Is the Car Driving Society to Ruin?

Here in one of the most high holy places in the cult of automobility, David Engwicht is either a prophet or a heretic. Either way, his message is simple: The cars we worship as vehicles of freedom and mobility are false idols.

In fact, they are slowly killing us--making us less free and less mobile.

They entomb us in air-conditioned comfort as we hurtle down the highway, cruise control at 65, to our inevitable end. And the end, according to Engwicht, is nigh.

It’s a simple message and comes from an unlikely source--a former window-washer from Brisbane, Australia--but it’s catching the ears of civic and transportation planners all over, including Los Angeles.

To support his thesis, Engwicht points to streets once pleasant for strolling that now are exhaust-choked rivers of cars. He points to neighborhoods where the most noticeable architectural features are the two- and three-car garages in front of the houses.

And he points to the sad fact that many are passing life by, speeding from place to place--madly punching the radio pre-sets--as the flowers and thorns zip past in a blur of color impossible to discern.

“Cars feed on the very elements that make the city a city,” he says.

We’ve all heard cars are bad because they cause smog. But Engwicht describes their offenses in more cosmic terms, saying they’re bad for the soul as well.

Look at it this way: When was the last time you cursed at someone for cutting in front of you while walking on the sidewalk? Now ask yourself when you last cursed someone for pulling in front of you on the freeway.

To this, Engwicht says: “Slow down.”

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Like a modern-day apostle Paul, Engwicht is touring the globe with his message of “traffic calming,” a planning theory that seeks to make neighborhoods more friendly to people and less friendly, deliberately so, to cars.

The idea is attracting, if not converts, at least a lot of listeners. His latest book on the theme, “Reclaiming Our Cities and Towns: Better Living With Less Traffic,” has sold several thousand copies in the United States. His seminars are attended by some of the brightest minds in local planning circles.

Engwicht’s ascension to international planning guru was no less dramatic than Paul’s roadside conversion. Until 1987, Engwicht ran a window-washing business in suburban Brisbane. But when local road officials proposed expanding a highway through his neighborhood, Engwicht organized opposition.

More than a “Not In My Back Yard” response, Engwicht and his cronies argued that the highway should not cut through anyone’s back yard. They prepared their own report to counter those of the traffic experts.

Ultimately, Engwicht and his neighbors won their fight. The roadway was never built.

And the report they wrote became the foundation of Engwicht’s first book, “Traffic Calming.” He left window washing behind and became the full-time traffic consultant he is today.

On a recent stop in Southern California, Engwicht strolled down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks--searching in vain for redeeming qualities that might change his mind about the future of Los Angeles. Our collision with the future, he figures, is going to cause one heck of a SigAlert.

“Everything about this environment screams that it’s for motor cars and not for pedestrians or bicycles,” Engwicht said over the din of screeching brakes, honking horns and revving engines.

To Engwicht, the pedestrian is one of the most basic units of society. When we walk, we see more, smell more, feel more, touch more and, often, taste more. We have time to talk and time to gawk.

We are, in effect, more human when we are out of our cars.

Engwicht figures cities were created as places for people to come together to trade goods and stories. “Now,” he said, “we just plunder the place for whatever consumer goods we want and then piss off to our little secured compounds.”

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Engwicht’s solutions seem simple enough. He wants to take neighborhoods from cars and give them back to the people who live there. But how? At first, he suggests tiny changes such as sticking a barbecue on a residential sidewalk or a fountain in a business district.

The fountains, of course, have been tried. The barbecues have not. At least not yet.

People gathering in what Engwicht calls “outdoor living rooms” might eventually create enough of an attraction to demand restricting auto access. After a time, he says, it might be eliminated altogether.

Or, Engwicht asked, why not refuse to widen streets to accommodate more traffic? Or even make a few streets narrower to choke off traffic?

“Traffic,” he said, “expands to the available road space and it will shrink to the space provided for it.”

But that’s not the California way. Just last week, Caltrans announced that it was allocating $11.8 million to widen 12 miles of the Simi Valley Freeway from the Ventura County line to the Golden State Freeway in Mission Hills.

Engwicht figures it will take an about-face in attitudes for any large-scale changes to occur. It happened with smoking and within a generation lighting up has gone from fashionable to offensive.

Engwicht hopes the same thing will happen with driving. Eventually, he predicts, people will realize that tremendous amounts of space, time and money are devoted to automobiles--resources that could instead be put into more fruitful investments such as parks and plazas and affordable housing.

“I’m not a heretic,” he explained. “I’m simply exposing that the emperor has no clothes.”