Believe me, I do have the right thoughts and habits. I know
that cars are locally and globally ruinous, polluting urban air, enabling sprawl
and accelerating climate change. I am a public transport user, a walker and a
cyclist (well, I don’t actually cycle or have a bike, but I’m a believer, if
you see what I mean).
The day before yesterday, however, needing to be in London
for a meeting, I got in my car and drove.
Door to door it was certainly quicker than the services of Southern
Rail, even on a ‘good’ day. It was
probably cheaper too (depending how you count depreciation, and the cost of
parking), and certainly less stressful than the perpetual nervousness about
what trains if any may be operating.
It’s not meant to be like this. We’re meant to ‘let the train take the
strain’, passing our time reading, working or simply daydreaming, as the train
speeds under down and over weald, delivering us to our city centre destination
swiftly and economically.
But the seemingly endless succession of strike days,
overtime bans and train crew shortages on Southern Rail has not just
inconvenienced passengers (some of whom have lost jobs as a result), but has set
the clock back decades. It has confirmed
the most insidious myth pedalled by the car lobby, that only as a solo buccaneer
behind the wheel do you have grown-up control over your destiny – automobile
autonomy.
Southern Rail has confirmed this myth by infantilising
passengers, removing all sense of agency, and reducing us to childlike states
of neediness and frustration. No,
sitting on the A23 in gridlocked traffic in South Norwood doesn’t bear much
resemblance to the illusions of the open road that the car commercials spin,
but it’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than hovering anxiously by a
departure board in a packed station, being barked at by specious pre-recorded
‘apologies’, and wondering whether to take a punt of a platform in the hope of
getting a seat. At least you get to
listen to music you like. Loud.
If the car lobby was looking for a way to undermine the case
for public transport, it could hardly hope for anything better than the current
Southern Rail debacle. I just hope that
is an awkward side-effect rather than a strategy.
