The Dream or Nightmare?

The issue of population and public transport is again raising its head. There is nothing like a federal election for the most outrageous arguments and promises to do the rounds again. Of course, if all the promises of past governments even had 1% implemented, we would all be living in Nirvana decades ago, instead of in a country that is often seen as ‘mediocre’ in its achievements. We are still lagging behind in infrastructures such as health, especially mental health, education, public transport, our high rates of incarceration, low social security payments with many elderly barely scraping by on miserable pensions, compared with other countries.

Nothing gets the voters more confused than when each party accuses each other of planning to   inflict total economic carnage with Armageddon the only possible outcome for all of us.

 The one item that gets up my gander is the idiotic assumption that Australia is also somehow adding to the worlds over population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our increase in births is being outnumbered by the number of us carking it. The reason for Australia’s increase in people is by our intake of people already on this planet. It is called migration. This is not adding to the world’s population. We might give relief to refugees or satisfy our own need for more skilled people but we do not add to over-population.

The other furphy endlessly promoted by politicians is the promise of better or faster public transport. Accepting that Australia has a highly urbanised population with most of us preferring cities we would be wise to also accept that public transport thrives on density. This is where we divert from most of the world’s cities with good public transport. This is also why Australia will NEVER get a reasonable public transport system. We have the least dense cities in the world. Public transport cannot support populations over areas the size of entire countries. This is why we are forced to use the car.

During this election we keep hearing about how hard it is for us to maintain our ‘dream of home ownership’ and almost on the same breath, how our cities are becoming harder and harder to navigate. Endless queues are being focussed on from overhead helicopters, pointing out the hot-spots of traffic hold ups. A single flat tyre or a car running out of petrol in one of the many city tunnels or dual highways and tens of thousands will be home late again for yet another hour. With luck they will get a few hours sleep before hurling themselves back on a hellish highway once again.

 Is our dream starting to curdle?

Yet, the population of our cities is modest compared with many world cities. It is the land area that our cities occupy which is the problem.  In that regard we have copied America, and like the US we haven’t been able to provide an alternative to the car. Of course the issue of owning own home is not just Australia’s dream. Many people all over the world aspire to have their own home. What we differ in is that this home preferably sits on own individual block of land. We also prefer to have the largest most energy consuming houses in the whole world. In fact, driving around the newer and more outlaying suburbs, the houses are bursting at the seams. They are in proportion to the size of our families. The fewer children we now breed, the bigger the house has to be.

The question that ever hardly gets asked during any election is; how well founded is the notion that a good public transport can be provided around cities that houses its population on areas that are mini farmlets? Many proud home owners often lament that the rural aspect of their surroundings are being spoilt by sub-divisions. They appear to miss the irony that previous subdivisions allowed them to settle there, spoiling previous owners’ enjoyment of rural life in the area.  At the same time, many complain about how much time it now takes to escape from that endless suburbia and how rural Australia is being pushed back further and further into degradation and waste. Not many seem to pick up that the lack of density is the bane of our almost non-existent public transport.  It is our wasteful ‘dream’ that is the problem.

It is ridiculous to suggest we are becoming overpopulated. Shanghai houses the entire Australian population. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Singapore and many other major cities have excellent modes of public transport. People in those cities prefer public transport because it is cheaper, faster and far more ecologically responsible.

The question that someone could also ask; is our mode of housing, with separate blocks of land, fenced off, with obsessive privacy to the exclusion of others, really working?  We will never have a reasonable public transport system based on our present stubborn maintenance of housing ourselves. Another question could be asked; it is estimated that over 25% of us will suffer from mental illness in the future. Could the way of housing ourselves, so far from each other and so utterly isolated, be one of the reasons why so many suffer from feelings of isolation, dread and depression?

 Is our ‘dream’ also not our ‘nightmare?’