A contributed perspectives piece by By Brent Finnegan
This is part one of a three-part series of Community Perspectives about land use and transportation in Harrisonburg.
Cars and trucks are the largest source of carbon emissions in Virginia and account for almost a third of emissions in Harrisonburg. The evidence is clear that our petroleum-powered automobiles are playing a major role in the breakdown of our climate. It’s less clear what we are supposed to do with that information, given the car-dependent design of our city.
We might like to believe that we choose to drive, as opposed to walk, bike, or take public transit. Driving can give us a sense of control, freedom, and personal choice. But when the majority of our municipal infrastructure prioritizes and subsidizes cars and makes all other modes of transportation unpleasant, inconvenient, or dangerous, is driving truly a choice? Few people would choose to walk on a 5-lane stroad with no sidewalk, assuming they had other options.
We tend to file the climate stats about internal combustion engines under “There’s Nothing I Can Do About It” as we start our cars and go about our day. It’s easier to blame the faceless automobile industry and absolve ourselves of responsibility to shift climate priorities and norms in our own communities. The motonormative solution to address carbon emissions from transportation is that everyone should buy an electric car. While we are seeing more EVs on the road, we’re nowhere close to being on track to hit our 2050 emissions targets. The new tariffs make reaching that target even less likely. Cars (of any kind) are incredibly expensive, and Americans are in an arms race for larger and heavier personal vehicles at a time when we should be moving in the opposite direction.
“The big problem for EVs from a price standpoint is that the whole industry has decided that the only way to cater to American tastes is to make their EV fleet out of trucks and SUVs, eliminating the economical sedans that might be affordable.” (The American Prospect)
Although EVs have a much lower carbon footprint than GVs, walking, biking, and public transportation are orders of magnitude lower than EVs. And while it may sound “unrealistic” to replace your car by walking, biking, or taking public transit, near-mandatory private car ownership for everyone is both financially and environmentally unrealistic.
Motonormativity has impaired our ability to think clearly and creatively about decarbonizing transportation. Whether we realize it or not, we’re experiencing societal carbon lock-in. Using private vehicles for 100% of our transportation needs is incompatible with a sustainable future, but we’re so deeply, collectively invested in the system we have that we’re unable to imagine any other means of getting around. We need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but our goal cannot be to simply replace every GV with an EV. While it’s tempting to hitch our climate hopes to solutions that require no real change of norms, we won’t be able to drive our way out of the climate crisis.
Car-dependency is not only bad for the planet; it’s a destabilizing financial burden for working class families. The average monthly car payment in the US is more than $700 for new cars or more than $500 for used cars, and that doesn’t include the cost of gas, insurance, and maintenance. All told, the average cost of owning a new car is more than $1,000 per month. A 2021 Harvard study found that aside from housing, transportation is the largest expense for working-age renter households. The study suggests that reducing both the cost of housing and transportation through land use reforms and public transit would have the biggest impact on reducing household residual-income burdens.
In other words, we must take transportation costs and climate impacts into account as we work to address the affordable housing crisis. We’ve given ourselves no other choice but to drive, and for most of us, that means we are forced to own a car whether we want to or not. Is there an exit ramp from motonormativity? Have we resigned ourselves and future generations to perpetual car-dependency?
What’s the alternative to private car ownership?
Many people legitimately need to use an automobile every day. I’m not one of them, but if you had asked me four years ago, I would have said, “Of course I need a car for my daily transportation needs.” For the past three years, I’ve been using an ebike for 90 percent of my trips in town. After selling one of our two cars, my spouse and I have saved money, lowered our carbon footprint, and gotten far more exercise than we did with two cars and no ebikes (yes, even in the winter). Untethering myself from car-dependency has improved my overall quality of life, and I have no intention of going back.
A growing number of US cities and states are offering ebike incentives, and it’s working to reduce carbon emissions and household transportation expenses. A recent study from the University of British Columbia found that e-bike incentives are more cost-effective in reducing emissions compared to electric car incentives, “and that’s without including a range of cycling-related benefits such as increased physical activity, reduced local air pollutants and decreased travel costs.” In Denver, out of nearly 2,000 e-bike business trips reported by E-Bikes for Deliveries program participants, 83% directly replaced car trips.
Admittedly, ebikes aren’t for everyone and won’t work for every trip. However, considering that cars remain parked 95% of the time, we should be able to find more efficient ways of sharing them. I need a pickup truck a few times a year – perhaps three or four days out of 365 – but that doesn’t mean I need to buy and own a truck. I’m fortunate to be part of a neighborhood truck share, but even if or when we lose that access, it doesn’t cost that much to rent a truck during the <1% of the year we actually need one. If shared cars were widely available and accessible, many households that have two or more cars could sell one and still get around just fine.
We already have EV scooters parked all over Harrisonburg that can be unlocked with an app. Imagine if instead of just Bird scooters, there was an app that could unlock Chevy Bolts. Not only is EV car sharing possible, it’s already being done in other U.S. cities, including Charlotte, Sacramento, and Frisco. Some of those programs are municipally-owned. The recent success of car-sharing app Turo is a trend that could allow more of us to save money by giving up private car ownership without giving up driving entirely.
Harrisonburg doesn’t have a car sharing program yet, but it’s something we should explore and pursue. Changing the way we get around requires intentionality and effort on our part, but the payoff is worth it: vibrant neighborhoods where kids can safely walk or bike to school, lowering carbon emissions from transportation, reducing household expenses, and improving our overall health and sense of well-being. Climate solutions are all around us, hiding in plain sight.
Brent Finnegan has served on the Harrisonburg Planning Commission since 2016. He writes about housing, transportation, and climate on The Friendly City Urbanist.