TRANSPORT IMPACTS

I want everyone to know that I am no saint when it comes to being a sustainable transportee. I have been in many cars and planes, eaten food from other parts of the world, fallen in love with someone on the other side of the world and on one occasion I have even flown business class. I am not here to preach, I just want to make you think and provide you with information to ensure you are making the most sound decisions when it comes to travel.

I thought I’d tell you a little bit about why I came to feel so passionately about improving the sustainability of transport……

I guess I have always wanted to improve the world, just as I think deep down we all do (I guess people just have different perspectives on what “improve” means). I’d watched captain planet so I had a little guidance that luting and polluting was not the way. I started a degree in chemical engineering thinking that I was going to be able to improve the relationship between humans and the environment by changing the way we exploit its resources and its energy. So I sat through many hours of heat transfer and fluid mechanics hoping it would all make sense in the end.

Meanwhile, I found myself spending up to an hour a day getting to University - A train ride and a fifteen minute walk either side. I never contemplated buying a car because it just seemed so impractical and expensive - parking, petrol, worrying about crashing into someone and then finding a job to pay for it. Besides, I found myself enjoying my train rides. I would get some exercise, meet up with friends and I knitted a huge coat for myself and lots of beanies for everyone else - by the way knitting and driving is highly dangerous. My travel was a nice part of the day even when the trains were two hours late, when I had to confront the evil transit offices or when I sprinted all the way up the ramp to train only to hear them blow the whistle just as I got to the platform.

Then it happened - talk of getting rid of the rail line. First reaction was pure shock - they don’t go ripping up the roads, why would they rip up the railway. Then I thought about it, almost everyone I knew still living in Newcastle was buying a car and it was true the train was often very empty. Maybe it wasn’t fair that they keep the rail just because I loved using it. This got me thinking - I needed to look further than just what was happening - it was important to understand a million other things that different transport options provide- the equality, the opportunity, the safety, the capacity, the optimal efficiency, the culture etc. etc. I joined the campaign to save the rail line, making banners, handing out flyers and getting petitions signed.

I finished Uni and freaking about the idea of working for a big polluting company I skipped the country and decided to travel for a year (yes I flew). I became interested in how different people were traveling in different parts of the world and what this expressed about them. In cape town, the white population would get into their capsules (often SUVs) and drive from door to door. They wouldn’t interact with anyone until they reached their destination. The black population would get into their minivan taxis which would be held together with tape and string sometimes. It would be squishy and you would all have to contort yourself to find your wallet to pay. Payment was done by everyone passing their money to the passenger who was next to the driver - they would then be expected work out the change for everyone using mental arithmetic (which most people with computer access can only dream of), the money would then get passed back to the respective passengers.

Some of my other traveling experiences in Africa included

• being whisked onto moving matatus (like minivan taxis) while carrying my twenty kilo pack - by the way matatus are a phenomenon of colour, crazy design, music systems to knock your socks off and accessories to go
• waiting for three hours for a matatu to fill up (they tricked me into thinking it was almost full but then I came to discover that they put some non-traveling friends there to make it look like it’s almost full)
• catching a boat across lake victoria with some very curious locals
• bicycle taxis
• walking - lots of walking in the heat and humidity
• overnight bus rides in which would hook your feet and hands on to any “solid” object to try to keep yourself from hitting the roof as it bumps along the road

Anyone who has been to a non-westernised country is bound to have had similar experiences. The point is, the way people got around was sometimes an adventure, sometimes an expression and sometimes just a plain death wish. Sometimes it brought people together, and sometimes not. I thought maybe the Australian transport system could do with a little dose of this (without the death wish part).

Next stop was Europe. Here I saw the efficiency of Scandinavia, the village feel of Eastern Europe and I fell in love with riding around Paris. This last point was something big for me, because before that year, I had never really ridden a bike. Arriving in a Parisien suburb to work as an Au Pair (like a nanny), I was asked to cycle the kids to school. I told them about my lack of confidence and so I started spending my free time in the woods nearby trying to get this two wheeled object to stay upright and go where I wanted it to. Slowly, slowly I started to progress. By the time I moved into an apartment in Paris with two bike enthusiasts, I was semi-confident.

The first time I rode in Paris was going to a gig on the other side of town with a guy named Thierry - he was under strict instructions to only ride on the footpath with me, which led to us going along a very narrow illegal “footpath” between the Seine and an expressway. On the way home, he completely forgot my instructions and took me along Boulevard Hausseman (a four lane major road in Paris) and around Place de Madeleine. My next parisian adventure was with a guy who supposedly loved me but decided that going around the Arc de triomphe would be a good idea (this is a five lane round about). Surprisingly after this experience, I was still alive, and even more surprisingly, I was still in love with this man who had a death wish for me.

The point is I got thrown into the world of cycling and soon I was loving it. It beat the metro, I got to see the world as I passed through it and I got to be a part of it. I admired the cyclists of Paris, there were the beautiful, the poor, the funky, the old, the young, the suave, the student type, the business type and they all expressed this as they rode along. I have since moved back to Australia and I still love cycling - I have to admit, it’s a little different, with a lot less fancy clothes, bikes and hair, and a lot more lycra and sweat.

So, I realized that while improving technologies through my chemical engineering might be able to save some energy or resources, the world of transport was so much more complicated. How we travel expresses so much, affects us so much and shapes our world in many ways. A technological fix just doesn’t seem to be nearly enough. So, I undertook a masters in transport and sustainable development while I was in Paris and now I have decided to keep going along this line.

One thing you should know about me, is that I am open for ideas, or for you to share your experiences, I would love to hear any stories about how you travel, your perspective on different ways of traveling or anything that moves you. If enough people are interested I will set up a page so that you can share these stories with everyone.