Every day in the media, on twitter, on the roads and with people I meet, the perception of travel is clear: The Car is King! In fact, aside from aeroplanes, the mainstream view seems to be that all other forms of transport are completely inferior. It's an astonishing view, but it is so prevalent that it impacts on politics, town planning, even company policies & professional perceptions. I notice the difference if I ask how to get to a meeting by public transport compared to if I ask where I can park my car. But why is this?
In the UK, learning to drive and buying your first car is seen as a rite of passage. Once you turn 17, you're definitely in the minority if you're not at least getting driving lessons. Fair enough. Driving is a useful life skill, and like many such skills, it's good to learn it young, to have it there for when you need it. However, a lot of emphasis is put on actually driving as well. You may have been independent for several years previously, getting the train or bus around to see your mates, but somehow you're expected to drive everywhere once you pass your test. It's seen as completely normal to spend all your spare cash on buying & running a motor. No-one thinks you're insane for spending several grand a year just to go to the same places you went to before, but now in a car. college, mate's house, shopping, work (that extra job you had to get to afford the car), but people do see you as a bit weird for continuing to cycle to college even after you have the car, despite it being the best option. This view seems to continue, unchanged, throughout adult life.
It's seen as strange to cycle to town on a Saturday afternoon to do your shopping. You get pitying looks from passers-by as you adjust your heavily laden panniers ready for your journey home. It doesn't matter that you'll be cycling freely along, home in no time whilst they're stuck in traffic for another half an hour, having parted with £7.50 just for the privilege of parking their car for a few hours. The thought won't even occur to them that perhaps there is a better way, one that would allow them a bit of extra cash to spend at the shops & one that would allow them more free time. For some reason sitting in traffic, whilst an inevitability in many towns, is seen as a sensible choice. People moan about it, but they accept it, as though it's better to be sat going nowhere in a car than to already be home, cracking open that first beer and settling down to watch final score.
Companies up and down the country will unquestioningly reward drivers - they will pay them full expenses - 45p per mile driven, on a journey of any distance. Few companies I have encountered seem to care that there may be a cheaper option for them than every employee driving to their meetings. It won't be suggested for one second that maybe they should get the train instead, as it will save some money, these are tough times after all. Yet get the train and you're expected to be willing to get a cheaper ticket, even if it means taking the longer route, getting home later to your family. First class? Some chance! Even if it's cheaper than driving, a first class rail ticket is still somehow seen as an extravagance.
Commuters are expected to drive in most towns across the country. In London and a few other large cities, public transport is seen as an acceptable way to get to work (and even, dare I say it, cycling), but the reality in most towns & workplaces is that workers are expected to drive. Job adverts frequently highlight, among the benefits on offer, 'free parking!'. It's rare to see one that advertises 'great public transport links'. Indeed, many town-centre businesses seem willing to spend good money on expensive land just so their employees can drive right to the office door. Out of town business parks may be forgiven for expecting workers to arrive by car, but these are often served by a shuttle bus at least from the nearest transport hub. Do any have specific cycle parking? Rarely.
So when all these cars are going about their business, often at the same time of day, our town centres become congested, students going to school, workers commuting, shoppers driving into town. The end result of this is that the car loses any benefit it may have had for most people. Ok, so some may be disabled, or have a bootload of heavy shopping, or several young children, but look at most cars stuck in traffic and you'll see time and again just one person in the car, often between 20-50 years old & most likely with nothing in the boot but a spare pair of shoes. It's situations like this where the bike comes into it's own. Journey times can be far quicker by bike across town centres, over the relatively short commutes that most people will do, of under 5 miles, even in normal traffic conditions, at rush hour, it's a no-brainer. Bikes do still get held up by traffic though. A bike lane would be nice, to allow cyclists the smooth journey they deserve without having to 'weave through traffic'. You would think most drivers would switch. It seems to be some sort of prisoner's dilemma though - perhaps if the roads were clear, a car would be quicker - so it's better to be in a car & for everyone else to be on a bike. I don't see this happening any time soon though, so it's time for drivers to realise this and get on their bikes.
The result of all these congested town centres is often the same. Councils seek a solution, at the request of frustrated drivers and residents. They ignore the obvious solution though. The most common need of all these drivers is simply to get themselves from where they were to where they are going. They don't usually need to be in their cars. The obvious solution then, is to make the most efficicent use of the roads, to invest in more buses, more bus lanes, more cycle lanes, to allow each person to take up as little room as possible on the roads, and allow everyone to get through those traffic lights that stop them getting out of town in the quickest time possible.
But that's not what happens. Somehow, the problem is incorrectly identified. Town planners think the issue is not that people need to get somewhere, but that the cars need to get somewhere. So more road space is given over to cars, because the Car is King! It needs to get where it is going! Bus lanes get overlooked, cycle lanes squeezed into non-existance, traffic lights get re-phased, roundabouts get replaced & yet the result is just the same. Nobody is going anywhere. Because the Car is King, we all have to go at the pace the car goes at, no matter how slow this is.
No comments:
Post a Comment