Common Urban Myths About Transport

Myth: The motor car is the ultimate freedom machine

Fact: The 'freedom' promised by the motor car is largely illusory. In the 1950s, when roads were empty and people had a choice of alternatives, there might have been something to it. Not so today when car use is compulsory for most of the population and usually involves sitting in traffic jams.

Car dependence and urban sprawl has created a pervasive mythology, as planner Roberta Gratz notes:

Myths emerged to rationalise [urban sprawl]. Market forces shape everything. People love automobiles. Automobiles define freedom. Everyone wants a new house in the suburbs with a lawn. Old houses are out of fashion. No one wants to live in cities. Developers follow the people. You can't stop progress. And so on. All kernels of truth encased in beds of myth. Simplistically explained, conveniently ignored, totally underestimated, or craftily interpreted are the whole web of government and corporate actions that drive these trends, what environmentalist Henry Richmond....calls the tilt of existing public policy. Today, persistent myths get in the way of small cures.
---Cities Back from the Edge, p.145

The idea that cars define the very idea of freedom is quintessentially American, and the effect of that myth in that country is described by Gratz with reference to the social critic Lewis Mumford:

Lewis Mumford predicted in 1958 that Americans would discover that the highway program will, eventually, wipe out the very area of freedom that the private motorcar promised to retain for them. This warning has come to pass. Today, the car embodies the freedom to wait in traffic. Transportation choices hardly exist. Viable transit systems exist in only a few big cities, service is usually infrequent, inconvenient, and expensive, and is being drastically undermined by fare increases and service cutbacks. Gasoline is one of the few things that are cheaper today in real dollars than 20 years ago. Mass transit travel is many times more expensive. Development patterns make transit travel difficult, even for those who prefer it, and unavailable to most.
---Cities Back from the Edge, p. 163

Many of the things Gratz says about American cities also apply to Melbourne. There are many parts of our city, the outer suburbs in particular, where people are denied a free choice between transport modes. It is not that the residents of these suburbs have voluntarily chosen to drive everywhere; rather, the choice has been made for them by transport planners and other government bureaucrats who have systematically distorted transport choices in favour of the car. In present-day Melbourne it's almost impossible to believe that public transport could provide the same go-anywhere-anytime convenience that we associate with cars:

Roads bring freedom for the individual
Imagine if the advocates of public transport had gained control of our communication system. Instead of picking up the phone whenever you liked to call whomever you liked, you would have to assemble with umpteen others at set times at the closest public phone box where you and they would make a phone call to another public phone box at which all those being rung would have to assemble at another set time....
---Chris Curtis, The Age (Business), 13 February 2006

And yet public transport does compete with the car in many cities of the world, some of them (like Toronto or Vancouver) very much like Melbourne. Chris Curtis' cynical take on public transport is actually a fair comment on car pools, but bears no resemblance to public transport in the places where it's actually well used. Public transport planners in these cities understand all too well that the freedom of the individual to travel as they please is paramount, and must be provided for.

Our customer wishes to set off from a place of his own choosing, travel quickly, comfortably, cheaply and in safety to his destination, and arrive there at a time set by himself; nothing else will do.
---H. Brandl, Zurich City Transport Authority, 1990

Such respect for people's freedom to travel is hard to come by in Melbourne, except when road-building is under discussion. As a result, many outer suburban 'battlers' suffer financial stress because so much of their household income is spent running cars. A 2006 study by the Victorian Council of Social Service found that residents of the public transport-poor Shire of Yarra Ranges spend $233 on average travelling to and from work, while those of the relatively public transport-rich City of Yarra spend just $139. In a very real sense, outer suburbanites are less free than their privileged inner-urban cousins who can manage without a second or third car.

There is no such thing as a 'free market' in transport; no transport system can function unless it is facilitated, even subsidised, by governments. This is as true of private road transport as it is of public rail transport. The CityLink project, though notionally built and operated by a private company, would not have been possible without $800 million in government subsidy via tax concessions (in 1996 dollars). The annual subsidy for public transport throughout Victoria pales in comparison.

The bulk of car advertising draws on the cars-mean-freedom myth, thereby strengthening it. Cars are pictured travelling on empty country highways, without a single other vehicle in sight. The car is portrayed as giving its owner the freedom to go wherever one likes, whenever one likes, and carry whatever one likes, without concerning oneself with personal safety or exposure to the elements. The rhetoric evokes an ideal that has not existed since the 1950s. It disguises the everyday limits to this freedom in the form of traffic congestion, limited parking space, road rules, risk of accidents and the like, all of which pit drivers against one another in the daily commuter rat race. By contrast, public transport users need not concern themselves with any of these problems. 'Freedom to take charge of one's travel' means little when one is stuck in a traffic jam.

As car culture becomes pervasive, even the time-saving benefits of car travel are eroded, as commentator Wolfgang Sachs points out:

Right from the beginning, [the car] had been hailed as the ultimate time-saver, marvellously shortening the time to reach a desired destination. What has happened to that promise? Indeed, contrary to popular belief - and this is proven by a multitude of studies from many countries - car drivers do not spend less time in transit than non-drivers. Nor are drivers more frequently on the move; they leave the house slightly less often than non-drivers. Where has the time gained been lost? Those who buy a car don't take a deep breath and rejoice in extra hours of leisure, but they travel to more distant destinations. The powers of speed are converted not in less time on the road but in more kilometres. The time gained is reinvested into longer distances. And as time goes by, the spatial distribution of places changes and long distances become the norm. People still go to school, to work, to the cinema, but are obliged to travel longer routes. As a consequence, for instance, the average German citizen today travels 15,000 km a year as opposed to only 2,000 km in 1950.
---Wolfgang Sachs, Why Speed Matters

Motoring freedom, moreover, is purchased at the cost of curtailing the freedom of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users (ostensibly for their own safety), as well as those without the means to drive, including the young, elderly, and less affluent members of society. Indeed, almost everyone is affected by the pervasive pollution and noise which is a necessary condition of the freedom we enjoy as motorists. Even those who most sincerely believe that cars make us freer citizens can hardly fail to see the down side when they take to the streets as pedestrians, breathe the air on a Smog Alert day or install quadruple-glazed windows in their house.

We're in danger of creating a 'bubble wrap generation' of children - kids who are driven everywhere, who'll never know what it's like to explore their neighbourhood and play in the streets.
---Dr Rob Moodie, VicHealth chief executive officer, Moreland Leader, 30 May 2005

Perhaps the most obvious limit to the motorist's freedom, however, is the fact that cars need fuel in order to go anywhere. The inescapable consequences of this fact subject the motorist to yo-yo petrol prices and thraldom to the oil industry. Talk of 'freedom' in this regard hides an inescapable dependence on a vast support structure comprising oil refineries, tanker fleets, service stations, repair shops, road crews, traffic police, emergency services, investment in road projects, manufacturing, licensing, registration, insurance, and all who work in these areas. Seen this way, even a bicycle permits greater freedom. The freedom of public transport users is at least on a par with motorists, and public transport users aren't burdened with the responsibility of driving their vehicles!

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© 2007 Public Transport Users Association Inc. (PTUA), Victoria, Australia. ABN 83 801 487 611.
General copying and distribution on a non-commercial basis is permitted subject to proper acknowlegement.
Authorised by Tony Morton, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, for the PTUA

Last modified: 13 February 2006