Traffic Jams and Automobiles

Gradually, desirable locomotion was associated and finally identified with high vehicular speeds. But when transportation had passed through its second watershed, vehicles had created more distances than they helped to bridge; more time was used by the entire society for the sake of traffic than was “saved.”

A fleet of 200 mpg, roomy, clean, safe, recyclable, renewably fueled cars might keep drivers from running out of oil, climate, or clean air, but they’d instead run out of roads, land, and patience—the new constraints du jour.

it’s not that the 1948 editors of Science Digest were illogical; it’s that logic doesn’t work particularly well when applied to the future.

Somehow, in ways they did not even pretend to understand, the construction of this bridge, the most gigantic and modern traffic-sorting and conveying machine in the world, had not only failed to cure the traffic problem it was supposed to solve—but had actually made it worse.

Every technology is used before it is completely understood. There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences.