“Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day.”

It started in the 60s. Motorways were constructed on mass across the UK, suburbs sprang up around them, and big box stores became the norm along their routes. This created a world where everything you needed was reachable quickly by car, or so we thought.

In the modern day we know this dream is a nightmare. It is almost impossible to lead a functioning life in a town or city without a car. Traffic suffocates our centers, air pollution suffocates our lungs, and CO2 is suffocating our planet. Even worse, this has destroyed our cities. We have allocated almost all space to allowing motor traffic to move, with pedestrians shoved to the side. Not to mention how the average car has now increased 50% in size since then.

What this approach fails to see is spaces designed with human beings in mind are ones people want to spend time in. They spend more in local businesses, care more about their community, and have better health (which means much less strain on the economy).

Let’s paint a better town. Cars are no longer the rulers of the road, instead they are treated as guests. We reallocate huge swaths of road space to parks, greenery and community, with just enough space left for where cars are required. You can walk or cycle in 15 minutes to all the essential services in your area, and public transport runs frequently and to most places. You breathe fresh clean air, and the sound of engines is absent. You see more of your community as you navigate around it, because you are no longer trapped in a dehumanising metal box. 

All this saves you and the council a heap of money in road maintenance, car repairs, healthcare, emergency responses to crashes. And we haven’t even addressed how this makes a child friendly world. Kids can’t drive. So now children have more social mobility as they can easily navigate their town without their parents, they are healthier, are more in touch with their community, and there is less anti-social behaviour. 

So how do we achieve this? There is one key solution: We need less cars on the road, and to do that, we need to End Car Dependency. And how do we do that? Provide alternative methods of transport. Walking, Cycling and Public transport. Oh and this will also be necessary to prevent a climate disaster anyway*.

*(No we could not just switch to electric vehicless fast enough, they use mountains of energy we don't have, and why not hit two birds with one stone and improve people’s lives while saving the world?)