Dear Editors,

I emailed you yesterday concerning your negative attitude towards, it seems to me, all serious attempts to confront our transport problems (Re: Transport policy and the fate of our planet and Satellite tracking will drive up cost of school run, 8 June, 2003).

What follows are some of my ideas on what might constitute a sustainable transport policy.

For a start, the most obvious thing we need to do is STOP encouraging people to fly and buy motorcars.

But saying that, I realise, immediately places me beyond the pale of economic wisdom and necessity, which demands the exact opposite! It flies in the face of our most basic economic assumptions.

Not to act in accordance with economic necessity would be sheer madness, surely?

But encouraging people to buy cars and travel by air is also madness, because on a planet with more than 6 billion inhabitants, but limited resources and a finite carrying capacity, this MUST lead to catastrophe.

Which places us in something of a dilemma – one which up until now, because it seems to threaten our economic self-interests, we have chosen to ignore or deny.

Once we stop denying the dilemma, it becomes apparent that we cannot make the necessary changes to transport policy without also making radical changes to the way our economy works, which in turn will entail changing many of the values, attitudes and aspirations on which it is based.

It is not an easy problem/dilemma to face up to, since millions of jobs and billions of pounds/dollars/euros worth of investments depend on “healthy”, i.e. expanding, automobile and aviation industries.

It is particularly difficult for those whose jobs would be affected. Investors can invest their money elsewhere, although, so long as their first priority is achieving maximum returns for minimum risks, rather than creating a sustainable economy and lifestyles, the problem/dilemma remains.

If you have followed me this far you will realise that I have opened up a can of worms, and I can understand your inclination to put the lid back on – and turn it as tightly as possible. Or simply to turn away and not take me seriously.

Or to use another analogy, I’m like a doctor who has just told you that you have life-threatening cancer, which is not something you wanted to hear. You want to be told that the growth I am referring to is benign, so you run off to other doctors for a second and third opinion. You will have no trouble finding many, seemingly far better qualified than I am, who will tell you what you want to hear.

But supposing I am right and you do have cancer. If you heed what I say, you can still be cured (although it will entail quite a serious operation and a radical change of lifestyle); but if you don’t you are going to die.

Putting  the analogy aside, in reality, it may not be us personally who suffer the consequences of not facing up to the seriousness of our situation, but our children or grandchildren. We can probably get away with plundering and abusing our planet for a few years longer, perhaps even for another decade or so. But by the time the next generation is forced to face up to the PROBLEM, it is going to be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to solve. They are not going to look back and marvel at our achievements, as we do of those who went before us, but are more likely to curse us for our stupidity and selfishness!

If things look bad in the picture I am painting, it is only because we have not yet even begun facing up to the PROBLEM (of achieving a sustainable economy and lifestyles for 7 – 9 billion people on our planet, with its limited natural resources and a finite carrying capacity). Once we do – provided (and this is a VERY important point) we don’t leave it too late - there is no question of our ability to solve it. Once we have recognised the limitations we are subject to and accepted the fact that we have to develop forms of transportation which are not just affordable and convenient, but above all sustainable (in a world with 7 – 9 billion inhabitants), we can set about doing so. It is a challenge that should fire and inspire us!

If we want to be able to travel (all 7 – 9 billion of us), we have to give absolute priority to public transportation. Individual motorisation is not sustainable for such a large number of people!

Imagine if we were to spend just half of what we spend now on private motorcars on public transportation! We could create a system many times better than even the best public transport systems that exist today, in Germany, for example, and infinitely better than what we currently have in Britain.

Obviously, the adjustments that would have to be made in switching our dependency from current to sustainable transportation would be considerable, but the improvement to our standard and quality of life would be huge. Once it is in place (which could be within the next 10 – 20 years if the will were there), people will wonder how they ever put up with the conditions that prevailed before, and why our “affair” with the motorcar lasted for so long. Future social psychologists, I suspect, will explain it as a form of infatuation, or addiction, to something which, like alcohol, used sensibly, is very beneficial, but which got completely out of hand.

At the moment, any politician proposing to give such priority to public over private transportation would be quickly voted out of office by an indignant public still obsessed with and addicted to their motorcars (and cheap air travel). So what is the way forward?

For those who recognise the soundness of my diagnosis to start following the cure I propose.

Obviously, the cure is only going to work if enough people follow it, but someone has to make a start, and that can only be those who recognise the need. At first it will be just the more enlightened and responsible few, but numbers will increase as their example is seen and followed.

The threat posed by non-sustainable transportation policies, along with our non-sustainable economy and lifestyles in general, is every bit as serious as that once posed by Nazi Germany, and potentially far more serious.