Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
‘Three things that happened to get me out of my car’
With support for a car-free day gathering pace, Canterbury Society chairman Jan Pahl tells how the health of future generations relies on a longer-term solution... ‘Lots of other cities are talking about how to change people’s travel patterns’
City councillors are proposing a car-free day for Canterbury, but can people be persuaded to leave their cars at home?
With 4,000 homes to be built in South Canterbury and another 1,200 or so coming in Thanington, persuading at least some people to get out of their cars is essential if we are not to spend our lives in traffic jams on the ring road.
Reducing car use is also vital to improve the quality of the air we breathe: currently air pollution cuts short the lives of around 100 people a year in the city.
We need to get more people using buses and trains, bikes or other non-polluting forms of transport, or walking.
A car-free day is the sort of imaginative idea which can get the ball rolling, but we will need longer-term changes.
How is this change in travel patterns to be achieved? Here is one very small example.
I often travel from my home in the city centre to the University of Kent and until recently I always travelled by car. But now I go by bus – or sometimes walk.
Why did I make this change? The answer is that three things had to happen. The university cut back on parking spaces, the bus company put on more buses and the council granted me a free bus pass. So a mix of stick and carrot did the trick for me.
Now my trip to the university is quicker and, if I walk at least one way, healthier and more enjoyable: car-free can be fun.
The key point is travel habits can change, but in my case it depended on three organisations working together – the university, the bus company and the city council. And that is just for one person and one small shift.
Here in Canterbury over the next 20 years we are facing altering the travel habits of thousands of people, all making much more complicated journeys and with many more options for their travel arrangements.
Lots of other cities are talking about how to change people’s travel patterns.
Often it is described as ‘modal shift’, a trendy term for fewer car journeys and more trips on foot, by bus or train, on bikes and scooters, in shared cars, and so on.
Other necessary elements typically include cleaner underpasses, better cycle routes and park and rides, which are open all evening and at weekends.
However, change on the scale needed for Canterbury is not going to take place without a clear plan, good organisation and, above all, strong leadership.
Many different organisations will have to be involved.
They include Canterbury City Council and Kent County Council, the developers, bus and train companies, cycling organisations and schools (with their admirable walking buses) and us, the ordinary members of the public.
We also need experts to advise us about new developments, such as electric bikes and scooters, busactivated traffic lights and driverless cars.
And all these organisations and experts will have to be coordinated by a strong and effective team with a good leader.
We would suggest that the city council is the most appropriate organisation to take the lead in setting up a working group, as has been supported by members, to explore the idea (rather as it did for the Higher/further Education Review).
We are, of course, aware that the council is working with shrinking financial resources.
However, this initiative should be funded by the developers. They are very aware of the implications for the city of the traffic from their new developments and they have the resources to fund the work.
We need the council to take the lead in getting everyone together.
After all, it is the council’s Local Plan which is giving rise to the coming traffic problems.
The future wellbeing of our city and the health of our children and grandchildren depend on taking this action now.