Auto-Less in Seattle

24 Apr, 2006
Posted at 16.25 PDT

Seattle, as I’ve said more than once, has a few things going for it that appeal to me to no end. Once of those things is its electric trolley bus system. What makes it so interesting to me is, IIRC, the fact that being in the Pacific Northwest, and thus having access to the ample hydro-power around the region, allows the city to run its electric bus system—and its entire power grid—free of oil. Now this certainly doesn’t include the entire bus system, as it wouldn’t be efficient to try and string electric lines everywhere the buses need to go. Still, it’s kind of cool.

Almost since they were introduced, cars have been a symbol of freedom and independence in the U.S. To be an adult meant buying a car; it was part and parcel of the American dream: a secure job, a house with a two-car garage in the suburbs, and 1.8 children. You can thank Henry Ford in large part for that. His application of assembly line techniques (already in use, but don’t let that spoil your enjoyment of the myth around the man), brought the price of cars down low enough for the average middle-class American to purchase. As a society, we’ve never looked back.

In the thirties, Germany’s Adolf HItler looked at what we here in the U.S. were doing with our road system, and the result was the country’s much vaunted autobahn. (Yes, copied from us, not the other way around, surprisingly). We had a lot more ground to cover with shiny new highways than they did, and after Germany began feeling frisky in 1939, we had to postpone major work for a few years while the Soviets and the West showed them just how useful a highway system could be for invading armies.

At any rate, after we finally finished fighting the last of the nineteenth century wars for lebensraum, and the advent of the atomic bomb had put paid to any major power’s desire to conquer neighboring countries, the U.S. finished up its national highway system—and did so with a vengeance.

To me it’s especially cool considering that yesterday, for the first time since I was eighteen, I have taken the plunge, and am now living car-free. It feels a little strange.

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