An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance
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CAR SATURATION AND CHOICE
Further to yesterday’s piece by Tanya Paz on the changing world of carsharing, here’s a piece by Hertz International president Michael Taride:
The rise of the smartphone and new forms of car mobility are forcing change at a
rapid pace. …Instead of the traditional focus on cars and driving, people are mixing and
matching their transport choices – using what they need when they need it – and
the radical advances in technology are making such “smart mobility” possible. …Both car ownership and vehicle-kilometres driven in cities in developed countries may be reaching saturation, or even be on the wane, according to a recent report by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
People no longer automatically associate mobility with owning a car.
Instead, many of them want access to as many transport options as possible.
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UNSATURATED FATS
On the other hand …
Particulate air pollution, along with obesity, are now the two fastest-growing causes of death in the world, according to a new study published in the Lancet. …
And the cars are going to keep piling up, too. Car ownership continues to skyrocket, as this handy little terrifying chart demonstrates.
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GENERATIONAL CHANGE
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According to a new report – Transportation and the New Generation – people 
in between age 16 and 34 drove 10,300 vehicle-miles per capita (in 2001). By 2009 … my fellow young people drove only 7,900 vehicle-miles per capita—a 23 percent drop.
in between age 16 and 34 drove 10,300 vehicle-miles per capita (in 2001). By 2009 … my fellow young people drove only 7,900 vehicle-miles per capita—a 23 percent drop..
Members of my generation biked more, walked more, and took more trips on public transit than they did in 2001, according to the report, from U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Frontier Group. They took fewer trips in cars, and the trips that they did take were shorter.
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SPEED CAPITALISTS
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From “Who Really Benefits From ‘Big Data’?” – first in a series from Slate:
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As long ago as 1973, philosopher Ivan Illich recognized that speed was an issue at the intersection of technology and justice. In his extended essay “Energy and Equity,” Illich observed presciently, if somewhat obscurely, that the quest for speed in transportation was an unrecognized domain in which technological advance itself led to increasing inequity of distribution of social and economic opportunity:
Unchecked speed is expensive, and progressively fewer can afford it. Each increment in the velocity of a vehicle results in an increase in the cost of propulsion and track construction and—most dramatically—in the space the vehicle devours while it is on the move. Past a certain threshold of energy consumption for the fastest passenger, a world-wide class structure of speed capitalists is created.
The Beltway smart-lanes perfectly illustrate Illich’s proposition in a technological application that he might never have imagined. Market rationality imposed on roadways that all people depend on for their livelihoods and social lives means that poor people will be increasingly required to travel more slowly than those with more money. Relative to the toll-paying classes, they will have less time to sleep, or for their families, or for their work. …
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