No. You Can’t Just Move it, Move it
Car Dependency. Many a despairing piece has been written about how we worship the car and structure our society around it. It is true that in trying to serve the needs of automobile use we have wasted resources devoted to parking, roads and other infrastructure to meet that need.
But I find the argument gets a bit lost in the effect of the automobile. That providing parking and highways provokes demand for more automobiles. That our neighborhoods are designed around cars.
It is true we design around cars, and it can have profound negative effects, but we lose sight of the why that is so. Automobiles offer us freedom of movement, and in uncongested areas, unbelievable freedom of movement. It is no big deal to travel over 400kms from Kitchener, Ontario to North Bay, Ontario as a normal trip. The personal automobile and our road network allows a person to choose when they leave, what route to take, how often they stop for breaks, and the option of turning back if needed.
No other transportation solution on offer is as flexible, weather-resistant and convenient in use and time. Every other solution has limits, even public transit. Especially public transit.
The arguments against continued use of the private automobile are valid. Congested cities, suburban sprawl, ecological damage, climate change, etc. But the solutions proposed so far do not acknowledge that they require society to accept limits on the freedom of movement.
The holy grail of eliminating personal automobile use would even limit our choices of where we live. In the ideal society without cars, we all live in high density cities with walkable streets served by abundant public transit.
But we don’t all live in high density cities. And we are a long way from getting there, even if we could convince everyone to drop their dreams of a house in the country….
“But no one has truly proposed eliminating the automobile!”
Yes they have. Because they’re focused on the problem they want to solve (downtown congestion for one example) the solution becomes banning the automobile. But that’s why the conversation stalls. It’s a fenced off solution that ignores the inter-connected reality of our world. Like every problem, we quickly lose sight of the forest for the trees. Downtown problems are not suburban problems are not rural problems, and they need different solutions. At a certain level everyone agrees with that. The problem is that we haven’t agreed where the boundaries are. Where is the automobile allowed, and where do we stop it or discourage it?
Stepping back into the ecological harm and climate debate aspect, that line becomes even greyer and fuzzier. As the pandemic has driven people to work from home, and people have used that as an opportunity to move out of crowded cities, we are trending to a society with a different type of Haves and Have Nots. The rural and suburban Haves have the freedom of movement. The luxury of access to the rest of the country outside our dense urban cores. The transit dependent downtown citizen does not have that same freedom.
As we grapple with the challenges facing us, this question is always burbling in the background “Do we need to limit or constrain the freedom of movement?” Some are starting to answer that in the affirmative.
Limiting access to personal automobiles (‘green’ or ‘polluting’) and/or reducing the infrastructure that they use would have a profound effect on how we view mobility in Canada. The consequences reach into every aspect of our society for where we live, where or how we work, how we play, and how we stay connected to friends and family. We can’t propose radical change without discussing how it will impact every aspect of our lives. Without understanding how and why we as individuals instinctively assume we have this freedom of movement available to us.
The closures of bus service and rail are already having a horrible effect on the people that rely on them. Especially for the remote and rural areas of this province. Even if that bus and rail service was resumed, limiting or eliminating personal powered transportation would have an even greater impact.
I don’t know if we can have a sustainable society that still allows unfettered personal automobile use. I hope we can. Because I like and depend on that concept. If we have truly have to change that for the betterment and sustainability of Canadian society, we had better start understanding the impacts of that and how we will work to limit those impacts.
Take it away KALEO
Imagine myself in an automobile
A hundred miles an hour if you know how I feel
Alone with my mind, leave my worries behind
I might even reach the border, it’s just a matter of timeI said take me where the wheels take me, far away
Wheels take me, I can’t stay
Wheels take me, any place today
