Stuck in Traffic

The cost of our car-crazy culture—and what we can do to free ourselves

September 2026

BY KIM WHITING

It can be harrowing.

I’m referring to my almost daily walk to a nearby grocery store in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

To get to the store, I cross a highly trafficked four-lane road, via a crosswalk. The speed limit is 35 mph, which means many drivers go 40 mph or more.

The road is almost always busy, and it’s a crap shoot whether—even though there’s a neon yellow sign alerting cars that it’s a pedestrian crossing—cars will actually stop for me.

Most often, one driver will stop, and I have to trust that the other two or three cars coming my way will also stop. Only about half the time is this the case.

Some Tulsa drivers don’t even know they’re supposed to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. Other drivers simply don’t want to and speed up to make it past the crosswalk before I step into their lane.

I’m not an anxious person, but there are times I arrive at the store with a sheen of adrenaline sweat. My daughter won’t even attempt that crossing.

Built for cars, not for us

The reason crossing a street can be so dicey is that most U.S. drivers aren’t accustomed to having to work around pedestrians. Automobiles have long had dominion over our roads, because in this country, we don’t walk—we drive.

According to statistics from the U.S. Census, most of us don’t even walk to a bus, subway, or light rail stop. As of 2024, only 3.7% of Americans used mass transit, and in cities where it’s historically been a common mode of transport—New York, Boston, Philadelphia—ridership has declined considerably over the past decade.

To accommodate the increase in cars, states spent over $500 billion on highways from 1993 to 2017, and in the 100 most populated areas of the country, miles of freeway increased considerably faster than population.

Despite that, traffic congestion still increased 144%.

Yikes.

Our car-centric culture isn’t working for us, and it’s costing us big time. Despite significant money being thrown at the problems, these costs to us—financial, social, political, environmental and even physical and emotional—continue to grow.

How did we become so locked into this way of getting around? What is it doing to us? And why have we been so resistant to alternatives?

More importantly, how can we free ourselves?

Confessions of a mass-transit hypocrite

For those of you addicted to your cars, I’m in no position to throw stones. I’ve long been a huge fan of mass transit—I mean, why wouldn’t I be? It’s good for the environment, reduces traffic congestion, makes our air nicer to breathe, decreases noise pollution, and lessens our dependence on foreign oil. And yet unless I’m in a city like New York or Chicago, I don’t actually use it.

I’m not alone in my hypocrisy. Many who vote for the expansion of mass transit in their U.S. cities do so out of conviction that it’s good for the environment and society, but don’t use it themselves. Meanwhile, the people who do ride buses, subways or trains say, almost universally, that they’d be driving their own cars if they could.

Like many U.S. cities, Tulsa (again, where I live) is designed for cars. Bus service has improved in recent years, but it remains our town’s only, and not very convenient, form of mass transit. Like most of my Tulsa friends, in the two decades I’ve lived here, I have never once ridden the city bus.

Unlike the U.S., much of Asia and Europe were developed with mass transit in mind. Japan’s high-speed rail began in 1964, and mass transit has been central to getting around in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe since the late 1800s. Today, Asia-Pacific is the largest user of mass transit in the world, with China alone accounting for a quarter of all riders globally.

Meanwhile, 18% of the EU uses mass transit, while many others walk or bike, since most European cities are walkable and bike-friendly by design.

A friend of mine who moved from Italy to Tulsa found this out the hard way. She tried to walk to the grocery store, as she’d always done back home— and found herself trudging beside a six-lane road with no sidewalk.

And driving isn’t always a picnic, either. Two of my relatives leave for work at 5:30 a.m. or earlier—one commuting into downtown Houston, Texas, the other into Newark, New Jersey—for jobs that start at 8 a.m. They leave that early because at 5:30, the drive takes about 45 minutes; at rush hour, it can take more than two hours.

And getting there is only half the battle—once you arrive, parking can be scarce, expensive, or too small for the SUVs and trucks so many of us now drive. Three times in recent memory, I’ve driven to Tulsa’s monthly art walk only to give up and go home because I couldn’t find parking within a quarter mile of the event. I won’t park farther out than that. Since most people don’t walk, the empty, poorly lit downtown sidewalks at night feel uninviting—even a little scary.

I don’t know about you, but I do a little internal jig when I snag a spot closer than half a football field from a major grocery store.

And that four-lane road I cross to get to my little local grocery store? Taking a left turn onto it is an exercise in patience. I’ve learned to take a right and loop the block instead.

The impact of our auto-centered culture has for me extended beyond travel travails while errand-running.

For over a decade, I lived in Phoenix, Arizona. While there, I hiked city mountains several times a week. A few years before I moved, more often than not, I would get to the top of a mountain and look down on a blanket of ozone haze.

The panorama that years before had inspired awe and breaking (internally) into Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, became depressing. I was angry and sad about what we were doing to our planet. I was mournful that the view on the mountain was no longer beautiful. I was freaked out about what sucking up that polluted air had done to my lungs.

Traffic became increasingly congested, and I learned to drive only between 9am and 2:30pm.

And, of course, summers got longer and overall, hotter.

I imagine at least one of these experiences hits a chord for you as well.

A place I’d once loved became somewhere I wanted to leave, and then did leave—and this was due, in large part, to our dependence on cars.

Our car-driving culture is messy and inefficient, and this isn’t new. Almost 40 years ago, I spent over an hour each workday on the DC beltway for a commute that should have taken 30 minutes.

Despite traffic and long commute times being the norm, however, in most American cities we keep choosing cars over mass transit. As of two years ago, Americans made up 4% of the world’s population, and owned 11% of the world’s cars.

So, what can we do?

David Muyres is a co-founder of Mobility Futures Alliance, a recently launched organization with a mission to “improve lives through better transportation and redefine mobility for a more vibrant and prosperous world.”

Muyres spent 30 years as a designer in the auto industry, and in 2008, when U.S. automakers were in financial crisis, he testified before Congress about building a more sustainable transportation future. He’s continued speaking on the topic at transportation conferences since.

I sat down to talk with Muyres about how it is that we got to this point, what our auto-centric culture is costing us, and what we can do to make things better. What he has to say is eye-opening:

“The Futurama pavilion was the most popular exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair,” Muyres tells me. “It attracted 30 million visitors. General Motors sponsored the exhibit, with the goal of using exciting storytelling to inspire people to get on board with their vision: an auto-centered world where people bought lots of cars. So many people bought into GM’s vision for cars and highways that by 1956, the National Highway Bill was passed, and GM’s vision was brought to life. But Futurama didn’t just create the blueprint for how we’d get around for most of the last century. Their strategy went on to change our country’s landscape, culture, homes and neighborhood designs, our environment, politics, economics, social dynamics, and even our health.”

Muyres continues, “It changed everything. And for the majority of the past century, the changes brought about by this model of transportation have not been positive. Inspiring storytelling can be that powerful and far-reaching. Our goal at Mobility Futures is to create that same kind of momentum and inspiration—using the same storytelling strategy, but this time for forms of transport that are right for 2050 and beyond.”

After talking with Muyres, I looked up images of the Futurama exhibit and was stunned—the models could’ve been aerial views of U.S. cities today. The vision GM presented became our reality, down to the details, except that its model didn’t include traffic jams.

“Inspired storytelling,” as Muyres calls it, had been so effective at shaping how we’ve gotten around for almost a century, that it made me believe the same approach could inspire a shift toward healthier models of transportation today.

I was reminded of the 1960s Space Race—ignited by President John F. Kennedy’s speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Beneath Kennedy’s words was a call to compete, to plant our flag before our rival, Russia.

That idea, and the competitive spirit it conveyed, was so inspiring that an entire country got behind it, collaborating and pooling their ingenuity. The result was that an American stepped onto the moon five months ahead of schedule.

Imagine what could be done for transportation—or any of our biggest problems—with that same kind of united, inspired effort.

But how do we bring that kind of storytelling into the 21st century? It’s unlikely a president will give a speech rallying the country around a new culture of transportation, and organizations like Mobility Futures aren’t about to build a new World’s Fair exhibit.

It occurred to me, however, that inspired storytelling doesn’t have to be a big production. Instead, it can be each of us telling stories or imparting information that compels even one other person to vote differently, decrease their car usage, write their legislators—or try out the city bus.

I’m a psychotherapist by background and in that field we say, “Awareness is halfway to being there.” Raising awareness about what single vehicle usage costs us, can bring us halfway to being less auto-centric.

Each of us carries the power to effect change, simply by sharing our knowledge and experience. Writing this article is—I hope—inspired storytelling.

But inspired storytelling presented to bigger audiences can obviously have a bigger impact. I assumed that a bigger impact was what Mobility Futures Alliance was going for with its inspired storytelling and so I asked Muyres what his team was doing to inspire change. The answer he gave was layered—as you’d expect on an issue as complicated as transportation.

“Let me start with our mission,” he says, “which is to improve people’s lives and create a more vibrant, prosperous world through transportation models that are better for our health, our human connection, the environment, job and healthcare access, and our budgets. We design better transportation models, and we judge ourselves on how lives are improved.”

Mass transit is more than just good for the planet

Mobility Futures’ plan to judge its success on how much lives improve seemed smart, because people are far more likely to embrace change when it directly benefits them. Personally, I’d never given much thought to mass transit as a life-improving force. For me, its appeal has mostly been about the planet.

And some of the data on the environmental pros is impressive:

• Buses, trains, and light rails reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 63 million metric tons annually.
• Riders of Salt Lake City’s TRAX light rail line alone save roughly 1,000 gallons of gasoline and prevent 19,400 pounds of CO₂ emissions every single day—adding to about 364,300 gallons of fuel and millions of pounds of emissions a year.
• A World Bank satellite study found that cities with metro rail systems have CO₂ emissions 50% lower than comparable cities without rails, contributing to an 11% reduction in CO₂ globally.

The focus on using mass transit to improve lives also got me thinking about other benefits that I hadn’t considered. I went down a research rabbit hole and was astounded by the breadth of the upsides:

• Social and Emotional Health: Mass transit decreases social isolation and increases quality of life among older people, as well as those with disabilities. Even though half of mass transit users engage in solitary activities like looking at their phones, they report that even limited social interaction on transit makes them happier.
• Economy: 87% of transit trips directly benefit the local economy by connecting people to work, retail, and entertainment. And a review of 86 transit systems worldwide found that rail-based transit increases property values and spurs development near transit lines—though only when the service meaningfully cuts commute times.
• Household Budget: Households that rely on transit instead of maintaining a personal vehicle can save more than $13,000 a year.
• Job Access and Job Creation: A University of Minnesota study found that proximity to Minneapolis light rail stations produced large, statistically significant gains in access to low-wage jobs—and that the number of low-wage jobs near stations increased.
• Safety: Cities with large rail transit systems average 40% fewer traffic fatalities than cities where buses are the only mass transit option.
• More Efficient, Sustainable Land Use: A single bus can replace more than 40 cars, and one metro train can take the place of roughly 900. This reduced auto congestion spurs more efficient and sustainable land use.
• Physical Health: As of 2009, mass transit users walked a median of 21 minutes a day, and 72% of riders with rail access walked 30-plus minutes more than those without it.
• Time Better Spent: An obvious benefit of riding versus driving is the time it allows for activities such as reading, catching up on work or emails, meditation, or rest.

Impressive as these benefits are, I’m still not compelled to hop on a Tulsa city bus. I work from home, and so don’t commute, and my driving is almost entirely comprised of distances less than five miles. Riding the bus, as it runs now, would mean walking four blocks to a bus stop, waiting at the bus stop and traveling longer than it would to take my car. I need to see clear benefits before making the switch.

“At Mobility Futures, we’re working to better understand what motivates mass transit use and what doesn’t,” Muyres explains. “We’re starting small, designing transportation models for specific communities or populations. We will then share the data, as well as new design ideas gleaned from these projects, with policymakers and movers and shakers in the world of transport, with the goal of scaling-up what worked.”

He continues, “It used to be that transportation conferences were for auto makers to show off new designs. These days, the conferences are attended by people with expertise in smart technology, sustainability, mass transit, city design and more. This means that the talks we give at conferences not only have a broader reach, but can also prompt collaboration and brainstorms.”

Our inspired stories can have more impact.

Right now, Muyres says Mobility Futures is focused on a project that “connects rural areas in Minnesota to healthcare, jobs, and educational opportunities, focusing on the first and last miles of the trip—which is the biggest obstacle to using mass transit. As it stands, 25% of the rural population can’t regularly access healthcare because of inadequate transportation.”

So while those in rural areas aren’t dealing with traffic and smog, our car-centric culture is ineffective for them in other ways.

According to Transportation for America, a national nonprofit working to “create a transportation system that safely, affordably, and accessibly connects everyone to jobs, services, and opportunities through diverse travel options,” over 1.6 million rural homes don’t own cars, “necessitating a heavy reliance on inadequate or absent local public transit.”

Roughly 30% of rural residents commute at least 30 minutes one-way for work, and 4% travel up to 90 minutes each way. About 19% of U.S. adults report transportation hardships, most of them low-income rural families. This means that for many people, lack of accessible mass transit impedes getting and maintaining employment.

And rural residents drive about 17% more than urban residents on average, meaning a larger share of often limited incomes goes toward gas and vehicle upkeep.

In 2021, the National Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that 85% of the nation’s 88.8 million rural residents had “reasonable access” to intercity transportation. I was heartened by this statistic, until I read that “reasonable access” meant living within 75 miles of a large airport, or 25 miles of a smaller airport, intercity bus stop, or rail station with scheduled service.

How exactly are people without a car, or the gas money for a 50-mile round trip to a transit stop, supposed to pull that off? That’s not reasonable access.

Time is a factor, too. A server at our local pizza restaurant told me he lives 14 miles from work, and his bus commute takes two hours each way. People with kids or elderly family members to get home to, or household tasks waiting, don’t have that kind of time to spare.

As Muyres puts it, “Half our population lives in rural environments, so change is needed. But rural spaces are less sexy, and most of the important people with money live in cities—which leads rural communities to get neglected or left behind. I’m not blaming anyone. It just happens. Let’s make rural mobility a priority and see what happens.”

Why we don’t use mass transit

I was curious just how much that first and last stretch of a commute actually matters. Turns out it matters a lot. An analysis by McKinsey and Company found that public transit use drops by up to 90% when passengers have to walk more than half a mile to the nearest stop.

In a survey of 1,056 residents in El Paso, Texas, 77.6% said they didn’t use mass transit. However, when researchers presented a free shuttle connecting people’s homes to the nearest bus stop, that number dropped to 38.2%.

Free or inexpensive shuttles to existing transit stops are less expensive to implement than new light rail cars and tracks. Mobility Futures Alliance’s focus on these shuttles is a smart first step in increasing access to mass transit and ridership.

Which brings us to Mobility Futures’ other current project; Leimert Park, in Los Angeles, and the creative ideas they’re playing with that could improve mass transit anywhere.

“The Leimert community is artsy,” Muyres says. “A lot of well-known musicians have come out of there. One community leader, Ben Caldwell, is a filmmaker, and he liked the idea of making a film to paint a vision for how better transportation could improve life in his community. We’re co-developing with Leimert Park an enhanced micro-transit strategy, covering the first and last mile of people’s commutes. This ‘Art Shuttle’ won’t just make getting around the neighborhood easier, it’ll also connect riders to longer-distance options, including a newly built LA Metro station near Leimert Park. This initiative is a way to strengthen community engagement and build support for better transit at the same time.”

Research backs Muyres here, too. A Science Direct study of commuter preferences found that microtransit could pull a meaningful number of suburban commuters away from their cars, particularly if wait times and walking distances stay low.

In fact, how long it takes to access mass transit matters more to potential riders than how much time the transit itself could save them over driving.

Before one on-demand microtransit service launched, 32% of those surveyed said they’d swap car use for transit if the service existed. Nearly half said they kept a car mainly for that first and last mile to a transit station. Nine months after the service launched, 34% had sold their car or were considering doing so.

Reliability and timing matter just as much.

Portland, Oregon initiated a timed-transfer system, in which different modes of transit arrive at a shared station around the same time, pause briefly to allow passengers to change to another mode of transport, and then depart. This system almost completely removed wait-time and boosted ridership 40% within a year of launching. Austin, Texas saw the same result, and researchers there found that optimizing the timed-transfer network mattered more than optimizing the routes themselves.

The stigmas about mass transit being for the poor, particularly buses, are another reason that people don’t use it. These stigmas are rooted in fact. Around 40% of mass transit riders don’t have a car and/or money to spare. In smaller cities this number climbs higher, and among bus riders specifically, it reaches up to 60%, with 30% falling into the very-low-income category.

The stigmas are part of a negative loop. Buses are seen as inefficient, often unclean and as serving an almost entirely low-income and homeless population. This then deters business commuters and leisure riders, particularly because addiction and mental health issues among the homeless and impoverished increase the chance of criminal activity.

Policymakers neglect mass transit because it lacks a strong political constituency. This neglect worsens service, which reinforces the stigmas.

Mobility Futures is utilizing an idea for their Leimert shuttle that could help raise the image of local bus service in any location:

“Leimert is an artistic community, so we’ve had fun imagining a shuttle that reflects the local culture in its design and the experiences riders have on board,” says Muyres. “Many of us on the team are vehicle designers, myself included, so this is right in our wheelhouse.”

Making mass transit feel like an experience rather than just a way to get from A to B seems like a smart way to draw more riders. The streetcars in New Orleans, for instance, typically run full—partly because they’re quaint and a little classy, and so don’t carry the same stigmas as “regular” mass transit.

An appealing interior or a bit of a designed-in experience would go a long way toward making me a city bus customer–the way a double-decker bus looks more fun to ride than the usual city bus.

Creating better designs and more appealing experiences for riders could help break the stigma loop happening in many U.S. cities—but accomplishing this takes funding, and funding takes the interest of policymakers. I asked Muyres how this can be accomplished.

What your car really costs you

“Our team at Mobility Futures works to increase awareness of the costs of our car-culture and the benefits of shared transport, especially for those in a position to effect change,” Muyres says. “We’re so used to a car-centered culture that most of us, including some policy-makers, don’t register how much it costs us beyond gas prices. For example, many have never considered how much a car costs a household –or they simply accept the costs as inevitable. A vehicle is our second-largest purchase after a home—but unlike a home, it starts depreciating the moment it leaves the lot. Shared-ride and public transit typically costs less than half as much annually as car ownership, and the money saved by switching could go toward something that actually builds value.”

He continues, “There are so many hidden costs baked into an auto-centered culture. Consider this, the largest room in most homes is the garage, meaning the biggest share of our real estate is devoted to storing cars we use only about 4% of the time. Ninety-five percent of the time, they just sit there.”

And then there are the obvious expenses like gas, maintenance and insurance. On average, cars cost households about $13,000 a year—and again, for an item that, on average, is used a small percentage of the time and is a poor financial investment.

There are other costs to single vehicle transport as well.

For example, the death rate is significantly higher when traveling by car versus by bus or other public transit.

Muyres adds, “The rise of SUVs and trucks has increased average vehicle size, which means bigger parking spaces, which means even more land swallowed by parking lots and garages used solely to put cars on and not use them. Right now, 40% of Los Angeles is covered in parking structures or roads. This is land that could otherwise ease housing shortages or become something that adds real value, like parks.”

As I’ve said, my first thought when considering the impacts of our auto-centric culture is about costs to the environment. For me, 40% of L.A. being covered in cement and blacktop means a huge carbon footprint.

Single vehicle exhaust contributes to around 17% of our country’s annual carbon footprint. And that’s just the effects of auto exhaust. Construction of a single two-lane road produces approximately 880 metric tons of per kilometer. This number increases with each added lane.

Muyres points out that “a lot of people look at electric cars as the climate fix, but EVs still take up the same space and need the same infrastructure. Real change means less car use, period.”

He adds, “Our emotional health is another cost of single vehicle use. Many people think of driving as relaxing, or at the least, more relaxing than mass transit, but research has found that driving is stressful. We just don’t register the stress, because most of us start driving at 16 and have spent most of our lives acclimating to it.”

He continues, “I could go on about the downsides of car culture and the upside of mass transit, but here’s a story that really drives how ill-fitting single vehicle use is for us in the 21^st century. About 20 years ago I spoke at auto shows in Shanghai and Beijing. I told attendees they were lucky because they still had the chance to design other forms of transport, since they hadn’t yet fully adopted America’s transportation problems. Their response was, ‘But here, the car is a symbol of success. It’s a luxury item that shows you’ve made it. People buy more cars to prove it.’ I did a quick calculation after that conversation and told them that if people in Shanghai owned cars at the rate we do in the West, we’d have to stack cars eight deep on every street in the city. And this was 20 years ago, when Americans owned fewer cars. The number would be even greater today.”

What we can do to free ourselves—and to raise a next generation that doesn’t need a car

Government Efforts: California, Colorado, Minnesota and Oregon are actively working to reduce single vehicle ridership, while Massachusetts, New York and Washington are moving in that direction. Dozens of cities are doing the same, such as Austin and Seattle. For example, in January 2025, New York City began charging single vehicles for using highly trafficked downtown roads during peak hours. Since then, more than 27 million fewer cars have entered those areas, subway trips in that zone rose 9%, and express and local bus trips rose 7.8% and 8.4% respectively, and rush-hour travel through the Holland Tunnel decreased by 65%.

What’s more, revenue the city makes from charging vehicles for peak time use is going toward subway, bus, and rail capital improvements. Efforts in other cities toward reducing single-vehicle driving include the construction of protected bike lanes, sidewalks and bus shelters, increasing the reliability of local transit, lowering fares, and slowing traffic in residential areas.

Not-for-Profits: Non-profits, such as Mobility Futures, are making efforts as well. For example, California’s Coalition for Clean Air works with government agencies on better land use and transportation practices, such as the creation of “15-minute cities” where all basic needs are located no more than 15 minutes away, reducing the need to travel long distances.

Employers: Some employers have initiatives such as subsidizing the use of mass transit for commutes, giving incentives for carpool/vanpool use, allowing more remote work, and providing bike racks and showers for those who walk or bike. Studies show that such measures significantly impact how employees get to work and can result in a 17-24% decrease in peak parking demand at or around the workplace.

What you can do—besides driving less:

• Ask your employer if it offers pre-tax transit benefits or a “cash-out” option for not using a parking spot. If not, suggest it do so.
• Write or call your legislators.
• Donate to organizations like Mobility Futures Alliance, that are working toward a workable, reduced auto-use culture.

Inspired Storytelling:

Mobility Futures has created an eight-minute digital film imagining a day in the life of two kids in the year 2045. While fun to think about—the film reminded me of watching The Jetsons when I was a child –the technology and vision seemed so futuristic that I wasn’t able to get that excited about it.

But I was wrong about it representing some distant future.

Muyres (speaking like the designer that he is) says “much of the technology needed to make this future a reality is already in development if not already deployed, such as autonomous vehicles, smart streets, and real-time transportation demand management.”

He adds, “Equally important to the technology are the economic models necessary to build these systems. For example, public-private partnerships are needed in order to create sustainable businesses for taxpayers and shareholders, as opposed to today’s competing models that impede progress. Also, policy adjustments will be necessary to incentivize today’s corporations to initiate new business opportunities, capturing value as they support this transition to better mobility systems. All of this is doable, as long as enough of us get on board with a new, non-auto-centric vision.”

To accomplish this, we need to share that vision with others.

What’s next

“I think it’s really important to cultivate the next generation to be flexible transit users,” Muyres says. “To get them used to a world that isn’t entirely built around cars. That’s one of the clearest ways I can see to shift our culture toward transit, and toward walkable, bikeable cities.”

He continues, “A woman I recently spoke with in London, who works on transportation safety, suggested we build a project aimed at kids right before they get their first car—something to help them understand the seriousness and costs of driving before they’re handed a license.

“Driver’s training and licensing in the U.S. is honestly pretty inadequate. Maybe how we prepare kids for that responsibility needs a rethink. How about we expose them to more transportation options before they ever set foot in a driver’s ed class?” Muyres says. “Right now, most kids dream about their first car. They don’t know there’s anything else out there.”

What’s stuck with me most after researching and writing this article, is that at one point an automaker told a story so compelling that it reshaped how we build cities, spend our money, and even relax. Maybe it’ll take an equally compelling story to build something different—a way of getting around that works better for all of us.

In the meantime, I’ll continue my hair-raising street crossings to the grocery store—and share my own inspiring transport stories.

I hope you will share yours, too.

Kim Whiting is a Reporters Inc. advisory committee member. You can read more about her here. Kim can be reached at whiting444@gmail.com.

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