Feb 14, 2005
Rationality, Cars, and Satellite Radio
Sorry to slip away from the Churchill brou-ha-ha, but I find myself distracted by Rational Man, Rational Woman, and the D.C. commute. The distraction came courtesy of this Washington Post article (registration required) on commuting in the D.C. area.
Six out of ten D.C. suburban commuters don’t like their commute. They will rearrange their lives, their schedules, and on occasional even change jobs or work locations. They even support raising gasoline taxes to fund new major projects to ease their lives, if only temporarily.
The one thing the vast majority will not do is give up their car, even thought they understand that their choice, multiplied by the millions of other people who make the same choice, is what causes the problems
Here is the one spot where the article fails. It does not ask the commuters why they won’t give their cars up. Some simply don’t like the public transportation, but are there practical necessities (for example, the ability to pick up little Billy at school if he gets sick)? Is it a vaguer, “I never know when I will need it,” sense of necessity? Or is it simply the fact that a car that we own is our own space in a way that a Metro seat can never be?
In any event, the solution for most is to make their car as comfortable and useful as possible. Cell phones, books on tape, Satellite radio, CD’s: the car becomes a second home, a bit short on scenery, but long on creature comforts and practical, non-transportation utility.
The mentality here gives us, in a nutshell, the problems facing traffic engineers, environmentalists, anyone who deals with the long-term consequences of masses of individual decisions. One-by-one the decisions by these commuters may be rational; that is, each person may be making the best of the situation he or she is in.
Taken together the decisions are insane. They don’t simply create horrendous problems, but they do so in such a way that there is no politically viable solution other than to extend the problem by increasing the number and size of highways. This projects the problem forward to a new generation.
But, hey, it’s all rational.
Six out of ten D.C. suburban commuters don’t like their commute. They will rearrange their lives, their schedules, and on occasional even change jobs or work locations. They even support raising gasoline taxes to fund new major projects to ease their lives, if only temporarily.
The one thing the vast majority will not do is give up their car, even thought they understand that their choice, multiplied by the millions of other people who make the same choice, is what causes the problems
Here is the one spot where the article fails. It does not ask the commuters why they won’t give their cars up. Some simply don’t like the public transportation, but are there practical necessities (for example, the ability to pick up little Billy at school if he gets sick)? Is it a vaguer, “I never know when I will need it,” sense of necessity? Or is it simply the fact that a car that we own is our own space in a way that a Metro seat can never be?
In any event, the solution for most is to make their car as comfortable and useful as possible. Cell phones, books on tape, Satellite radio, CD’s: the car becomes a second home, a bit short on scenery, but long on creature comforts and practical, non-transportation utility.
The mentality here gives us, in a nutshell, the problems facing traffic engineers, environmentalists, anyone who deals with the long-term consequences of masses of individual decisions. One-by-one the decisions by these commuters may be rational; that is, each person may be making the best of the situation he or she is in.
Taken together the decisions are insane. They don’t simply create horrendous problems, but they do so in such a way that there is no politically viable solution other than to extend the problem by increasing the number and size of highways. This projects the problem forward to a new generation.
But, hey, it’s all rational.