Thinking of getting a car? Read this instead.
 | By Honor Jones Cover Stories Editor |
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Two friends recently texted me to ask how much I like my family’s station wagon. |
These friends are both New Yorkers with young kids and, because of the coronavirus, they’re thinking, for the first time, about buying a car. I get asked these questions because I’m the boring friend who moved to the suburbs, so I’m often on the cutting edge of the dowdiest trends. But after praising the trunk size and mileage, I now have to text them back and say: Don’t do it. Read this instead. |
When Farhad Manjoo said he wanted to write about a future without cars for this week’s Sunday Review cover story, I was skeptical. What if you’re kind of wobbly on a bike? And hold up: We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Now is not the time to tell people to crowd back into the subways so they can breathe each other’s bronchial backwash. |
But it turns out that my reaction just goes to show how much cars have constrained my imagination. |
First, Farhad points out that there’s not much evidence that public transit has contributed to the spread of the virus. Second, “if riders wear face masks — and if there are enough subway cars, buses, bike lanes and pedestrian paths for people to avoid intense overcrowding — transit might be no less safe than cars, in terms of the risk of the spread of disease.” |
He knows what readers will be asking: “There aren’t enough buses in your city to avoid overcrowding, and they’re too slow, anyway? Pedestrian space is already hard to find? Well, right.” That’s because cars — parked cars and moving cars — are taking up way too much room. “And it’s exactly why cities need to plan for a future of fewer cars, a future in which owning an automobile, even an electric one, is neither the only way nor the best way to get around town.” |
The first step, Farhad argues, would be to ban privately owned cars in Manhattan. He worked with Vishaan Chakrabarti at the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism to dream up that new New York City. In the piece you can scroll through their architectural renderings to explore greenways and pedestrian plazas and to see how dedicated bus lanes would zoom commuters to Midtown. It looks genuinely awesome. |
Honestly, I would give a lot right now for the chance to wade through a trash pile so I could slide over the hood of a parked car so I could dash through 8th Avenue traffic so I could beat the tourists and the light and walk into our office in time for the morning meeting. I really would. But Farhad’s piece is a good reminder that, while we yearn to return to normal life, we should spend some time thinking about how we can improve it. Reducing our dependence on the dirty, expensive death machines we use to get around is a good place to start. |
That reminds me of something David Leonhardt said in his piece today, which tries to imagine what life might look like two years from now. David predicts that the crisis will lead to some lasting changes: Many colleges will shut down, along with department stores; lots of people will keep working from home; and the election could usher in more sweeping political reform than we’ve seen since the Reagan administration. |
“Some of the old behavior will revert when the pandemic ends,” David writes. “But not all of it will. In some cases, people will realize that they were sticking to old habits out of inertia and prefer their new habits.” |
As for my family, we’ve started taking a bike ride each night before bed: the big kid behind dad on a tandem bike, the babies strapped in a trailer behind me. When the pandemic ends, that’s one habit I hope to keep. Makes me wonder, for a moment, if we need that new minivan after all. |
Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) will be taking your questions about a New York City without cars live on Twitter today, Fri., July 10 at 1:00 pm ET. |
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