http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/11-5
Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2012 by Common Dreams
Democracy and the Ecology of Transportation
by John Buell
There is no question as to whether New York City and the surrounding
coastal communities of the tri-state area will be rebuilt. But will
these communities be reconstructed to serve the vast majority of
working people or the interests of the economic and cultural elites
that have dominated city life? Not surprisingly, those largely
responsible for the current crisis are once again eager to take
advantage of that crisis. Nonetheless, in the aftermath both of
Occupy Wall Street and Sandy citizens not only in the New York area
but also in many urban communities may not be as easily cowed and
manipulated as after 9/11. Transit will be an especially vital
concern.
In a recent article in Waging Nonviolence, Yotam Marom reports: "The
city government is already thinking about how it is going to spend
the enormous sumsthat will be poured into redevelopment in the near
future The disaster-capitalist developers are already out there
doing everything they can to ensure that they're the ones who get the
contracts. The fossil fuel companies, meanwhile, are hoping none of
us will put two and two together and hold them rightfully responsible
for the climate crisis; they are probably doing all the lobbying they
can to make sure the city rebuilds in a way that is as dependent on
fossil fuels as before."
Nonetheless, Sandy still has put the climate science deniers on the
defensive. The combination of continuing, deep recession and the
storm's vast destruction has opened up possibilities of
worker/environmental alliances that might reshape both our economy
and urban space.
Sandy raises questions of the role that urban land use and
transportation planning can play in reducing the incidence and
severity of monster storms and mitigating their effects. More
ecologically oriented planning has become a survival necessity.
Forty years ago Andre Gorz pointed out: "The automobile is the
paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its
own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed
by an ideological devaluation. The myth of the pleasure and benefit
of the car persists, though if mass transportation were widespread,
its superiority would be striking."
Unfortunately the ongoing economic crisis is being used as an
occasion not only to reduce transit subsidies but also to privatize
many public systems.
The ecological case for making public transit more accessible to more
communities is overwhelming. York University environmental studies
professor Stefan Kipfer reminds us: "Public mass transportation
produces five to 10 per cent of the greenhouse gases emitted by
automobile transportation. The latter is responsible for about a
quarter of global carbon emissions. In addition, public transit
consumes a fraction of the land used by individualized car
transportation (roads and parking space consume a third or more of
the land in North American urban regions). Not even counting other
negative effects of automobilization (congestion, pollution,
accidents, road kill, cancer, asthma, obesity, and so on), shifting
to transit will markedly reduce the social costs of economic and
urban development. It would also make a substantial contribution
toward global climate justice."
But the case for public transit is not only ecological. A compelling
case also must include more than critiques of the auto. Sandy can
become an occasion to promote and build modes of mobility, housing
and working, shopping and relating to our peers that are more humane
and satisfying. The harms and the risks attendant on global climate
change are real enough, but too little is made of the human costs of
our acquisitive, workaholic, auto-dependent society or of the kind of
satisfactions more sustainable alternatives might offer.
Kipfer argues that capitalism as a world system imposes both mobility
and immobility on the poor and working classes. Many poor in the
developing world are displaced and forced to migrate to first world
cities where they often then find themselves confined to urban
ghettoes with only marginal job prospects. Even the working and
middle class finds itself trapped in traffic jams and spending larger
sums on the auto. Road rage and various forms of scapegoating of
these urban minorities grow out of and intensify the travails of our
highways.
Are there ways to change this pathological dynamic? One way is to
make mass transportation more widespread by making it free. Free mass
transit would increase ridership among current users and add some new
ones. To those who would complain about the budgetary implications
Kipfer points out: "{T}he overall budgetary cost of transit budget
expansion can be measured against the typically much higher cost of
underwriting car-dominated transportation (road and infrastructure
budgets and tax policies which subsidize them). Second, from a
macro-economic and social efficiency point of view, public
transportation is far less expensive than the existing privatized
system."
Kifner recognizes that mass transit by itself is no panacea for
economic injustice or environmental degradation. Transit systems can
be designed to bypass poor neighborhoods or to serve only wealthy
suburbanites to the exclusion of decaying inner city bus service.
Such suburban-centered systems ultimately reinforce sprawl, the car
culture, and consumption- intense economies. Even the expansion of
transit systems to formerly underserved areas can become an occasion
to remove minorities and gentrify neighborhoods.
Unfortunately the ongoing economic crisis is being used as an
occasion not only to reduce transit subsidies but also to privatize
many public systems. Brooklyn based writer Willie Osterweil points
out that when transit is privatized the emphasis is upon immediate
returns. One consequence is reduction in services and cuts in transit
workers wages, thereby blunting support for these systems.
Ultimately the shape of the cities we reconstruct both after storms
like Sandy and-better yet-to mitigate the effects of such future
storms-- will depend on the coalitions that are build. Mainstream
corporate forces could see a commuter rail as an instrument primarily
of suburban real estate development. Or a right wing populist
coalition could treat transit, bike lanes, and walking paths as well
as the immigrants who use such systems as obstacles to the car.
Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker once achieved considerable
notoriety when, asked if he would like playing in New York City,
responded: "Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark
looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with
purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude
who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some
20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing... The biggest thing
I don't like about New York are the foreigners."
Against these visions, Kipfer argues for the social and ecological
benefits of broader democratic coalitions: "To win out against the
real, if contradictory pleasures of our car culture, transit has to
offer an exciting way of experiencing urban life. The beast so
central to capitalism as we know it, "homo automotivis" will only
die out with a renewed transit culture: being together with others in
anonymity and encountering fellow inhabitants not simply through
kinship and self-selected sub-cultures but through the unexpected
encounters of urban living. Fostering such an exuberant - curious,
open, and generous - public culture of being "in solitude without
isolation" will require that many of us relearn the capacity to live
outside privatized, atomized and sanitized environments.
This is not impossible. A recent survey by the Pembina Institute
reveals that most Greater Toronto Area residents would happily trade
their cars and bungalows for walking, transit and denser living
arrangements if they could afford it. After decades of worsening
congestion and 'world-class' commuting delays, Torontonians seem to
have become more intolerant of car-led sprawl and more receptive to
more open and public forms of urban life. This makes it possible to
think of a transit culture beyond the central city spaces where
transit is already a fact of life for the majority of inhabitants. If
not from personal experience, we know promising elements of living in
large cities from movies, literature, and music: the syncopated
rhythms of street life and mass transit, the promise of independence
from domestic life, the excitement of bustling crowds, the bouts of
unexpected camaraderie among strangers."
Such generous, exploratory sentiments cannot be assumed, as John
Rocker's hateful diatribe illustrates. Coalitions must be fostered
amidst different ethnicities, changing gender roles, rapid population
shifts, and diverse religions and life styles. This is a task that
requires great sensitivity on the part of activists along with a
willingness to acknowledge the gaps and limits of their own
fundamental religious or ideological beliefs. By the same token,
however, when transit expansion is part of a broader full employment
politics, the greater economic security thus assured can create a
climate less hospitable to exclusionary identities and rigid
ideologies.
Such achievements are never final. Coalitions on behalf of a
fundamental right to mobility can be expected to germinate new
challenges and visions. Nonetheless, arguably the receptivity to
change and difference Kipfer so eloquently describes can and has been
cultivated, and such cultivation is essential to the politics of
transit.
Discontent with the solipsistic, time consuming culture of the
automobile is no longer limited to residents of a highly cosmopolitan
city like Toronto. Even the world's most caraholic culture is
shifting. Bill McKibben recently pointed to a poll conducted by the
Natural Resources Defense Council that "suggests that [public
transit] would be popular with the public, 59 percent of whom believe
that the U.S. transportation system is "outdated, unreliable and
inefficient." Americans also want to be less dependent on cars.
Today, 55 percent prefer to drive less, but 74 percent say they have
no choice, and 58 percent would like to use public transportation
more often, but it is not convenient or available from their home or
work."
Osterweil wonders: "What would cities look like with bikes, buses and
even subways truly run by their citizens? For now, the question is
pie-in-the-sky, but public transit truly run by the public and for
the public would make cities more equitable, more green and less
prone to temperamental whims-of market forces and politicians alike.
If we start imagining and building these systems today, we can start
building the cities we'd like to see in the future."
Ultimately sustainable public transit systems require creating or
revitalizing public space and thus democracy itself. A more vibrant
democracy can help shape systems that in turn strengthen our
democratic commitments.
John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and
environmental issues. His most recent book, to be published by
Palgrave in August 2011, is "Politics, Religion, and Culture in an
Anxious Age". He may be reached at jbu...@acadia.net.
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