Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 303, Ed. 1 Sunday, June 1, 2014 Page: 3 of 36
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Denton Record-Chronicle
LOCAL/NATIONAL
Sunday, June 1, 2014
3A
Running on fumes?
Mel Evans/AP file photo
Commuters wait for an New Jersey Transit train to New York,
in Trenton, N.J., on April 14.
By Adam Geller
AP National Writer
The ’57 Chevy was still a year
away when the launch of the in-
terstate highway system kicked
U.S. car culture into high gear.
But six decades later, changing
habits and attitudes suggest
America’s romance with the
road may be fading.
After rising almost continu-
ously since World War II, driving
by U.S. households has declined
nearly 10 percent since 2004,
with a start before the Great Re-
cession suggesting economics is
not the only cause. “There’s some-
thing more fundamental going
on,” says Michael Sivak ofthe Uni-
versity of Michigan Transporta-
tion Research Institute.
The average American
household now owns fewer than
two cars, returning to the levels
of the early 1990s.
More teens and 20-some-
things are waiting to get a li-
cense. Less than 70 percent of
19-year-olds now have one,
down from 87 percent two de-
cades ago.
“I wonder if they’ve decided
that there’s another, better way
to be free and to be mobile,” says
Cotten Seiler, author of Repub-
lic of Drivers: A Cultural His-
tory of Automobility in Amer-
ica.
Those changes — whether its
car trips replaced by shopping
online or traffic jams that have
turned drives into a chore —
pose complicated questions and
choices.
Trying alternatives
Each day, about 3,500 people
bike the Midtown Greenway, a
freight rail bed converted to cy-
cle highway in Minneapolis,
where two-wheel commuting
has doubled since 2000. It’s still
a small percentage, but more
residents are testing the idea of
leaving cars behind.
A second light rail line opens
in June. Street comers sprout
racks of blue-and-green shared
bikes. About 45 percent of those
who work downtown commute
by means other than a car, most-
ly by express bus. That syncs
with figures showing Americans
took a record 10.7 billion trips on
mass transit last year, up 37 per-
cent since 1995.
“There’s a lot of people who
want the less-driving lifestyle,
definitely” says Sam Newberg,
an urban planning consultant
and transportation blogger.
They include Kimani Beard,
40, who used to drive for a pack-
age express company. Now he’s a
graphic and apparel designer who
walks or bikes to a coffee shop a
few days a week, with its Wi-Fi
providing an instant office.
“I don’t want to drive any-
where,” he says. “I’ve spent my
time behind the wheel, but I
think I’ve done enough.”
Meanwhile, some are re-
thinking the paradigm of vehicle
ownership.
In the suburbs just north of
Chicago, Eugene Dunn and Jus-
tin Sakofs live four miles apart,
but met only because Dunn’s
2005 Pontiac broke down.
Dunn, 43 and a math tutor,
takes a train to work. But getting
to his second job, refereeing
youth basketball on weekends,
required a car he didn’t have.
Luckily, Sakofs, the director
of a Jewish day school, had a
Nissan he didn’t need from sun-
down Friday to sundown Satur-
day, when his Sabbath obser-
vance precludes driving. They
found each other through Relay-
Rides, whose app pairs indivi-
dual car owners with neighbors
looking to rent.
“Right now, I just need [a
car] to get back and forth and
BRIEFLY
IN DENTON
Ramp to be closed as
part of widening project
The entrance ramp from U.S.
Highway 77 (Dallas Drive) to
southbound Interstate 35E will
close for approximately 12
months beginning at 9 a.m.
Monday.
During the closure, crews
will rehabilitate the ramp as part
of continuing work to expand
Interstate 35E through the
35Express project, an expansion
of I-35E between U.S. Highway
380 in Denton County and In-
terstate 635 in Dallas County
Several detours will direct
traffic around the closure:
■ Southbound traffic will
turn right onto Teasley Lane,
then left onto the southbound
I-35E frontage road before en-
teringthe southbound I-35E en-
trance ramp.
■ Traffic traveling south on
U.S. 77 (Dallas Drive) will turn
right on the northbound I-35E
frontage road, north to Teasley
Lane, left on Teasley Lane, turn
left to the southbound I-35E
frontage road, and then back to
southbound I-35E.
All closures are subject to
weather conditions and will be
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make money,” Dunn said.
Testing the bonds
Car culture is about an emo-
tional attachment that can be
hard to measure.
A good place to start is Carl-
son’s Drive-In in Michigan City,
Ind., where a car hop arrives at
the window before you turn off
the ignition.
“It definitely takes you back
to an older time,” says Barry Oli-
ver, recalling teen nights driving
the strip and stopping here.
Places like Carlson’s were
destinations for Americans em-
bracing driving as recreation. As
recently as the 1990s, Indiana
had nearly 60 vintage drive-ins.
Today just five or six are left.
Drive-in movie theaters, which
numbered 4,300 nationally in
1957, have dwindled to just 350.
Where does that leave car
culture?
“Gear heads live here,” says
Todd Davis, a Lansing, Mich.,
native visiting the R.E. Olds
Transportation Museum from
Orlando. Away from Michigan,
“it’s not like that.”
But Davis’ cousin, Sol Jaffee,
isn’t convinced.
“Kids will always be interest-
ed in cars! I mean, cars are
America, don’t you think?”
But at Wisconsin’s Oshkosh
North High School, enrollment
in driver’s education, no longer
required for graduation or sub-
sidized by the state, has declined
40 percent.
Like other states, Wisconsin
eliminated funding for driver’s
ed, raising the price of in-school
programs. Today’s young people
postponed, if necessary, officials
said.
For more information on the
35Express project, visit www.35
Express.org or call 214-483-
7777
— Bj Lewis
often rely on parents for rides,
says driver’s ed teacher Scott
Morrison. And then there’s
Facebook and other social me-
dia. While most students still
look forward to the freedom
conferred by a license, a small
but self-aware contingent says it
can wait.
“I’ve never really needed” to
drive, says senior Ashwinraj
Karthikeyan. “It’s almost like a
rite of passage for people to
drive, but I know offhand prob-
ably about 15 or 20 people who
don’t have their license.”
The future
In 1939, General Motors capti-
vated World’s Fair crowds with a
futuristic vision of technology
linking highways and cars. But in
2014, Debby Bezzina will tell you
that future is fast approaching.
Bezzina, of Michigan’s Trans-
portation Research Institute, has
just begun to explain the technol-
ogy inside her 12-seat van when a
bend in Baxter Road interrupts,
setting off a staccato beep that
warns the vehicle to slow down.
For nearly two years, 2,800 vehi-
cle owners here have been partici-
pating in this federally financed
bid to connect vehicles with their
surroundings so they can join
drivers in decision-making.
Meanwhile, on the institute’s
second floor, a Nissan Versa
wired to let drivers navigate a
simulated cityscape will soon be
reprogrammed to make it al-
most entirely self-driving.
There are bound to be compli-
cations as people turn over some
control to their cars, says the in-
stitute’s director, Peter Sweatman.
But imagine, he says, summoning
a driverless car you might not
even own, being picked up and
dropped off at curbside, and
watching it pull away.
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Cobb, Dawn. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 303, Ed. 1 Sunday, June 1, 2014, newspaper, June 1, 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124652/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .