street roots
Oct. 12, 2012
In our autopian society, sound transit is to park your car
BY TOM WATSON
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
Straphanger:
Saving Our Cities
and Ourselves
from the
Automobile
by Taras Grescoe
Most major United States metropolitan
areas gave the keys to the city to cars and
freeways years ago, sacrificing scores of
neighborhoods in the process. Public
transportation has somehow managed to
stay alive and is even expanding in fits and
starts in Portland and other cities, but it
always seems to be on life support. Many
politicians refuse to fund public transit,
trashing it as wasteful, and lots of
Americans still think of a bus as the “loser
cruiser” for people not successful enough to
have a car.
Taras Grescoe eloquently blows apart
those ridiculous notions in his compelling
new book, “Straphanger: Saving Our Cities
and Ourselves from the Automobile.”
With current, well-researched examples
from around the world, Grescoe shows how
urban bus and train systems link
neighborhoods and cultures, connect people
with jobs and reduce global warming. Not
only is effective public transportation the
lifeblood of a vibrant city, but it opens the
door to opportunity and social justice for all
residents.
As Grescoe explains, this book is partially
“the story of a bad idea: the notion that our
metropolises should be shaped by the needs
of cars, rather than people. ... Simply put, I
like subways, buses and trains because I
believe they make better places than cars
and freeways.”
But the great strength of “Straphanger”
is that it’s not simplistic. Grescoe colorfully
analyzes public transit systems (mostly with
a chapter apiece) in New York City,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Phoenix,
Portland, Ore., Vancouver B.C., Montreal,
Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow, Tokyo and
Bogotá, and he never finds a perfect system,
although Copenhagen comes close.
Grescoe finds challenges and problems
with public transit in the real world, but
more often he sees shining beacons of hope.
As an international traveler, a user of
public transit (or “straphanger”) all his life,
an excellent journalist and a deep thinker,
Montreal resident Grescoe expands our
thinking about public transit. It’s not just
about buses and trains. It’s also about how
often they run, where the stations are and
how people get to the stations. The biggest
revelations are when he describes the vital
roles of bicycling and walking in public
transportation. The bicycle, in Grescoe’s
view, is “the most decentralized, affordable
and efficient mode of mass transit ever
invented.”
Although Copenhagen is frequently
lauded in liberal media as the ultimate bike-
friendly city, Grescoe goes beyond
platitudes as he describes how Copenhagen
utilizes separated bike lanes and other tools
to make cycling a way of life. The results are
astonishing. Thirty-seven percent of metro
Copenhagen’s residents get to work or
school by bicycle. “More people commute
by bicycle in greater Copenhagen,
population 1.8 million, than cycle to work in
the entire United States, population 310
million,” Grescoe writes.
Closer to home, Portland also scores
points with Grescoe as a cycling hub.
“Thanks to a network of 260 miles of bike
paths, Portlanders are now more likely to
get to work by bicycle than the inhabitants
of any other American city.”
But Copenhagen and Portland rely on
extensive bus and train networks as well,
and Grescoe shows us the pros and cons of
transit systems there and in every other city
he highlights. He ponders the big questions
but also delves into the nettlesome details.
How does a subway system get built and
maintained? What’s “transit-oriented
development”? Do streetcars work? What’s
“bus rapid transit”? How do cultural factors
affect the use of public transit? What’s the
best model for regional transportation
planning? Should transit systems be publicly
or privately owned? Grescoe cogently
addresses all those issues.
“Straphanger” also spells out the
environmental costs of our reliance on the
car. Looking at the climate change
implications, for example, Grescoe notes
that the average American is responsible for
emitting 24 tons of
carbon annually.
“Thanks largely to
widespread transit
I s am Ial@r«at!asia! tra w le r,
use,” he observes. In
a «ser ©I pu b lic transit (or
contrast, the share of
the average Tokyo
"straphanger"! a ll bis lile ,
resident is only 4.8
an excellent jo u rn a list and
tons of carbon.
a deep, tim b e r, M ontreal
If any fault can be
resident Taras Grescoe
found with this book,
it’s that Grescoe gets
expands onr th in k in g about
a little carried away
public transit®
with his vocabulary.
He freely uses obscure
words — proleptic,
bosky, osmotic,
coruscating, ramified, pantiles, chamfered,
hecatomb — that might drive you to the
dictionary (or not). But that’s almost
endearing. What matters is that we take
public transportation seriously. Grescoe
makes us do that, writing with uncommon
wit and warmth.
He’s a proud straphanger, and he’s not
alone. “Half the population of New York,
Toronto and London do not own cars,”
Grescoe writes. “Public transport is how
most of the people of Asia and Africa, the
world’s most populous continents, travel.”
Are they all losers because they don’t drive
a car? Maybe our personal cars are the real
“loser cruisers.”
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