Leave the car at home tomorrow?
Gothenburg city, where I live, has a challenge going on this week, where they encourage their own employees, as well as the rest of us, to leave our cars at home and take the bus, bike or walk to work for one day. The argument goes that the traffic situation in our town (where traveling by car has increased by 350% since the sixties while traveling by public transportation nearly hasn’t increased at all) cannot be built away, instead it is us, the citizens, who have to fix it by choosing alternative ways to commute.
Apart from the leave-your-car-at-home-challenge there is also an information campaign going on about our short travel habits, with the purpose to encourage people to consider the alternatives, like walking or taking your bike for example. According to the campaign 46% of all travels that are 4 km or less are done by car in Gothenburg. There are also several other projects going on with the purpose to inform people on alternative ways to commute.
A part of me think that this is a great initiative - if more of us stopped being so lazy and tried to find alternative ways then the traffic situation as well as the environment would certainly improve. Especially when it comes to the short travels, for example driving your children to soccer practice or driving to the grocery store etc, I think most of us could all improve a lot.
On the other hand I don’t believe that we can fix this problem by simply informing and/or encouraging people to use the available infrastructure. The reason why people don’t use public transportation in this city isn’t because they’re unaware of it - it’s because it sucks. Unless you work and/or live very near the city center (when it actually works just fine), using the public transportation system often takes twice the time (or more) than taking the car. If commuting by car takes 1,5 hours instead of 3 hours a day by bus/train, of course people will take the car. Not only is the public transportation system highly ineffective, the whole city seems to have been built for cars. It’s really more of an city planning issue than merely a traffic planning issue.
Perhaps the city’s new program for public transportation, called K2020, will be an improvement. But it will take a long time before we will see the results and there are things that could be done in the meantime. For example to abolish the parking spot regulations (sv: parkeringsnormen) so that more and cheaper apartments can be built where public transportation is already available, and making the trams more effective by reducing the number of stops.
But if you, like me, do have the opportunity to let your car stand still tomorrow, then I really encourage you to do so, no matter where you live. Perhaps next week as well. :-)
