The typical household spends over a quarter of its budget on transport. For this it gets a troublesome car. Constant noise and congestion, ugly environments and a badly compromised public transport system.
In New Zealand we also get 300 deaths a year, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of distressing moments and scares. We are at war. Before our kids can go out we indoctrinate them with our fears of what will happen if they are careless on the road. We probably discourage them from using a healthy cheap bicycle because they are likely to be maimed or killed on it. If there were terrorists sniping at our children as they tried to get to school we would say we were are war and losing, yet because the cause of this distress is all of us and our love of cars, we call it normal.
Most of our population lives in cities and towns with centres and suburbs. We all go to the same places. When we leave our cars at home we can have public transport every ten minutes or less throughout the day and night. If the distances are great we can have trains going many times faster than we can ever make our cars go. No more interminable driving the kids to school to make sure they live through the event. No more getting up in the night to bring the teenagers safely home. No more domestic disputes over who can have the family transport. No more domestic distress over the cost of the family car.
It could be done. Quick cheap friendly transport everywhere with just essential services having personalised transport. But we love our cars even at the cost of thousands of deaths and maimings every year and even when we know it only solves a small part of our transport problems and the rest are all made far worse.
