Right from the beginning, it had been hailed as the ultimate time-saver, marvelously shortening the time to reach a desired destination. Those who buy a car don't take a deep breath and rejoice in extra hours of leisure, but they travel to more distant destinations. The powers of speed are converted not in less time on the road but in more kilometres. The time gained is reinvested into longer distances. And as time goes by, the spatial distribution of places changes and long distances become the norm.
People still go to school, to work, to the cinema, but are obliged to travel longer routes.
As a consequence, for instance, the average German citizen today travels 15,000 km a year as opposed to only 2,000 km in 1950.The automobile is no special case. Across the board, from mobility to communication, from production to entertainment, time saved has been turned into more distance, more output, more appointments, more activities. The hours saved are eaten up by new growth. More energy fed into the transportation system means that more people move faster over a greater range in the course of every day. Everybody's daily radius expands at the expense of being able to drop in on an acquaintance or walk through the park on the way to work.