United States: Car Paradise. Too Bad for the Poor

A mother was found guilty in the death of her child, who was struck by a van just as the family, having come off a bus, was trying to cross a street with no crosswalk nearby. The driver was drunk. In the land where cars are kings, the car-less are struggling to survive.

The accident occurred on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2010. The conviction for vehicular homicide was announced on July 14 of this year. The driver of the van, who had been drinking and had taken sedatives, was blind in one eye. With a record of similar incidents, he was sentenced to six months in prison.

Since then, anger has been swelling in the black community, supported by the environmental movement and advocates for better public transport in the country. Urban planners admit their guilt but see no way out: This is how the United States was built!

Here’s Raquel Nelson’s story, a 30-year-old black woman who is not the first to experience this kind of situation. In Virginia, for example, police are known for charging pedestrians when cars hit them, on the grounds that they “disturbed traffic.”

Too tired to walk so far

It’s a Saturday afternoon. Raquel and her three children, 2, 4 and 9 years old, are leaving Walmart. The family has no car. On weekends, buses are infrequent and they just missed theirs. The following happens an hour later; it’s already dark. The kids are exhausted.

With the other passengers, they get off at their usual stop, located along a six-lane road where stoplights are rare and cars drive at high speeds. Their apartment is on the other side of the road. Usually, when her children are with her, Raquel walks 500 meters back, crosses at a traffic light, and then turns back in the other direction.

Not this time, though, because it’s late and everyone is tired. With other children and adults, the family quickly crosses the road half way and takes a break for a moment in the left-turn lane. Upon seeing a woman manage to run across, the 4-year-old boy lets go of his mother’s hand to follow her.

Holding on to her 2-year-old daughter, Raquel tries to catch her son. But it’s too late; the child is hit by a van, which also injures the mother and child. The driver does not stop.

Skin color and social class

Here is what Grist, an environmental news site that greatly helped to publicize Raquel Nelson’s case, has to say about the matter.

“Let’s talk frankly about one aspect of this story: It’s partly about class and race. People who walk and use transit to get around are, in most parts of the country, lower-income than those who drive. Transit riders and pedestrians are marginalized and looked down upon. In many places, transit service is meager and crappy, and the same can be said for pedestrian facilities. Cobb Community Transit, the service Nelson was riding, has cut service on many routes in the past few months. Who suffers most? Poor people.”

Regarding the frequency of buses and planning of their stops, things are unlikely to improve anytime soon in the U.S. Since the beginning of the economic crisis three years ago, hundreds of municipalities — including Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, New York and other large cities — have reduced services because they no longer have the budget.

This is particularly paradoxical since, simultaneously, unemployment is rising and people’s incomes are plummeting; they cannot afford to have a car or pay for gas, and the need for public transport is even more acute. The greater the demand, the more supply is limited. It is useless to expect an improvement on what remains in these circumstances.

The irresistible transformation of American suburbs

A striking video report entitled “Crossing the Line” was released on Blueprint America on PBS. Here’s the beginning of the program.

“In recent years a little noticed shift has been transforming suburbia: The home of the middle class has become the home of the working poor. As a result, roadways that were built for the car are now used by a growing population that can’t afford to drive. The consequences can be deadly.”

The reporter gives a staggering figure: “About 43 thousand pedestrians were killed in the U.S. in the last decade; ‘the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month.’”

Websites and newspapers jumped on the story, anecdotes abounded, each one more striking than the last. One of the writers from the Mother Nature Network, away for a seminar in a suburb of Toronto, said he was happy to learn that his meeting would take place in a building located just steps away from the tram stop. No need to rent a car, he thought with relief.

“Alas, the ‘street’ between the train station and the hall was in fact Highway 401, the broadest and busiest superhighway in Canada. A brief exchange with my hosts confirmed that I’d have to walk well over a mile to get to the nearest overpass, and even then it wouldn’t likely have anything in the way of safe and welcoming pedestrian infrastructure. In the end, I resigned myself to the absurdity of taking a three-mile cab ride to travel 500 feet across the street.”

Buses banned from shopping malls

Four years ago, the mayor of my city (Raleigh, North Carolina, which has nearly one million inhabitants) expressed his anger toward the owners of four very large shopping centers located on the outskirts of town: Bus stops were banned for so-called security reasons.

The real reason was very ugly: It was to prevent the poor, who are not very flattering to the scenery and who come more for the air conditioning than to spend, from strolling through (Lord knows that the walks through the mall just for the cool air are frequent, especially when it’s over 100°F).

As for the hundreds of employees dropped off along the highways without sidewalks, they were condemned to walk miles to reach their workplaces. Since then, the situation has improved, except for one of the shopping centers.

Apparently, no state, county or municipality can require an owner to allow the passage of public transport on his or her property, except when it is stipulated in the issuance of the building permit. This is precisely what had been forgotten in Raleigh.

The problem of transport and road infrastructure is not ready to be solved in the United States since it is almost exclusively publicly funded. So that would mean taxes. Political will is not enough. In this country, expenses must be approved individually by the citizens.

Two days ago, the jurors of Cobb County Superior Court announced Raquel Nelson’s sentence. She faced up to three years in prison for the “murder” of her child, but received twelve months of probation and forty hours of community service. But with the judge allowing her to appeal the decision (which is unusual), she finally decided to challenge the guilty verdict.

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