Driving Forces

James A. Dunn

doi:10.5771/9780815707202

Summary

To its critics, the automobile is a voracious consumer of irreplaceable energy resources, a leading polluter of the environment, and a destroyer of cohesive communities. The most outspoken opponents call for greater regulations and restrictions to ultimately replace the automobile as the country's primary means of transportation. But their proposals all ignore one simple fact: Americans love their cars! Millions of citizens have made the automobile the most successful method of mass transportation ever developed, and they are not about to give up the personal mobility it offers. This book presents the controversial view that, for the vast majority of Americans, the automobile is not the problem, but the solution to transportation needs. While acknowledging the automobile's significant drawbacks, the author refutes much of the shrill rhetoric and doomsday predictions of its opponents. He takes a skeptical look at the major policy initiatives to tax, regulate, and provide alternatives to the automobile, pointing out that any policies designed to remove Americans from their cars without offering them a superior means of mobility are "worse than useless" and doomed to failure. The book offers suggestions and guidelines for politically realistic initiatives that preserve the benefits of the automobile while building public support for policies that will reduce its negative effects on energy use and the environment.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8157-1963-2
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8157-0720-2
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 230
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
1. The Automobile as a Problem No access
2. The Rise of the Adversarial Temperament No access
3. From Prophecy to Organization: The Vanguard Strategy No access
4. Problems with the Vanguard's Agenda No access
5. Issue-Attention Cycles and Types of Transportation Policies No access
1. The Advantages of Highways for Promotion Policy No access
2. The Highway Promotion Regime: Intergovernmental Transfers and Trust Funds No access
3. The Politics of Federal Taxes on Motor Fuel No access
4. The Highway Benefits Regime: Restoration or Revolution? No access
1. Policy Entrepreneurs and the Politics of Adversarialism No access
2. The New Social Regulatory Regime No access
3. The Road Not Taken: Positive Public Leadership No access
4. Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Restoration No access
5. Between Regulation and Partnership: The Politics of Propulsion Systems No access
6. The Results of Regulation: The Politics of Evaluation No access
7. Toward a Postpetroleum Benefits Regime? No access
8. Vehicles of the Future No access
9. Conclusion No access
1. A Policy Window for Public Transit: Building a New Benefits Regime No access
2. Closing the Window: Fiscal Retrenchment and the Privatization Challenge No access
3. Evaluating the Results of the Transit Benefits Regime No access
4. Transit as Policy Monopoly and as Symbol No access
1. The Disappearing Railroad Blues No access
2. The Amtrak Regime: Design Deficit No access
3. Reinventing Amtrak: Partnership, Privatization, or Liquidation? No access
4. Beyond Amtrak: The Allure of High-Speed Rail No access
5. Potential High-Speed Rail Corridors in America No access
6. State Attempts to Promote High-Speed No access
7. The Prospects for Fast Trains: Stakeholders in a New Promotion Regime No access
1. Rationalization as an Alternative to Sprawl No access
2. Rationalization versus Restriction No access
3. Access and Holistic Transportation No access
4. The New Urbanism: Back to the Future? No access
5. Portland as the Promised Land No access
6. The Automobile and the Prospects for Metropolitan Governance No access
7. The Vanguard's Venue: Federal Planning Mandates and Mobility Restrictions No access
8. The Search for "Home Town, U.S.A." No access
1. Competing Paradigms in Transportation Policy No access
2. The Automobile, Plus: Pragmatic Analysis, Effective Policy Choices No access
3. The Problem of the Carless No access
4. Preserving Automobility, Improving Automobiles No access
Notes No access Pages 195 - 222
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