271 The Change of Transport
271 交通工具的转变
As machines go, the car is not terribly noisy, nor terribly polluting, nor terribly dangerous; and on all those dimensions it has become better as the century has grown older. The main problem is its prevalence, and the social costs that ensue from the use by everyone of something that would be fairly harmless if, say, only the rich were to use it. It is a price we pay for equality.
由于机械的发展，汽车不再充斥着可怕的噪声，不再造成严重的污染，也不再带来可怕的危险；随着时代的进步，这些方面都已得到改善。目前最主要的问题是汽车的普及，一只有富人使用汽车，那它几乎是无害的，而随着人人都开用汽车，那么随之而来的社会代价也是相当大的，这是我们为平等所付出的代价。
Before becoming too gloomy, it is worth recalling why the car has been arguably the most successful and popular product of the whole of the past 100 years—and remains so. The story begins with the environmental improvement it brought in the 1900s. In New York city in 1900, according to the Car Culture. A 1975 book by J. Flink, a historian, horses deposited 2.5 millioo pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine every day. Every year, the city authorities had to remove an average of 15,000 dead horses from the streets, It made cars smell of roses.
在这种情况变得更糟之前，我们还需要回顾一下——在过去的整整100年里，为什么汽车一直被认为是最成功，最受欢迎的产品——而且目前仍然是。这一观点源于20世纪初汽车的应用给环境带来的改善。据历史学家J．福林特1975年出版的一本书《汽车文化》记载，20世纪初的纽约市街头，马匹每天排出250万磅的粪便和6万加仑的尿液。而且，纽约市当局平均每年得从纽约街头清理15.000头马匹的尸体，这样 就促使了汽车的盛行。
Cars were also wonderfully flexible. The main earlier solution to horse pollution and traffic jams was the electric trolley bus. But that required fixed overhead wires, and rails and platforms, which were expensive, ugly, and inflexible, The car could go from any A to any B, and allowed towns to develop in all directions with low-density housing, rather than just being concentrated along the trolley or rail lines. Rural areas benefited too, for they became less remote.
汽车也极为便利。最早的解决马匹污染和交通堵塞的主要方法是使用有轨电车，但它需要固定的悬空电线，绳索和平台，这些设施昂贵，难看而且极为不便。而汽车可以往来于任何地点之间，而且城镇可以向所有居住密度低的方向发展，而不是只能集中在电车或铁路沿线地带。乡村同样也受益于汽车，因为乡村变得不再那么遥远。
However, since pollution became a concern in the 1950s, experts have predicted—wrongly—that the car boom was about to end. In his book Mr. Flink argued that by 1973 the American market had become saturated, at one car for every 2.25 people, and so had the markets of Japan and Western Europe (because of land shortages). Environmental worries and diminishing oil reserves would prohibit mass car use anywhere else.
然而，在20世纪50年代，由于污染受到重视，专家们曾错误地预言：汽车的流行即将结束。在J．福林特的书中，他认为，到1973年，美国的汽车市场会达到饱和——即平均每2.25人共用一辆汽车，而由于土地面积的限制，日本和西欧国家也将如此。受到环境污染和石油存储量下降的影响，其他地区汽车的大量使用也必将受到限制。
He was wrong, Between 1970 and 1990, whereas America’s population grew by 23%, the aumber of cars on its roads grew by 60%, There is now one car for every 1.7 people there, one for every 2.1 in Japan, one for every 5.3 in Britain. Around 550 million cars are already on the roads, not to mention all the trucks and mocorcyeles, and about 50 million new ones are made each year worldwide. Will it go on? Undoubtedly, because people want it to.
然而，他错了——从1970年到1990年，美国的人口增长了23%，而道路上行驶的汽车数量却增长了60%。在美国，现在平均每1.7人就拥有一辆汽车，在日本和英国则分别是2.1人和5.3人。已经上路的汽车大约有5亿5千万辆，更别提卡车和摩托车了。而且全球平均每年约有5千万辆新车被生产出来。这种情况还会持续下去吗？这是毫无疑问的，因为人们想要这样。