Thornbury Wayfinders

Car Wars

Professor Scarlett McNally is hard on cars. Not only do they give out C02, but they also shed particulates from tyres, brake pads and the road surface, which work their way past your defences to compromise your health. Also, whilst sitting down is bad for you, sitting down while stressed behind the wheel of a car is even worse! Electric cars are not the answer either because their weight means they shed even more particulates.

The Walking Lobby can be and often is characterised as anti-car. Apart from Professor McNally’s remarks, Catherine Woodhead, CEO of Living Streets and Bristol Green Councillor, Ed Plowden both attacked Pavement Parking and Ed Plowden characterised Parking in general as an unproductive use of space. I think it was Lib Dem, Steven Williams who admitted that local authorities had become addicted to revenue from parking charges. Where Parking Charges are linked to creating a modal shift to public transport or other active travel, they may be justified, but they are difficult to forgive if there are no alternatives to driving and parking.

Pavement Parking is often linked to A-frames as an attack on the visually handicapped. But this argument is often played the other way round against pedestrianisation schemes. “My Granny needs to drive (or be driven) to the shops.” So pedestrianisation is an attack on the old. (This only works if Granny does not have a power chair or a mobility scooter – which work better on pedestrianised streets.)

Some people need to drive in order to work. Kyrby Brown argued that if she did not have a subsidised car to get to work, she would not be able to work and pay taxes, which make her nothing but a burden on the public purse. She was also sympathetic towards the disabled woman who succeeded in scuppering a liveable neighbourhood scheme. Kyrby said it was fear on the part of the disabled that made such people angry enough to attack such schemes.

Jodi Savickas, Associate Director in Movement and Place at AtkinsRealis had an answer in her 4 Cs: Complexities, Communication and Comfortable Change.

But there are other kinds of disability. And a voice from the floor pointed out that not everyone wanted to be involved with other people in a Shared Open Space. Many people only felt safe in their armoured boxes moving from one enclosed space to another. This disability can also lead to fear and hence anger and anti-social behaviour, if their daily solitary routine is disrupted.

Kiron Chatterjee, Professor of Travel Behaviour at the University of WoE had some interesting statistics, which seemed to show that the number of people engaging in Everyday Walking was going down over the past so many years, whilst the numbers of people involved in Leisure Walking was going up. I wondered whether Housing Policy, which seems increasingly to build Car Dependent Housing might account for this. I suggested he might get a post grad to check this out.

I wonder if he will?