Acadia National Park is being overrun with automobiles. Several times this summer, park officials have shut down the Cadillac Mountain Summit Road to alleviate the glut of cars. A recent Bangor Daily News story outlined traffic and parking problems in the park’s most popular areas, and reported that Acadia is struggling to preserve a natural experience in the face of the onslaught.

The park draws an estimated 2.5 million visitors a year. Most of them arrive by car and expect to use their cars in the park. But Acadia has scheduled a handful of car-free days, where private vehicles are not allowed in the park for up to twelve hours.

Mount Desert Island has always had a problematic relationship with cars. There’s only one way on and off the island – something that wasn’t true of steamships, which could use any of the island’s several excellent harbors. John D. Rockefeller, whose family fortune came from oil, initiated construction of the network of carriage roads still used by hikers and bicyclists today. Cars were not allowed on the island at all until 1913, five years after Henry Ford’s first Model T rolled off the assembly line and ushered in the Age of the Automobile, in whose late stages we are now living.

National parks exist in tension between two worthy goals. One is to preserve land, particularly scenic land, in as natural a state as possible. The other is to ensure that the land is accessible to the American public – or, again, as large a segment of the public as possible. The car is a detriment to the first goal but a boon to the second. Not everyone can hike to the top of Cadillac, though perhaps more people should.

Like many year-round Mainers, I tend to avoid Acadia in the height of the tourist season (at least the most popular, MDI segment of the park – Isle Au Haut and even Schoodic Point are much less crowded). And like most of my ilk, traffic is the primary reason I stay away. The park’s problem with traffic is twofold: too many cars in the park, and too many visitors driving to the park. They are separate but related problems, with separate potential solutions.

An effective way to address the first problem would be an adjustment of park entrance fees. Currently, the cost to bring a vehicle into the park is $25, which covers seven days. It’s $20 for a motorcycle, and $12 per person. Pricing should incentivize alternatives: say, $50-75 for a car, $25 for a motorcycle, and $5 or even free for an individual. I’ll bet you would see a lot more people opting for a bicycle or the Island Explorer Bus, which is free but accepts donations, and allows you to hike from one trailhead to another without doubling back to your vehicle.

Some people balk at the very idea of fees to visit national parks. The museums along the Mall in Washington, D.C., for example, are free; signs explicitly state that they are supported by taxes and accessible to all Americans. But no one suggests that parking in the area should be free. Cars do not have rights, nor should they.

 Acadia’s other traffic problem affects anyone who uses the roads in the surrounding area. Route 1A between Bangor and Ellsworth sees horrific accidents each year, and congestion every day of the summer. So why not simply widen the road? Because more road capacity encourages more people to drive, a phenomenon known as “generated traffic.” You can’t build your way out of traffic congestion. We’ve been trying that for the past hundred years, and traffic has only gotten worse.

We need alternative ways for people to get there. A light-rail line from Bangor to Bar Harbor is one idea. An along-the-coast ferry service, from Portland to Rockland to Mount Desert, is another. Regular and more frequent bus service, from Bangor and Portland, is yet another.

A few years ago, I discovered that you can take a bus from Bangor to Bar Harbor any weekday of the year for six bucks, round trip. It’s run by the Jackson Lab, and leaves the Odlin Road parking area at 5:15 every morning. Jackson Lab employees have first dibs on the seats, but the bus is open to the public. It arrives in Bar Harbor at 6:40 and leaves at 3:45. Unfortunately, it doesn’t carry bicycles.

Acadia’s traffic problems are America’s traffic problems, focused and in microcosm. We need to think beyond the car. Otherwise we might as well call it Acadia National Parking.

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I got a good laugh from a recent story in the New York Times (September 2) about the tribulations of Google’s experimental self-driving cars.

It seems that the automated automobiles are too smart for their own good.

Self-driving cars are miracles of modern technology, able to navigate the highways and byways of our complicated country far more safely than mistake-prone human drivers. They can anticipate and correct for congestion, slow down for pedestrians and bicyclists, and react quickly to unexpected events, such as a child darting out into the street after a basketball.

But they are also programmed to obey the traffic laws. This turns out to be a problem, because most drivers don’t.

In a recent test, a Google car slowed down for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, just as it was supposed to do. It was immediately rear-ended by a human driver.

In fact, the story (by Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty) reports, Google cars have been in 16 crashes since 2009. Most were minor, but in every single case, a human being in another car was at fault.

In another test, a Google car was paralyzed at a four-way stop because human drivers at the other three corners kept inching forward, probing for an advantage, while the automated car waited for them to come to a full stop. They never did.

I find this all pretty amusing, and also somewhat vindicating, given some of the comments on my last two posts about bicycles. When drivers rail at bicyclists for committing minor traffic violations, they would do well to look at themselves in the rear-view mirror. Few of them obey the letter the law. Dmitri Dolgov, head of software for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, was quoted in the Times article as saying that human drivers need to be “less idiotic.”
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But there’s a larger issue to address here. The whole point of self-driving car technology is to make our roads safer, to reduce the car carnage that still claims upwards of 30,000 lives per year in the United States alone. We are a long way from a fully-automated traffic system, or even a partially automated one, in which people could drive themselves into a city and then turn over their car to some sort of central control. And how would we prevent hacking and other electronic mischief? In the short term, the challenge of integrating automated, law-abiding vehicles with the comparative anarchy of human-driven traffic remains.

I have to wonder if some of these research dollars might be better spent on proven technology that would make our roads safer by reducing the number of vehicles using them. Cities and suburbs could invest in state-of-the-art public transportation systems, build bicycle infrastructure, and promote pedestrian-friendly business districts. The widespread long-distance trucking network that moves most of our goods over the Interstates could be scaled back in favor of inter-modal transport, which uses rail for long distances and trucks locally.

To me, it makes more sense to work toward reducing traffic than to work toward automating it. Every trip not made in a car or truck takes a motorized vehicle off the roads and makes them less congested and safer for everyone.

Here in Bangor, that means longer bus hours, more bike lanes, and more tolerance by drivers for bicycles and pedestrians. It could also mean consolidation of the three bus services – Greyhound, Concord Coach, and the Community Connector – into a central downtown hub. These modest measures may seem prosaic, but they are also practical, and can be achieved quickly, at far less cost than outfitting us all with automated vehicles.

Like many kids of my generation, I grew up watching the Jetsons, and imagined that I might someday live in a world of flying cars and buildings in the sky connected by conveyor belts. I’m not against technology. I’m typing this on a computer that slips easily into a satchel I can carry on the bus. I’d love to be able to beam from place to place like the characters in Star Trek.

But sometimes less is more. Automating the automobile will do nothing to alleviate the isolation and expense of our car-driven world. It will not revitalize town centers. It will not relieve the pressure on our overstressed natural environment. It will not foster a sense of community or physical fitness.

Until people become as smart as their cars, I’ll keep seeking out saner and safer alternatives.

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Buying a car can be a terrible financial decision, one that can set you back for years. And many American households make the same mistake over and over again.

In his landmark book, How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, Chris Balish points out that the cost of buying a car is quite different than the cost of owning one. Many people add up the car payment, insurance and gas, and arrive at a round figure for their annual car cost. The problem with this rough calculation is that it does not take into account things like depreciation, maintenance and repair, financing, parking, accessories, and the other small things that make up half the cost of owning a vehicle. When you wonder at the end of the month where all the money went, look no farther than your driveway

“The gross underestimation of how expensive cars are to own is so widespread it’s a national epidemic,” Balish writes. “This lack of understanding is fueled by an endless barrage of automobile advertising purposely designed to make cars seem more affordable than they really are. Commercials that promise ‘A brand new car for $199 a month! Just $199 a month!’ are so misleading they should be illegal.”

Turn on the TV almost any evening, to any channel, and you won’t wait long for a car commercial. They proliferate especially during sports broadcasts, alongside ads for car insurance and cheap beer. Is it any wonder that drunk driving, despite the public relations campaigns of the last 30 years, remains a national tragedy?

Car companies spend billions of dollars a year convincing us that their product is necessary. According to Business Insider, four of the twelve companies that spent the most on advertising in 2012 were car manufacturers.

General Motors spent $2.15 billion on ads. (Source: AdAge 100 Leading National Advertisers Index). Of this total, $1.3 billion went to television, $185 million to magazines, $143 million to newspapers, $176 million to internet advertising, and $1.3 billion to “other” – a category that presumably encompasses direct mail, billboards, live promotions at public events, and everything else.

Ford spent $2.56 billion on advertising in 2012; Toyota spent $2.09 billion; and Fiat Chrysler spent $1.97 billion. The categorical breakdowns were similar.
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According to Kantar US Insights, one of the world’s largest information and consultancy networks, U.S. automakers aired 12.7 million television advertisements in 2012 for an estimated cost of $9.4 billion. That amounts to between $1200 and $1500 in TV advertising for every car sold. Since television accounts for roughly half of all advertising spending on cars, the price of a new car includes between $2400 and $3000 in marketing costs alone.

If we all need cars, why does the industry spend nearly three thousand dollars per unit trying to convince us to buy one?

I’m reminded of the controversy surrounding a lawsuit filed by two young women against McDonald’s for making them obese. Morgan Spurlock briefly addressed this suit, which was eventually dismissed, in his 2004 film Supersize Me. The women were widely ridiculed for blaming their own lack of control on McDonald’s. But was their suit really that farfetched? McDonald’s spends nearly $1 billion annually in advertising. One essayist challenged readers to drive along a commercial strip in any U.S. city, count the number of fast-food restaurants, and then turn around and count the number of places one could buy an apple.

It’s hard to fight obesity when its causes are so relentlessly promoted and dangled in front of us. Cars contribute to the problem. We hit the drive-thru instead of carrying our lunch to work on a bicycle. Can individuals be entirely blamed for this behavior when every advertising outlet encourages it?

Clearly, our car-driven lifestyle is bad for our health. And alternatives are readily available. But the sheer volume of car advertising tends to drown out advocates for change. Have you ever wondered why stories about public transportation seem to get buried in your local newspaper? The advertising inserts in the weekend edition constitute a powerful disincentive. Newspapers all over the country are struggling. Car ads provide a valuable source of revenue.

Owning a car costs twice as much as most people think it does, Balish writes. And car companies invest a lot of money to perpetuate this mass delusion, which adds even more to the cost of the product. The smartest decision an American household can make is to reduce its number of vehicles – down to zero, if possible. The car companies and their advertisers hope most us never figure this out.

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