Over at CityTank, Cola alum Dan Bertolet has a beautiful post about shopping with his kids in the city---by car.

Yes, by car, even though there’s a bus stop two blocks from my house with a line that would have taken me to within two blocks of my downtown destination. What gives?

My first thought was to take the bus, mainly because parking downtown is known to be an expensive hassle. But then a vague memory bubbled up about low rates at the city-owned parking garage at Pacific Place, and I found out it would cost $7 to park for two hours. Not much more than the $4.50 bus fare for my crew. Factoring in the time and convenience, along with the negligible gasoline expense, the car was the easy winner.

So it goes. We Americans are incessantly trained pretty much from toddlerhood on to be skilled consumers, that is, to make purely rational, cost-benefit-based decisions. And not surprisingly, that’s how most people typically make their transportation choices.

The problem, he argues, is that social engineering has worked for decades to encourage and subsidize auto use, to the detriment of other, less-subsidized forms of transportation like transit.

Read the whole thing, in which he also calls the Hummer (above) the "stupidest, most offensive car ever made," here.