This is an overview of the options of public transportation. Growing up in the UK, even before I could learn to drive, I was able to take a bus or train to most places I needed to go. And that included places in the countryside where I hiked as a young teenager. To get to remoter mountain locations in the UK, you could get to the outskirts of the area by train or bus (or if a parent of friends was willing to drive you there). As a teenager I did a lot of walking, packing, and youth hosteling. The thought of taking a two mile walk to just meet someone was not even a question – I just walked. Since I was a climber and hiker, when I was old enough, I learned to drive and got a cheap car to take me to those out of the way places I wanted to go to in order enjoy the outdoors. And friends who joined me but didn’t drive just helped pay for petrol (gasoline) costs for the trips when drivers drove. Of course, there were some scroungers who tried to take advantage of us drivers, but they were quickly let it be known that their behavior would not be tolerated. It was system that worked well – we didn’t all need cars.
When I first came to the USA, the first thing I noticed was that public transport that existed was sparse for areas outside the main cities, and trying to get to out of the way places would take a lot of planning to get transport connections that worked. And to many areas, there was simply no public transportation to get there. Of course, the USA is a lot vaster than the UK, or many other countries. Yet, there was a time in the USA when the train system that crisscrossed the country would get you to within 20 miles of where you needed to go, and then some form of transport could get you to your destination. That all changed when Henry Ford captured the transport market and started dismantling the inner-city tram systems and the railways (see earlier post, Thinking Anew – Part 5 – Appropriate Technology 3 {January 2022}). In vast countries like Canada, the USA, and Australia, public transportation outside urban areas is economically difficult to arrange for efficient time tables and cost-effectiveness. Not that it can’t be done but the problem is expectations and this sense of urgency to ‘get there’ and not waste time.
Even in Europe when I visit, it now seems that everyone has to have a car to get places quickly. The massive traffic jams to popular areas is part of the resulting mess of that kind of thinking. I remember once driving north into Germany from Switzerland and while my side of the road was relatively quiet, there were traffic jams of 20-30 Km in length of traffic going south – a problem when the whole country shuts down for the month and everyone wants to drive to their choice of holiday spots. And Europe has a fair public transportation system. I visited in 2017 and used a rental car for local travel, but used the fast train system to move across the continent (see earlier post, Energy options {February 2018}).
When we vacation or go on holidays, we tend to do things at a more leisurely pace and spend our time just as productively as we do when we are running around in our jobs. Life used to be more leisurely overall, even if people worked hard at what they were being paid to do to make a living in the industrial age. In the industrialized countries, our relationship with time has changed over the last couple of centuries and especially so in the last 70 years. A saying coined during the industrial age was ‘time is money’ and that wasting time was almost criminal. One of the biggest changes in a sustainable society will be that of how we think about time and not linking it to money. Fast travel is good, it gets you places fast, but the false idea that we must all have our own vehicles to reduce the amount of time waiting for public transport is a falsehood we need to dispell.
Local and regional public transportation systems can work more effectively than simply building more roads and ‘fastways’ to allow cars to get around. Trucks are still needed to get goods around, but people do not need to have their own transportation to get around urban areas. A case study for what can be done to develop effective, efficient, and cost-effective local and regional transportation is Curritiba, Brazil. They were once plagued with traffic problems and inner-city pollution from so many cars trying to get around. “Curitiba did not have a working and effective transportation network, but instead an assortment of different systems that did not fit together.” The development of the 1965 master plan resolved all that and now Curritiba has one of the most studied and exported ideas for transport systems in the world. And with it a city that has reduced its traffic pollution problems to very low levels.
Regional traffic pollution is a bane of modern living. In an earlier post I discussed how cars were swiftly adopted since they reduced the ‘horse-poop’ problem (see, Adapting to Transformational changes 7 – A technological Solution to Horse Poop, Part 2 {December 2018). But petrol (gasoline) pollution was worse because it was gaseous and toxic, and just because we couldn’t see it, as you could horse poop, imagine it landing on the ground from our exhaust tailpipes. Imagine for every 8 miles you drove a pound (0.45 Kg) of poop splattered onto the road behind your car. Imagine what the roads would look like at rush hour!
One of our biggest problems in getting people to accept public transportation is psychological. The perception of personal safety, cleanliness, time, and this burning need to sit in your own little transport bubble when going places (this seems especially true in America) is the challenge we need to overcome. When I visit other cities with decent light rail or bus systems, I usually use the public transportation. It saves on the need for renting a car if I am staying in the city, and certainly makes parking problems and costs go away. Even if I drive to a city, I usually park my car and use its transportation system for ease of moving around the area, saving my car for trips outside to more remote areas. It takes a little more planning to get things organized but allows me more freedom to move around. As for time, I consider the option of looking out of a window from a public system more relaxing than dealing with traffic – let the driver worry about that. There is a saying about rush hour that, ‘it is when the drivers see the pedestrians rush by.’
One other aspect that would improve health and reduce pollution and traffic is the development of independent bicycle lanes separated from all other traffic – urban bikeway design. My last visit to the Netherlands was interesting since the friends I visited lent me a bike so we could all ride around the area easily to see the sights – and all in street clothing without the need for special riding apparel. I ride a bicycle and have ridden in rush hour traffic – not my favorite – but I had an ethic that if a car had to overtake me on a road, then I would not ride up the inside at any junction to get ahead. Doing so makes drivers become mean and while I may not get a drivers ire, the next cyclist might. The easiest solution to angry drivers and bikes is to keep them apart. And, no I do not ride in the snow, but might in rain. I’m a realist.
So, to end this post, a sustainable community would have multiple ways of moving around an area that would eventually remove the need to have a car, except for trips that public transportation doesn’t get to, but might in the future. Besides the greatly reduced pollution, it allows a freedom most car drivers do not consider.
0 Comments