An unlikely metaphor to illustrate our transport challenges: we can simultaneously invest in choices that protect the planet, and not feel like monsters for missing our cars
Opinion: I was watching Speed this weekend. Classic Generation X viewing. Bad typeface in the intro credits, terrible scripting, stereotypes abound, vastly enjoyable nonetheless. Sandra Bullock plays Annie and Annie is on a bus that is going to get blown up unless Keanu Reeves (I forget his character's name) saves them. Annie is on the bus only because she got disqualified from driving - or something like that. Again, knowing the details is not critical to its enjoyment.
Anyway, Annie “loves her car, and she “misses her car”. I mean who could blame her when the alternative is a bus that an unhinged Dennis Hopper is trying to blow up? It struck me that the Speed story (thin as it is) is a good metaphor for the situation we are facing as we try to reshape our transport system.
We care about the planet and cars harming it sucks, but they are also very handy and helpful in a system designed around them.
Most people genuinely want to do something about climate change, they just don't know what to do (recycling is not an intervention that will make the biggest difference here). Or they do know what to do but those things look immensely difficult to achieve the way they are currently being talked about. In the case of using non-car transport, people who feel this way would not be wrong. “Changing your lifestyle”, including using non-car transport, can be bloody hard when the environment that encourages you to live that “lifestyle” in the first place has not changed to make it easy.
In reality, for most of us, driving private cars sucks in many objective ways. Cars make us unhappy when we drive them in cities: they are bad for the planet, they harm people both directly through traffic injuries and indirectly through air pollution, they suck up street space for kids, elderly people, bikes, trees, and hanging out - pretty things, fun things! They crowd out the vehicles of people who really need to get about, like disabled people and emergency response vehicles.
Even though they suck, cars seem better (and in some cases just are) compared to the alternatives we're given by people responsible for the transport system. It's something that has happened by design.
Many cities are designed around private car use. We have a car industry that has convinced us - and people in politics - that driving cars at speed everywhere is critical to our lives and livelihoods (sometimes our identity even). People in politics and policy believed this, and so made it true in many places by failing to create decent, easy options for non-car transport. Try getting a regular reliable train to the Wairarapa from Wellington, or be a young person trying to get from a satellite suburb in Auckland to a place of study without a car (even with a car!).
You can read this blog about the role people manufacturing cars have had to play in shaping our lives to be dependent upon cars and trucks, and how we have been let down as citizens and a society when what we need is a transport system that works for everyone.
Current options look a bit like a crappy bus in comparison
So what we have in many cities and large towns is an alternative to cars that feels like being asked to get on a crappy bus, with a bomb Dennis Hopper strapped underneath, that is doing endless loops of a runway in downtown LA.
It's no wonder quite a few people feel mad and sad at the idea of life with fewer cars. If you care about the planet and also need to get places and not die or be hurt, late, poor, wet, or angry, then transport often sucks from all angles it in this current moment.
Of course there are quite a lot of people working hard to change this reality, and a few others also working even harder to tell us that these same people can’t or shouldn't create a better transport system to help protect the planet from harm.
Fear, and a good bit of grifting drive current objections
Every time there is a conversation about creating this new transport system, by reallocating street space to pedestrians, putting in public transport lanes, spending on public transport, subsidising non-car modes, or putting in pedestrian crossings so children don't die as they go about their daily lives, small groups of noisy people absolutely lose their shizzle. It's a fire then fanned by some in politics eyeing to the populist vote.
To be clear, those small groups will always lose their shizzle about fewer cars, those few politicians who rely on their votes will always cash in on that opportunity.
However, these people’s stories (and the media amplification of them) can and do influence the many more people who care and want to do something about protecting the places they love.
They get that life without a car is hard, but are now hearing there is a conspiracy to take away cars and all they will be left with is a falling-apart bus. Which feels true at the moment but is actually quite untrue – false information even.
These oppositional narratives have politicised car trip reduction goals to the point that no one wants to talk about it, and so get accused of engaging in a secret agenda
We need to talk more about Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
The best defence is an offence, and I think we can talk about having fewer cars if we can consistently frame that reality within a hopeful and honest story about overcoming the big challenges.
Here is where Keanu and Sandra (Annie) come in. In metaphorical terms, we need to talk more about the good-looking guy removing the bomb under the bus, the woman driving it, and why they are there.
Like Annie, we might miss our cars, we possibly did not even want to get on the bus and it's okay to acknowledge that.
We can also acknowledge that the bus is not the best. It's hard for a significant number of people – especially disabled people, those on low incomes, children, and people who live in outer suburbs – because there are so few options. However, people in our transport system, like Keanu, are working on a fix – yes, I did just compare researchers, transport planners, urban designers and policy nerds to Keanu Reeves.
Initially they had few resources, and not a lot of support from their bosses who thought they were mavericks (see also Top Gun for excellent Gen X movie nostalgia with a transport theme). Now however, they are making real headway on solutions as organisations are finally getting the need for this work.
So, the Speed metaphor is now stretched to wafer thin, but the point is that great origin stories people can connect to are critical for building support for changes that make a big difference to protecting the planet from harm.
In the case of transport (and probably most other systems we rely on in the way we live, work and play), we can proactively invest in good and clear explanations about what we need to do and why (way fewer cars) and acknowledge the challenges. And we also need to focus more on the good people working towards better outcomes that most of us care about – and that can be achieved.
But don't watch Speed 2.
