Leaving aside the collective cost to climate, habitats, and household budgets of this private car parade during the 180+ days in the school year, morning and afternoon, generation after generation, there is something wrong with over-reliance on personal solutions to shared problems. Individualism runs to the roots of the USA history of European occupation, settlement, and control of resources, trading, and infrastructure for all. On the positive ledger, there can be high motivation to succeed, to profit, and to survive. Accountability can sit on individual shoulders, too. On the negative ledger, there can be duplicative chattels, toolkits, pantries, and all manner of maladaptive living repeated over and over when there is no external point of reference, benchmark, or authority.
As with most complicated and therefore interesting problems to grapple with, finding the right middle point between the extremes is not always immediate, obvious or directly accomplished. At one extreme is each household owning, insuring, licensing, selecting, financing, maintaining and operating an all-weather steel, glass, and rubber, petroleum-powered 2,000-pound vehicle. It is not rare to run two or sometimes more of these. This makes all kinds of activities and routines appear easy and efficient. But in fact, the costs do add up to a significant proportion of household income. So there are psychological feelings of convenience, comfort, style, and pride of ownership. But financially there is a reckoning that comes from the myriad costs that accumulate over the lifetime of running a car, even when there are no accidents, major recall notices, or repairs of bad design of a model-year produced.
At the other extreme there is a place like Japan with its high density of national, regional, and local rail services for passengers and for freight. Rural and exurban town residents may well own a (light) car, but since 80 or 90% of Japanese are part of large urban centers these days, paying for parking and ownership costs of private cars means relatively few adults do rely on private automobiles to get to work; few students need parents to drive them to school; few travelers dream of trips based on cars. So while there are tollways and regional highways, country roads, and plenty of cars and trucks to be seen, this comprises a subset of the whole population.
Turning to the above west Michigan video clip around 2:45 p.m. on a fine Friday in early May, it is hard to believe this daily spectacle of idling engines and risks of distracted drivers mingling with pedestrians and big yellow school buses in all kinds of weather during the cycle of seasons. Experiments at intentional communities with pooled cars, lawn mowers, snow blowers, and tool sheds allow residents to use the common equipment rather than for everyone to choose (and pay for, license, and maintain) their own set of equipment for living. Obviously, there are shortcomings of a collectivized life since carelessness, maliciousness, or blockheadedness can lead to damage that must be shared by all. But there are clear gains possible, too: less need for storage space, maintenance, and expense (initial outlay and ongoing costs). Imagining some combination of ride-sharing (having an app for that) and public transportation, like rapid light rail or city tramlines, would make part of this private vehicle parade go away.
It is one thing to envision a future that is more like countries that have inherited dense rail services, but getting from the vision to the daily reality of building, staffing, funding and making best use of that is where things soon become bogged down in detail and personal circumstance: existing drivers, having invested in private property and learning to operate personal automobiles, see daily school commutes as a problem they can solve by turning the key, gassing up the car, and making the drive time enjoyable together with their children; a kind of performance of parently competence, demonstration of care, and public mingling with others to compare vehicles. To go from “instant solution” for getting to/from school to some hazy kind of rail system would not be an easy idea to sell; unless there is no other way.
In an increasingly crowded, warming, and digitally mediated world where relationships (to others and to the surrounding land and sea and air) intermingle with money, it is becoming increasingly important to seek the optimal balance between individual choice and consequence on the one hand (e.g. getting your own children to and from school, day after day) and collective solutions on the other hand (e.g. school buses, rail services and other public infrastructure of mutual benefit and burden). This video clip illustrates the current way things at school occur, at the same time tacitly teaching the next generation how things seem to be, have to be, or should be aspired to be. Let us instead take another lesson from the spectacle: here is a chronic problem that presents a challenge to solve for the short-run and for the long-run. Similar daily commuter parades for school and for work are multiplied across the USA and perhaps also to some extent in other places where car culture overshadows other forms of getting around.
