Favorites from Andy Singer's CARtoons

I first heard of cartoonist Andy Singer when his No Exit cartoons were published in the Pioneer Press for a year or two about five years ago. I knew right away they were not the usual denizens of a daily newspaper -- more like something you'd see in a weekly.

The cartoon above was one of several I clipped out (back in the days before the blog) and had on my bulletin board at work. It also appears in his book CARtoons, along with dozens of other aggressively thought-provoking images about America's car addiction.

In addition to Andy's cogently written polemic that runs throughout, the short book contains a lot of great quotes from other anti-car thinkers, juxtaposed with his cartoons. Some of my favorites:

"In European communities auto use is generally between 30% and 48% of all trips; transit comprises between 11% and 26% of all trips; and pedestrian/bike trips are 33% to 50% of the total. In comparison, the U.S. the average mode split is 86% via auto, 8% walking, 3% bike and 3% transit. In the U.S., the commute itself constitutes only one-quarter of all car trips. Over 40% of car trips are for shopping, social or recreational purposes." Peter Calthorpe, "The Next American Metropilis," 1993. (page 14)

"Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it." Andre Gorz, "L'ideologie Sociale de la Bagnole," in Le Sauvage, Sept.-Oct. 1973. (page 24) I don't believe Gorz's luxury analysis is completely true of the car, but it's definitely accurate that the more cars there are, the less ease there is in driving one, and also that car advertising emphasizes the idea of driving on empty, romanticized roads, promising people the luxury of space.

"In the mechanized, high-energy system developed during the last two centuries...there is only one efficient speed, faster; only one attractive destination, farther away; only one desirable size, bigger; only one rational quantitative goal, more." Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power, 1970. (page 26)

"A car [in America] requires on average 30 square meters of space at one's home, 30 square meters near one's destination, 60 square meters of road surface, and about 20 square meters to be sold, repaired and maintained. Each car thus requires a ground surface equivalent to that of a four-person apartment." (page 55)

"An automobile lane can carry a maximum of just 1,500 cars per hour. By contrast, a single track of transit can carry 40,000 to 50,000 people per hour." Paraphrasing Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1974. (page 47)


You can get your own copy of CARtoons direct from Andy for $10. For an extra $6, he'll include a CD of high resolution images of all the cartoons, which "may be freely reproduced for the non-profit use of individuals or groups fighting cars."