World Car Free Day is coming up on 22 September. Transport and urban planners, let’s consider how we can make our cities less car-centric, and more people-centric. We have a vital role to play in slowing the climate catastrophe that seems to only be gaining momentum.
Across the world, more and more, we have seen a shocking imbalance of our natural order. Nature’s delicate balance is wavering, and unleashing its fury on us puny humans.
A third of Pakistan is now underwater. Amid unprecedented rainfall, more than 1100 people have died since June as a result of flooding. Viral videos show wide concrete bridges and whole buildings sliding into fast-flowing rivers – one million homes have been damaged or destroyed.
Half a million people have been displaced in what UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called “a monsoon on steroids”, with more than 33 million people affected. That’s more than the population of our entire continent.
Europe is experiencing its most severe drought in 500 years. Thousands of people across the EU died as a result of heat waves last month. France’s longest river, the Loire, can now be crossed on foot.
The banks of the Danube River in Serbia have receded, revealing a graveyard of Nazi warships heavy with undetonated explosives (around 10,000 bombs, according to Serbia’s transport minister).
Research from UNSW has found that a massive and critical Atlantic ocean current that brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic is slowing down for the first time.
If this huge conveyor belt collapses, it will have complex and profound global consequences for heat distribution systems, and La Niña could become the norm for Australia. This is what is called a “tipping point” – a point of no return.
Wheels in motion for change
Meanwhile, here in Sydney, one member of The Fifth Estate team recently started riding a bike to work.
On a bike, you notice more. Things like the quality of the bike paths, the pollution being spewed from car and truck engines, the road rage of impatient motorists.
Nevertheless it’s a fairly pleasant ride from the south east of Sydney into the CBD. But it’s a privilege that not many Sydneysiders are able to enjoy – or would even consider.
Many areas in Greater Sydney don’t have bike paths at all – or they are badly maintained, riddled with bumps and potholes, unprotected from traffic and don’t take a direct route.
The streets are built for cars, not designed for bikes or walkability.
Since its invention in the late 1800s the car has been lauded as the transportation method of the future.
We have so many cars that the transport sector contributes around a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. The average passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons (tonnes) of carbon dioxide each year. Enabling safe active transport and public transport use is essential to halting climate change.
We are not arguing that everybody should ditch their cars and buy a bike. This is not possible for many, there may be barriers like accessibility, distance, and other factors.
However, let’s look at the facts. Every day in Sydney there are 2 million car trips that are less than 2 kilometres.
Just 5 per cent of work commutes are taken by active transport in Australia, compared to more than 30 per cent in countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Denmark.
Now, let’s consider how unfriendly to bikes our streets are. It’s almost as if the streets were designed for car users alone! And this car dominance has leached into the public lexicon and culture – so that we start to look like a cycling-averse society. Most roads are not safe for cyclists. Riding a bike is not a safe or easy way of commuting in the same way that driving is.
We must question why families owning two or more cars is so prevalent. There are, on average, 1.8 cars for every household in Australia.
The good news is that most Australians want more investment in active transport infrastructure, and almost three-quarters of people in NSW would cycle more if they had access to separated bicycle lanes.
As the popular Youtube channel Not Just Bikes pointed out, “Nobody should have to own a car just to participate in society”.
Not all cities are like this.
Across the world, there has been a movement to take cars off the roads. Consider Amsterdam, a city that didn’t see investment in cycling infrastructure until the 1970s. Cycling was a normal mode of transport until the postwar boom, when people became wealthier and could afford luxuries like personal cars, and vast swathes of the city were bulldozed to make way for motorways. Nowadays, thanks to community activism, it’s not cars that rule the roads – it’s cyclists.
Similarly, Colombia’s sprawling and high-altitude capital Bogotá is a good example of a city that found a small balance against the dominance of cars. Every weekend, the streets are closed to cars for the Ciclovía (Bicycle Way), where cyclists and pedestrians alike can meander at ease wherever they like.
The idea of a car-free city is not as impossible as it sounds. There was a time before cars, after all (although we may not remember it).
Want to see it in action? Pontevedra, Spain, is a fully car-free city. It is common for “old towns” in European cities to deny entry to cars – often due to the narrow laneways and winding streets – but from 1999 cars were banned from much of the city. It’s a walkable city, it takes only 25 minutes to cross from side to side.
The argument is that driving a car is a privilege. In an article published in The Guardian, the city’s head of infrastructure César Mosquera, tells the journalist. “How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?”
There are many other cities where cars are banned: think Venice in Italy, Lamu in Kenya, Fire Island in the US, Ghent in Belgium, and Hydra Island in Greece.
You often hear people saying that cities are designed for cars. This is not true – cities have been bulldozed to make way for cars.
Take a look at these images of Sydney, not a car in sight and plenty of room for pedestrians.
The first car to drive Sydney’s streets was in April 1900 along Harris Street, Pyrmont. There was a speed limit of 13 kilometres an hour. By 1911, there were almost 4000 cars and almost 3000 motorbikes on Sydney’s roads.
Today, Sydney’s streets are famously inhospitable to cyclists. It has a reputation for being a “city that hates bikes” – only about 1.5 km of separated cycleways a year have been developed over the past decade.
When Duncan Gay was was roads minister, between 2015 to 2017, he went on a vendetta against cyclists – ripping up a much-used $5 million separated cycleway along College Street in the CBD.
An individual cyclist won’t get us to a safe climate alone
Melbourne author Jeff Sparrow recently argued that a sense of individual responsibility – the feeling that personal choices are important in fighting climate change – is a scam encouraged or engineered by big corporations to distract from the real problem. And we have to say that we agree with this idea to an extent.
The term “carbon footprint” was dreamt up by public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather, employed by BP in order to reposition the oil and gas company in the face of rising public concern about climate change.They didn’t want to be seen as the perpetrator, the bad guy.
In the same way the Keep America Beautiful anti-littering campaign was funded by plastic and packaging companies.
The destruction of the planet was successfully rebranded as the fault of the individual.
Author Sparrow recently told the ABC: “One of the reasons why we feel so despairing about the [climate] situation that we’re in is that we are made to feel that we are the problem.”
But collective action comes from the power of individuals banding together to make a difference. If absolutely everyone who is physically able to decided to get a bike, it would make a difference.
But at present, the lack of physical infrastructure is a symptom of the domination of auto companies in the transport debate. This only serves to reinforce the idea that cycling is “too difficult”, a systematic cultural bias against cyclists that says “they take up too much space” and don’t have a right to take up public spaces.
At the COP26 conference in Glasgow last year, there was a day specifically for transport. And bikes were not even on the agenda – neither were other forms of active transport like walking, not to mention public transport, which wasn’t on the agenda either.
Electric cars were at the centre of talks, and cyclists held a demonstration outside the conference room ringing their bells in protest.
More than 300 groups including the Union Cycliste Internationale, EU Cyclists Federation, Cycling UK, Bike Is Best, and People on Bikes signed an open letter calling on governments to “commit to boosting cycling levels to reduce carbon emissions and reach global climate goals quickly and effectively”.
“Our world is on fire,” they wrote. “We must urgently leverage the solutions that cycling offers by radically scaling up its use. What we need now is for governments to politically and financially commit to more, safer and integrated cycling that is equitable for everyone living in our countries, cities and regions.”
Finally, at the eleventh hour, “active travel” was added to the zero emissions vehicle declaration.
So yes, while our individual action might make us feel good (and cycling has many health benefits!), and if we can work together collectively it does go a long way to making a difference, there are heavy roadblocks standing in our way.
The public needs business and government to band together to make a difference.
Built environment professionals, transport and urban planners, have an important role to play in fighting climate change – especially by creating cities that are walkable, cyclable, and have good quality public transport.
Undoubtedly, big corporations and governments hold far more power than individuals. And with great power, comes great responsibility.
World Car Free Day is coming up on 22 September. Let’s consider how we can make our cities less car-centric, and more people-centric. Let’s work together towards a healthier planet, and a healthier population.