Thoughts on Transportation

I’ve been thinking about the fact that the transportation network is the biggest polluter and what it would take to decarbonize transportation. Executive orders like the one signed by Newsom in September are definitely a step in the right direction. If we can’t buy new gas-powered cars, then eventually we will move towards electric. That being said, I think the bigger issue is the mindset around driving and travel, and that’s the biggest hurdle. The SPUR Northern California Megaregion document states that 65% of commuters drive alone in their vehicles. On top of that, most commuters are moving intra-county, not between counties.

“Still, most commute patterns are within, not between counties. Among the top 25 largest commuter flows in California, only three are between counties — and the 25th is the only one in Northern California (Contra Costa to Alameda) with about 96,000 daily commuters.” SPUR — The Northern California Megaregion.

I was really surprised to read this, because I just assumed that the hours of traffic I experience commuting to Berkeley must be other people like me, commuting between counties. How do we change people’s mindset to commute to work differently? Having a working public transportation infrastructure is an obvious solution. People aren’t going to stop driving to take an unreliable bus or BART. If commutes are mostly within counties, there’s a good reason to improve local public transportation networks. It’s also a good argument for not increasing decentralization but instead densifying in the central Bay counties.

At the same time, I’m curious what would need to happen on a social / psychological level to get people to dissociate from their cars. Since the post-war period there has been a steady push towards individualism in automobiles, to the point where people identify directly with their cars, they personify them, and the idea of separating from them seems unfathomable. It’s also totally normalized to drive 45+ minutes to get somewhere. There are several car sharing services out there, and yet I rarely see shared cars in my daily commute. Maybe along with banning the sale of gas-powered cars, the government and transportation industry should direct more money into car-sharing systems, to make them more efficient and affordable for daily commuters.

(UC Berkeley image by Ronald Cohen) https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/09/drop-in-pandemic-co2-emissions-previews-world-of-electric-vehicles/

Maps like these show us what could happen if we start to decarbonize our transportation. The results and effects are real. COVID has been a drastic change for everyone but it’s also shown us what the Bay Area’s CO2 levels can look like with decreased car traffic. If California really wants to pride itself on being a green state, it should commit to changing it’s reputation as a state where you couldn’t possibly live without a car.