Can we live without cars?
A shot from a night hike earlier this week. Related to this post? Nope. A good reminder to get outside even as it gets colder and darker? Yup.
Two questions have been on my mind regularly and often for the last 12 months:
How and where can I live without depending on a car while maintaining a lifestyle that includes both great people I care about and ready access to the outdoors?
How do I align my skills and experience with a career that makes a positive impact on climate change and supports my other values?
I’ve done a lot of “looking within” since I decided to ride my bike across the United States (nearly three years ago now!) and the countless questions I have asked myself boil down to the two above. Why these two? I believe the answer is public transportation.
My eyes were opened to the brilliance of effective public transportation when I studied in Denmark for a semester back in 2015. Copenhagen has an incredible public transit system and some of the strongest bike cultures in the world. While based in Europe, I was fortunate to travel to several countries and major cities nearby and noticed a recurring pattern of impressive networks of trains, metros, and buses that worked in harmony and seamlessly to get the population and its visitors where they needed and wanted to go in a timely, stress-free manner.
When I returned to the U.S. via JFK airport after this semester, I was stunned. It felt like entering a much less-developed country: heavy traffic, cars honking, people rushing around to get to their own vehicles. Buses were the only public transportation in sight and the ones I saw were dirty and empty. What was going on? How was this home?
The beautiful, logical chaos within Schiphol airport’s arrival atrium
That semester marked the longest stretch I had been away from home and the return trip gave me intense reverse culture shock. Having some distance between all I had been used to for my whole life made me acutely aware of the areas in which the US and cities in western Europe differ. The drive home from the airport in traffic and traveling among the New York drivers felt chaotic and made no sense after having flowed effortlessly throughout Europe on thoughtfully designed public transportation systems that served as the primary means of travel and the car was purely supplemental.
My oldest sister and her family moved to The Netherlands just before I spent that semester abroad and they have lived there ever since. I have taken several trips to visit since they moved to their home an hour south of Amsterdam and the travel experience is a tale of two halves with incredible contrast. Most of us know what it’s like to get to a US airport and make our way to the plane. After taking off toward the land of the Dutch, though, the rest of the experience is entirely different from any domestic trip.
Landing in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is reminiscent of many of our busiest airports - thousands of people are flowing in different directions to get to their destinations, signs and shops and bathrooms fill one’s field of view. The key differences (aside from bathroom stalls being well-built private cubbies where there’s no risk of your neighbor grabbing your ankle) after baggage claim.
Upon claiming your bags, you enter this large atrium that has restaurants (including Burger King), an exit to the city (and, yes, to transport like cars), and tons of people looking for their loved ones. There are also signs pointing to trains. Schiphol has a train station built-in underneath this impressive building. Buy a ticket at one of many kiosks, head down an escalator to the appropriate platform, and off you go to wherever you want without setting a foot outside. It just makes sense and is so easy.
It gets better! Train platforms often have “kiosks” - tidy little convenient stores - so when heading to my sister’s town, there’s usually one change of trains required with a painless 10 minute wait - just enough time to grab a Heineken or a muffin from the kiosk. These little things coupled with the removal of stress make the final leg of a long journey a lot more joyful.
I am sure some of this is romanticized and the Dutch would dismiss some of what I am saying. I also am aware there are cities in the United States that have public transportation at a pretty good place. The areas where I believe we lack most as a society are in the systems and culture surrounding transportation. Our lives are built around cars and in many urban areas there is hardly any room to expand roads to add bike lanes, let alone add a new rail line to get some cars off the road. It also appears that the politics and finances surrounding public transportation are not set to create efficient progress and the ruling energy and auto manufacturing companies play a role in stifling improvements as well.
Another sticking point is that even in the cities in the US where public transportation is well established, affordable, and reliable, there are other systemic issues that keep people in their cars: risk of violence, large populations of unhoused folks, and a stigma against using transit over a private vehicle. All of these challenges point to a broader question of where do we start? And how can one individual make meaningful change?
Some days, I want to move to a place that has these beautiful systems in place already - a turn key solution. Other days, I want to help make a positive change here in the US and help build momentum in the right direction rather than abandoning ship. Of course, there is no magic solution and I find myself frequently frustrated with the status quo here of driving everywhere for everything. Is everyone content with relying on a car?
A dissatisfying end to this post is the only fitting way to wrap it up. I don’t know the answers to the two questions that keep swirling in my head. If I did, they wouldn’t be swirling. I also didn’t discuss climate change at all. That’s because I believe an overhaul in our approach to living and moving ourselves around this world is necessary to make meaningful change and I do not know where I fit in helping make that happen.
We, as a planet, will be better off when we live in places that enable us to travel less, buy less, consume less. Right now, it feels like our systems only encourage the opposite. Can one person’s career choice really make a difference in this stampede of consumerism? I believe so, and we’ll see how this plays out.
Thank you for reading and for not driving distracted!
-Ben Grannis
#EyesUp
