US Transportation System Found Structurally Violent

For the past few years, debate has been raging among Virginia officials on how to solve the state's transportation crisis. The governor offers plans to build more roads and improve public transit. Some legislators and community activists object that the plans are too expensive and would require large tax increases. Others believe that they do not go far enough towards establishing a long-term transportation policy. There are crucial issues missing in this discussion—issues that conflict analysis and resolution may help to illuminate.

To most in Richmond, the problem can be summed up quickly: too many automobiles on too few roads. The policies that public officials suggest reflect pressures brought to bear by a number of influential groups, including commuters who spend too much time and money getting to work, community residents who find shopping or visiting friends a traffic-ridden ordeal, businesses trying to attract choosy employees to "gridlock city," developers seeking to extend urban and suburban settlement, environmentalists attempting to slow the pace of development, and taxpayers struggling to keep taxes down.

Defined as a struggle among interest groups, the conflict seems to present a limited range of solutions: build more roads, get cars off the road via improved mass transit, ride-sharing, etc., and either raise taxes or find some other way to pay for these changes (such as "privatizing" HOV lanes and charging fees for their use). The assumption common to all proposed policies is that our transportation system will rely primarily on private automobiles operated and paid for by their owners.

But take a look at the true dimensions of the transportation crisis. For starters, consider the commuting problem. Washington D.C. is tied with Los Angeles and Chicago for longest average time spent getting to and from work. It is not unusual for commuters to spend two hours or more each day inching through traffic. This is no mere inconvenience for workers in our region and other metropolitan areas; it represents a substantial and increasing decline in their standard of living.

When U.S. employers and the Bureau of Labor Statistics announce average worker wages, they count only the hours spent at the job site. Once, U.S. labor unions demanded "portal to portal" pay on the theory that their members were actually working for the employer's benefit from the time they left for work until they returned home. After World War II, they were forced to abandon the fight. The result: as commuting time increases, which it continues to do, the income of working people (per unit of real time worked) decreases substantially. How people would scream if their employers suddenly announced a five percent cut in income. But a mere increase of 15 minutes per trip, to and from the job, has exactly the same effect. And this does not factor in skyrocketing fuel prices and auto repairs, or the fact that policing, maintenance, and construction of new highways comes out of the same worker's pocket—as a taxpayer.

Now let us add another element rarely discussed in debates about commuting: the incredible carnage on our highways. Each year, 40,000-50,000 Americans—almost as many killed in the Vietnam War—die in traffic accidents. Each year, the number of those seriously maimed or injured exceeds 300,000. The neurology wards of our hospitals are filled with brain-damaged victims of auto accidents. "Motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death and acquired disability for children after age one," says the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. They are the leading cause of death and disability for young adults. The National Transportation Safety Administration estimates the total costs of this legalized butchery at $150 billion per year—and this says nothing about the price paid in human suffering and destroyed families.

Conflict theorists describe systems like these as structurally violent. Johan Galtung, who coined the phrase, described it as the result of social structures which empower a few groups and disempower most others. The transportation system based on the private automobile is essentially irrational: private cars promise freedom, efficiency, comfort, mobility, and a higher standard of living, but when used in the world of commuting, business travel, necessary shopping, and getting to school, they deliver death and destruction, a lower standard of living, decreasing mobility, and a mind-numbing enslavement to the traffic jam.

How do we solve this deeply destructive form of social life? Some might say that the problem is insoluble, given the enormous private investments committed to automobile manufacturing, sales and repairs, petroleum companies and gas stations, highway construction, and related industries. But the sense that there is no possible alternative to the way our economy and social lives are currently organized is what keeps us trapped in an irrational, increasingly destructive system. It is also what leads us to misconceive social conflict and the possibilities of conflict resolution.

The "transportation-industrial complex" does not appear directly as a party to the debate in Richmond, but it is a party to the real social conflict over transportation, which (like intense current conflicts over energy production, financial institutions, and the military-industrial complex) pits powerful, entrenched private interests against emerging public needs and demands. This conflict cannot be resolved by building new roads or by improving the public transit system. Its solution may well require re-conceptualizing and converting our privatized transportation system to one in which transportation for public purposes (including shopping and getting to work) is provided primarily by public facilities, while private cars are used for recreation and pleasure.

Whatever shape the ultimate solution may take, it seems that building more roads, while private automobile use increases, and creating new public transit facilities, while Metro ticket prices soar, won't solve the real transportation crisis. What is needed are regional and national discussions, including all stakeholders, of what the alternatives to the current system are, what they would cost, and how to distribute those costs. Such dialogues could be facilitated by conflict resolution experts who are increasingly interested in helping people deal with structural conflicts. To convince political leaders to take a deeper and more inclusive view of the conflict when they are accustomed to dealing with more visible and (apparently) manageable interest group disputes is not an easy task. But the ultimate health of our society, on and off the highways, depends upon it.