The comments from my last post are interesting. They seem to fall into a couple of categories: 1) People who think it was smug for me to point out that I don’t have to sit through the same hell they do, and 2) people who feel it’s important to point out that not everyone has the choice available to them, because the city is expensive and/or a lot of jobs are located in the suburbs.

I don’t put much stock in the first comment. I will not apologize for opting out of a miserable experience, nor for suggesting that opting out is possible. The second comment on the other hand is much more fair, and I think it merits some further discussion.

It’s true that not everyone who would like to live a traffic-free urban lifestyle can freely choose to do so. This is because we don’t have nearly enough urban supply to meet the demand, and because our transportation system is skewed heavily to an auto-oriented extreme that makes driving easier the only practical option in all but 6 or 7 cities around the country.

The real lesson, therefore, isn’t so much that some people are capable of opting out of the system (and though it isn’t available to everyone, the choice is certainly available to many people who don’t take it). Rather, the lesson is that we need to stop dictating that most people live in suburbia via bogus land use regulations and transportation subsidies that force most development in that direction.

One commenter opened his comment by asking “Why is it that affluent city dwellers demand that everyone adopt their chosen lifestyle?” He later backed off the statement, but I think it’s a particularly ironic question, because the fact that so many people want to live in the city but can’t is a very strong indication that reality is the other way around. If the market weren’t so restricted, urban developers would be able to meet the demand for urban living. If the supply weren’t so much smaller than the demand, more people would be able to choose to opt out traffic, which would benefit everyone (including those remaining on the highways).

Not to put all the blame on nefarious suburbanites. The city needs to improve itself too, especially the schools.

Ultimately the best comment in the thread came from someone named Steve, who summed things up thus: “The response to this annual story from the Post about the UMR should be that more people should be given the opportunity to opt out of traffic.”

Indeed.