Do Americans Have A Unique

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Do Americans Have A Unique Love Affair with the
Automobile?

• Joel Schwartz
• Visiting Fellow
• American Enterprise Institute
• June 24, 2005

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Questions

• Have we been forced into driving by carmakers,
  roadbuilders, and planners?
• Are Americans unique in their love affair with
  the automobile?
• Does driving make us worse off overall?

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A Worldwide Love Affair with the Automobile

• In a wide range of economic, policy, and cultural
  contexts, people the world over choose
  automobiles for travel and suburban living as
  soon as they become wealthy enough to afford them
• Wealth is the single greatest determinant of
  automobile ownership and driving
• Driving is the overwhelming transportation mode
  even in countries that heavily tax cars and
  driving and provide widespread subsidized transit

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Have Americans been Forced or Hoodwinked into
Cars and Suburbs?

• If Americans were forced into driving, then
  transportation in other countries would look
  quite different from the U.S. But it doesnt.
• Americans use cars for 88 of motorized
  passenger-miles. In Europe, the figure is 78.
• Transits share dropped 35 in Europe between
  1970 and 2000.
• Singapores car ownership quota increased cost of
  purchasing a car by 60, but caused only about a
  10 reduction in demand for automobiles
• Europe has suburbanized much as America
• Population densities in European cities dropped
  more than 60 between 1960 and 1990
• Amsterdams suburban share grew from 20 to 33
  from 1970-1994, while Pariss grew from 68 to
  77 between 1968 and 1990
• Americans adopted the automobile before
  interstate highways and post-war suburbanization
• By 1930, Americans owned 3 cars for every 4
  households

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Huge Net Benefits from Driving

• What do people know that policymakers and
  activists dont?
• The dominance of driving and suburbs in wealthy
  countries is the result of deep-seated human
  desires for opportunity, space, convenience,
  autonomy, and privacy
• Driving increases choice and opportunity Greater
  choice of jobs and housing. Greater choices and
  lower prices for consumer goods. Greater
  lifestyle competition among cities. Ability to
  visit friends and relatives who are otherwise too
  far away. Greater recreational opportunities.
  More rapid response to fires and medical
  emergencies.
• Not only do wealthier people buy cars cars help
  people become wealthier.
• Even after accounting for the harm from air
  pollution, accidents, congestion, and other ills,
  automobile travel delivers trillions of dollars
  per year in net benefits to Americans

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More of the Good, Less of the Bad

• Greater safety
• Compared to today, the per-passenger-mile risk of
  dying in a car accident was four times greater in
  1960 for vehicle occupants and seven times
  greater for pedestrians
• Pedestrian improvement is not the result of less
  walkingsuburbanites are the most physically
  active group.
• Risk of injury dropped
• Air pollution
• Despite steadily increasing driving, air
  pollution has steadily declined. Almost all
  carbon monoxide pollution comes from cars. But
  peak CO levels have declined 75 since 1975
  despite more than a doubling of driving.
• Congestion
• Getting worse, but this is largely the
  intentional result of public policies to restrict
  road building and encourage people to use
  transit.
• Although congestion has increased, cars are also
  much more comfortable and quiet than they used to
  be.

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Automobiles Critics Have It Exactly Backwards

• The automobile is a powerful enabling technology
  that has vastly increased human welfare
• Policymakers and activists have spent decades
  working to override peoples preferences, and
  impose their own prescriptions for how people
  ought to live work and travel.
• These policies have unnecessarily eroded the
  benefits of automobile travel by increasing
  congestion, diverted hundreds of billions of
  dollars to transportation modes that few people
  choose to use, and driven up the cost of housing
  by artificially restricting supply.
• Instead, to maximize Americans welfare and
  prosperity, policies should be reoriented to work
  in concert with peoples choices and aspirations,
  rather than against them

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Auto Ownership Follows Income

• Cars per capita vs. GDP per capita by country in
  1992

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Trend in Automobile Ownership Follows Trend in
Income

• Trend in cars/person vs. GDP/person, 1970-1992
  (log scale)
• By 1992, many European countries had reached
  Americas 1970 per-capita income level, and
  Americas 1970 per-capita car ownership level

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European Travel Trends

• Passenger miles by mode, 1970-2000
• Air is fastest growing sector, likely due to
  deregulation
• Auto miles increased by 2.4
• Transit increased slightly, with bus increasing
  more than rail

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• Europeans drive less per capita when compared at
  the same income level
• But per-capita driving has been growing more than
  twice as fast in Europe as in the U.S.

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Automobiles and Opportunity

• Automobile travel is faster that transit,
  providing access to three times the land area in
  a given amount of travel time.
• Many places arent and cant be served by transit
• If only half of all households and employers are
  accessible by transit, then the autos speed and
  accessibility advantage would put 12 times as
  many employers within reach
• Welfare-to-work studies show owning an automobile
  greatly increases the chance of landing and
  keeping a job

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Automobile Benefits vs. Costs

• Costs and Benefits (1995)
• Costs roughly 2 to 4 trillion dollars
• Includes all costs, such as estimated costs of
  air pollution, climate change, free parking at
  malls and work, etc. (Source DeLucchi 2005)
• Benefits roughly 6 to 11 trillion dollars
• Includes expenditures and consumers surplus
• Even after accounting for externalities and
  other subsidies and hidden costs, Americans
  derive trillions of dollars per year in net
  benefits from automobile travel
• This explains why demand for driving and
  automobiles is so high, even in countries that
  levy large taxes on cars and driving

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Automobiles Compared to Transit

• Driving cost about 0.20 per passenger-mile in
  2002, while transit cost 0.82.
• Adding in a recent RFF estimate of
  externalities would add a few cents per mile to
  the cost of autos
• Adding in the most extreme and implausible
  automobile costs proposed by smart growth
  activists would add about 0.23 per
  passenger-mile
• Full-cost pricing of all modes would decrease
  transit use, because transit is so much more
  heavily subsidized that autos
• About 64 of transit costs are subsidized by
  taxpayers

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More Driving, Less Pollution
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What Is the Alternative?

• There is no realistic alternative to the
  automobile that would not require large
  reductions in peoples autonomy, prosperity, and
  quality of life
• Automobile travel provides a level of
  opportunity, choice, and mobility unparalleled in
  human history
• Policymakers should continue to reduce the
  negative side effects of automobile travel but
  they should also stop trying to erode the huge
  benefits of automobile travel

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Contact information

• Joel Schwartz
• joel_at_joelschwartz.com
• 916.203.6309
• www.joelschwartz.com