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Bicycle Shame
Alan Durning, Sightline
You don’t have to go farther than Hollywood to see one reason Bicycle Neglect is so rampant in North America. Consider the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The middle-aged protagonist, obsessed with video games and action figures, seems stuck in early adolescence. The film spends two hours lampooning him for being emasculated, immature, not a real man. His vehicle? A bike. (You can almost hear the schoolyard snickers.)
To be a successful adult, apparently, you have to drive. Cycling is for children; cycling is for losers. In this view, it’s fitting that the pinnacle of the sport of cycling is the Tour de France. (Implied snicker about France as a symbol—unfair, of course—of all that’s cowardly, effeminate, and weak.)
Call this Bicycle Shame.
…In the imagery that’s typically invoked, real people—regular people, who work real jobs and raise real families—travel by regular means. They drive. They have no other choice. (See this and a recent example.)
These cultural associations are damnably hard to counteract, because their roots are emotional, even sociological. They have to do with in-groups and out-groups; with status, prestige, and identity. Overcoming them, therefore, is as much about creating new associations—or strengthening alternative ones—as it is about counterargument.
(25 July 2007)
Make your mark and ground the growth of aviation
Claire Fauset, The Guardian
Next month’s Camp for Climate Action will put Heathrow airport at the frontline of direct action on climate change. Hundreds of people, including many from the local community, will be camping there.
The industry calls its planned airport expansion “sustainable development”, but it seems to be contradicting all the demands of science and common sense: the UK-wide proposals are equivalent to a new Heathrow every five years. At this rate, aviation will by 2050 account for more than the government’s target of 60% emissions reduction. That is before we turn on a single light bulb.
The government is facilitating this growth. The UK aviation sector already enjoys a unique zero-tax regime on everything from fuel to tickets to in-flight meals. With the majority of flights being taken by the wealthiest 20% of the population, the rest of us are paying for the perks of the rich, and the cruel effects will be felt by the poorest people in the world.
As individuals, we are not off the hook. It is time to take responsibility. More than 150,000 people will die this year from climate change.
Claire Fauset is an environmental activist. More on the Camp for Climate Action at climatecamp.org.uk
(25 July 2007)
The carbon cost of building and operating light rail
Emory Bundy, Crosscut
Rail mass transit is supposed to be good for the environment. But a leading critic of Sound Transit’s Link light rail project offers metrics that suggest the environmental costs are much higher than those of more vanpools, more carpools, more buses, and, particularly, more bicycling.
…the data make the energy performance of rail transit appear better than it really is. The reason is urban rail in the U.S. primarily is used in New York City, where it’s more fuel-efficient than elsewhere, due to the packed subways. Here, the local rail energy consumption average is inferior to New York’s.
The most cost-effective and energy-efficient transportation option, it turns out, would be making more productive use of existing capabilities. There is a lot of spare capacity on King County Metro Transit buses and those of other local agencies, even on a large share of the rush hour routes.
…But the greatest harm to the environment and the public comes when you calculate the lost opportunities. Much could be done to move people and reduce congestion in energy-efficient, cost-effective, health-enhancing ways, but Sound Transit is sucking up a huge share of the fiscal oxygen.
(25 July 2007)
On the rails to nowhere
Staff, The Age
Hundreds of people walk past it each day, just one of the 100 blue fire doors that dot Central Station’s labyrinth. Push it open, and there lies the unfulfilled promise of Sydney’s phantom rail network: platforms 26 and 27, standing cold and abandoned, with no tracks, no trains and not one passenger.
These are not the only ghosts in Sydney’s once-great rail system. There are rough-hewn tunnels under North Sydney and St James, and a desolate half-built viaduct over the Nepean River. Millions of dollars in best-laid plans now gather dust in bundles in the State Government back office. ..
Harper says the Olympics shut the gate on rail spending “by $120 million per year – they cut investments in every form of infrastructure for 10 years and that is why nothing went ahead”.
In most cases the death knell was sounded by the cost-benefit analysis, an accounting tool that runs rings around the service principles of public transport.”You try and put a dollar value on all the benefits, which is shortening to and from work journeys, and you try and come back to a ratio that the government finds acceptable,” Lock said. The ratio has proven far more acceptable for toll roads under the current government – it has built four. ..
(21 Jun 2007)
