With regard to the Dec. 29 commentary piece, “Portland should end its war on cars,” it seems to me that the war has been waged against public transportation, not automobiles.

It’s the fossil-fuel companies that have been secretively influential parties. One could hardly view them as victims in a conflict. For many years, more funding and subsidies from federal, state and local governments have been and continue to go to car infrastructure than to any other mode of transportation by orders of magnitude.

That money includes the planning, building, maintaining and policing of roads. These roads are all on public land, and the traffic they cause leads to increased air and noise pollution, increased congestion on our roads, and far greater greenhouse gases than those emitted by public transportation or any other transportation mode. Cars also bring much greater risk to public safety than transit or bikes. The public transit and biking industries do not make obscene profits as do fossil-fuel corporations. But they do provide a much more egalitarian service without requiring people to buy their own vehicles, which only adds to the congestion and pollution in the city and the planet. The true war needs to be waged against climate change.

Richard Nunno, Portland