Cars are rubbish for health. The trouble is, speed, shiny new wheels and Top Gear do still exert a strange attraction for rather too many of us…
Our love affair with a private bubble of transport has been blamed for anti-social sprawling suburbs, a rising tide of obesity, pollution, roads too dangerous for children to play – and war, as the rich nations fight over ever diminishing oil supplies.
But has the car had its day? A new book by Taras Grescoe Straphanger: saving our cities and ourselves from the automobile suggests it has. His optimistic travelogue of world cities where investment in public transport infrastructure has held back the seemingly relentless rise of the automobile argues that these are the sustainable cities. No longer the last resort of those too poor to drive, those metros, trams and buses of New York, Tokyo, Bogota, Paris and Moscow are, argues Grescoe, revitalising our cities and reconnecting their citizens with each other.
Recent articles from the UK suggest we too may be gradually falling out of love with the car. In our study of travel in London, central Londoners apologised for using their cars, and were quick to tout their commitment to ecology, health and sustainability. As one participant put it: ‘driving – it’s the new smoking’.
And in this moral economy, cycling has perhaps become the new driving – the only way for busy professionals to get about the city, speedily and independently, whilst efficiently boosting not only their health, but that of the planet. A sociologist Rachel Aldred, in a report titled “On the Outside: constructing cycling citizenship”, argues, cycling enables particular kinds of citizenship to be enacted, allowing the cyclist to meet commitment to themselves and the social collective. As she puts, this is an alternative ‘view from outside the car’.
But before we get carried away with the end of automobility, and imagine the immanent arrival of pollution free cities with healthy cycling commuters waving at kids cheerfully playing football on the Euston Road, we should remember that only around 2% of trips are currently made by bike in the UK. For most of the country, the car remains the only viable mode for getting where you need to go. And even if Londoners thought that cycling was the most moral way to get around – they still thought cyclists themselves were largely smug bastards who terrorised pedestrians.
So, a way to go – but recent sociological studies at least suggest we are all now thinking about how our travel affects not just our own health, but everyone else’s as well.
4 Responses
Ewen Speed on Sep 14, 2012
It’s interesting that your post talks about the rise of cycling amongst professionals and commuters. For me this taps into an interesting sociological aspect of the ‘rise’ of cycling. The boom corresponds with an embourgeoisement or ‘middle class-ification’ of cycling. Jack Thurstone was talking about this last week on the Bike Show. He argued that if you go into any cycling club, there would be a clear demographic split, club members over 50 would be working class, and club members under 50 would be middle class. This is perhaps an over-simplification, but it demonstrates a clear shift in the cycling demographic. This shift brings with it attendant shifts in the status, prestige (and consequent cost) of cycling. Thurstone gave the example of a family with three kids who all want to ride at a competitive level – at current prices this would mean finding £2400 for three racing standard bikes, and that’s just for this season. Whether it’s about the bike or the cyclist is another debate, but this figure clearly demonstrates that cycling is more and more accessible for people with more disposable income, and less and less accessible for people with less disposable income. Given the history of the bike as a predominantly working class mode of transport, (see Tim Hilton’s ‘One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers’) this current ‘boom’ raises a lot of interesting questions about class, mobility, and if you’ll pardon the pun, class mobility. It is interesting that one of the stated aims of the Bradley Wiggins Foundation is “to provide equipment or facilities to allow participation in sport as an individual, through clubs, local communities or schools”. In this context it is important that access to cycling, as a sport, as a means of exercise, or as a means of getting to work does not become the sole preserve of those who can afford it.
Graham Martin on Sep 14, 2012
In your study, though, was there any discernible relationship between car drivers’ self-proclaimed ecological consciousness / apologies for car use and their actual behaviour? While it’s pretty un-PC not to profess some environmental credentials, it feels like there’s a bit of a disconnection between stated views and actual activities. This paper http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01441641003736556 makes a similar point in relation to air travel.
Of course, it’s unfair to make this the sole responsibility of the individual, and as you say, collective investment in the infrastructure is surely the biggest determinant of cycle use.
Judith Green on Sep 14, 2012
Good question – in London, like most of the UK, very few people actually cycle – and those that do are still more likely to be white, male and affluent (see Rebecca Steinbach’s paper http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/1179/ ) and (as always) what people say is not a guide to what people do – BUT we were struck with first how much ‘moral’ talk there was about transport, and second, by the differences between our data (in a city with a good public transport infrastructure) and those reported elsewhere, where the car still (reporedly) has high status. There may not be more people cycling, but there are certainly fewer driving – which does show what investing in infrastructure can do.
Ingrid on Oct 25, 2012
As a literary character he smoked 60 cigarettes a day but James Bond was last seen smoking on screen in 2002 (Die Another Day). I haven’t been able to find the details of the Aston Martin deal but his current taste for Heineken earns the film makers £28m in sponsorship. So, for me, the day James Bond sets off on his bike to save the world is the day that driving has become the new smoking!