The B.C. government just rolled out a new contest designed to get people to walk more, to get in better shape.
There is nothing wrong with this. Walking is nice exercise, its relaxing, its something you can do while having a conversation. (Try that while doing kickboxing, for example. So how was your weeken WHACK! Bleed, pick up your teeth, go to the ER.)
But the contest press release specifically talks up the many walking trails in B.C. It doesnt mention walking as, you know, a practical way to get around. Walking is, by implication, only an exercise activity. Left unstated is the idea that if you were trying to get to work or the grocery store, of course you wouldnt walk. Youd drive.
Its a fair assumption. In 2006, the pie chart of how we get around in Metro Vancouver had one big piece for cars (76 per cent) and a few slivers for walking and transit (11 per cent each) and cycling (two per cent).
Everyone who has stepped out of their front door knows that for 60 or 70 years, weve been designing the Lower Mainland to get cars from place to place. Pedestrians and cyclists and bus riders are of secondary importance.
Lets forget the enormous health and environmental implications of this for a moment. (Really. Try to forget that urban design has promoted obesity, lung cancer, and global warming.)
Instead, lets worry about the fact that the end result of creating communities based around the car makes even driving a miserable activity.
Has anyone ever said I really enjoy my rush hour commute?
You can use the time to listen to some music or books on tape, and your heated seat keeps your backside warm in December, but those things really just make a commute bearable, not fun. If you werent driving, you could still use that time to listen to music or read.
How about finding a parking stall at the mall on the weekend? Enjoy that? What about at Christmas?
Or what about getting from your car into the mall itself?
Parking lots are friendly (more or less) to cars, not people on foot, even though everyone immediately transforms from a driver to a pedestrian once they find a stall.
Almost being run over in a parking lot is the price we pay for driving everywhere.
Urban planners and engineers and politicians have faced car congestion problems for decades. A rounded solution would involve upgraded roads, but also improved transit, cycling infrastructure, maybe some light rail, car sharing programs, road pricing, etc.
But its a lot easier and cheaper to just ram through six lanes of blacktop. You wont have 76 per cent of the people showing up to scream about how their money was used to pay for bike lanes and buses that are just for health nazis and poor people!
That has given us the situation we live in now. Most of us drive most places, because we have no choice. Our communities dont let us live close enough to the store, or the office, or school, to walk. Bus service is especially iffy in the suburbs. So those people have to own a car.
Because we all own cars, were very sensitive to gridlock. So when traffic gets jammed up too badly, we complain.
In response, the government builds more and wider roads.
So we keep driving, and it doesnt get any more fun.
Lather, rinse and repeat for 60-odd years. How many more years before we stop letting the cars run our lives?
