On the road again.

• Author: Epstein, Lee
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

Margy Waller ("Auto-Mobility," October/November) is correct that automobiles will not be going away any time soon and that the poor need better ways to access jobs. Somehow providing the means for many more Americans to own a car is surely a well-meaning idea. But instead of digging our graves deeper by making even more of us desperately dependent on the volatile, unsustainable and devastating oil economy, we should be talking about giving people more choice and autonomy as to where they can live and how they can get around: for example, allowing people to choose among driving to work, living closer to their jobs (including in the suburbs, where unfair regulations all but prohibit lower-cost housing options), using dependable and convenient transit, and taking a job closer to where they live (i.e., bringing jobs to existing developed areas).

Waller is correct that transit systems today cannot effectively serve both central cities and the sprawling suburban countryside. But over time--indeed, over a relatively short span of 25 years--that can change if we want it to. In a recent Brookings Institution report, Professor Arthur C. Nelson of Virginia Tech writes that, as of 2030, fully one half of all the buildings in which Americans will live and work will have been built after the year 2000.

We still have the opportunity to vastly influence the shape and location of future growth and development in this country. This is the future of choice, of personal and family autonomy instead of one marked by the unaffordable promise of publicly subsidized car and commuting costs for every wage-earner--with all the wide-ranging adverse implications of such a public policy, both foreign and domestic. The former is the future we should be seeking to create, instead of reinforcing the latter.

Lee Epstein

Silver Spring, Md.

It's hard to know where to begin to respond to Margy Waller's bizarre proposal to spend $100 billion to support auto commuting.

First, there is the serious question about national funding priorities. Why, when our roads and bridges are crumbling--not only in the devastated Gulf Coast, but all across America--should we be adding to our burden by funding an increase in auto use?

Although the price tag for Waller's proposal is significant, it doesn't begin to address the total costs involved. Individuals will be burdened with fuel, maintenance, and insurance costs, which, according to the AAA, can run as high as $5,000 or more annually...