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For most of human history, it was likely that you would live and die a stone’s throw from the place you were born. You would kill your dearest for a mule and ladies would spread their legs quicker than Courtney Love if you had a pony.

Today, much has changed, and much has improved. We skate, bike, drive, fly, sail, we have it cheap and easy (again Courtney Love comes to mind). Everything comes with a cost though. 20 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from road transport. The by-products of convenience have adverse health effects. Vehicles emit particulates, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, ozone, and benzene. Carcinogenic, bad for asthmatics, bad for the planet. These problems are not unsolvable. Rather, transport is an area in which many innovative opportunities exist. Just recently a plane was flown for 26 hours just on solar energy! Check out solarimpulse.com.
Politically, however, debates with regard to transport are often divided along the left/right fault line; the classic public vs. private positions. Cars represent individualism and consumption beyond the means of most humans alive today. Most importantly they represent freedom. In contrast, public transport represents collective solutions to finite resources. Investing in it increases accessibility for the old, disabled, and financially challenged (i.e. poor students). Other social and cooperative types find hitching and car pooling useful.
It’s time to seriously consider the future of transport and reflect on our priorities nationally and globally. Perhaps we could question why the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, is spending $1.4 billion on the ‘Holiday Highway’ between Puhoi and Wellsford. His response manages (incredibly) to commit two fallacies at the same time: the straw man fallacy and the false dilemma. “Getting into a debate on rail verses road versus coastal shipping is not what will get the country where we need it to go. It’s not about which one you like the most. The reality is we need to have all three transport modes working to complement each other.” Well, no one is putting forward the case that we shouldn’t utilise all three, rather they question spending billions on roads and only millions on rail. How ironic that he is a minister for a party that espouses a “balanced approach.”
Fortunately we have two newbies in Parliament on his case. Labour’s Clare Curran, who won the Dunedin South electorate, deserves a pat on the back for backing the Hillside Workshop workers who wanted to manufacture rail for Auckland, supporting the right industry, skills, and jobs. Much appreciated by many, I’m sure. Also, the newest and youngest addition to the Green Party, Gareth Hughes, has already had some beautiful moments. His Give Way to Buses Bill is a subtle way of resetting the precedence of travellers. Cars should give way to buses, as they do in parts of Australia, Europe, the USA, and Canada. Hughes urging other parties in the house to offset their travel emissions like the Greens: reasonable. Asking them to talk the Speaker into it: cheeky. Love it.