Car pools, which arose as a promising environmental strategy during the oil embargoes and fuel shortages of the 1970s, have gone the way of hitchhiking and other highway anachronisms, according to The New York Times, which reported new census data showing that car-pooling has declined by half since 1980 when the U.S. Census Bureau started keeping statistics on how Americans commute.
One Man's Opinion of Car Pools
My colleague Marc Lallanilla over at About.com: Green Living, writing in his blog about the decline of car pools, says, "I'm not sorry to see them go." In bidding farewell and good riddance to car pools, Marc writes:
"The whole idea of car-pooling seems to depend on the idea that mass transit can't work, and we need to rely on cars and highways and traffic jams to get us to the only place we ever go -- an office.
"Mass transit, however, does work -- ask any New Yorker -- and setting aside car pool lanes on crowded highways just makes the highways even more congested -- ask any Los Angeleno. And with no flexibility to where you go (work, home, work, home) it was only a matter of time before car pools dried up.
"So long, carpool. Hello, mass transit!"
My Take on Car Pools
Marc makes some good points, as usual, but he has overlooked the most important one: commuters are not giving up car pools in favor of mass transit; they are abandoning car pools so they can go back to driving solo.
Marc is correct in saying that mass transit works, and he cites New York as a good example. Everybody always cites New York, because it's one of the few places where owning, driving and parking a car has become so absurdly expensive and inconvenient, not to say impossible, that people have been forced out of the driver's seat and onto buses and trains.
Mass Transit vs Solo Driving in D.C.
Washington, D.C., also has a great mass transit system. The D.C. Metro (subway) provides convenient and inexpensive transportation throughout the city and into most of the nearby suburbs. Yet, traffic in and around the nation's capital has grown steadily worse over the past few decades as the D.C. population has grown and more people have chosen to drive their own cars. As The New York Times reports:
"Here in the fast-growing suburbs of Washington, the number of people driving alone has more than doubled since 1980. That is a sharp contrast from a generation ago, when Washington had one of the highest car-pooling rates in the nation, with one person car-pooling for every two driving to work alone. Today, for every one car-pooler, there are six solo drivers. This trend crawls to life every weekday morning before dawn, when a stretch of Interstate 95 turns into a glittering river of headlights moving so slowly that drivers need to leave up to two hours to cover a 30-mile trip."
Why Do Americans Prefer to Drive Alone?
The American obsession with solo driving doesn't make much sense from a pros and cons perspective. Both car pools and mass transit are less expensive than driving alone, both solve the problem of expensive or hard-to-find parking, and both are more likely than solo driving to bypass traffic congestion during rush hours to get you where you're going in less time. And both offer commuters the option of reading, napping or talking with other riders rather than stressing about slow-moving traffic.
So why do we insist on climbing behind the wheel of our own cars instead of boarding a bus or subway, or hooking up with other commuters to car pool, despite car-pooling incentives such as HOV lanes on freeways and dedicated parking set aside by many employers to encourage ride-sharing?
There are a few trends that have contributed to the change such as part-time telecommuting, and other flexible and irregular work schedules, that make it harder for many commuters to find a workable car pool, but I think the real reason has more to do with something Marc alluded to in his blog post when he said, "no flexibility to where you go."
Americans are independent by nature. We like knowing we can go wherever we want, whenever we want, without being locked into a pre-determined route and schedule. The census figures show that many of the people who still choose to car pool either come from cultures where ride-sharing is common practice, or don't have enough income to own and operate a car. As long as most Americans can afford to drive solo, many of them will.
Do We Still Need Car Pools?
Unlike Marc, however, I can't celebrate the decline of car-pooling. Yes, car pools still burn fossil fuels and pollute the air, and there is no question mass transit is a better option. But car pools are a big improvement over solo driving for the same reason that mass transit is better than car-pooling: rider density. The more people we can put in one vehicle, the less fuel we burn and the fewer tailpipe emissions we create.
Car-pooling is not a long-term solution to any problem. Neither is any strategy involving vehicles that run on gasoline or other petroleum products, because the world is quickly running out of oil.
According to some estimates, the global oil supplies could be effectively depleted within 20 years. As a result, our best course of action is to aggressively pursue alternatives to fossil fuels, such extending the range and carrying capacity of electric vehicles and finding non-polluting transportation fuels.
Meanwhile, however, car pools remain a viable option to help extend fuel supplies and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Private employers, along with federal, state and local governments, should be creating incentives for people to car pool and use mass transit while discouraging solo driving.