HOW NOT TO WIN HEARTS AND MINDS.

A Streetsblog contributor called Mark Gorton might be more persuasive if he chose to be less scoldy.  Congestion Pricing Does Not Begin to Compensate Society for the Harm and Violence Caused by Cars.

That's the title.  Then the fun begins.

Many drivers pilot their massive steel boxes through the city in a bubble of entitlement, blissfully unaware of the wave of danger generated by their driving and the significant social harms they impose on the neighborhoods through which they pass.

If wider society is ever to see how damaging auto orientation is to cities, the livable streets movement needs to better articulate how our city is brutalized and degraded by traffic, cars, driving, and parking.

Few people have fought the scourge of driving longer and harder than Charles Komanoff, who is quoted in a recent Streetsblog article as saying, “Everyone who drives has a rationalization to be excused from the toll … but none of them can make an argument that their trip by car doesn’t delay others.” His argument makes it seem as if the problem with driving is that cars don’t go fast enough. Of course, Komanoff’s point is valid, but congestion is hardly the main harm.

That's cathartic, it's also the same error as hoping that people will vote for you because you've deplorable-shamed them.  It's also got more errors than that Mets game when the Brewers clinched the division.

If the city Department of Transportation did not see its main mission as moving cars through our neighborhoods, we could have livable streets with a rich social life. Kids could play, neighbors could meet. Our streets would be safe, welcoming places with a rich social life. Instead, the city streets are deadly places, and drivers force us to stay inside to be safe. We don’t know our neighbors. Kids have little chance to meet other kids who live only a few buildings away. Cars steal the space in which people could congregate.

With livable streets, the daily life of everyone in the city would be transformed. I want to live in this transformed city where I am connected to my neighbors, but I can’t because cars and drivers degrade my street.

The major harms of driving are invisible. No one can see the neighbors who don’t gather, the friendships not formed, the seniors stuck inside instead of sitting at city-provided cafe tables and chairs, the kids who aren’t biking to school. Most people have never seen a world like this [it exists — check out the video below] and don’t even realize it is possible. Drivers are certainly not thinking about the hundreds of kids that they intimidate, isolate and endanger.

Much of what he describes is what I recall in the tract housing neighborhoods of the American High. Those streetside cafes and front stoop conversations? Probably hazardous in the big cities these days, with the corner boys who never took a range safety course making that sort of gathering difficult, whether or not they are shooting from moving cars.  I suppose it's easier to rant.

Drivers impose their will on everyone who lives on every street. They steal the freedom of kids to bike and play and neighbors to meet. They ruin the human living environment.

In addition to the actual, real, measurable societal costs that drivers impose on all of us, drivers also need to pay for the wave of danger that propagates from their car. They need to pay for every person they bully, intimidate and scare at each intersection and on every street. They need to pay for the constant stress that they impose on everyone that they pass. They need to pay for forcing vigilance on everyone on the street. They need to pay for all the people that are not on the street because drivers have made our own living environment toxic. They need to pay for all of the friendships not formed due to our degraded social environment. They need to pay for all the people who would like to bike but can’t because drivers make it too dangerous. They need to pay for the time stolen from people whose bus is stuck in traffic. They need to pay for all the businesses that could be thriving with a richer street environment.

Totalitarian much? What's the next step, walling in all the current city dwellers so they can't be tempted by those filty lures from the subdivisions?