Nothing raises as much feelings when debating sustainable living as the
car. It is funny that a piece of metal can get people to feel so much!
On one hand we have the "green" people who are saying the car is
a symbol of evilness, and the cause for all the problems in our society. In
many cases these people are still using cars, with various explanations like
for example:
*it would take me too long to get to work with public transport/with bike (often
about 15 min longer), this time is away from me being with my kids!! (But the
yoga class is not..?? And since you dont bike you have to go to the gym...
which takes time.)
*we are 2 persons in the car, and the other person would anyway use the car.
(Really? how can you be sure of that?? maybe the other person is thinking the
same??)
*if the society would provide better public transportation/better bike
roads/cheaper bus tickets/tax reductions for biking... THEN I would not use my
car. (Ok, so you put your own responsibility on the shoulders of "society”.
That is quite common here in Finland at least).
On the other hand we have those sworn car-users who cannot under any circumstances
walk more than 20m, or wait for a bus for even 5 minutes. To back up their choices
they often choose to calculate the cost savings by using only the running costs
of the car. There should not be any parking fees in the city centre since
parking is considered a "civil right" or something.
*All the shops in the centre will have to close if you have parking fees...
since nobody would come there anymore...
*This hits the poor people the most...
This list could go on and on, but it makes me too depressed so I will stop
it here.
There are research showing that car free zones lead to MORE business.
People actually like to stroll around without all the cars around them. But in
political arguments the research and facts seldom weighs that heavily.
I was truly amazed recently when I heard a discussion where people were
discussing how fancy car another one had, and how much it had cost and so on. I
couldn’t say anything, I was just feeling amazed about how anyone can care
about what car somebody has!! I hardly know what car we have :) And this is
honestly not about me being jealous! If I would suddenly get millions of
euros, I would not even consider buying a new car; my bike would however need
to be upgraded a bit.. and maybe our boat ...
One point that seldom is raised in the discussion is the mobility of the
increasing part of our population that can’t drive a car. The share of elderly
is raising all the time, and these people don’t want to just sit at home! They
want to go out and see as much as we "car-driving-age people" do. And
what about the young ones? How is there independency development suffering from
not being able to go anywhere without mum or dad driving them? If we develop
our cities to be based on private cars, then we disregard these groups of
people and their needs.
The "positive" thing to all this is that it could be much worse.
In StPetersburg the car is really seen as a "symbol of freedom", you
can not in any way suggest anything that is not supporting the use of the cars.
I had the courage to ask how it can be any "freedom" in sitting in
traffic jam for 2h instead of taking the metro in 20 minutes. They replied a
lot in Russian and I suspect the translator didn’t translate everything to
me..they sounded a bit upset.. hmm..?? Touchy topic also over there it seems!
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| Not the safest way of moving around. This is taken between Alexandria and Cairo in about 100km/h! |
Visiting Alexandria gives you a glimpse of how things end up when you
really don’t think about the mobility needs of people and just build more and
more houses. The city is totally FULL! Public transport is not really working
too well, except for the minibuses along the corniche, they work really well.
Now the situation is such that you can’t really walk anywhere because of the
traffic, which means that people use more their cars even for short distances...and
there we have a nice loop.
Want to finish up with saying that there are also those truly
"green" people who really don’t use cars and still move around, also
with smaller children. So there is hope! I belonged to this group for a while,
it was great not having a car!! Then switching job location "made me"
have to buy a car..as you can see I moved easily over to the "wonna be
green" ones who have a lot of good explanations for why they need to use
the car. Below you
can see my favourite mode of transportation :)
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| My favourite mode of transportation. |
