain them, let alone expand them, is large.
I use the term car bloat to describe the ongoing expansion of vehicle models over the past 50 years. Although car bloat is a global trend, it is especially pronounced in the United States, where sedans and station wagons have been largely replaced by the SUVs and pickups that now account for about 4 in 5 new car purchases. At the same time, individual models have grown heftier. A 2024 Chevrolet Silverado pickup, for instance, is around 700 pounds heavier and 2 inches taller than the 1995 edition. According to federal data, the average new American car now weighs around 30 percent more than it did 40 years ago.
Car bloat creates numerous costs that are borne by society rather than the purchaser, or “negative externalities,” as economists call them. These include increased emissions, faster road wear, and reduced curbside parking capacity. But car bloat’s most obvious and urgent downside may be the danger it presents to anyone on the street who isn’t cocooned inside a gigantic vehicle.
Although occupants of big cars may be slightly safer in a crash, those in smaller ones are at much greater risk. A recent analysis by the Economist found that among the heaviest one percent of American cars, 12 people die inside smaller models for each person saved by the enormity of their vehicle. Pedestrians are still more exposed. A recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that vehicles with tall, flat front ends—common on SUVs and pickups—are more than 40 percent more likely to kill a pedestrian in the event of a crash than those with shorter, sloped ones. Worse, giant cars are more apt to hit a human in the first place because drivers sitting high off the ground have an obscured view of their surroundings. A 2022 IIHS study found that large vehicles’ A-pillars (the structure between a windshield and side window) frequently conceal pedestrians at intersections, and TV news stations have run segments demonstrating that an SUV driver cannot see as many as nine toddlers sitting in a row in front of her.
Having a bigger vehicle may help increase the safety of the driver and passengers but causes issues for others. If the American emphasis on driving and planning around cars was not enough, having even larger vehicles makes it more difficult for pedestrians, bicyclists, and users of smaller vehicles.
The article goes on to discuss options to limit the danger to pedestrians while still allowing vehicles to be big. It might be harder to think of realistic ways that American vehicles could shrink over the next few decades. Imagine an American landscape in 2050 where large vehicles are rare. Large SUVs and pickup trucks are small in number. More vehicles are smaller. How did it happen? Will Americans come to care more about the environment? Will there be a larger groundswell for alternative modes of transportation? Will there be influential financial incentives to move to smaller vehicles? Is there political will to set size and/or weight limitations?
I also imagine there might be some limits to how big vehicles could get. Do lane widths and parking spots all need to be redesigned? Is there a significant loss in drivability and/or fuel efficiency at some point?
Street grids have benefits, including offering multiple routes should congestion arise at one intersection or certain routes are off-limits. But what if a driver or pedestrian wants to move quickly through the grid at a diagonal?
Different communities may offer options for this. Perhaps there are alleys one can cut through. These back ways offer even more alternatives through the grid if the main streets are congested. Or there might be an occasional diagonal roadway that crosses at an angle to other roads. Depending on the way one is traveling, the diagonal route might be more direct.
Chicago is a good example of having both options in numerous neighborhoods. The flat Midwestern city primarily has a road grid that stretches for miles. East-west and north-south streets can go a long way from one end of the city to the other (and beyond). At the same time, alleys and diagonal streets provide other travel options. The diagonal roadways can create some interesting intersections – these present travelers with different visuals and traffic patterns than they might be used to – but offer more direct routes at an angle to the grid. Numerous alleys take some pressure off the roads for garages, garbage, and other uses.
I imagine other places might offer different options. Any city offer an underground grid at a 45 degree angle to the ground-level grid? Or pedestrian skyways or tunnels that offer paths that cross the grid in different ways?
It was the only bicyclist death so far this year, suggesting what some hope signals the beginning of a decline in such fatalities.
Some even contend the number of all traffic deaths in Chicago — cyclists, motorists and pedestrians — could be reduced to zero with the right improvements.
Others are more guardedly optimistic.
Before that August crash on the West Side, Chicago had gone 10 months without a cycling death. That was the longest such duration dating back to at least the beginning of 2019, the earliest year available from the city’s daily traffic crash data.
“Statistically, this drop appears too large just to be entirely good luck,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation professor at DePaul University. “It’s not likely the fatalities will stay at this level, unfortunately, but this is encouraging.”
The rest of the article talks about methods that could be implemented to make roads in Chicago safer.
As I have read about similar efforts in recent years, reducing traffic deaths seems to go well with multiple other efforts:
More sustainable cities with fewer cars on the road and other viable non-driving transit options.
More inviting and lively streetscapes with less emphasis on motorized vehicles.
Encouraging walking and biking, which are healthier options.
Safety alone may or may not be a compelling reason to change conditions but combine safety with other interests people have and perhaps there will be a steady shift away from only emphasizing driving.
“Right now, our transit system reflects an old design,” DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy testified in Naperville. “One that saw commuting as merely bedroom communities serving downtown workplaces.”
“All suburban residents deserve the same level and access to and from Naperville to Rosemont or from Oak Park to the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.”
College of DuPage student Rowan Julian experienced that disconnect trying to get from Wheaton to Batavia to see a friend, a 20-minute car trip. She wanted to use public transit but found it could take up to one hour and 40 minutes.
“For me I felt like I had no choice … so I chose to take my car,” she said.
Even in deep-blue states, a bipartisan coalition keeps the highway funding spigot open, said Amy Lee, a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles who wrote her dissertation about California’s failure to constrain highway growth. “The construction-materials companies tend to be very big on the right, and organized labor tends to be very powerful on the left,” she said, and these forces form a pro-highway juggernaut. In January, a coalition of construction companies and labor groups sent a letter to California’s top elected leaders defending “funding for infrastructure projects that may potentially increase vehicle miles traveled”—i.e., highway expansions. (The Laborers’ International Union of North America did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.) As with electric vehicles, highway construction seems to be a topic in which environmental and union interests diverge.
Transportation departments don’t want to hear no on highways. In 2022 Oklahoma’s department of transportation preemptively bought 23 web domains, like oklahomansagainstturnpikes.com and stoptheeasternloop.com, that could theoretically be used to rally opposition to the state’s $5 billion highway plan. Speaking up against pavement within a department can be difficult and risky. Last year, Jeanie Ward-Waller, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology–trained engineer who served as the deputy director of planning and modal programs for California’s Caltrans, was demoted after questioning her agency’s plans to widen I-80 between Sacramento and Davis. In an editorial published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ward-Waller wrote, “My concerns were repeatedly brushed off by my bosses, who seemed more concerned about getting the next widening project underway than following the law.”
At the federal level, even asking questions about the collective climate impact of highway building appears verboten. In 2022 Stephanie Pollack, the acting head of the Federal Highway Administration, called on state DOTs to measure the carbon emissions attributable to their highway systems. Republicans were incensed; 21 states filed a suit, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell advised governors to simply ignore her.
Democrats have supported highway expansions too. The White House called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law “a critical step towards reaching President Biden’s goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050,” but subsequent analysis by Transportation for America found that state DOTs used nearly a quarter of the $270 billion they received through the law to expand highways, a move sure to increase emissions. (After the infrastructure bill was passed, the head of Louisiana’s transportation department said that “some of the winners I think from this project funding will be things like the Inter-City Connector,” referring to the Shreveport project.)
With so many forces pushing for roadway expansions, opposing them requires political bravery.
As noted above, this system requires resources. And both major political parties tend to support it. They might fight particular projects (also highlighted in the article) but they generally find the money needed for fixing roads and creating new ones.
To reverse course then requires a major political change. Resources could be funneled elsewhere. The topic could become a regular campaign issue. It could join with popular support. How might it be pitched? Here are two areas where I could guess these political appeals might work:
The individual costs of driving are high. Paying for gas, insurance, maintenance, storing a vehicle, and more add up. Are all people interested in paying this year after year after year?
A desire among some (not all) for denser living areas that can support less driving. Even American cities can be sprawling but it seems there is some interest for communities that are more walkable and accessible by other means.
There are other arguments to make, of course. The two I listed get at different opportunities people might want. Pivoting from a transportation method that tends to privilege individual choices to travel wherever they want whenever they want might require providing different opportunities.
One of the proposals would forbid Washington’s local government from banning right turns at red lights. Another would do away with the automated traffic-enforcement cameras that ticket D.C. drivers for speeding, blowing stop signs and other violations.
The provisions are not just a case of earnest traffic-engineering wonkery sneaking into Congressional oversight. They represent a culture-war cause just as real as D.C.’s needle-exchange efforts or mask mandates, two other targets of current GOP riders. At the core of it is the politically revealing question of cars versus other ways of getting around.
In blue cities across the country, local road policy in the past decade has been tweaked in the name of making things safer and more enticing for non-drivers — often by making things slower and more annoying for motorists…
In a polarized country, it was inevitable that this would become more than just a disagreement over traffic circulation and moving violations. After all, the 21st century push to promote alternative modes of transportation cites a Democratic-coded cause (climate change) to promote ways of getting around (by foot, bike, bus, or subway) that are a lot more convenient in dense blue cities.
On the right, for more than a decade, there’s been a refrain about the “war on cars” right alongside the war on Christmas. “There is a loud constituency that does not want you to drive your car,” said Jay Beeber, executive director for policy at the National Motorists Association, which has championed the measures dictating Washington policy. “A lot of this is virtue signaling.”
Four thoughts:
Is it “inevitable” that this would become a culture war issue? I am sure there is an interesting history in here. Does this go back to seat belt laws? Speed limits on highways set in the 1970s?
It is relatively easy to break this down into cities versus other areas. What about groups or political discussions in between such as suburbs promoting more walkability and bicycling, small towns and rural areas trying to lessen dependence on cars, and regions emphasizing different transportation policies? Are there Republicans for different road policies and Democrats for more driving?
The interplay between federal and local policies is worth paying attention to. Americans tend to like local government oversight of local issues. Do Americans tend to think the federal government does too much regarding traffic policies or not enough?
Where does this issue rank in the range of culture war issues? Is this more like a proxy war or the big issue? Americans like driving so this could get at core concerns about American ways of life.
Legally Sociable 