Is this the supreme accomplishment of our times? Our society with its boundless wealth is creating soulless, dull communities in the suburbs. What a tremendous waste. These are monuments only to our culture of conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, I think suburbs accelerate the sense of disassociation and alienation that is so common in our cities. We live in cities with hundreds of thousands, often millions of people and yet we can be so incredibly isolated. Few of us know our neighbours, few of us participate in any kind of organizations that link us to other people. I believe the fabric of civil society is weakening at the seams faster in North America then elsewhere. We rarely take notice of it, but civil society is the fundamental underpinning of democracy. There is a strong correlation between democratic values and civil society that few of us take notice of.
The absurdity of car culture is compounded when we factor in the hidden subsidies that cars receive. We think it perfectly natural that the state pays for the immense costs for the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, for the costs to police the roads, to clean up the accidents that occur, to deal with the pollution that occurs from cars as well as to plow the roads in the winter (in Ottawa, it takes ~1 million C$ a day to keep the roads clear in the winter) Naturally, some of the costs of car use are borne by users in the form of gasoline taxes. They only recoup a fraction of the costs. The taxpayer bears the rest. This is one of the reasons its more efficient for many things to be shipped by truck rather then train. It's almost always faster and often cheaper to drive rather then take a train to another city. I think its fun to drive, but I don't think the government should be taken on more of the costs for me to do so. Why on earth do we subsidize cars rather then other forms of transportation? Wouldn't it be more logical for the state to subsidize public transportation in a more significant way and end up subsidizing cars?
How did we end up with this absurd situation? Like many things in our society, it is a result of the working of the free market and private interests. When railways, cable cars, and tramways were introducted, private interests encouraged the government to subsidize their construction. (Often) Private companies would then control the lines and try to make a profit from the transport carried on them. When the automobile came around, an even more efficient system was devised: have the government pay for the construction of the roads, and let them pay for their maintenance. Money can be made on the sale of automobiles without having to pay any of the ensuing costs. Automobiles are big business and have driven the prosperity of the postwar era.
There is a social consequence as well. In North America, public transit is for the poor. The middle classes and the rich don't use it. Public transit continues to become more uncomfortable (OC Transpo scoffs at the costs of maintaining cushions on seats has decided to remove all comfort on the buses and make them as hard and uncomfortable as possible) When subways were introduced, they were comfortable and sometimes even luxurious. The rich more often then the poor rode them then.
I think we have a page to learn from the rest of the developed world. In Europe and Japan, they have much higher gas taxes (which probably come closer to realizing the actual cost of cars)