What to read to understand why the heyday of the automobile is over

IN “THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY”, a comic sci-fi novel, Douglas Adams, the author, mused about the nature of travel. Road bypasses, he wrote, “are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast”. People at point C on the bypass, in between points A and B,  “often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be”. Adams hit on something. Humans spend an awful lot of time, money and energy on moving around in cars. The average American sits behind the wheel for nearly an hour a day—about two full weeks a year—travelling around 11,500 miles (or 18,500km).