The trumpet sounded from eighth row center at a Washington University lecture hall in St. Louis five years ago. It was early in my explorations for the book that would become Asphalt Nation, and I was happy preaching to the choir. Or, I should say, to fellow passengers; for the students at the architecture school were already on the same trip. They knew intuitively, if not literally, the design formulas that I recited from the podium-for example, that every motor vehicle required building an ancillary seven parking spaces to hold it at rest. They realized that big chunks-some 30 percent-of our cities were hardtopped in service to the car's voracious appetite. And they knew how that transformed the built environment into a grim "carchitecture."

The students absorbed my other arguments on the broader compass of America's car costs: financial, social, and environmental. They comprehended the motor vehicle's economic toll-$6,000 a year in personal costs and another car costs: financial, social, and environmental. They comprehended the motor vehicle's economic toll-$6,000 a year in personal costs and another $4,000$5,000 in "invisible" ones borne by the public. They were startled by the health and environmental hazards of driving, from the more than 120 fatal accidents a day to habitat destruction and global warming. They had experienced the inconveniences of congestion and playing chauffeur, of parking and driving for miles to get a quart of milk. The room darkened and they chuckled at the slides of cartoons and auto-mated mayhem.

Then the questions started pouring forth. Toward the end of the evening came the telling one: "Do you own a car?" And with it my confession: Yes, I did.

Of course I did. With my first child I had bought my first car. In fact, I had recently purchased a new one, my third Saab-the most "environmental" one, I supposed, but a car nonetheless.