Kia ora toot friends. (Hello in Māori language)
Tonight I am bringing some #transport, #bikes, #cycling, #urbanism and #antiCar#memes.
I hope you enjoy them and are radicalised like I am. Once you start seeing how we've been trapped by #carDependency you cannot unsee it again.
Let's fight for space for people, cities that are walkable, accesible, clean, green and safe.
Of course, please contribute your own memes to the thread and also radicalise your family, workmates and friends!
Probably my personal favourite one is this extremely text heavy Simpsons #meme.
I love it because it suddenly questions our assumptions of how normal it is to move about our cities, and it also highlights how wasteful and inefficient #cars are.
Our cities can be very quiet and clean if we move in our feet, or bikes or scooters.
Cars are noisy dangerous and dirty. We should make cities where we need to use them as little as possible.
In our unquestioning worship of the #automobile, we have built cities that are hostile to people!
Cities OF people that are hostile TO people! How ridiculous is that?
This image is a classic and it illustrates how most of our #carCentric spaces feel for humans on their feet, for kids wanting to play, for our disabled whānau trying to live a normal life.
We can do better! We have done better for our whole history. It's really the last century or so where we allowed cars to take over everything.
And yet we've bought into this idea that a car is indispensable. A basic need for our lives.
A big metal box that spends over 90% of its existence just sitting there, waiting for us. Using up valuable space in our streets, gardens, parks, houses.
Spaces we could use to play, plant, socialise, exercise or really anything else is devoted to the storage of a box that most of us use for an hour or two.
But we've adopted #CarCulture so deeply that for many, an attack on cars in general feels like a personal attack. Any attempt to reclaim space in our cities for #bicyles, #people, #parks or children feels like a loss that needs to be stopped and defended against.
Often ignoring the reality that our urban built environment (and much of the rural building too) is completely car centric.
Cars take up unnecessary space when they are moving too!
In a cruel reflection of the class hierarchies we've created for society we prioritise space in our roads for the single most inefficient users. Effectively devoting a limited resource (#transit capacity) in who uses it in the most wasteful way possible, a privilege of owning a car. We struggle with city councils to get scraps of sometimes temporary space for buses or bikes.
And yet this space is not enough. It will never be enough.
Space for cars can never be enough because of the natural rules of geometry and maths.
You cannot move that many people in their individual boxes. It is inefficient, wasteful and really at some point just plain impossible.
The #car is quite unique in the way that it is a mode of #transport that really quickly becomes worse the more people use it.
But true to form, we have refused to learn from the last few decades of #motorway development. #InducedDemand is the phenomenon that explains that the more lanes we build, the more cars will be out driving on them. That's why widening #roads, adding more lanes ends up being a temporary relief, if anything, and quickly reverts to traffic jams, potentially worse than the ones we had to start with.
City governments, urban developers, fossil fuel companies, #road builders and car manufacturers have created a self reinforcing ecosystem, where they all get wealthier by depending on each other. Convincing us of the lie that we do need one more lane. This is the one that will fix everything. This bypass, this new road, this expansion, once we get it done #traffic will be solved. For good.
But it is never true and yet we try again, hoping for the silver bullet in the next lane we build.
It is a well known and tested fact that a city where everybody drives is a city where nobody moves.
But we still have a really bad case of #CarBrain in our societies.
#CarBrain is what happens when we let our #cars become our identities. When we prioritise cars over the lives of the people who surround us, of our own children.
Car Brain is the reason why #jaywalking even exists as a concept. Car Brain is a group project that the automobile industry has been working on for decades, and they have successfully installed it in most of us.
There is a lot to unpack about #CarBrain. But this gif is a decent summary.
Mainly its the idea that Cars = Freedom, but in a bad way. If you lose your car you lose your freedom.
The idea that your car is your identity, your livelihood. One of your biggest expenses and sources of stress, too. You should get that noise checked, is the engine working properly?
Everyone else outside your car is an enemy, they're slowing you down, they'll scratch your paint. Road rage.
CW for blinking lights.
#Motorists seem to be angry by default. And that's of course quite bad.
They are angry at other drivers, angry at pedestrians, angry at #buses, angry at potholes and traffic jams.
But the worst of all their anger is usually directed at #cyclists.
We can't seem to get it right. Always in the wrong place, too slow and too fast at the same time.
This culture of anger that #CarCulture encourages has a very high cost. Lives are lost everyday inside and out of cars, but we've convinced ourselves that this is the only way to live. There's nothing we can do and these lives must be sacrificed in the altar of the #car.
Cars ruin cities. Cars ruin public transport, our health and our very lives.
We've built streetscapes that centre and prioritise cars before everything else. And then we wonder why kids don't play outside anymore, why they can't be independent.
Entire parks, playgrounds, homes and other amenities have been demolished since the 50s to make space for parking and motorways and service stations.
The cult of the #car has robbed us even of childhood.
Once you start seeing how much space we sacrifice for #cars, you can't unsee it. They have taken over our cities completely.
And they feel entitled and justified to every single space available. Given a chance, anything becomes a parking spot.
And if you dare speak up about it or oppose it, #motorists respond immediately with aggression, violent threats, racism and sometimes actual violence.
Don't dare advocate for a cycle lane, some space in the footpath for a wheelchair user, or a stroller.
Now we know that we are in a #ClimateCrisis. We know both that urgent action is crucial and that transport (our cars mainly) are an important source of our emissions.
So they sell us an answer: #ElectricCars.
But although they are part of the answer. They are nowhere near the silver bullet we're told they will be. And other, more important and effective solutions are ignored meanwhile. Like #bicycles and #publicTransport
While it's true that #EVs have dramatically lower emissions when compared to combustion engines, that is only part of the problem.
EVs do not solve congestion, or road mortality (they might be worse as they tend to be heavier).
The production of batteries is very unsustainable and the need for charging infrastructure creates a new set of issues that need to be addressed in our public space. Essentially they need MORE of our cities.
EVs are here to save the automobile industry, not the planet.
When measured by energy required to move people around, it's obvious that the real game changer in the EV field is not a Tesla, or even a car (although microcars come closer). The revolution here is the #ebike.
It's cheaper, safer, more efficient, more fun and it makes users healthier and happier. Although it also shares the problem of sustainability for battery production, the scale of this issue for ebikes is drastically reduced (close to 100x)
And the charging infrastructure already exists.
The solutions to improve our cities are not some yet to be invented technology. We do not need to wait for flying or autonomous cars (which are always ten years away and never actually work, except in very limited scenarios).
The truth is the solutions exist and are even old and boring: buses, trains, bicycles, skateboards and even our own feet. Cheap, clean, reliable answers that build communities and improve with use.
The answers are simple, what we lack is political will.
Whenever we talk about using a #bicycle (#paihikara) as a mode of transport, someone will say "But what about rain?"
I ride every day and get wet maybe twice a month on average. Soaked once every two months.
My workmates sit in traffic every single day, regardless of weather.
A rainproof jacket is enough 70% of the time. Pants and boots for the other 30%. When even that's not enough, there's dry clothes and a towel in a locker.
There's no such thing as bad weather. Only the wrong clothes.
We have allowed our simple need for transportation to be over engineered and over complicated to the maximum.
Cars have their place and use, but 90% of the time you see them carrying a single human being on trips that are shorter than 10 kms. Quite easily the most inefficient use of energy and space possible, while also raising the stakes of any potential error to make it deadly.
If you are just moving about the city, do you really need a 2 ton metal armour of ecocidal fumes to carry you around?
Add comment