From Cap’n Transit, via the Humantransit blog:
…there is nothing inherently convenient about cars, or about any vehicle. It is the system that makes them convenient, and that system includes both the vehicle and the infrastructure. Provide unlimited, subsidized “free” car infrastructure, and cars will be convenient. Run buses often, everywhere, all the time, and buses will be convenient. Put everything in a giant skyscraper with computer-controlled elevators, and elevators will be convenient. Trains, walking, bayou boats, swinging from vines, conveyor belts, scuba diving: whatever it is, if you throw enough money at the infrastructure you can make it convenient.
So true.
It’s like asking why Aucklanders drive so much….. maybe it has something to do with the fact that we spent almost nothing at all on public transport between the end of World War II and 2000?
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Well said. I live in London and it takes me longer to drive into the city than train / tube. The train / tube in London is well… convenient.
I do think there are many advantages to car ownership or access, such as ease of carrying large purchases and day trips/holidays but a car per family instead of 3 or 4 should be sufficient…
A transport system made of swinging vines would be interested…
I disagree to a degree. While I think Jarbury’s GIST is right, and needs to be noted, cars have a lot of added convenience that public transport cannot ever really provide.
Primarily, the car provides an individual space. And humanity (especially but not only western society) is very individualistic.
With a car, you essentially carry part of your home around with you. The car is YOUR zone. Close the door, and you are no more in the public zone (technically you still are, but you get the idea). You can decorate it however you like (to a degree of course), inside and out. It can be used as a status symbol in a way a public bus cannot be etc…
You can store things in it (how much I would like that feature on my bike – especially this afternoon, when I was trying to juggle a portfolio, a helmet, a portable bike light, and a wobbling bike while trying to fit my key into the bike lock…!) – store things safe from weather, safe from accidentially forgetting them, and safe from at least casual theft. It also carries heavy stuff easier and more directly than most other forms of transport.
Planning policy is not to blame for the meteoric rise of the car (it had enough merits to do that on its own). Planning policy IS to blame for the much-stronger-than-expected fall of PT in the same timeframe, though. BAsically, we really thought this was the coolest thing since sliced bread, to a degree that we dismissed all the other modes, even where those other modes DO have adavantages.
“A transport system made of swinging vines would be interested…”
New Zealanders have always used motorised vines, and that is why we are building a new high-speed swing-line out to Howick. Some have criticised us for that, saying that we should not forget the transport advantages of refrigerated ice-skating canals, because they can move more people without the shading and barrier effects of high-growing swingline forests.
I am over that debate, personally. That is why our government has just announced that we will be looking carefully into additional funding to keep our ice-skating canals below zero even in higher summer temperatures. But we have to accept the fact that New Zealand, and especially Auckland, just doesn’t cater well for canals, or ice-skating – they are more an European thing. Meanwhile, trees have always grown well here – so we will have to continue to primarily fund these modes of transport which Aucklanders have chosen in the past.
Yes I’m not exactly sure if the term “convenient” is the right one, which is the issue that the Human Transit blog points out. Just because something might appear, or even be, convenient, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option available.
Like Jeremy says, cars are certainly a very useful part of the transport system. The real problem is auto-dependency, ie. when we feel that we need to use our cars more often than ideal, because of a lack of alternatives.
Despite all the benefits of a car they will always have one major flaw and that’s the fact that the driver has to be sober.
A city needs to have transport freedom that allows people to do simple trips such as going from home to a bar or a cinema and then home again, and frankly Auckland’s system fails in this regards.
Personally i never felt more free than when i lived in London and didn’t have to own a car. I didn’t have to worry about traffic or finding park or servicing the bloody thing paying for petrol,warrents,regos, insurance or repairs. Also if i was out somewhere and decided to have a few beers i could, plus i could sit on the tube and read a newspaper or magazine and listen to music and just relax. That for me was convenient.
I’ve never found cars that convenient, in Auckland i’ve just found them to often be a nessesity because of how this city has been planned,I agree I think often people in Auckland (particularly those who have not experienced anuything else) confuse that nessesity with convienience. This city has been planned around cars so of course for many people they will be the only option for getting around.
Given the option i find fast, regular extensive public transport far more convienient.
Good point Cam. Another interesting PT benefit is that YOU don’t have to worry about negotiating traffic. I remember a year or so ago I started catching a bus to work along a route I had previously driven each day. It was very relaxing that the bus driver, and not me, had to negotiate tricky right turns onto Mt Albert road at peak hour.
Having sold my car a couple of weeks ago I have a pretty good insight into their convenience in Auckland and haven’t found the change too dramatic but I have advantages others don’t have:
1. I work in the CBD
2. I live two minutes walk from a Dom Rd bus stop
3. I am fit and enjoy cycling
I find that you have to be a lot more organised and plan your day better but having let go I don’t really miss my car desperately…
When I first moved here (with a 1 year old boy) I didn’t have a car and I didn’t need it either (admittedly I lived and worked in the CBD so walking and the Link bus were enough).
Then we decided that we needed more space so we went out west … still without a car. Actually we didn’t have a car for almost 2 years living in Waitakere. 15 min walk to the train (when the trains used to run on time) and a bus stop 3 minutes from my doorstep (and I’m talking walking time no driving time as appears to be the norm).
When we finally caved and got a car was when my 2nd son arrived … it was not the accessibility of the buses (which is improving) or the appaling routes (did you know that it takes 25minutes to go from Parrs Park to Glen Eden by bus … if it wasn’t uphill it would take me 15 min to walk!) but it was the actual destinations. There was NO bus to go to the midwife. I needed 2 buses to get to the hospital and doing that with 1 kid in a pram and another one in my arms was a bit much… talk about convenience!
I agree with the personal freedom thing Cam, since moving to an inner Melbourne suburb (with an eight-line rail interchange four minutes walk from my house and a grid of tram lines on three sides) three months ago I have never felt more free in my travel arrangements. I just pay my $29 weekly pass each week and I have no worries. No gas stations, no parking, no insurance to rego etc. I actually borrowed my brothers car for two weeks while he was in NZ not long ago, after the first drive in city traffic it sat in the carport for the rest of the fortnight!
In my situation near the CBD where traffic congestion is epidemic and public transport is turn-up-and-go in every direction it is simply far easier, quicker and cheaper to forgo the car completely. Another factor is the fact I have a supermarket, department store, medical clinic, video store, various shops and a variety of cafes and bars at the top of my street, I can take care of my day to day needs quite comfortably with a few minutes walk. I always giggle a little when I see people driving in from the suburbs to park in my street to get to the local bars and cafes. The walk from their carpark to the cafe is further than the walk from my house, let alone the drive they must have made first!
In Auckland I always had a car, since I was 15 years old FFS! It would probably be the same if I lived in a fringe suburb of Melbourne too I imagine.
Just to clarify, I don’t have a car either – my post was being a bit of an advocatus diaboli post, raising some of the advantages of a car – which are as much psychological / social as they are real in some situations.
In Hong Kong, owning a car is considered a luxury item. Many people who can afford a car do not buy one, because public transport is ‘convenient’.
“Convenience” is defined within the framework of the cultural landscape. The cultural landscape is shaped to a significant degree by the historical landscape.
Cities and/or countries with a long history of living cheek-by-jowl also have incredibly long histories of clustering into walkable communities and centuries long histories of connecting these communities with “public” transport, albeit frequently these were private enterprises catering to a popular, therefore “public” demand, whether by canal, stagecoach or railway. Within that cultural landscape PT not only makes economic sense it also is intrinsicly “convinient”.
Cities and/or countries whose urban history really only begins after the invention of the bicycle have an entirely different historical landscape shaping their cultural landscape and, not surprisingly, the motorcar has persisted as the embodiment of “convenience” well beyond the point where it is actually able to deliver actual convenience.
(I think I’ll include that in my essay assignment “The Cultural Landscape of the St. Albans Motorway Corridor” (LASC101))
There are some situations in which PT cannot compete with private vehicles. If I want to go to the Coromandel for a holiday, for example, public transport is never going to be a realistic option (unless the Coromandel itself becomes a city, which is of course undesirable). Public transport within and between cities can be excellent, and should of course be invested in, but private vehicles are always going to rule rural areas, and are thus a necessity for those who need or want to visit them.