Changes

Norton sees a similar process to Fishman, but he argues that it was motordom, not suburban advocates which ultimately killed mass transit in favor of the motor age. Instead of examining the two bond issues voted on by the city, Norton examines the campaign waged by motordom, starting in the 1910s, against pedestrians. The roots for Los Angeles’s transition to single driver cars started much early than the process described by Fishman. As soon as cars began to use city streets, Norton explains that autos and pedestrians came into immediate conflict. Drivers and pedestrians began hurling epithets at each other. Drivers labeled pedestrians who recklessly crossed city streets as jaywalkers and walkers accused motorists of being joyriders. While these invectives may initially appear to be innocuous, these tags highlight this earlier struggle for control of city streets. Norton argues that motordom effectively changed “prevailing conceptions of the city street” and conditioned urban residents to accept the cars takeover of their streets. By criminalizing jaywalking, motordom laid the groundwork for the takeover of the streets by cars. <ref>Peter D. Norton, “Street Walking, Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street,” <i>Journal of Technology and Culture</i> Vol. 48, Num. 2, (April 2007): 333-334.</ref>

By the early 1920s, the Automobile Club of Southern California sought to convince city police to issue citations to jaywalkers for failing to use crosswalks. Initially, police officers simply ignored jaywalkers and failed any issue citations. The Automobile Club then engaged in a public relations campaign designed stigmatize jaywalking. Instead of asking police officers to arrest jaywalkers, they advocated whistling at jaywalkers in an effort to curb their conduct. After a year of ridiculing pedestrians, police officers were finally willing to cite jaywalkers and force pedestrians to obey traffic laws. When Los Angeles approved the MTSP, it was simply demonstrating that motordom had successfully demonized pedestrians and criminalized their unfettered use of the streets. Norton does not believe that this transformation of the city streets was inevitable, but the result of a long struggle over its purpose.<ref>Norton: 333-334</ref>

Norton makes an intriguing argument that it was motordom’s long-term campaign to challenge the traditional understanding of city streets, which was ultimately decisive in laying the foundation for the motor age. While it does appear that motordom, a nebulous term at best, waged protracted battle with motorists, it is not convincing that this public relations campaign laid the groundwork for the motor age. Additionally , by 1925, most Angelinos would have been part of the loose coalition that comprised motordom. Ultimately it was not special interests, which passed to the MTSP, it the city’s motorists.

By focusing on the social reconstruction of city streets, Norton ignores powerful economic factors in favor of the automobile. Even if motordom had successfully social reconstructed the street, it would have been moot if cities had not determined that cars could cheaply handle population growth. Additionally, if people had not bought automobiles then any effort by motordom to socially reconstruct the street would have quickly overturned in favor of a more economically viable paradigm. Americans ultimate acceptance of the socially reconstructed street was not based on motordom public relations campaign, but on Americans, including Angelinos, willingness to invest their money in automobiles and adopt them as their primary mode of transportation.