Redistribute Vehicles to Increase Economic Mobility — And Clear the Path for Green Transit

As an ecosocialist, I believe the best social and economic policies not only reduce greenhouse gasses, but also get people out of poverty by both increasing access to and redistributing wealth. In most of America, access to wealth means access cars.

For progressive urbanists, upzoning to build dense, transit-oriented cities while taxing driving are core climate and equity polices. Affordable, safe, linked, and efficient public and micro-transit options open up opportunities to the rich and poor alike, while costs on driving dissuade unnecessary single-occupant trips, usually made by wealthier people in suburban areas, especially into urban cores.

While a noble and necessary goal, expanding transit can take decades. Extremely poor cities like Augusta and Fresno are basically starting from zero; the promise of a bus ride in the future don’t help anyone now. Further, where taxes on driving are meant to limit unnecessary trips, poor people already drive as little as possible to save money on gas and maintenance. In car-oriented environments, limiting driving means limiting economic, social, and physical wellbeing. Involuntarily carlessness is the an extreme form of socioeconomic limitation.

Fifty years of research support this point. The hard truth is that outside of a handful of neighborhoods where the carless of any income strata make economic gains, carlessness is directly associated with worse socioeconomic outcomes: severely limited job prospects and satisfaction; poor accesses to healthcare, food, and education; and generally worse well being. Carless people, women with children especially, must make tough quality of life tradeoffs like paying higher rents to live closer to work/care/education, or spending precious time on far slower modes (or simply staying home). Across the country, not having a car is more of a burden than having one.

Researchers in urban planning generously call this phenomenon “modal mismatch”. I call it “racialized capitalism expressed via transportation.” Wealthy white people have shaped the environment to extract and hoard wealth across the globe since the rise of Europe; cars are just another exclusionary tool in the settler-colonial toolbox that eased the transfer of resources and wealth into their hands.

This facet of capitalism reinforces itself through racialized policing and systemic disenfranchisement. Subprime auto loans and “yo-yo” scams are driving people desperate for economic security, instead into massive debt. Vehicle seizures fall disproportionally on poor people, but so do license revocations on people of color for failure to pay tickets or show up in court. And as of February of this year, 35 states do not offer driving privileges to “unauthorized” immigrants. People lose driving privileges as punishment for committing crimes or felonies, notably DWIs, which primarily target mixed race and Native American drivers, despite white drivers self-reporting driving under the influence more often than any other racial group.

If the built environment is built for cars and racialized capitalism makes carlessness a burden that’s both perpetual and difficult to overcome, urbanists must be open to programs and policies that increase car access. At least, until economic and social parity is reached along side developed transportation alternatives. Turns out, people with economic mobility and a high level of education make environmentally conscious choices like moving into transit-oriented cities to drive less.

It’s important to note it is car access that is crucial, not car ownership. Not everyone needs their own small living room parked outside to unlock opportunities. This means programs can exist beyond the capitalist model of personal ownership and orient towards community-based solutions that either reduce or at don’t increase the outsized stranglehold the auto has on America. Such programs, along side reductions in the carceral state, could include:

• Distributing car share/taxi credits funded by capital taxes on Uber and Lyft
• Create a federal insurance program that allows group rates
• Redistributing bloated governmental and police vehicle fleets
• Mandating a percentage of unsold electric vehicles be offered to low income and racialized people at low- or no-cost
• Creating dirty vehicle trade-in programs open to all income groups
• Creating a genuine ride matching program without a profit motive to avoid exploitation and hoarding
• Expanding licensure to undocumented immigrants in all 50 states

If cars are as crucial a tool for escaping poverty as housing, internet, or any other piece of infrastructure, we cannot outright reject them from policies for the sake of the climate if doing so keeps people poor. Policies that increase car access through redistribution rather than building more infrastructure along with a Green New Deal that gives struggling cities funding and resources for transit is a winning strategy. Not only will it not perpetuate the sprawl cars create, but it wouldn’t sacrifice the lives of people today for a hazy future.