Thoughts on “Car Culture”
Our family heading home on the ION LRT
Every year, my wife and I (who are Ismaili Muslims) observe Ramadan in a somewhat non-traditional way. Many years, rather than fasting, we choose to give up something else, with the same goal of making room for spiritual contemplation.
This year, I made the resolution to go through Ramadan without using a car. Going car-less used to be a major part of my identity starting from the time I moved to Waterloo Region. However, in 2019, I purchased a Chevrolet Volt (a plug-in hybrid), feeling that driving an electric vehicle would still be consistent with my environmental values. By 2022, our family had upgraded to a used Tesla Model 3, completely eliminating carbon emissions from our transportation.
As the month of Ramadan went on, I began to appreciate the things I’d given up by subscribing to society’s “car culture”. With the convenience to travel anywhere, anytime, the temptation is there to cram more into an already jam-packed life. Getting around on foot, bike, and public transit forces me to slow down, and creates space between my daily activities.
It also leaves more space for my mind to wander. If, like me, you are your family’s primary driver, the hours you spend behind the wheel demand at least some measure of attention and focus. It is very hard to daydream while driving, at least if you want to do it safely. True to my intent, giving up on driving for the month gave me space to take in the world around me, and to daydream, which is actually very important for mental wellbeing.
With additional room to take in the world, I really started to notice how much we’ve built our society around the use of cars. Vast amounts of land in cities are given over to parking lots, and the prevalence of roads and highways makes it far too easy to create vast distances between the places we live, the places we work, and the places we spend our free time. By necessity, giving up on the car forces you to spend more of your time closer to home, or at least to be mindful about when you travel further away.
I also reflected on the way that both our federal and provincial governments have been pushing for a transition to more electric vehicles, to replace the gas-powered ones. Especially after my experiences of the last month, I think this is the wrong approach to be taking. To replace all the cars on the road with EVs would have a massive environmental impact in terms of mining the metals, like lithium, that are required to make the batteries. The need for a greatly expanded electrical grid capacity would be a major expense as well. Not to mention, electric cars are currently more expensive to buy than conventional cars, meaning they are not financially feasible for many lower-income families (for whom car ownership is already a fairly large financial burden).
This led me to ask some questions, key to my platform position:
What if we took all the money we spend building and maintaining highways, and instead invested it in high speed commuter rail, robust public transit networks, and making our cities more walkable and bikeable? What would our cities look like then?
How is our physical and mental health suffering because we choose to use cars instead of more active transportation, like walking and cycling?
If we really want Canada to have better intercity rail and bus systems, and better public transit systems in the cities, shouldn’t we be sending that message by actually using these systems, despite their current shortcomings?
If you think there’s some sense to what I’m saying, I invite you to take the same challenge I did, and go a month without using your car. I know it’s difficult: lugging dozens of pounds of groceries home on the bus is challenging at the best of times, and so is taking transit across the city with an infant. But I’ve done both several times this month, and not only has it reconnected me with the community around me, it also plays a small part in creating the world I’d like to see.
