A Radical Suggestion

Photo by Jeffrey Blum on Unsplash

What if we banned or strictly limited cars in city limits? I know this seems like a very radical suggestion here in St. John’s but many cities have done it, for example Zurich, where 32% of people get to work by transit and 42% on foot or bike and Copenhagen, where people protested, “We’ll go broke, and the weather’s too bad for people to be outdoors” but ended up loving their car free city. Our weather is worse and we’re probably broker but wouldn’t we actually save money if we only had to plow the sidewalks and bike trails, and a single lane in each direction on bus routes? We could use that money to get more buses and build more bike and walking trails.

What else might we gain if we did this? We’d be safer, for one thing. Canadian road fatalities fell 15.2% between 2010 and 2016 but pedestrian deaths increased by 10.5% in that same period (source). Newfoundland and Labrador have the fourth highest rate of pedestrian fatalities (7.9 per 100,000 population) and the second highest rate of pedestrian injuries (624.4 per 100,000 population) (source). Removing cars would drastically lower these figures. We’d also be healthier. It’s well known that regular walking lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke as well as having many other health benefits. Walking, cycling and public transit use can all be key to preventing premature deaths and diabetes. There are also links between getting around without a car and mental health and happiness. Interestingly, this includes not only active transit but also public transit use. So, while it might take longer for emergency services to reach us if only main bus routes were plowed, most of the province already has to wait longer for those services and, on the up side, we’d have much less need of them.

I’ll continue to explore this topic in future posts but would love to hear from you in the meantime. What do you think?