Green Prophet’s Arwa on her decision not to drive a car and the social stigma that comes with it…

Maybe it has something to do with my love of trains and car-induced travel sickness as a child, but I can honestly say I’ve never aspired to driving a car.

Hitting the open road or whizzing around the city in my very own car doesn’t really fill me with anything but dread. Although I think that choosing to drive is a personal decision, it does however seem to annoy lots of people. People who seem to think that you are a complete failure unless you can drive and own a car.

I am 24 years old now and I have come to terms with the fact that I will never drive my own car but my little sister (nothing like a little public humiliation here!) thinks ‘it’s a little embarrassing’ that I don’t drive. It’s an important skill, she reasons, one which would give me a lot more independence. She’s right about the personal independence it would give me as a young Muslim women but than I tell her what I always tell anyone who asks why I don’t drive- ‘Driving is not the future’.

Although people seems to think that driving a car is as natural as… well walking, the fact is that driving cars is a pretty new phenomena in the wider scale of things and everyone owning a car is an even newer trend.

How did we get here? Well it wasn’t a coincidence, we were guided here by a number of factors: advertising, rising income, growing consumerist culture and the crafty work of some car manufacturers and car insurance companies.

According to the No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change by Danny Chivers (which I recently reviewed), back in the early 1900’s companies like General Motors and Firestone aggressively bought out public transport systems in the US and then shut them down. Over a hundred commuter rail systems were closed and thousands of kilometres of rail tracks were pulled up. In fact, the poor state of public transport seems to be a (rather short-sighted) motivation behind why most people resort to driving cars. As Chivers points out, “the US love affair with the motor car was really more of an arranged marriage.”

What’s more driving cars doesn’t work. Despite those epic adverts with cars sweeping across amazing landscapes and locations, most people hate driving and seems to spend more time stuck in traffic than actually getting anywhere fast. The more people drive the worse things will get- it just doesn’t make any sense.  A indicator of this is the fact that less 10 percent of the global population own a car- they are expensive, time-wasting and stressful machines and I guarantee that any journey would be improved by catching the train or bus where a person is paid for the stress of driving.

All this and I haven’t even got to the dangers of driving to our planet and ourselves. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation, more people will die from road accidents than AIDS in 2020. If that doesn’t shock you than the impact that cars have on global warming should. According to the World Resources Institute, motor vehicles currently emit over 900 million metric tonnes of CO2 every year- that’s more than 15 percent of global fossil fuel emissions. Time to go car-free!

: Image via Flavio@flickr on Flickr.

For more on going car-free see:

Dubai Goes Car-Free For a Day!

Car Talk with the ‘Driving Dutchman’

Bike Sharing Down to a Science

The post How To Live A Car-Free Existence appeared first on Green Prophet.

Around 2,500 took part in the car-free day – aiming to encourage the use of public transport

Empty car parks and full Metros and buses is not a sight you’re likely to see very often in the Dubai but for one day it became reality. On Wednesday, around 2,500 employees decided to leave their cars at home and ride the metro or bus to work as part of the car-free day initiative organised by the Dubai Municipality. Considering that this is a nation where only 4 percent of population walk anywhere in a week, this really is a breakthrough. The event was declared ‘a huge success’ for actually getting people to see the benefits of using public transport and for convincing them to leave their cars at home. How did they do it!?

Asma Murad Ahmad, a Dubai Municipality employee told the Gulf News that she came to work on the metro and thought it was a great idea.

“Not only is using public transport good for the environment, it also helps reduce traffic congestion and for us it was fun to get together with fellow employees and catch up during the ride,” Asma said.

Most of the participants were employees of the Dubai Municipality and other government bodies (Dubai Land Department, Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Etisalat) who were promoting the car-free day.

Around 2,500 employees took part and they all managed to arrive on time- in festive spirit-which goes to show that public transport is not better than sitting alone in your car in traffic but it’s just as quick too.

Engineer Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director-General of Dubai Municipality led the employees from the Metro to Dubai Municipality’s empty parking lot to mark the event with tree-planting and an environment-friendly car show.

There was also a religious lecture by Shaikh Abdullah Al Kamali titled ‘Islam and Environment’ which no doubt helped highlight the link between Islam and environmental awareness.

Lootah also noted that due to the success of the event, they would try and encourage private businesses to take part in next year’s car-free day.

“The Car-Free Day was organised to encourage the local community to care their cities the best way by reducing the number of vehicles, especially those used on city roads and also to raise awareness on alternative means of transport,” said Lootah to the Gulf News.

Whilst you can’t deny the success of the event, I think the trick here is to be able to sustain this effort so that car-free day is not just a one off yearly event but actually a long-term policy to encourage the use of public transport.

::Image via Philcampbell via flickr.

For more on the UAE and public transport see:
Only 1 in 25 Emirates Use Their Legs to Walk
Dubai Gas Stations Running Out of Gas
Dubai Metro Expands to Three More Stations

The post Dubai Goes Car-Free for a Day! appeared first on Green Prophet.

In the bursting-at-the-seams megacity of Cairo, it seems that there is no escaping the traffic. Roads grind to standstill for hours most days and the traffic jams are only getting worse as the Egyptian population simultaneously heads to Cairo every morning either to work or in search of a job. However, one organisation has decided that if there is no space on the road than the solution is take to the air and introduce the ‘Helicopter Taxi’.

Yep, you read right. According to Al-Arabiya, an Egyptian aviation company will be launching a flying taxi project as part of a plan to solve traffic problems in the city. Five turbo helicopters have already been purchased so that people can be flown around Egypt and Cairo whilst avoiding the traffic below. As well as plans for fire fighting and medical evacuation helicopters, these flying taxis will also be “affordable to all people” wishing for a stress-free (and let’s face it a more exciting) Monday morning commute. However, something’s not adding up.

Lots of Traffic + Helicopter Taxis= Lots of Traffic Still

Now, I’m no genius but how are helicopters which probably can’t seat more than a handful of people going to solve Cairo’s epic traffic problems? Even if there were fleets of helicopters (which can’t be very safe), how many people would they actually take off the road? Also, isn’t this totally avoiding the root of the problem which is a culture of car-dependency coupled with sub-standard public transport?

It seems that in our car-entrenched culture, any solution is viable as long is doesn’t threaten our dependency on cars. Helicopters? Yes! Less cars? Well, that’s far too far fetched for most people to even consider. Yet as fellow Green Prophet writer Karen Chernick states “Cairo, unfortunately, is almost synonymous with traffic congestion, and all those drivers want to get where they’re going – fast. But if there were less cars on the road (and fewer people riding alone in their cars), those drivers really could get where they wanted fast.”

Ignoring The Roots of the Traffic Problem: Cars

Less cars is clearly the most logical solution, as the Egyptians behind a recent carpoolers scheme state. Logic, it seems, has escaped some people who are willing to consider ‘helicopter taxis’ before the notion of reducing cars on the road. Not that the region isn’t feeling the effects of car dependency. In Iran, traffic fatalities are 5 times the world average at 22,000 deaths a year and Saudi Arabia has the highest rates of traffic accident fatalities in the world. In fact, the entire Gulf region seems to have a car problem as 12,000 people die there every year due to traffic accidents in the Gulf– that’s around 35 people dying every day.

Clearly, what the region really needs is more efficient and cheaper public transport so that people will seriously consider leaving their cars behind- not outlandish ‘solutions’ such as flying taxis which don’t even tackle the real problem.

:: Image via Dave Evers on Flickr.

:: Al Arabiya

For more on green issues in Cairo see:

Get a Ride and Reduce Carbon Emissions with Egypt Carpoolers

Green Tidings from The American University in Cairo

Cairo’s Climate Art of Epic Proportions

The post How Do You Solve Traffic Congestion in Cairo? With Helicopters Taxis, Apparently appeared first on Green Prophet.