Our Disastrous Lovable Cars

So much depends on what is meant by “our cities” and “ourselves” in the subtitle of Taras Grescoe’s resounding new transit treatise, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. If by “our cities” Grescoe means the cities of all humanity (including black-belt carbon catastrophes such as Mumbai, Beijing and Shanghai), and if by “ourselves” he means every one of the roughly seven billion riders on the fragile little subway platform we call Earth, the prospect of salvation from the car is one long smoggy look down the highway or tracks.

If, as suspected, however, he has in mind a less onerous version of “our cities and ourselves”—say, the cities of the West and Japan—the notion of salvation becomes a little, in fact a lot, more plausible.

To save North American and European cities from the car at this point will require, as Grescoe makes clear, shrewd and expensive planning and engineering, much of which is already in progress in...