calling for the transport we all need a few of the issues and facts

Road transport currently accounts for 26% of UK carbon emissions with a 31% increase in traffic predicted by 2025. It’s crucial that we both change our behaviour and raise our voices for better alternatives to car use while there is still time.

Yes, moves for cleaner, more efficient vehicles are to be welcomed but this should not distract us from the fact that we need a massive reduction in cars on the road if we are to stand any chance of meeting our emmission targets.

Biofuels are not the answer as their impact on other ecosystems removes carbon sinks and therefore contributes to climate change, leaving aside whether we have the right to remove these habitats on any grounds, to say nothing of the world hunger biofuels exacerbate.

Hydrogen is a less than perfect technology, as it is only a method of storing energy, not creating it and is so far highly inefficient while electric cars are dependent on the source of electricity generation; we have enough of a challenge as it is to get our current electricity consumption on a more carbon friendly basis.

But even with the cleanest, most miraculous source of fuel or propulsion, cars take up vast quantities of energy in their manufacture, scrapping and breaking while their use necessitates the building of roads that scar our landscapes and disrupt communities. They remove us from the elements and from each other, encouraging both the cult of the individual and that old Cartesian split between ourselves and the natural world; the world which it is now more important than ever to find some greater sense of synthesis with. Cars lock us into a model of consumption that has surely had its day and the more roads that we build, the more we come to rely on individual motorised transport, the more our businesses and lives are bound by the necessity of daily mass migration, then the bigger the challenge we face in scaling down our lifestyle, which has to happen due to the necessity of reducing our emissions, if not eventually more bluntly forced by lack of fuel.

Change is upon us whether we like it or not. Our society needs a massive shift in direction if we are to steer ourselves clear from disaster and changing how we travel is perhaps the biggest personal contribution we can make to that. We face inertia, vested interests, short sightedness and corruption. But if we act together we can bring about the changes that we need.

The problem of our dependency on cars is often seen as intractable but it doesn’t have to be like this. Even without investing in better buses and cycle lanes, both of which are known to have a hugely positive effect, smart and small scale measures – costing a fraction of what is being spent on new roads – have been shown to have a massive impact on changing behaviour; cutting traffic by as much as 20%. These include school and workplace travel plans, marketing of public transport, personalised travel planning, car clubs and car sharing, advertising campaigns plus teleworking, teleconferencing and home shopping, not to mention holding onto to local shops and services. Compare this with the many millions currently spent on building new roads and it’s clear that a very large part of the problem we face is the decisions made at the highest levels of national and regional government.

It’s also now official that people are being deliberately priced off the railways, just as we know that to many, investing in a car, paying through the nose to keep it on the road, means a commitment to that mode of transport, on financial grounds alone. We have to call for cheaper, fairer trains and buses. The efficiency and equality of our public transport is a key litmus test of the effectiveness and equity of any government. We have to raise our voices, to demand the kind of prices it is the reasonable reaction of any population to expect.

We need to lobby government as surely as we need to envision and call for a cultural shift that no longer enshrines the very double edged liberty of the car. It’s not as though we have to be absolute; cars are undoubtedly highly useful for the elderly, for those living remotely as well as many families. But we have to use them less, to curb our habits so we only make the journeys that are absolutely necessary, not hop in and out of them without a second thought, a habit formed from decades of cheap oil. We have to challenge the myth that car use makes us somehow better individuals. We have to take these engines off the pedestal on which we’ve placed them for so long. We have become displaced by decades of their use and by our pandering to them. We have become a people disjointed from ourselves and from each other, blatting in our little metal boxes, spending hours on end half listless at high speeds on motorways that do our souls few favours. The road back is neither easy nor simple but starts for everyone of us with the affirmation, silent or proclaimed, that we have to find a way to change our lives, that we can no longer continue as we are.