I was riding the light rail in Seattle's transit tunnel on Monday, and saw a series of insurance ads on a station wall that followed a "my dream" theme. One read, "my dream has that new car smell." Isn't it weird how often car-oriented businesses advertise in public transit spaces?
For many people, car ownership is only a dream. Owning a car is very expensive. I recently interviewed a woman who told me that she spent more money on her car than on anything else. She had no plans to get rid of it, though; this was just a fact of life.
Why is the image of car ownership so powerful? Well, for one thing, if you don't have your own car and find yourself in a position where you take a ride from someone who does have a car, you can easily be labeled a "mooch." And being a mooch is very much at odds with our American belief in self-reliance.
For many years, especially in suburban areas, if you couldn't afford a gas-powered self-reliance symbol, you might as well not have existed. I read a comment thread online this morning that reminded me that this attitude is very much entrenched, even in urban dwellers. The statement that really hit home for me was, "in LA [driving is] ESSENTIAL. I would not date someone without a car, despite the fact that I take the train 5 days a week to work. You need a car for everything else and if you don't have one, you are a mooch. Simple as that." This comment was made by someone who identified as living in transit-rich Silver Lake.
I think this is the target of ads like the one I saw this week: people who are willing to ride buses and trains, but have a lot of money or dreams invested in differentiating themselves from the people around them who don't have cars waiting at home. What do these people think of the carfree crowd? We're not responsible/adult enough to be considered potential mates.
As an anthropologist, I've read a lot of theory about culture as an unconscious thing. We may not be able to articulate why we do or don't do certain things, but we are very likely to feel bothered when something is outside the norm. One source of conflict between people who drive and people who choose other modes of transport is that we have different ideas about what is normal transportation.
This is what I see expressed, sometimes indirectly, in a lot of American culture:
car ownership = adulthood
car ownership = independence
car ownership = work ethic
car ownership = rational
no car = immaturity
no car = dependence
no car = lazy
no car = irrational
Here are some different ideas that I see expressed in my corner of American culture:
car ownership = oil-dependence
car ownership = antisocial
car ownership = destroying our life systems
car ownership = irrational
From these different ideas follow a different side of the coin:
carfree = independence
carfree = social benefit
carfree = supporting our life systems
carfree = rational
Do you see how "rational" shows up all over the place here? That is because our transportation choices, influenced by so many cultural beliefs that we can't even articulate, are not coming from a rational place. I hope that someday soon we can start to talk about transportation in more direct terms, based not on underlying contempt for socially disempowered individuals, but on the very real effects our transportation choices have on the world around us.
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I've found that membership in a car-sharing program works great for living otherwise carfree, but still having those need-a-car moments (free piano on craigslist, friends moving, etc) once in a long while.
ReplyDeleteI do find that it's harder to spend time with people who aren't carfree (or at least diet-car), just because they tend to do different things, and get to places quicker than you. Plus, a lot of time I spend with low car folks is spent riding to wherever we're going. Those friendships will naturally be stronger, I think.
When I do spend time with someone who drives exclusively, they often will offer to pick me up or drop me off, especially during the rainy season, I will have to be in the 'moocher' position. It's hard to not feel like you owe a little something to them for the transportation. Being in the 'moocher' position kind of introduces an operator that effects the friendship, I think.
I kind of feel that drivers are the moochers since more of my tax go to subsidize what they do rather than what I do. I also found that before the cuts I could get places faster on the bus than people could drive.
ReplyDeleteAs always, your thoughts are right on, Adonia. The "moocher" narrative is often the basis for anti-bike ranting. And in fact the reason I learned to drive when I was 27 (many years ago) was to avoid the problem of "mooching" on my driving friends. But "mooching" is not an objective thing - objectively, Helen is right, it's when we drive that we're "mooching" off the contributions of other taxpayers and the wealth of the environment. But we live in a cultural context that defines "mooching" irrationally.
ReplyDeleteI drive as well as bike, and this would never occur to me. Occasionally on a long trip out of town in someone else's I might offer to help with fuel cost, but I would rarely expect or ask for it.
ReplyDeleteCould we define "mooching" as a pattern? I was thinking of a colleague at the plant where I worked in the 70's. He was an epileptic and bicycled because he couldn't get a driver's license. One night a storm moved in, and by quitting time (after midnight on the night shift) it was raining heavily. I've forgotten whether he asked or I offered, but he put his bike in the back of my truck and I drove him home. That's helping out--no mooching involved. On the other hand, if someone needs a ride just about every night, and doesn't offer to help with the gas, that could be mooching. The idea of drivers "mooching" on resources provided in part by non-drivers is (at least in some ways) different. This is not an individual like Mr. Wimpy in the old Popeye cartoons, or the guy in the old song with a "handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged". This is a vast system, set up by either wilful design of "motordom" or the unintended consequence of Henry Ford and his Model T.
ReplyDeleteI have been confronted with this narrative before, and I find it coming from folks that have barely stopped to think about the different ways in which transportation functions and the many ways in which it can take form.
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