I realise that 'hate' is a strong word. That's why I'm using it. This essay makes a poor effort to be balanced and fair, but as you read, I hope you'll appreciate why this is so.
Cars are convenient. One can walk the short distance to where it is parked, unlock it, start the engine and drive to any destination that has a road leading to it and a parking spot at it at any time one wishes. And that's it! That was the argument for owning and driving cars.
Now imagine if you will, the money spent on cars instead spent on a mass-transit system. I going to help you out here by listing the types of expenses incurred. The average car owner pays road toll and parking fees during an average week. In that average week, petrol is bought. In an average year, a car is serviced and its registration and insurance are paid for. Also in that average year, a parking or traffic infringement fine will have to be paid. In Australia, approximately every ten years, a new car is bought. These are expected costs. What about the cost of the 1,600 Australians who die each years as a result of a road accident [1]? Or the 22,000 that are maimed each year [1]? Or the 200,000 that are injured each year [2]? Or the 600,000 reported traffic incidents each year [2]? The cost of insurance premiums does not cover all the damage that occurs in these incidents. Some of these can result in some big and fuzzy numbers that can be much larger than insurers are prepared to pay even if a claim be successful. Any insurance company will tell you that calculating the cost of a spinal cord injury is very difficult but usually very large. For example, the NRMA Compulsory Third Party insurance will pay $250,000 for an incident resulting in quadriplegia. But the real cost of care could easily be in the millions. It doesn't stop there: when there are large sums of money at stake and even the remotest chance at disputing the 'at-fault-driver', then lawyers take their seat at the table for their slice of the action. But take a close look at your policy and you may note that it wont even pay the full cost of even small incidents: the policy holder will always be out of pocket to some extent.
And yet there are even more costs that are we are only just learning how to calculate. Cars emit carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides (NO and NO2) that are contributing to the green house effect. Cars also emit particulates, especially diesel, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (incompletely combusted fuel) that adversely affect our health. Of course I can't leave out the cost of roads, traffic lights, tunnels, bridges and all the other infrastructure needed for the road transport system to work. The NRMA has calculated vehicle operating costs average at $169 per week [3] multiplied by fleet life of ten years [4] gives about $88,000. However this number only takes into consideration the capital cost, annual fixed costs, and average operating cost such as fuel, tire changes, service and repairs. So I can only guess at what the average of a single car truly costs our society and our environment and that guess is two hundred thousand dollars over its average life of ten years[5,6,7]. With 13,533,071 registered cars in Australia in 2004 [8], that's nearly three trillion dollars. Calculated over only one year (divide by ten), that's larger than the annual Australian revenue by about twenty billion dollars [9].
To justify the carnage, the health problems and the climate change, surely this system of transport must provide us with more wealth and prosperity than if we were to spend it on mass-transit? We don't have to have our own coffins-on-wheels just because we don't like to sit on an already warm seat, do we? Because if this kind of damage and expense were found to be so in any other facet of our society, it simply would not be tolerated. It would be criminal. Even if my per-car-guess is out by a hundred thousand dollars either way, can you picture what kind of mass-transit system could be bought with this kind of money? This tackles head-on the primary argument for cars which is 'that we have to commute somehow'. A coordinated mass-transit system that was rightfully the major infrastructure of any city, would eliminate traffic jams; reduce traffic noise; reduce the area of parking; reduce damaging emissions; reduce fuel consumption; reduce insurance premiums; reduce registration fees; and reduce fatalities. If you're still thinking, “but it's never on time” then that's because you are still only thinking about current spending and present day services. A well funded, technologically enhanced, robust system would increase the wealth and productivity of a society immensely. Which means it will get you to where you want to go cheaply and on time. What then, will we be giving up? Nothing, unless you enjoy the arrhythmic acceleration and deceleration of traffic lights and give-ways. What about rural areas? Sure, cars will have their place but that place is not in urban or suburban areas. Cars should be a small market like tractors or like all-wheel-drives used to be. But if this system is so much better, why do we not have it? Surely the powers that be would not have allowed such foolishness in the first place?
Go back fifty years and only the wealthy could afford a car and so traffic density was low. Over time, growing middle class were able to acquire the ever more affordable car. Its convenience and status in the resultant suburban sprawl favoured it over the then form of mass-transit which was and still is public transport. Thus the car companies grew wealthy and lobbied governments for more roads and grew wealthier because the public paid and still pays for, the most important thing the car companies need in order for their product to work. When it was widely accepted that smoking cigarettes was bad for human health, cigarette companies didn't stop selling cigarettes. In fact, even though they were one of the first to know their dangers, they did nothing but deny and cover up the facts. And nor could anyone stop them from selling cigarettes. The tobacco industry was and still is, too big to stop. Well, the car industry is bigger. It also has the support of the petrochemical industry as cars are one of the biggest consumers of their products. So, just like the tobacco industry, now that it has been finally established that their product is no longer good for society, the car industry will never be prepared to abandon it. They're in business to make money, even if it kills us.
Gone are my younger, ideal believing days when I used to think that companies and corporations needed to be accountable and ethical in their business. I now realise that every society has a diverse range of people in it. Every society has people who are prepared to kill with a gun for a few dollars and intend to get away with it. So too, we must expect every society to have people who are prepared to sell obsolete machines in the knowledge that thousands will die and tens of thousands will be maimed and expect to get away with it. It is all the more perverse when every other advertisement in the media is for another shiny, faster means to this end. I hope that the majority of society are compassionate people. But I believe it is they who must take the responsibility for this travesty and fight for change because those without a conscience can and will not.
It makes no sense to knock down the old before planning for the new. In my next edition to the topic of car versus mass-transit I discuss some of the alternatives and mixes of mass-transit available and appropriate for todays' society and in those that might be possible and suitable in the future