Is “war on cars” a useful term?

“No one wants to call it a war, of course,” Washington Post reporter Robert McCartney writes in Monday’s article, “Is D.C. waging a ‘war on cars?’”

In reporting on plans to reduce the number of parking spaces at Union Station, McCartney says yes, the District is waging a war on cars, and plenty of local officials and advocates are ready for it.

There are plenty of well-documented reasons why the District and Capital region would want to reduce their dependence on cars: to reduce road violence, carbon emissions, and more. It’s also true that efforts to do this—by funding bike lanes or public transit, for example, or cutting down on parking spaces—are often met with fierce resistance from drivers who would rather see projects that make it easier to move their cars through the city.

It’s an ongoing fight, and it’s a heated one. But is it useful to invoke the language of war, even in the metaphorical sense akin to the war on poverty or the war on drugs?

We asked GGWash contributors to share their thoughts on whether this framing is helpful or harmful to the cause.

Dan Reed says it’s important to remember who’s really getting hurt in this fight:

“War on cars” implies that it’s a zero-sum scenario, in which cars can either win or lose. This ignores the fact that people not in cars are losing every day—people are losing time and money stuck on unreliable transit, or at serious risk of harm or injury while walking, biking, scooting, etc.

Tracy Loh agrees:

The “war on cars” rhetoric echoes not just actual wars but other policy initiatives like the “war on drugs” or the “war on crime.” What it is implies is that there’s a policy objective that is so important to achieve, it doesn’t matter who gets hurt or what it costs to get there. On the contrary, I think that considerations about safety, quality of life, and cost are at the center of the “war on cars.” So it’s at best inaccurate and at worst disingenuous, inflammatory, and sabotaging to refer to efforts to reduce our dependence on automobiles as such.

Canaan Merchant sees pros and cons to the term:

It’s a bad frame in that it just feeds this culture war narrative that focuses on an ideology first and fixing any actual problems second. An example of this is the Maryland Highways plan, where a good part of the impetus is to supposedly “correct” an imbalance in state funding back towards roads. It all falls apart once you examine the evidence, but again this isn’t about finding the “best” solution. It’s about finding ways to score political points against people who likely align on other political priorities in addition to transportation. Most normal people aren’t ideologically predisposed to any one form of transit anyway.

Then again, it’s a good frame because despite the inherent ridiculousness of the issue, it’s still a real thing with real-world effects. When highways are expanded for purely ideological reasons, the practical effects don’t go away. But the key is that in the war on cars, the cars are winning.

David Cranor says he used to hate the term, but has changed his mind:

It started as a sort-of pejorative that was used by people opposed to taking space from drivers to give it to other users, which is why I originally disliked it. It was like “the Death Tax” in that it was an inaccurate description given to something to create an emotional response among the uninformed.

But I see using it as a way of taking the sting out of it, as is sometimes done with other pejoratives. … I like to ask people when they use it, “Why shouldn’t we declare war on cars?” to which most don’t have a good answer. They’re so sure cars are good that the idea is like asking why shouldn’t we declare war on grandmothers. But some people do talk about mobility “That’s how everyone gets around.” Then I ask about road violence, pollution etc.. and we can usually agree that we need to change cars, and the way people get around. And then we can usually agree that we need to get rid of all cars as they are now, and change our roads. Which I then say is a “War on cars AS THEY ARE NOW and as they’re accommodated” which is a mouthful.

Caitlin Rogger says the “war” language allows the real winners to be seen as victims:

Firms that profit from selling lots of expensive cars and related goods and services won whatever “war” there was several decades ago. They reaped the spoils of public resources and human lives and welfare, with limited checks on their power or expansion. “War on cars” just lets them carry the mantle of victim or equal player.

Dave Murphy says he likes to think of the “war” in more specific terms:

I am more or less okay with the phrase so long as it is a war on car subsidies like free parking, weak emissions standards, city planning that focuses on car traffic, and bloated highway spending. My disabilities largely prevent me from driving. Not only does a huge chunk of my tax money go towards something I can’t utilize very often, but also something that actively impedes just about any other way for me to get around.

Risky monikers aside, I’m all in for a war on emissions, a war on free parking, a war on traffic violence, a war on sprawl, and a war on highway subsidies. Cars are great, but all the externals and subsidies of automobility have trashed our built environment.

Let us know what you think.