If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.

Our people are steadily increasing their spending for higher standards of living. Today there are almost nine automobiles for each ten families, where seven and one-half years ago only enough automobiles were running to average less than four for each ten families. The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage. Our people have more to eat, better things to wear, and better homes.

The essence of air transport is speed, and speed is unfortunately one of the most expensive commodities in the world, principally because of the disproportionate amount of the power required to achieve high speed and to lift loads thousands of feet into the air. This is strikingly illustrated by the fact that while an average cargo ship, freight train and transport aeroplane are each equipped with engines totalling about 2,500 H.P., the ship can carry a load of about 7,000 tons, the train 800 tons and the plane only two and a half tons.

Everything is already moving so very fast, but you need a great deal more speed than this to escape the earth's gravitational pull. Seven miles per second. More fuel, please.

There are too many damn cars. I first recognized this in 1983, just after high school. A friend and I were unable to buy tickets for a rock concert on Long Island, New York, and had to sit outside the Nassau Coliseum for three hours, waiting for a ride home. Looking out, I saw seemingly endless parking lots surrounded by endless highways, streets and exit ramps, all of them filled with cars-thousands and thousands of cars. Amidst all this concrete, I couldn't see a single tree, a single bush or even a single blade of grass. Once I became sensitized to cars, I realized that almost everything in North America is centered around the automobile. This is true of architecture, urban planning, socializing and even the basic procurement of goods and services. We have become a society in which the simplest human gatherings, like going to hear music or see a sporting event, require thousands of motor vehicles and miles of asphalt. There are precious few places where you are not within sight or sound of a road.

If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it.

The automobile, which began as a transportation convenience, has become a bloody tyrant (50,000 lives a year), and it is the responsibility of the park service, as well as that of everyone else concerned with preserving both wilderness and civilization, to begin a campaign of resistance.

The world has too many automobiles and televisions. Now the standard is there should be one car and TV for every person. This is not healthy for the environment or our souls.

L'industrie du transport façonne son produit : l'usage. Chassé du monde où les personnes sont douées d'autonomie, il a aussi perdu l'impression de se trouver au centre du monde. Il a conscience de manque de plus en plus de temps, bien qu'il utilise chaque jour la voiture, le train, l'autobus, le métro et l'ascenseur, le tout pour franchir en moyenne trente kilomètres, souvent dans un rayon de moins de dix kilomètres. Le sol se dérobe sous ses pieds, il est cloué à la roue. Qu'il prenne le métro ou l'avion, il a toujours le sentiment d'avancer moins vite ou moins bien que les autres et il est jaloux des raccourcis qu'empruntent les privilégiés pour échapper à l'exaspération créée par la circulation. Enchaîné à l'horaire de son train de banlieue, il rêve d'avoir une auto. Épuisé par les embouteillages aux heures de pointe, il envie le riche qui se déplace à contre-sens. Il paie sa voiture de sa poche, mais il sait trop bien que le PDG utilise les voitures de l'entreprise, fait passer son essence dans les frais généraux ou se fait louer une voiture sans bourse délier. L'usager se trouve tout au bas de l'échelle où sans cesse augmentent l'inégalité, le manque de temps et sa propre impuissance, mais pour y mettre fin il s'accroche à l'espoir fou d'obtenir plus de la même chose : une circulation améliorée par des transports plus rapides. Il réclame des améliorations techniques des véhicules, des voies de circulation et des horaires ; ou bien il appelle de ses vœux une révolution qui organise des transports publics rapides en nationalisant les moyens de transport. Jamais il ne calcule le prix qu'il lui en coûtera pour être ainsi véhiculé dans un avenir meilleur. Il oublie que de toute accélération supplémentaire il payera lui-même la facture, sous forme d'impôts directs ou de taxes multiples. Il ne mesure pas le coût indirect du remplacement des voitures privées par des transports publics aussi rapides. Il est incapable d'imaginer les avantages apportés par l'abandon de l'

The highway construction truck tore up the street at forty miles an hour.

We had entered an enormous traffic jam ... The enormous energy of the twentieth century, enough to drive the planet into a new orbit around a happier star, was being expended to maintain this immense motionless pause.

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth — when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass — the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another — particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth — when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass — the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another — particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

If only cars were fueled by road rage...