What the Steamship and the Landline Can Tell Us About the Decline of the Private Car - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities

Interesting read. 

Cohen figures that we're unlikely to maintain the deteriorating Interstate Highway System for the next century, or to perpetuate for generations to come the public policies and subsidies that have supported the car up until now. Sitting in the present, automobiles are so embedded in society that it's hard to envision any future without them. But no technology – no matter how essential it seems in its own era – is ever permanent. Consider, just to borrow some examples from transportation history, the sailboat, the steamship, the canal system, the carriage, and the streetcar.

All of those technologies rose, became ubiquitous, and were eventually replaced. And that process followed a pattern that can tell us much about the future of the automobile – that is, if we're willing to think about it not in the language of today's "war on cars," but in the broad arc of time.

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/03/what-steamship-and-landline-can-tell-us-about-decline-private-car/4930/

Typos courtesy of my iPhone