The path towards Asphalt and a bankrupt nation

Tony Miselli

   The American experience with the automobile is recounted in an older  book I recommend called "down the Asphalt Path" written by a dude called Clay McShane. he pretty much brings up the automobile and asphalt intensive necessity the automobile became in early urban America. The Automobile was for many years a luxury of the rich as private jets are for many in today's world. This is a really intensive academic book that can be boring at times but is a great read for anyone with a unique interest on transformation of cities and streets. As someone who calls for the eventual abolishment  of the automobile I wanted a further study to See why this machine got to be so ubiquitous in America. Nothing is helping to put local governments in the hole more that the high costs of the delusional idea that every road in rural areas need to be paved for car transportation. Clay sets up the reader to know much about the history and methods of city travel in the decades before the automobile with information on rise of trolleys and animal power. The dangers and failures of the first moving machines using steam power is often an overlooked item in history and attempts of the automobile before the internal combustion engine usually went wrong. Even after this new engine few had resources and American car ownership lagged behind Europe. Only large cities had the financing to build paved roads that were needed to even go a few blocks. Clay writes some interesting stuff nap out how e choked traffic eventually ended common bicycle transportation that was evolving and it took a hundred years for it to evidently make a serious comeback. The dangers for the early bike riders on streets that were filled with trains,horses,early cars, and trolleys made bicycling a less promising alternative. 

   McShane let's us no the date of the first traffic fatality as some guy got ruined over leaving a trolley by one of these early automobiles in 1899 and by 1910 most parking spaces were often filled in New York and other cities and ownership of automobiles skyrocketed unfortunately around this time period. The freedom the car gave and the gender male masculinity it provided  by those speeding the streets is often the reason for the popularity proclaimed for these destructive machines. Brainwashing advertising antics also played a role is spreading the desire for everyone to own an automobile and its affect on people using the automobile as a status need is still widely witnessed up to the current moment we face today. His chapter on growing female use of the automobile and social consequences of liberated women in later decades really makes the reader realize the game changer that the automobile was for the Western world. It is no surprise that the biggest battle between genders in places like Saudi Arabia is focused on women's ability to move about in society. The need for more rules and laws concerning driving and the fight against it from rich asses in drivers lobbying  clubs is also focused in this book as traffic signals were needed to be introduced along with the asphalt. Clay spends a lot of time describing streets and what they were made of throughout this book. This is the ultimate read for the need to learn about the major impact early automobiles had on mainly the urban environments in America.