Unplug the car and let’s go!

Letters

Vol. 19 No. 17 · 4 September 1997

From Kenneth Blake

John Sutherland’s wonderful sketch of the faltering development of the electric car (LRB, 21 August) arrived on my doorstep shortly after the purring milk-float had glided down the road at a serene 20 mph. As I write, the Paris authorities have had to halve the cost of a ride on the Métro, as the summer’s car pollution is choking the capital. Hayfever sufferers are overdosing on antihistamines in a bid to ward off the hazy cloud of carbon monoxide that hovers over London. More and more people cycle to work (icons of the common man like Jon Snow or Mr Justice Scott), but now have to wear ‘respos’ to avoid instant lung cancer.

This same week John Prescott, the Deputy PM, took the bus to Broadcasting House to outline his attempt to integrate government policy on transport. Tony Blair of course has converted his family vehicle to natural gas. This in sharp contrast to the former Tory Minister for Transport who suggested that only losers get the bus. But for all the rhetoric, the Government has only cancelled one road-building plan, and has promised that the car stays ‘at the heart of transport policy’.

All of which goes to show that the car is still assumed to be the liberating, virile machine of decades ago, driven by Kerouac and his ilk across the continents; ads sell them as romantic and exotic (‘Nicole?’ ‘Papa’) rather than the dirty, dangerous executioners they really are. The furore over Cronenberg’s Crash doubtless had much to do with resentment at the portrayal of car-love as rather depraved, not to say demented. We absolve our consciences by recycling a few random objects, but express any reservations about the car and you’re thought to be a wild, un American green.

There are very simple solutions: anyone driving alone within the area circled by the M25 should be subjected to a prohibitive tax (the ‘inner sanctum’ levy which has worked so well in Singapore). Motorways should have fast lanes, as in much of LA, where only cars with passengers can travel (it was this innovative policy which led to a theft of mannequins in California in the early Nineties, such was the solitary road-user’s mania for speed). As an antidote to 18 years of hunger for the privatised and personal, a new petrol tax and road tolls should penalise the car, and persuade people into the calmer, more democratic modes of public transport.

Kenneth Blake
London NW5

Vol. 19 No. 18 · 18 September 1997

From Nicholas Barnes

John Sutherland’s otherwise excellent review of The Car that Could (LRB, 21 August) incorrectly describes Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine as ‘the story of the “breakthrough” VAX mainframe computer’. First, the VAX is a minicomputer, not a mainframe. The VAX was indeed a ‘breakthrough’ system – the first 32-bit minicomputer – and revolutionised the market when introduced by Digital in 1978. VAX systems are still in production nearly twenty years later. This brings me to the second error. Kidder’s fine book actually concerns the development by Data General of the MV-8000 Eclipse minicomputer, in response to the VAX. In fact the Eclipse was never able to compete effectively with the VAX, although this was due more to poor marketing than to technical weakness.

Nicholas Barnes
Cambridge