Highways Are Today’s Indoor Smoking
Highways cutting up cities shares a lot of parallels to when we allowed smoking indoors.
Until the 1990s, people smoked inside. This was terrible for everyone’s health, including those who weren’t smoking, due to secondhand smoke.
When they banned smoking indoors, people cried out that it would kill bars and restaurants. They called it an infringement of their freedoms.
But restaurants continued to thrive. Smokers went outside or stopped altogether. Everybody had lower risk for lung disease.
Highways in cities bring thousands of cars through densely populated areas. This brings pollution, danger, and high asthma rates along with them.
Like the push to ban smoking inside, the idea of transforming highways to serve cleaner, more efficient modes of transportation is met with similar cries.
When New York City launched congestion pricing, opponents said that it would kill New York’s economy and infringe on people’s rights to drive through one of the densest areas in the world.
Just like when we banned smoking indoors, once we reimagine city highways, we’ll wonder why we didn’t do it sooner. The air will be cleaner, our cities will be safer, and we’ll all breathe a little easier.
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