James A. Dunn, Jr., Driving Forces: The Automobile, its Enemies, and the Politics of Mobility, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, D.C.; www.brookings.org), 1998, ISBN 0-8157-1964-7, 230 pages.

According to James Dunn’s Driving Forces, Americans enjoy the best of all possible worlds. Our auto-dominated transportation system is convenient, comfortable, fast, dependable, safe, and affordable, offering levels of mobility the rest of the world can only dream of. Portraying the United States as a veritable transportation nirvana, Dunn briefly concedes a few "minor" problems but claims that they can be solved by painless technological fixes. In short, Dunn views the auto-highway transport system as almost perfect and getting better all the time.

If only it were true! One wonders whether Americans feel like they are in paradise when stuck in traffic jams for hours. Is road rage indicative of the ecstasy that cars inspire? Are the millions of traffic injuries and tens of thousands of deaths each year only a "minor" problem? Can we simply ignore the noise, air, and water pollution caused by cars and highways? Do the residents of a smogged-in, gridlocked Los Angeles, Phoenix, or Denver really think that the car is an almost perfect mode of transportation?

There can be no doubt that the auto-highway transport system does indeed provide enormous mobility benefits, but at what cost? Consider just a few of the many social and environmental impacts of the nearly perfect automobile:

• In the United States alone, there were 6,613,000 car accidents in 1995, resulting in 3,386,000 injuries and 41,798 deaths.¹ In the 25 years between 1970 and 1995, 1.2 million Americans died in traffic accidents. Motorists are not the only victims: over a third of traffic fatalities in American cities are pedestrians and cyclists killed by car and truck drivers. ²

• Most Americans get little or no exercise, partly because they use the car instead of walking or cycling, even for short trips. Our sedentary, car-based lifestyle leads to one of the world’s highest proportions of obesity (one-fifth of all adults) and serious health problems.³ How much of the precious time saved by driving instead of walking or cycling is eventually lost through premature death? A 1992 study for the British Medical Association found that the time spent cycling and walking is more than offset by the health benefits of such cardiovascular exercise, which extends life expectancy by more than the extra time it takes to walk or cycle.⁴ The Surgeon General of the U.S. also recommends walking and cycling as valuable forms of regular exercise to promote health.⁵ By comparison, visits to the gym or track (usually reached by car) are almost never frequent enough to provide regular exercise throughout life.

• Total hours of congestion delay in U.S. metropolitan areas have roughly tripled since 1980.⁶ For many Americans, the daily commute to work has become a seemingly endless nightmare. Without question, the dramatic shift from transit, walking, and carpooling to single-occupant auto use over the past few decades has contributed to congestion in our cities.

• Air, water, and noise pollution remain serious problems of the auto-highway transportation system. Cars and trucks are a major source of noise and air pollution in most cities, in spite of technological improvements over the past two decades.⁷ The huge increase in vehicle miles traveled has partly offset the impressive reductions in carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxide pollution per vehicle mile traveled.

• The automobile is America’s primary source of carbon dioxide emissions, the main greenhouse gas causing global warming.⁸ None of the pollution control measures to date have dealt with this problem. It is not entirely clear what the timing and long-term effects of greenhouse gases on global warming will be. Nevertheless, in 1997 virtually all OECD countries (including the U.S.) formally committed themselves in Kyoto, Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the coming two decades. Unless auto use can be curtailed, it is virtually inconceivable that the U.S. will be able to fulfill its international commitment.

• Notwithstanding the mobility benefits the auto-highway system provides for the affluent majority, it disadvantages anyone who cannot afford a car or who is physically or mentally unable to drive a car. Extensive roadways, parking facilities, and homeowner subsidies have encouraged extremely low-density suburban sprawl that puts most destinations out of reach for anyone without a car. The poor, the elderly, and the disabled are the main victims. Their opportunities are already restricted through financial and physical handicaps; substandard accessibility further disadvantages them and segregates them from the rest of society. An auto-based society discriminates against the disadvantaged.

• Even affluent households are adversely affected by a transport system that immobilizes anyone who cannot drive a car. Suburban children are totally dependent on their parents to get anywhere, since auto-oriented land-use patterns are so spread out that trips to almost all desired destinations are either too long or too dangerous to cover by foot or by bicycle.⁹ Suburban sprawl sharply limits the mobility and independence of children and requires their parents to spend hundreds of hours a year chauffeuring them everywhere. This forced mobility dependence wastes the time and energy of everybody involved. It also requires most suburban families to own two or more cars, since almost no trips by anyone are possible without a car.

• As suggested by critics of the auto, America suffers from a number of other, perhaps more controversial and less quantifiable harmful impacts of auto dominance: the loss of a sense of community and social cohesion; suburban sprawl and the ugliness of auto-based strip development along highways; the disruption of neighborhoods both during and after roadway construction; depletion of natural resources; loss of inner-city vitality; and the atomization and further segregation of our society by income, race, and ethnicity¹⁰.

• Finally, a growing number of scientists have attempted to measure the indirect cost of autos for society, the so-called external cost not borne by auto users directly. The estimates range widely and are controversial, but they certainly suggest a huge social and environmental cost of the auto-highway transport system. Generally, the figures range from about $500 billion per year to $1,500 billion per year for the United States.¹¹ Even taking the lower bound, that is an immense cost, amounting to about $0.20 per vehicle mile traveled or $2,400 per car per year. That is the minimum estimate of costs and only includes the social and environmental costs not directly borne by the driver of the car (such as noise and pollution).

Given this long list of negative impacts, it is hard to believe that anyone could seriously argue that the costs of the auto-highway system are not enormous. Yet that is the conclusion reached by Dunn in Driving Forces. Evidently, we just don’t realize how lucky we are to be living in the best of all possible worlds, the auto-based transportation paradise.

Most auto apologists in the U.S. are quite generous in wanting to spread the American auto paradise to the rest of the world. What’s good for us must be good for other countries as well. Even at their much lower levels of auto ownership and use, however, developing countries are experiencing serious social and environmental problems from rising motorization. Congestion, pollution, noise, injury and death caused by cars in the Third World often exceed levels in the United States, since developing countries have fewer resources to deal with such problems.¹² Many still use leaded gasoline. Most cars and trucks are old and in disrepair. Driving habits are dangerous due to lack of driver training, lax licensing of drivers, and non-enforcement of traffic laws. Finally, their roadway networks are scanty and usually in terrible shape. Round-trip car commutes in the largest cities regularly average three hours or more.¹³

Pollution levels in Mexico City, Manila, Shanghai, Teheran, Bangkok, and Cairo are so high that they can precipitate immediate illness and even death for susceptible individuals, not just long-term health risks. Traffic deaths and injuries are skyrocketing.¹⁴ Between 1968 and 1985, traffic fatalities rose 300% in Africa and almost 200% in Asia. From 1960 to 1995, traffic fatalities in Brazil rose from 5,000 to 32,532. From 1966 to 1992 traffic fatalities in India rose from 8,700 to 59,400. From 1972 to 1994, traffic fatalities in China rose from 10,000 to 66,362.¹⁵ Moreover, in these developing countries, 56%-74% of traffic fatalities are pedestrians and cyclists killed by car and truck drivers. According to the World Health Organization, road traffic accidents will be the second leading cause of death in developing countries by the year 2020.¹⁶ Clearly, the increase in auto ownership and use in developing countries is not bringing the transportation paradise envisioned by Dunn. On the contrary, rising motorization is worsening almost all their already severe social and environmental problems.

By ignoring the serious transport problems in developing countries, as well as those of disadvantaged groups in the U.S., Dunn’s analysis is far too narrow. Unquestionably, it is the view through the windshield of a car, representing the perspective of an auto driver in a multi-car household living in an affluent American suburb. Even for affluent Americans, however, Dunn exaggerates the benefits of the automobile while vastly understating its costs. Finally, the book is shortsighted; it ignores many of long-term impacts of the auto such as global warming, resource depletion, public health problems, and suburban sprawl.

Having listed here a number of criticisms of the auto, this reviewer will inevitably be branded as one of those notorious "enemies of the auto" that belong to the "anti-auto vanguard." According to Dunn and his fellow defenders of the car, anyone who criticizes the auto-highway system has a visceral hatred for the car and opposes it, not because of any real problems it causes, but out of ideological opposition to the car-based American way of life. This charge is both unfair and absurd. Does Dunn really believe that the danger, congestion, noise, pollution, and inequity documented above are imaginary, and that there is no legitimate basis for criticizing the car? In fact, hundreds of millions of people all around the world suffer every day from the very real problems of excessive auto use.

One need not have an ideological ax to grind to find fault with the auto-dominated system of transportation. Who doesn’t know someone—a relative, friend, or neighbor—who has been killed or seriously injured in a car accident? Who doesn’t get irritated by motor vehicle noise and air pollution? Who doesn’t occasionally get stuck in a traffic jam? How many pedestrians and cyclists are harassed, intimidated, and endangered every day by inconsiderate motorists who refuse to respect the legal rights of way of non-motorists? How many residential neighborhoods would be safer and more pleasant if there were less and slower motor vehicle traffic?

The problems of the auto-based transport system are hardly imaginary, and those who suffer from them certainly have a right to complain. Millions of victims—not the few academics Dunn denounces as the "anti-auto vanguard"—form the core of opposition to the auto’s domination of our transportation system and our lives. What is imaginary is the mythical vision of an automobile paradise portrayed in this book.

1. U.S. Department of Transportation, National Transportation Statistics, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Washington, D.C., 1997. 

 

2. The pedestrian/bicyclist share of traffic fatalities is higher in urban areas and lower in rural areas. In 1995, the U.S. had 6,415 pedestrian and cyclist traffic fatalities. A disproportionate share of motorist fatalities occurs in non-urban areas, where travel speeds are much higher and the distance to the nearest hospital is much farther. 

 

3. According to the National Institute of Health, more than one-half of Americans between the ages of 20 and 74 are overweight, and one-fifth are severely overweight and technically designated as obese. For details see "Overweight Was Bad Enough: The Fat Get Fatter," New York Times, May 2, 1999; and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control and Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 1996. 

 

4. British Medical Association, Cycling Towards Health and Safety, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

 

5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. 

 

6. Texas Transportation Institute, Urban Roadway Congestion, College Station Texas: University of Texas, 1996. 

 

7. Environmental Protection Agency, National Air Pollutant Emissions Trends, 1970-1995, Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency, 1997; Don Pickrell, "Cars and Clean Air: A Reappraisal," Transportation Research, Vol. 33, No. 7/8, autumn 1999, forthcoming. 

 

8. World Bank, Sustainable Transport: Priorities for Policy Reform. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1996; P. Newman and J. Kenworthy, Sustainability and Cities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Urban Travel and Sustainable Development, Paris: OECD, 1995. 

 

9. Aside from the problem of trip distance, the shameful neglect of pedestrian and cyclist safety in the United States makes walking and cycling unsafe for unaccompanied children. Separate facilities for pedestrians and cyclists are woefully lacking in the United States, in sharp contrast to Europe. Moreover, motorists rarely yield right of way to non-motorists, although the laws in virtually all states require it.  

 

10. K. Schaeffer and E. Sclar, Access for All, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980; J. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1961; J. Kay, Asphalt Nation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; A. Downs, New Visions for Metropolitan America, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994. 

 

11. M. Delucchi, The Annualized Costs of Motor Vehicle Use in the U.S.: Summary of Theory, Data, and Results, Davis, Cal: University of California, 1998; J. MacKenzie, R. Dower, and D. Chen, The Going Rate: What it really Costs to Drive, Washington, D.C.: The World Resources Institute, 1992; J. Holtzclaw, "America’s Autos and Trucks on Welfare: A Summary of Subsidies," Mobilizing the Region, No. 15, Feb. 3, 1995, p. 3; T. Litman, Transportation Cost Analysis; Techniques, Estimates and Implications, Victoria, BC: Transportation Policy Institute (www.islandnet.com/~litman), 1999. 

 

12. E. Vasconcellos, "Transport and Environment in Developing Countries: Comparing Air Pollution and Traffic Accidents as Policy Priorities," Habitat International, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1997, pp. 79-89. 

 

13. R. Gakenheimer, "Urban Mobility in the Developing World," Transportation Research, Vol. 33, Nos. 7/8, autumn 1999, forthcoming. 

 

14. E. Vasconcellos, "Reassessing Traffic Accidents in Developing Countries," Transport Policy, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1996. 

 

15. The older figures on traffic fatalities in this section come from the two Vasconcellos articles cited above. The latest figures (for 1992 and 1994) were provided directly by Dr. Paul Guitink of the World Bank (Washington, D.C.) from unpublished data the World Bank has collected. 

 

16. World Health Organization, Investing in Health Research and Development, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1996, Table S.1, pg. xxiv. 

Appeared in "Ideas in Motion," Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2, spring 2000, pp. 7-11)

James Dunn’s defense of his book Driving Forces in the winter 2000 TQ reiterates his basic message that the almost complete auto-dependency of American cities is not a serious problem.¹ He ignores or trivializes most of the social and environmental impacts of the car. Thus, it is not surprising that Dunn enthusiastically advocates the continued dominance of the car in our transportation systems.

In most respects, Dunn’s so-called "Auto, Plus" policy framework is little more than a resounding endorsement of the policies already in effect in the United States. In some respects, however, he proposes turning back the clock by abandoning the enormous progress made in intermodal transport planning over the past two decades. When one carefully examines the ingredients of "Auto, Plus," it is clear that it avoids any policies that would be unpopular with car drivers. Dunn is willing to adopt a range of "carrot" measures, but refuses to even consider any "stick" approaches. He explicitly states as his criterion that we should only consider policies that would be favored by a majority of car drivers. If ever there were a formula for the guaranteed continuation of the auto’s domination of our transport system, Dunn has surely found it. In his book, Dunn claims that his "Auto, Plus" framework goes well beyond the status quo, but in fact, it ensures there will be no fundamental changes at all, just some minor fine-tuning here and there.

No one can argue with the undeniable benefits of technological advances that reduce auto pollution, increase fuel efficiency, and enhance safety. Such "painless" solutions must be pursued to whatever extent feasible. But they are not sufficient. Dunn proposes relying almost entirely on such technological solutions to whatever problems our auto-dominated transport system causes. His "Auto, Plus" policy package only permits other, non-technological measures when they do not inconvenience car drivers, restrict auto use in any way, or raise the cost of car ownership or use.

There is an extensive literature comparing transport systems, travel behavior, and public policies throughout Europe and North America.² Only a few countries have achieved truly balanced transport systems, where walking, bicycling, public transport, and the auto all are feasible means of getting around and really work together as an integrated transport system. Without exception, every successful policy package has included substantial restrictions on auto use and much higher charges for auto ownership and use than one finds in the United States. In Germany and the Netherlands, for example, roughly a tenth of all trips are by public transport (vs. less than 2% in the U.S.) and over a third of trips are by walking or bicycling (vs. only 7% in the U.S.).³ Those two countries rely partly on the "carrot" approach to encourage the "green" modes: high-quality public transport, with attractive fares and fully-integrated services; extensive systems of on-street bike lanes, off-street bike paths, and ample bike parking; pedestrian zones, extra-wide sidewalks, and safe street crossings. These "carrot" measures are effective mainly because they are strongly complemented by "stick" policies aimed at restricting auto use in urban areas: comprehensive traffic-calming of residential neighborhoods; high taxes on auto ownership and use; restrictions on parking supply; and the reallocation of roadway space from car to bus or bike use, or to wider sidewalks.

The American approach to urban transport policy has been almost entirely limited to the "carrot" approach, which is also the essence of Dunn’s "Auto, Plus" policy package. Without the "sticks" to go along with the "carrots," it is certain that the overall program would be both expensive and ineffective.

We need only look to ISTEA and TEA21 for indications of how ineffective "Auto, Plus" would be. There is almost nothing proposed in "Auto, Plus" that has not already been possible through ISTEA, TEA21, the Clean Air Acts, the federal CAFE standards, and other existing legislative programs and administrative regulations. Indeed, Dunn’s proposals represent a scaling back of federal and state programs. Dunn even criticizes intermodal legislation as a ploy by anti-auto extremists to limit highway funding. Is it that upsetting that departments of transportation at both the federal and state levels have devoted increased attention to public transport, bicycling, and walking in recent years?

Dunn rejects many of the innovative developments and advances in transportation planning of the past two decades. For example, ISTEA and TEA21 both called for experimental congestion pricing. Dunn dismisses it as infeasible. The federal Clean Air Acts authorize significant penalties (loss of federal funding) for urban areas not meeting ambient air quality standards, and specifically allow auto-restrictive measures to improve air quality. Dunn’s "Auto, Plus" focuses on technological advances in emissions per mile driven and proposes no policies whatsoever to reduce miles driven though disincentives to single occupant vehicle use. Thus, he opposes government mandated trip reduction programs, which were in force for a few years, first in California and then for the entire country. Indeed, Dunn would oppose any policy (such as HOV lanes or priority parking) that would favor carpoolers over motorists driving alone since that, in effect, would be an auto-restrictive measure.

"Auto, Plus" proposes no changes at all in parking policies, which currently encourage vast supplies of parking at virtually no direct user cost. Dunn claims that motorists have a right to the free parking they currently enjoy. Using data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Donald Shoup of UCLA has shown that motorists park for free on over 95% of the trips they make.⁴ Shoup estimates that free parking at work typically represents a larger subsidy to car use than free gasoline would. He further finds that building regulations and tax incentives that encourage large supplies of free parking have an extremely harmful, distorting impact on both urban land-use and transportation systems. Yet Dunn sees no problem at all and thus has no criticism of high minimum parking requirements in local building codes and zoning ordinances, underpricing of on-street parking, and continued subsidized parking for virtually all motorists.

Dunn emphatically rejects land-use policies such as urban growth boundaries, in-fill development regulations, mixed-use zoning requirements, and density bonuses. Since he does not view low-density sprawl as a problem, he sees no need for government intervention to slow it down. Yet many studies have documented the problems of suburban sprawl.⁵ Moreover, public support for controlling suburban growth and protecting open space has been growing rapidly in recent years. In state and local elections, voters have approved sprawl-control referenda all over the country. By no means is sprawl just an issue of the anti-auto elite.

"Auto, Plus" allows some limited efforts to improve walking and cycling, but nothing significant. For example, it would permit a few more sidewalks and bike paths here and there, but nothing even approaching the truly comprehensive systems of bikeways, walking paths, pedestrian zones, and traffic calmed neighborhoods in Dutch and German cities. Likewise, Dunn concedes the need to improve public transport but certainly not at the expense of motorists. Thus, the extensive systems of priority traffic signals, bus lanes, and transit malls in European cities would also be taboo, since they all restrict car use in one way or another. In short, Dunn is willing to permit the occasional supplements to the auto but no real alternatives. The "Auto, Plus" designation is thus entirely appropriate. What it really means is more cars.

"Auto, Plus" is not a step forward; it is a step backward. It would reverse much of the progress made in transport policy over the past two decades. By downplaying virtually all of the problems our current auto-dominated system causes, Dunn makes us complacent and less willing to do anything serious about solving them. By refusing to do anything that would inconvenience car drivers or suburban homeowners, he ensures future growth in car use, auto dependence, and suburban sprawl.

It is no wonder that Dunn’s book has been a smashing success with the auto-highway establishment and all the interest groups that support it. Dunn writes of the "hidden agenda" of the "anti-auto vanguard," as if there were no "hidden agenda" of supporters of more cars and more sprawl. Building more roads, more cars, and more suburban homes is vastly more profitable than providing better pedestrian facilities, more bike routes, traffic-calmed neighborhoods, or high-quality public transport systems. As Altshuler wrote over two decades ago, there is a massive and extremely influential network of vested interest groups supporting the auto-oriented transport system.⁶

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Dunn’s book and his rebuttal to the TQ review is his attempt to further polarize transport discussions into pro-auto and anti-auto camps. He marginalizes even fair-minded and well-intentioned auto critics by lumping them together with extremists and portraying them all as a subversive, un-American elite he denounces as "enemies of the auto" or the "anti-auto vanguard." Dunn vastly understates the accomplishments of the auto’s critics, arguing that their vociferous attacks on the auto, and pleas for more regulation, taxation, and restraints have been fruitless—indeed, "worse than useless." Yet for the past three decades, much of the progress in technologies related to auto safety, emissions control, and fuel efficiency can be attributed to these critics. Their persistence forced the enactment of federal legislation that mandated cleaner, safer, and more fuel-efficient cars. By attacking auto critics throughout his book, Dunn does a disservice to the genuine contributions they have made to improve transportation systems in the U.S. The two most recent federal transportation laws, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the Transportation Equity Act for the 21^st Century (TEA-21), are monuments to critics who have fought for a more humane and environmentally friendly transportation system where walking, cycling and transit also play a role.

By all accounts the automobile is the nearest thing to an ideal transportation system. No transport technology offers people more convenience, comfort, security and privacy. The auto serves its users on demand, from door to door, with no transfers, no waiting, and at an acceptable price. Widespread car ownership has given millions of people more options of where to live and work and opened up access to greater social and economic opportunity. 

So, how come a number of vocal critics see the auto not as a solution but as a problem, and view existing auto and highway policies not as a success but as a failure? In an insightful and widely noticed book, James A. Dunn examines the gulf in perceptions that separates the auto's critics from the millions of ordinary citizens who treasure the auto as a symbol of personal freedom.

Behind the current anti-highway rhetoric, James Dunn, professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden, sees a loosely organized band of crusaders who harbor visceral hostility toward the auto and its culture. This "anti-auto vanguard," as Dunn calls them, view the automobile "not as a proud achievement of American industry but as a relentless oppressor and a menace to civilization."

The fact that cars are less polluting, safer and more energy efficient today than they were twenty-five years ago is no consolation. The car critics are not interested in solving the problems caused by the car, writes Dunn. "It is the whole gestalt of the auto as the central sociocultural icon of our society that they want to eliminate."

The vanguard's immediate goal is not a total abolition of the car, just a dramatic decline in its importance in the transportation system, writes Dunn. But the anti-auto activists go beyond seeking more balance in transportation by improving public transit and providing incentives for its use. They want to make auto travel more expensive and less convenient, if necessary, by resorting to legislative mandates and regulatory measures. The ultimate goal of the vanguard is to bring about a massive change in our travel habits. Dunn finds this highly ironic. In the past, he observes, progress meant replacing an older transportation technology with a newer one that offered greater mobility. The vanguard's goal of replacing the auto with "alternative transportation," transit, walking and bicycles would be the first modal shift in transportation history that would reverse this historic process by restricting rather than expanding mobility. The vanguard's objective, far from being progressive, is profoundly reactionary.

How successful has the anti-auto movement been so far, and how is it likely to fare in the future? Dunn traces the rise of the anti-car sensibility to the "green tradition" in American thought and literature of the 19th century, exemplified by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. In the 20th century, social critics and urbanists like Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs drew on these values to focus on the negative effects of the automobile on America's cities. The 1970s saw an outpouring of books, articles and reports that were highly critical in their assessment of the car's impact. "Within a few years the private car and the whole industrial and social apparatus that supported it were redefined by its critics in very negative terms," writes Dunn. The car was demonized as a voracious consumer of irreplaceable energy resources, a major source of greenhouse gases, a killer of tens of thousands of accident victims, a destroyer of cohesive communities and a despoiler of the landscape.

But the early critics' predictions of the "death knells of the automobile culture," did not materialize. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the automobile kept gaining ground, and not just in America but in the rest of the world as well. The critics vastly overestimated the public's willingness to give up personal mobility and underestimated the extent to which autos and highways fit the values of the American political and social culture.

What does the current generation of critics make of the auto's continued dominance? Do they still expect the end of automobility? Or have they changed their views? "The visceral hostility to the auto and its culture is clearly still present" writes Dunn. The most committed members of the anti-car movement resist arguments that their basic goals may be unattainable. Contemporary critics, such as James Howard Kunstler (The

Geography of Nowhere, 1993) and Jane Holtz Kay (Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, 1997) still believe, in Kunstler's words, that "the Auto Age as we have known it, will shortly come to an end." The mainstream environmental movement, although less apocalyptic in its predictions and more restrained in its rhetoric, is no less convinced of the need for fundamental change. Groups such as the Worldwatch Institute, Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense Fund and Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) build their policy recommendations on the basic proposition that the current dominance of the automobile is unsustainable in the long run.

There are three key elements in the vanguard's long term strategy, observes Dunn. First, there must be continuous consciousness-raising among policymakers and the general public. The auto must be made to pay its "true social costs." Once people are confronted with paying the full costs of auto travel, they will be much more willing to consider other transportation alternatives. Second, the auto critics must engage in effective lobbying of the legislature. The most notable success in this regard, notes Dunn, have been the efforts of the STPP to introduce more funding flexibility into the federal-aid highway program and to earmark funds for environmentally-friendly transportation initiatives. The third element of the vanguard's strategy is to build bureaucratic momentum, writes Dunn. To this end, the vanguard has become an active part of the policymaking process and seeks a voice in numerous forums to influence the course of debate on auto-related environmental issues, such as global warming, "sustainability," "smart growth" and "livable communities."

Will the vanguard succeed in its campaign to drastically reduce society's dependence on the automobile and bring about a massive modal shift? Dunn doubts it. The main strength of the anti-car lobby lies in their sense of outrage and their missionary zeal. Their weakness which Dunn thinks, will doom their efforts in the end is that they are disconnected from mainstream America. Their goals are not shared by the vast majority of people and run counter to deeply entrenched preferences of most Americans. The vanguard's vision of a largely carless world in which residents mostly rely on bicycle and public transportation lacks political realism and seems beyond the bounds of public acceptability.

"They [the anti-auto vanguard] threaten to take away the individuals' tangible embodiment of their personal freedom, their car, without offering a superior substitute," Dunn notes. The Politics of Mobility for the 21st Century Dunn offers an alternative policy future. The most effective policy response to the pressing auto-related problems, he writes, is not to discourage people from using cars but to encourage improvement in the technology of the auto itself. "It is easier and more politically astute to use Washington's arsenal of powers against Detroit than against tens of millions of citizen motorists," writes Dunn.

Such a policy would welcome the advent of less polluting, more efficient cars. It would allow individuals and communities to choose freely from an expanded range of choices rather than seek to impose bureaucratic "command and control" patterns of travel behavior. It would try to preserve rather than denigrate the immense and undeniable benefits of car ownership.

Above all, Dunn believes that "a successful politics of mobility must have commonsense appeal to citizens." People must see it as a means to help them meet their specific personal needs, not as a crusade to save the planet or to reshape the living environment in the elitist image of the anti-car vanguard.

The anti-auto forces will not like Dunn's book much. But the broad public, having been exposed for years to strident anti-automobile rhetoric, deserves a better understanding of the mentality behind the anti-car ideology. James Dunn has performed a valuable public service in better illuminating the anti-auto movement's agenda, motivation and philosophy.