Street Talks with Rachel Aldred – The Case Against the Car Brought to you by Movement for Liveable London - movementforliveablelondon.com

1. 1
THE CASE AGAINST THE
CAR
STREET TALKS 5TH FEB
Rachel Aldred
Rachelaldred.org

2. Content
2
 The transition to the car
 Meanings of the car
 What are mass motorised societies like?
 Inequalities
 Violence
 Enclosure
 Privilege
 Futures beyond the car?

3. How I got here
3

4. How we got here
Billion passenger km, cars, UK
800
700
600
500
400 – In 1950, under 2 million
private cars were licensed in
Britain - 1 per 20 people
300
– By 1970 it was nearly 10
million - 1 per 5 people
200
– By 2002 it was almost 25
million - getting on for 1 per
2 people
100
0 4

5. Pre-war commuting
5
From the1890s-1930s walking to work was
the most common experience. In the early
twentieth century, distances to work remained
relatively short in towns below 100,000
people. There, in the twenty-year period
before World War Two around two-thirds of
people walked or cycled to work.
In London, by 1900, most people already used public
transport.
Pooley, C. and Turnbull, J. (2000) Modal choice and modal change: the journey
to work in Britain since 1890, Journal of Transport Geography, 8, 11-24

6. Commuting today
6
Over the past hundred years, commuting distances
have quadrupled
In the 1890s, the mean commuting distance was 2.5
miles, 100 years later it was 10 miles
(NB: this overestimates the ―average commute‖)
Over the same period the mean commuting time has
only doubled, this has stabilised since the 1940s
Two-thirds of all commuting trips are by car
―In general...women have tended to use both slower
and more communal forms of transport
(buses, trams) than men who have had access to
faster and more individualised means of
commuting (cycling, cars).‖ (Pooley et al, 2005,
p.117)

7. The car as system
7
 John Urry: the car system marks a break from
previous mass transport modes -
 It is a complex system that becomes part of people‘s
everyday lives; we can‘t opt out of it
 It frees people from a ―public timetable‖ and from
passengering
 It allows them to become modern, mobile individuals – and
to travel much further on a daily basis than before
 Yet it also alienates them from their environment in
distinctive ways
 Environments (and cultures) are rebuilt around the car and
the assumption of car access

8. Meanings of the car
8
 Society
 Modernity
 Consumerism
 Individualism
 Democracy…
 People
 Symbolising in/equality, hierarchy etc.
 But also e.g. transitions, adulthood…

9. 9

10. Early 60s vision: ‗A Central London block‘, p.178, Traffic in Towns

11. The car/roads as symbolising (new)
society
11
 For Transport Minister Boyd-Carpenter in
1955, motorways had to be free at the point of use
because…
 ―the motorways would act as potent symbols of the
Conservative government‘s commitment to the
modernisation of Britain […] the correct message would be
conveyed of a government prepared to service the needs
of a consumer boom‖ (Dudley & Richardson 2000: 73)
 ‗Only when road building as a policy was connected to
the policy idea of popular consumerism did the
programme really take off politically.‘ (Dudley and
Richardson 2000: 110)
 i.e. not road building as economic/political interests alone –
and it depended on popular consumerist values as well as
personal mobility values
 Left the roads lobby vulnerable in the 1970s and in the
1990s

12. New People: Free and Mobile and
12
Airy
“What I like […] about motoring is
the sense that it gives one of
lighting accidentally, like a voyager
who touches another planet with
the tip of his toe, upon scenes
which would have gone on, have
always gone on, will go
on, unrecorded, save for this
chance glimpse.” … “Soon we
shall look back at our pre-motor
days as we do now at our days in
the caves” …“the motor is turning
out the joy of our lives, an
additional life, free & mobile & airy
alongside our usual stationary
industry.”
 Virginia Woolf, 1927

13. Power and mobility
13
 Paul Virilio - the industrial revolution installed
speed as the key social principle
 E.g. production lines
 E.g. faster obsolescence
 E.g. computer-aided trading
 In this system, according to Virilio, people
can‘t afford not to be mobile e.g. following
jobs
 The faster and more powerful push the
slower, less powerful out of the way
 And are able to not move when they don‘t want
to…

14. 14 Average distance travelled by mode and household income: Great Britain, 2011
Walk / bicycle Car/van Local and non-local buses Rail Other
12,000
536
10,000
1,218
233
Miles per person per year
8,000
570
256
394 552
6,000 374 351
267 8,289
4,000 403
333 6,723
487
5,468 5,397
2,000 3,727
2,722
0
Lowest real Second level Third level Fourth level Highest real All income
income level income level levels

15. The car as a
positional good
15
Cars are ‗like castles or villas by the sea:
luxury goods invented for the exclusive
pleasure of a very rich minority, and
which in conception and nature were
never intended for the people. Unlike the
vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the
bicycle, which retain their use value
when everyone has one, the car, like a
villa by the sea, is only desirable and
useful insofar as the masses don't have
one. That is how in both conception and
original purpose the car is a luxury
good...‘
Andre Gorz, Social Ideology of the
Motor-Car, available at
http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/
misc/gorz.html

16. Chained and Stuck and
16
Concrete

17. Gorz – mass car ownership destroys the
city, creating the need for escape then satisfied
by the car …
17

18. And on a global scale…
18
Country Name 2009
Iceland 644
New Zealand 603
Italy 596
Germany 510
Spain 478
Sweden 462
United Kingdom 460
United States 439
Kuwait 412
Denmark 380
Hungary 301
Russian Federation 233
Mexico 191
World 125
Singapore 121
Turkey 95
Algeria 74
Indonesia 45
China 34
Kenya 13
India Cars per 1,000 people, selected countries: World 12
Bangladesh Bank; 2
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.VEH.PCAR.

19. UK household car ownership
19
Source: Transport Trends, available at
http://www.dft.gov.uk/162259/162469/221412/190425/220778/trends2007a.pdf

20. 20 Household car availability by household income quintile: Great Britain, 1995/97 and
2010
No car/van One car/van Two or more cars/vans
100
4
8 12
90 17
26
30 39 35
80
49 47
53
70 45 40
60 45
Percentage
50
53
40 47
49
66 41
30 44 38
47 49
20 38
10 20 18
12 12 9
7
0
Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest
real level level level real real level level level real
income income income income
level level level level
1995/97 2010

21. 21

22. The car as a
positional good (2)
22
‗[T]he car, like a villa by the sea, is
only desirable and useful insofar as
the masses don't have one. That is
how in both conception and original
purpose the car is a luxury good. And
the essence of luxury is that it cannot
be democratised. If everyone can
have luxury, no one gets any
advantages from it. On the
contrary, everyone
diddles, cheats, and frustrates
everyone else, and is
diddled, cheated, and frustrated in
return.‘
e.g. rat running
Andre Gorz, as before
Enclosure of public space – but still

23. Mr. Walker and Mr. Wheeler
23

24. The mind of the driver
24
 Böhm et al – individualist AND
systemic nature of automobility
 Attitudes to other
drivers, invisibility of / hostility to
support systems
 Externalisation – congestion
experienced as imposed, yet is
imposed on others; danger
imposed on others
 Need for regulation / generates
demand to be exempt
 Consequences for political
debate (& the economy)
 e.g. GMTIF, green streets vs
parking
 Generates tension in right wing
thinking on car

25. Selling care: privatised families
25

26. Selling care #2
26

27. Gender and car access
27

28. Selling independence:
28
danger and rebellion
1987 – Changes (Volkswagen Golf)
c.f. Paul Gilroy‘s article in Car

29. Normalisation: privilege and
29
in/visibility
 Drivers as the ‗unmarked category‘
 c.f.
other dimensions of inequality
 Unmarked categories & Others (who must adjust)
 Becomes prominent when needed
 The ‗hard pressed driver‘
 But most of the time is an assumption
 E.g. ‗parking‘
 Cars also shift between privileged and invisible
 E.g. advertising/heritage

30. Still cathedrals of our time?
30
 ‗I think that cars today
are almost the exact
equivalent of the great
Gothic cathedrals: I
mean the supreme
creation of an
era, conceived with
passion by unknown
artists, and consumed in
image if not in usage by
a whole population
which appropriates
them as a purely
magical object.‘
(Barthes, 1957)

31. The car and social theory
31
‗strangely the car is rarely
discussed in the
‗globalisation
literature‘, although its
specific character of
domination is more
systemic and awesome
in its consequences than
what are normally viewed
as constitutive
technologies of the
global, such as the
cinema, television and
especially the computer‘
Urry, J. (2006) ‗The System of Automobility‘ Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4-
(Urry 2006: 25)
5), pp. 25-39.

32. 32

33. 33

34. 34
From TfL‘s Traffic Modelling Guide
v3

35. Inequalities #1: Who are the
35
Others?
 People with lower incomes have lower access to
transport and lower levels of mobility
 And are disproportionately harmed by others‘
mobility
 through infrastructure (e.g. road-building)
 traffic harms (air pollution, injuries, etc.)
 TfL's Deprivation and Road Safety report found that
pedestrians are three times more likely to be injured due to
a road collision if they are from one of the most deprived
areas of London, compared to those who come from the
least deprived/more affluent areas
 Source: Deprivation and Road Safety in London, TfL 2008

36. Constrained choices: infrastructure &
culture
36

37. Daniel Duckfield arrest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8225472.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8225472.stm
37

38. Not ‗ideal pedestrians‘? #1
38
 Older people are less likely to fit the ‗normal
pedestrian‘ image imposed by motorisation
– e.g. slower walking speeds, poor vision
 They have low rates of car access, although
this is rising
 They are particularly affected by barriers to
walking or cycling, e.g. poor condition of
pavements, lack of subjectively safe cycle
routes.
 Nearly half of all pedestrians killed on the
roads are over 60.
 The casualty rate for pedestrians rises from 60
years old and doubles for those aged 80 plus. A
collision that may not injure a young person may
well injure an older person.

39. Not ‗ideal pedestrians‘? #2
39
 Much work on how young people are affected by
growing numbers of vehicles on the road
 See ―One False Move‖; new PSI report on children‘s
mobility
 Like older people, young people don‘t fit the
assumed ―normal pedestrian‖ figure (who walks
quickly and always watches traffic)
 They‘ve suffered a loss of independent mobility
compared with the early post-war period when
there were few motor vehicles on the road
 This is aggravated by income inequalities
 Leads to shrinking of ‗home space‘ – ‗I‘d drop litter
in your street…‘ – see Putnam

40. The car as disabling
40
 Under the social model of disability, disabilities are seen as
resulting from inequalities structured into the surrounding
environment, disproportionately affecting people with specific
impairments
 E.g. failure to provide wheelchair access
 Mass motorisation can be seen as disabling – it generates
environments with which most people – as imperfect
pedestrians (or cyclists) – cannot cope
 E.g. pedestrian crossings that don‘t allow enough time for 15% of
users
 E.g. assumption that children must learn not to be children while
outside (despite evidence that under 10s can‘t judge speed/distance
above 20mph)
 Freund and Martin on alertness
 See Aldred & Woodcock ‗Transport: Challenging Disabling
Environments‘, 2008, in Local Environment

41. 41

42. Do we hate children because they can‘t
drive?
42

43. The car and violence
43
 The most well established
environmental determinant
of levels of violence is the
scale of income differences
between rich and poor. More
unequal societies tend to be
more violent. (Richard
Wilkinson; co-author of The
Spirit Level etc.)
 Car dominated societies fit into
this picture of being violent and
unequal; although in this case
the violence has a different

44. Car nightmares
44

45. 45

46. The victims:
Invisible and At Risk
46

48. 48

49. Learning to fear
49
 ‗Sewing Machine‘, 1973
 A Minute Is Too Late

50. Selected References
50
 Steffen Böhm et al, eds. (2006) Against Automobility: Social
Scientific Analyses of a Global Phenomenon (Sociological
Review Monographs)
 Bob Davis (1993) Death on the Streets: the mythology of
road safety, Leading Edge Press
 Kingsley Dennis and John Urry (2009) After the Car. Polity
Press.
 Peter Freund and George Martin (1996) The Ecology of the
Automobile. Black Rose Books.
 Tobias Kuhnimhof et al (2012): Men Shape a Downward
Trend in Car Use among Young Adults—Evidence from Six
Industrialized Countries, Transport Reviews, 32:6, 761-779
 Matthew Paterson (2007) Automobile Politics: ecology and
cultural political economy, CUP
 Winfried Wolf (1996) Car Mania: a critical history of
transport, Pluto