Breaking Gridlock: Moving Toward Transportation That Works - Hardcover

Motavalli, Jim

3.25

8 ratings by Goodreads

9781578050390: Breaking Gridlock: Moving Toward Transportation That Works

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1578050391 ISBN 13: 9781578050390

Publisher: Sierra Club Books, 2003

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Motavalli (editor of E: The Environmental Magazine ) simultaneously critiques our current reliance on the automobile and offers suggestions for alternatives of urban transportation. Adopting a conversational style, he looks at various forms of transportation and discusses the pros and cons of cars, buses, trains, air travel, and ferry travel. While some of the discussion verges on fantasy, such as the speculations on personal hovercrafts, much of the material focuses on vital infrastructure and city planning issues that affect and are affected by choices in transportation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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About the Author:

Jim Motavalli is the author of Forward Drive: The Race to Build "Clean" Cars for the Future (Sierra Club Books) and the editor of E: The Environmental Magazine. He writes a monthly column on cars and the environment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and is a contributor to the "Automobiles" and "Escapes" sections of the New York Times. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Salon, and many other national publications. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this informative but scattered survey of transportation issues in America, ecologist Motavalli presents a legion of reasons why automobiles are the wrong choice for metropolises. They range from the global (ozone layer depletion) to the personal (long commutes) to the social (isolation and urban sprawl) to the near-farcical (increasing numbers of women giving birth on the way to the hospital because highways are too congested). Despite all this, of course, Americans are still addicted to their cars so much so that they'll even use dummies to fake their way into HOV lanes. Partly, Motavalli believes, this is because cars seem to fulfill Americans' desires for individualism. But it's also because of the historic narrow-mindedness of city planners like Robert Moses, who had such distaste for mass transit that he purposely built highway bridges around Long Island and upstate New York that were too low for buses. Unfortunately, Moses's modern counterparts aren't much better. For every Portland, Ore., which has committed to light rail and refused to spend money on highways, there is a Boston, which has thrown billions of dollars into its Big Dig program to extend highways underground. While Motavalli is a proven expert at diagnosing these problems, he is less adept at prescribing solutions. He believes in an interconnected hodge-podge of transit systems subway, light rail, buses, ferries, bicycles along with (most importantly) a total readjustment in American sensibilities based on the European model. Readers will undoubtedly have their own opinions; after finishing Motavalli's earnest and well-researched book, however, they will have no doubt as to its necessity. Agent, Sabine Hrechdakian.

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