Brand New Old Fashioned Modern Transport System of the Future from the Past

We have mentioned on several occasions the folly of hoping to solve traffic congestion problems by building more road capacity - that would be like trying to lose weight by letting your belt out. So we were pleased to see the major booster of a motorway project - Tom Smith, chairman of local business development quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) - at last admitting to the true motivation for proposing to build a new motorway. Appearing on local BBC news broadcast "Reporting Scotland" Mr Smith said "if it had not been for the [protestors' court] appeals, we would already be enjoying driving on this road".

Enjoy!

Mr Smith was invited onto the TV programme because the most recent appeal by campaign group "Road Sense" to prevent the building of an orbital motorway around Aberdeen was rejected by Court of Session judges in Edinburgh on the 29th of February. This new road will be a "special category road" (which is to say, a motorway in all but name) and is known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR).

We found Mr Smith's "enjoying driving" statement refreshing, because - at last - there was no assertion that purpose of the AWPR was to reduce the congestion, pollution, noise or danger caused by motor traffic in Aberdeen. Nor was there any attempt to try to suggest that the £750m project would in some way save (or generate) money for Aberdeen and "safeguard the future" - all of which were the sort of rationalisations offered by him in previous years. No, now that a last barrier to the project going ahead has been removed, Mr Smith reveals what we already knew; this road is for people like him to enjoy driving upon. By this ill-guarded admission, Mr Smith has let slip something else which we already knew: that this road is a solipsistic solution only to itself and the demands of drivers to drive more, drive everywhere, drive always. In the view of Mr Smith and his fellow motorists, motor-traffic transportation is the desired outcome of providing infrastructure for motor-traffic transportation.

Let us be clear: we would be vociferous supporters of the AWPR if this major road-building programme were to be accompanied by a range of new-urbanism measures which would reduce traffic flows into and through the residential and central business/retail districts of Aberdeen - measures like suburban rail and trams, bus-only roads, pedestrianisation, bicycle infrastructure, parking restrictions and charges - just the kind of contemporary urban transport planning policy you see all across continental Europe, the Middle East and increasingly these days even in the cities of the USA. But, unfortunately, none of these measures is present in the planning of the AWPR, quite the reverse. Instead the AWPR will be complemented by multi-million pound radial access projects (including new inner-urban dual carriageway expressways) which will increase motor-traffic flows into central Aberdeen. We can't possibly support a scheme which will dramatically increase the proportion of space allocated exclusively to motor transport in and around Aberdeen. The results will be as predictable as they will be devastating to the liveability of our town.

More than once we have flexed our fingers typing rebuttals to the tired old "predict and provide" arguments for building ever-more motor traffic infrastructure - arguments which decades-long and worldwide experience have long-since discredited. And so then, flexing their politically-aspirant muscles, the business-community boosters of this orbital motorway project shifted their rhetoric onto the unfalsifiable ground of appeals to 'common sense' and populism. "Everyone knows" they said, "that the long-awaited Aberdeen Bypass is much needed, and the majority want it built." 

Check out the 'Common Sense' pro-motorway blog:

http://www.common-sense.org.uk/

(The type of discourse displayed in the comments section of the "Common Sense" blog-post is an object lesson in the dangers of unleashing populism in the service of business interests. Have a read, but it's not for the faint-hearted.)

For the sake of balance, we're happy here to quote some of the opposing voices, which have not been offered a platform by our local mainstream media:

Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland:

The Scottish Government seems addicted to tarmac yet has set itself demanding targets to meet with regard to reducing Scotland's carbon emissions and tackling climate change. This new road will not help them in this regard, and goes to show that Scottish Ministers just aren't able to see the bigger picture. You can't cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change while simultaneously building massive new roads that create more traffic and development.

WWF Scotland director, Dr Richard Dixon:

It is deeply disappointing that the the court have thrown out this challenge from community campaigners trying to stop the Aberdeen Bypass. This scheme will trash local wildlife and increase climate change emissions as it generates new traffic. We call on Transport Minister Keith Brown to use the forthcoming budget to commit to ensuring that Scotland's transport sector plays its full part in tackling climate change.



Colin Howden director Transform Scotland, the national sustainable transport alliance:

The bypass will do nothing to address the key traffic congestion issue in Aberdeen. The real problem is car commuting into the city, especially during the morning rush hour - something that an orbital road will do nothing to address. The best way that this could be tackled would be to deliver commuter rail routes into the city. It is unfortunate that the Scottish Government seem unwilling to invest in public transport, and instead continues to subsidise car use. The only thing that this project will deliver is car-dependent commuter sprawl and out-of-town retail tin-sheds.

It's that "car-dependent" quote from Colin Howden of Transform Scotland which we think goes to the heart of the issues surrounding road-building projects like the AWPR. As we walk the streets of Aberdeen, we see the car-dependent all around us, and it perplexes us to see self-admittedly car dependent people correctly identify road-provoked urban sprawl as the cause of their dependence, and yet they call for the building of more, bigger, "upgraded" roads as a palliative. 

Only policies which lead to a shift in transport modes by a reduction in the use of motorcars (like roadspace reallocation away from use by motor-vehicles) will deliver a sustainable reduction in motor traffic congestion and its attendant externalities. Yet the old-fashioned motorists of Aberdeen stick to the old discredited roadbuilding polices of the 1960's. Like the people in the US midwest who Barack Obama ridiculed for clinging to their bibles and guns, the car-crazy folks of Aberdeen can't see over their dashboards; they want more, bigger and faster, "better" roads, "upgraded". It's embarrassing.

Those unfortunate addicts who seek the help of Alcoholics Anonymous are invited to consider why they do the same thing over and over again, yet expect different results. Were the extent of tasteless self indulgence, waste of natural resources, and disastrous externalities not so catastrophic it would be amusing to observe how closely aligned the rationalisation strategies of addicts and motorists are. We cannot be sure whether it is car dependency which leads to car addiction or vice versa, it's so difficult now to tell the difference. But what we can say is that the results are devastating.

Again, let's be clear - we are not anti-car. Cars are undoubtedly useful and I use a car when and where it's appropriate to do so - when and where there are no alternative transport modes available which would be less harmful to health, the urban environment, and the wider ecosystem. I have chosen a way of life which minimises my need to use personal motor transport - it was more than a decade ago when I stopped driving regularly. It was difficult - yes, but only for about a week. I soon became entranced by how quickly I became much, much fitter. I soon became enamoured by walking the urban environment, seeing things unmediated, feeling my range and freedom increase and engaging with the town I inhabited. In short, I began living in Aberdeen for the first time since I was a child. That's living in as opposed to merely inhabiting.

And now, on the rare occasions when I'm obliged by circumstance to drive, I feel the terrible oppression of claustrophobic restrictions. Queuing at traffic lights; one-way streets; speed limits; parking restrictions; inconsiderate fellow motorists; and all the other minor and major strictures which people have convinced themselves that they are happy to put up with daily - all the while tied to a chair in the tightly restricted space of a hot locked box full of plastic and metal and volatile refined hydrocarbons. Isolated from the outside environment. View restricted by glass screens, metal pillars, the rear-view mirror. Hearing restricted. Movement restricted. Personal space restricted. And we are expected to aspire to this? It was Voltaire who said "its difficult to free fools from the chains they so revere". It is clear that today, in this town, in this country, the motorcar is one of those chains. But, per Konkin "each individual can free himself, immediately". All that is required is an effort of will.

The magnitude of that effort of will would be less were our planners, politicians and the businessmen (who wield increasingly more and yet more power) to embrace the new urbanism movement which is sweeping the rest of the world. It's a source of great shame and embarrassment that - as our business tycoons here in Aberdeen gleefully look forward to "enjoying driving" on a new motorway - towns and cities in the United States - Portland in Oregon for instance - have implemented free (yes, free!) public rapid-transit systems while others, like San Francisco, are bulldozing up their urban dual-carriageways (or turning them into woonerf-style mixed use boulevards).

It's heartbreaking to see our town not only falling behind the new urbanism agenda, but so comprehensively repudiating it as to buy wholesale (and at great financial and external cost) into a transport system which was dreamed up sometime in the middle of the car-crazy 20th century - a time when it was thought that there were no limits growth and no limits to the pressure which could be put upon the planet's resources. A time when the devastating impact of high traffic levels on the liveability of urban centres had not yet been experienced. Today, of course, we know different.

Unfortunately, our local politicians, planners and business tycoons are embarrassingly forward at displaying their backwardness when it comes to their love of cars and driving. Their acknowledgement of neither the externalities of their plans nor the unsustainable implications of provoking continual exponential increase in distances traveled by hydrocarbon-powered personal motor vehicles makes us feel that we are the subject of a sick joke. The sickness of this joke is compounded by the fact that (with straight faces) they call this a "Modern Transport System". It is not; it is in fact quite demonstrably more than a little bit old-fashioned.

Ferryhill Orbital Dérive

1. Holburn Junction

8.45 am at Holburn Junction, and the commuters in their motorcars stretch as far as perspective allows, gridlocked at the nexus-choice split-the-wind - Highland or Deeside? All the way from the Y-shaped fork junction to the right-turn to Royal Deeside at Great Western Road, the carriageway is bumper-bound stuck-still jammed with metal machines. One each to their cars - behind their windscreens, strapped to their chairs - the grim-faced commuters look as if they have just been bereaved, or have suffered some other form of intolerable injustice. But the pavements are empty and I am nearly alone as I walk towards the town centre. There is an unaccustomed hush; the usual speeding noise of the motorcars is temporarily stilled by the gridlock, the purring susurration of the idling engines is all I can hear. I feel like I am the last human being in a world of mechanisms.

Now I'm closer to the junction itself, and I can see the cause of the traffic jam. A bus-lane parker flashes his hazard lights (why?) as he just pops for a minute to an ATM or something, and in doing so renders the whole half-mile of bus lane worthless. A near-empty bus lurches out from the lane to pass the parked car, insisting its way into the stream of private motorists who do not want, oh they so do not want, to let it out. Staring straight ahead, they psychologically blank out the bus, trying to inch forward and deny it roadspace. The motor-bound expressions of the car-commuters change; the customary displays of glum ennui mutating to intolerant masks of fuming rage, indignant. Compounding their anger, the phasing of the Holburn Junction traffic lights has been changed since last I walked this way - it's a high frequency short phase now. Perhaps this is part of a traffic-management policy to discourage motorists from driving into the heart of the town centre, I don't know. One thing I do know - one thing which is plain to see - is that it has had effect on the driving style of the motorists as they approach accelerating towards the junction (not slowing down, as they should) and crashing on through the light controlled junction at amber, then red; two, three, five vehicles through at red, dropping a gear and flooring it, roaring over the junction as the pedestrian's green man shines out across the junction, beep-beep-beeping to no-one but me. It used to be that the green man meant it was safe to cross - but not now, not in this town. So the short-phasing of the traffic lights has had an effect on my behaviour too, because now I have to cross warily and looking and listening all around, as if there were no green-man pedestrian phase at all. 

Keen to study the habits of the commuting motorists, I go into the Starbucks coffee shop which has a picture window panorama of the junction. Sipping away on my americano, the repetitive spectacle of the red-light-jumpers soon pales. This town has an intractable traffic problem, along with the attendant externalities of pollution, dirt, noise, dust, ill-health and on and on. The traffic problem persists despite strategically placed park-and-ride facilities on the periphery of the town (the extensive carparks and shuttle buses remain stubbornly empty), despite high fuel prices ("high oil prices are GOOD for Aberdeen"), despite a "cycling action plan" and despite the new urbanism which is sweeping the developed world's towns, recognising that town centres are places for people, not machines. Despite all these things, traffic volumes in Aberdeen continue to rise; 20% up in the last 3 years, apparently. It starts to snow outside.

I go up to the counter and select a panini-thing. The twenty-something girl barista has an American accent and an over-pleasant, so-familiar-it's-nearly-flirtatious manner. But something in her eyes tells me it's from a script which she repeats over and over and over through her shift. She sing-song-says she'll bring my sandwich over once she's toasted it. I go back to my seat in the window and start to leaf through a magazine. I can't concentrate and my attention wanders. I scan the coffeeshop and its patrons. The place and the people remind me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Not quite deja-vu - more a similarity of category. It eludes me. 

Several suited and booted young salesey types, (I'll bet it says "Sales Executive" on their business cards). Sitting each one alone, one by one they lever open their laptops and check their e-mail. And there elderly couple conversing animatedly in sign-language appear to have come in just to get out of the snow, which has now turned into a pathetically damp sleet. Another anodyne group of be-suited folk arrive and settle in for what, amazingly, appears to be a full-blown meeting - something in their manner, their clothing, their pens and pads, makes me think they're lawyers or accountants or surveyors or suchlike. The most junior of them is taking minutes and making sure that everyone got the coffee they wanted. I notice that the deaf couple haven't bought anything, and they're sitting propped on the arms of sofas near the front of the cafe. Their BSL discussion becomes more and more animated - they're silently arguing. Not wanting to intrude on private grief, I look away. A squat casually-dressed woman with scaped-back hair; she's wearing trainers and has both a small rucksack and a big holdall. She holds her mug in one fist and pours over a thick soft old novel which she keeps open with a beefy forearm. A tall slender middle-aged man in active-looking beige clothing (he looks like a geography teacher - the sort who takes his guitar on field-trips) guddles in his tote-bag and confounds my preconceptions by fishing out a copy of The Sun tabloid. By now, the deaf couple have reached an impasse in their squabble and they sit, not looking at each other, arms crossed, chins jutted, brows knitted.

My sandwich arrives, and I notice that the sleet has stopped. Aching-blue between the parting clouds, the sky shoots a barrage of winter-low golden sunlight to glance off the slick wet tarmac and paving stones, up into my face. Blue sky and golden light in our february-grey town - a delight. Wish I'd brought my sunglasses. And with that thought I recognise what the place reminded me of - it's an airport departure lounge, it's a hotel foyer, it's a nowhere un-destination - where we go while we're waiting to go somewhere else. When we want to go somewhere else.

Why a Third Crossing is Wrong - We Try to Explain Electricity to a Cat

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Our attention has been drawn to the "Why a Third Crossing is Wrong" blog at thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com, in which a community activist in Tillydrone logically sets out the reasons why Aberdeen City Council and their business-community sponsors are wrong to push ever onward with their antiquated proposals for a damaging new bridge (the "Third [sic - see below] Don Crossing") over the River Don at Tillydrone. This new motor-vehicle bridge, if built, would form part of the much larger grand project to build a new (but paradoxically, as we have explained, very old-fashioned) radial expressway in Aberdeen, pointing directly at the heart of the town centre. We've touched on some of the aspects of this new radial expressway once or twice before.

We admire the systematic and thoroughgoing approach demonstrated by the author of Why A Third Crossing is Wrong (let's call it "WTCW") - but of course, the damoclean situation which the Tillydrone (and wider Aberdeen) community finds itself in demands nothing other than all the rigour that can possibly be mobilised in opposition to this road and bridge project which will slice the community in two. The case against the building of this new road and bridge is set out logically and assiduously on the pages of WTCW and the perspicacity and professionalism of the content pages (which are in the form of submissions to the forthcoming public enquiry into the compulsory purchase orders associated with the scheme) does credit to the Tillydrone community. We congratulate the author of the WTCW blog and we recommend it to our readers: go and have a look. 

Being familiar with some of the issues surrounding the proposed Third Don Crossing, and after reading the WTCW blog, we were reminded of a recent piece on Copenhagenize in which motorists using a street through a community in Ferrara, Italy are referred to as parasites:

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2011/11/parasites-and-living-lungs.html

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What a great word. The host organism is, of course, the city off which they feed. The streets outside my flat as I write this are relatively free of parasites. The ones that plague Copenhagen aren't your traditional parasites. They aren't noctural. They desert their host organism on migratory patterns, scurrying back to their formicaries in the afternoons, only to return to feed upon their host in the morning. To continue their infestation and causing all manner of illnesses that the host organism is unable to defend itself against. 

Traffic pollution with its toxic emissions and noise pollution, a lower perception of safety for pedestrians and cyclists, traffic accidents that kill and maim, reduced property prices and so on. 

Parasites. It's a brilliant way to describe the motorists who roll down these streets, contributing nothing to the liveableness of my neighbourhood and others, hardly making a dent in the economic well-being of the shops, paying their taxes in other municipalities. Rumbling past, spouting the residue of their combusted fossil fuels behind them to the funky tunes on their radio while they text away on their telephones. 

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WTDC says:

http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/34/

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The academic consensus is that growth in car transport and road haulage mileage should be discouraged as it is not sustainable socially, environmentally and economically and that there should be a ‘modal shift’ to other sustainable forms. i.e. there should be a decoupling of road transport from economic growth.

I am not alone in interpreting that the root of the problem of congestion is the over dependence of the North East on car transport and this is evident by the fact that congestion in and around Aberdeen is not only confined to the Haudagain and Bridge Don ‘pinch points’. I consider that the development will perpetuate this condition by encouraging car usage resulting in more congestion and continuing the progressive marginalisation of sustainable transport alternatives.

Reading through the documentation so far is leading me to the conclusion that there is a bias in the interpretation of the studies leaning towards the conclusion for the need of a road traffic bridge. There appears to be over emphasis on the benefits, understatement of the consequences and the ignoring of alternatives.

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OtherAberdeen's regular readers will of course know that our position is uncompromisingly against the use of motor-vehicles as a personal transport mode in the centre of Aberdeen (or any town centre). Policies which discourage cars in urban centres and reallocate roadspace away from motor traffic are mainstream throughout continental Europe and are being adopted even in the USA to the great benefit of local economic prospects and urban social profiles, but when we publish blog-posts demanding that similar policies be adopted here, we generally get a whole lot of quite nasty abuse. 

So… it's a tough nut to crack… Going hard at the technical aspects of specific projects, as WTCW does, and as RoadSense (for instance) are doing with regard to the forthcoming orbital motorway project (the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, or AWPR), is vital - for without these efforts and others like them, 'facts on the ground' would change rapidly and irreversibly, as road-building proposals are presented as plans, and plans are presented as faits accomplis. But it's troubling that efforts like these have to be made at all, for they are fighting a rearguard action against a democratic deficit. And as we have pointed out before, the current road-building obsession in Aberdeen is an atavistic desire for the realisation of plans which were first drawn up in the centre of the car-crazy twentieth century, before the externalities of motor-centric policies were understood. Car-dependency (or is it car-addiction? - so hard to tell the difference) as pointed out by WTCW is endemic in this part of the world.

We believe that the underlying problem lies in the mind-set of the polity here (just offering an opinion like that expressed in the previous sentence can provoke reams of abuse). It's a problem of framing, of context. We said, in the conclusion to our "Woonerf for the Denburn Valley" piece:

"…once our scheme is up and running … who would ever want to take their car all the way into the town centre ever again?"

And among the responses we got was one from someone who said:

"Yeah, exactly. That's the serious danger of schemes like these which remove road capacity". 

The point being that, here, in this town, in this area, more cars on more roads is ipso facto regarded as being the desirable outcome. This is the context - the frame - in which we try to make the case for sustainable and active transport. You might as well try to explain electricity to a cat. The framing, the prevailing mindset, makes the case for any alternative to motor-transport practically impossible to promulgate. For example, take the forthcoming "Berryden Corridor Improvements" [sic] project, which forms part of the same radial expressway as the Third Don Crossing. The use of that word 'improvements' is telling, for it is the consequence of an a priori assumption on behalf of planners that more cars on more roads in the city is a good thing. So the  use of that word 'improvements' can be seen as a political deployment of language; for who could credibly oppose something which is an 'improvement'? The questions that exercise us at OtherAberdeen are, firstly: Why is car-dependency endemic here? And secondly: What is to be done? What can be done to break the frame, change the context?

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Why is car-dependency endemic here?

Historically and broadly-speaking, economic progress and improvements in living standards have been accompanied by an increase in car ownership and use. This is understandable. The affluent society, status displays, the growth of suburban living and commuting, the upgrade cycle, etc. All other things being equal (and in the absence of civic policies to discourage motoring) economic growth provokes more motoring; cause and effect. It appears that our policy-makers have got this back-ass forwards; mistaking cause for effect they now believe that more motoring on more roads is a primary cause of economic growth. This is a cargo cult.

OtherAberdeen has explored the impulse for hierarchical status-display through motoring and, while that's an effect that's evident everywhere in the UK, we feel that the extreme affluence of the upper percentiles of the Aberdeen population has a disproportionate psychological 'pull' effect on those 'below' them in the hierarchy, many of who mistake affluence for wealth and so cannot understand that aspiration is not the same thing as acquisition. "Aberdeen is Tycoon-town, / If you're not a tycoon yet, you will be soon." So, aping the transport choices of the hyper-affluent, the people of Aberdeen and its hinterland are delighted to put more cars on more roads, because to them it demonstrates that Aberdeen is a town on the up-and-up, a town that's going somewhere (even if that's only to the shops for a pint of milk).

Related to that upper-percentile affluence is, of course, the fact that the predominant industry round here is concerned with oil extraction. An acquaintance, defending his excessive motor-mileage said he was "supporting the local economy" by using so much petrol. He wasn't joking. But there's a bit more to it than that: Aside from the impacts upon urban liveability, aside from the detrimental personal and social effects of sedentary lifestyles, and aside from the impact on the perception of safety and desirability of switching to other transport modes, excessive motoring also contributes to climate change (motor transport causes about a quarter of UK carbon emissions). As motor transport and the oil extraction industry are critically co-dependent, so it is psychologically impossible for a motorist in Aberdeen to integrate the fact that motoring is harmful into his or her world view, for that is the same thing as acknowledging that our town's success (such as it is) is based upon that same globally harmful thing. If you want to get Aberdeen people to admit that motoring is harmful, you are asking them to admit that the North Sea oil industry is harmful, and that, by extension, Aberdeen itself is harmful. As Upton Sinclair (author of "Oil!" filmed as "There Will be Blood") said:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it!"

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What is to be done?

We've mentioned that asking people in Aberdeen to switch to a mode of transport which is less amenable to hierarchical status displays is hard going.

http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/carshare-no-dont-think-so.html

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Having spent a lifetime on the upgrade cycle gathering those letters and numbers on the boot-lip of their car - those glyphs and cartouches which so shorthandedly signify their importance - to then tell them that it was all for nothing and that they must abandon these status-displays is to so undermine the foundations of their world-view that they cannot integrate it into reasonable discourse. You might as well tell them that everything they believe in and hold dear is demonstrably wrong, and that everything they think they have achieved and hope to go on to attain is just an illusion. It's like telling a toddler that Santa doesn't exist, and taking away their lollipop at the same time. The reaction you get is not good.

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In an ideal world, the fact that there is no 3rd Don Crossing would be seen as an opportunity. For instance, in both Oxford and Cambridge, high levels of active and sustainable transport are the norm. In Oxford's case, this was policy-driven. There it was decided in the 1970's that the urban environment in the town centre was simply too precious to expose to the detrimental effects of motor-traffic. Park-and-ride was pioneered in Oxford, but - crucially - it was accompanied by a moratorium on the creation of new parking spaces in the town centre. No new public car-parks, and - even more importantly - no employee carparks for businesses. While we have excellent P&R facilities for Aberdeen, they are fatally undermined by policies which continue to attract large numbers of motor journeys into the heart of the town.  Cambridge benefitted from a different dynamic; though, paradoxically, it was a lack of dynamism which has lead to today's happy outcome. In that town, civic neglect meant that they missed out on the late 20th century enthusiasm for inner-city ring-roads and radial expressways and the like. What turned out to be benign neglect meant none of that sort of motor-pandering infrastructure was installed, and - the ancient town centre being largely unsuitable for motor-traffic - the people of Cambridge took to bikes (or, rather, never got off them). Today, Cambridge has the highest modal share for cycling in the UK. It's worth emphasising that this is not the result of a specific pro-active-transport policy, but rather is the outcome of doing very little to encourage motoring.

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But where does that leave the likes of us active-transport advocates in Aberdeen? In Aberdeen, it leaves us out on the edge; that's where. Sniping from the fringe, marginalised, a hated out-group, seen as dogs-in-mangers; anti-progress, anti-business, anti-Aberdeen. But, of course, we are none of those things.

Additionally, we are highly skeptical of the compromises offered by groups such as Get-About, and Aberdeen Cycle Forum - because what they ask is that sustainable and active transport be considered, be included in strategic plans which are largely about putting more cars on more roads. And they get exactly what they ask for - tokenistic half measures, afterthoughts and unsuitable infrastructure tacked onto major road-building projects. Where these groups fail is in their acceptance that active and sustainable travel is 'in addition to' business as usual, whereas, if campaigns for active and sustainable travel were successful, there would be significantly less pressure on existing road capacity, and calls for more roads would simply evaporate. For active and sustainable transport is not 'in addition to' business as usual - rather, it is 'instead of' business as usual. The policies of GetAbout and the like have failure built in, for they first acquiesce unquestionably to the a priori calls for more roads, and then seek to piggyback on that.

We note that Aberdeen City Council's plans for the Third Don Crossing bridge and its feeder roads include some tokenistic cycle paths, some of which are labeled as being 'segregated'. You'd think we'd be pleased, yes? Well we're not, because this labelling demonstrates that road-planners in this town have completely misunderstood what segregation of facilities for cycling should actually encompass. We couldn't put it any better than the Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club, so we'll leave it to them and their discussion of what "Going Dutch" would mean for UK cycling infrastructure:

http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/misinterpreting-interpretations/

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The fact is that ‘Going Dutch’ does mean having segregation everywhere! But there’s one fundamental caveat; The British assume segregation to mean ‘segregating cyclists from the road to ’improve traffic flow’ for motorised traffic’ whereas the Dutch mean ‘segregate motorised vehicles from people to improve movement for everyone’.

Through the years, the British have created a lot of bypasses, relief roads, motorways, urban expressways and the like. The Dutch did the same but ensured that it became an utter pain in the buttocks to get across the town being bypassed in a car, in effect forcing motorised traffic to use the new infrastructure built. The British didn’t and are still paying the price with heavily congested town and city centres. In fact we keep using it as some perverse justification to build more bypasses, relief roads, motorways, urban expressways and the like.

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Here

Quite. Here, in Aberdeen, we have both plans for a new orbital motorway bypass and a new radial expressway (as well as other radial access 'improvements' for motor transport). Additionally, so great is the fear that the orbital motorway bypass road will reduce traffic flows into and through the town centre, that NESTRANS (the North East of Scotland Transport Partnership - a political/business quango) document "Optimising the Benefits of the AWPR" (pdf) includes specific provision for measures  to 'improve' radial flows of motor traffic towards and through the town centre. This is the direct polar opposite of the more modern transport planning we see in continental Europe (in particular Netherlands and Denmark) where, as the Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club point out, yes indeed they have bypasses and motorways and the like, but it is this infrastructure itself which forms the major plank of the segregation policy. 

Elsewhere

For these roads fulfil the policy of segregating cars from people, keeping motor-traffic flows away from where people want and need to be. And so, in this way, urban centres - centres for entertainment, residences, commerce and community - are allowed to fulfil their correct urban function as human-scale places for people, rather than machine-scale places for cars. Were our forthcoming orbital motorway bypass project to be accompanied by policies which would prevent radial flows of motor traffic into and through the centre of our town, there would be no greater advocates of it than we. But it is not, so we are not. 

Here

Incontrovertible evidence has been mounting for some time now, demonstrating beyond doubt that motor-centric policies to encourage ever-increasing numbers of motorcar journeys into the centres of towns are wrong. Wrong for the environment, wrong for personal health, wrong for the community and wrong for business sustainability. Indeed, we were delighted to notice that a raft of recent studies encompassing places as diverse as The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Canada, Swizerland and the United States shows policies which cater for bicycle transport are better for local business than those which cater for motor transport.

http://thisbigcity.net/local-economic-implications-of-urban-bicycle-networks/

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 ...a study from the Dutch city of Utrecht which found that whilst bicycle-based consumers spend less per transaction, they make more visits and spend the most collectively. This isn’t the only connection – a German study found similar results, calling cyclists ‘better customers’ due to them making eleven trips per month compared to seven for motorists. And the Swiss are in on it too, where research into parking space profitability found that each square metre of bicycle parking generated €7500 compared to €6625 for cars.

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Elsewhere.

When will Aberdeen get the message? In the past, when they didn't know what else to do, physicians used to allow fevers to run high - kill or cure. Perhaps the motor-centric policies of Aberdeen - with our forthcoming orbital motorway, accompanied as it is by this new bridge and other access projects at Haudagain, 3rd Don Crossing, Bridge of Dee replacement, Berryden 'Improvements', and a great big new carpark where Union Terrace Gardens used to be are an attempt to provoke just such a crisis - for once these projects are complete, large volumes of high speed traffic will power unimpeded into the heart of our town, causing atrocious levels of noise and chemical pollution, heavy congestion and destroying liveability for the communities the expressways bisect. Once this crisis is upon us, policy will - must - inevitably shift, for there will be nowhere left for new roads to be built.

Or will there?

Tunnels Vision for Aberdeen Transport
(a must-read)

If we tolerate current plans, the risible nonsense of grandiloquent proposals for tunnels and monorails and god-knows-what-all will surely follow. For that reason, as well as everything else above, we wish the Tillydrone community and the author of Why a Third Crossing is Wrong every success in their resistance.

But finally, there is another reason why a "Third" Don Crossing is "wrong". For, having successfully framed the discourse - the promoters of this scheme have managed to get us all to use the name "Third Don crossing" when referring to it. But it is not - if this scheme goes ahead - this will be the sixth bridge over the Don in Aberdeen. Count them.

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An Energetic Approach to Lingo Bingo and Greenwash

Last year, we wrote an indignant piece about local development quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) and their flagship cargo-cult real-estate project, "Energetica", which had then just benefitted from a relaunch.

The Energetica "leaflet" distributed at the time was, we said: "[a] self-satirising work of pompous cut-and-paste managementspeak buzzword grandiloquence [which] is both a plea by vested interests for development land to be released to construction companies and a sales brochure which sickeningly flatters potential buyers."

A Newburgh
Energetica Tenement

But we've been reading the peerless Auchterness blog, where we learned a much-needed thing or two about planning, so now we take it all back, all that nasty stuff we said about Energetica. For it seems that last year's relaunch of Energetica went so well that they've decided to have another relaunch this year, with a refresh of the offering and rebranding with new brochures to download from a smashing new website with a dot-uk-dot-com domain and everything.

And so we congratulate ACSEF on this re-launch, not least because it shows a praiseworthy evolutionary approach to the use of language in support of the promotion of real-estate ventures. Whereas the previous iteration of Energetica transparently telegraphed the oil-industry legacy of the ACSEF board members (last year we were instructed that the project would "stimulate synergies" and were invited to consider the "private sector vision" of "dynamic organisations"), today, things have moved on, oh yes, and an altogether more modern and forward looking and thrillingly emotional offering is published, ready for you to download in modern, exciting, PDF form here.

For on the Energetica website and in the lovely new brochure we were very thrilled to see a use of words which is designed to push the reader's psychological buttons - evocative words, expressive phrases laden with an abstracted emotional freight - words which connote a softer kind of power than that of the oil-service companies who are largely responsible for promoting this real-estate scheme. Here's the sort of stuff they're saying now:

"Here, now, and on the horizon" - "Inspired through a deeper understanding" - "If it can be imagined, it can be realised" - "Passion and opportunity should be shared" - "We should take responsibility for our world"

Yes, it's clear that - through their stewardship of the International Design Competition for the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens - ACSEF have learned a thing or to about peppering their publications with the very latest kind of Starchitect-style boilerplate. See - the Union Terrace Gardens debacle wasn't for nothing after all!

But above all, one of the most admirable aspects of the Energetica project is its greenwashing credentials - the use of the word "sustainable", for instance is a big favourite of our local oil company tycoons here in Aberdeen, and is highly evident on the Energetica website and brochure. There are, on the exciting, innovative, forward-looking Energetica interactive maps, little glyphs which denote the locations where a handful of wind-turbines might go in-between Aberdeen and Fraserburgh one day. Sustainability, see? And we all know that golf is a "green" activity (geddit?!), so it's heartening to see a preponderance golf courses decorating the map of Energetica - many indeed are the the chances afforded by these exclusive mostly-male bastions for high-ranking executives to discuss important matters in a low-pressure unminuted environment, away from the attentions of the busybody stickybeaks who just wouldn't understand the finer points of high-end real-estate dealings anyway. And as saviour of the future Mr Dr Donald Trump himself has said: 

...if I added the deals I make on my course to my portfolio then it would be a much bigger part of my business. If I didn't play golf at my course in Westchester County (N.Y.) then I wouldn't have four major buildings there. Owning a great golf course gives you great power.

We offer a word of caution, however, to ACSEF. We know how difficult it is for them to shrug off their existing high-carbon motorcentric and frequent-flyer world-view, but if they are to truly achieve world-class breakthrough greenwash, they should leave out (or at least de-emphasise) all their talk of the Aberdeen Airport Expansion project, which is mentioned in the brochure and on web-pages here and here and here. Moreover, they might consider leaving out (or at least not trumpeting quite so loudly) all their needy-pleading promotion of Aberdeen's mooted orbital motorway project (the AWPR - Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route) and the accompanying intended increase of capacity on the A90 trunk road to Ellon which are mentioned on the Energetica brochure and on the web pages here and here and here and here and here and here.

And a final word of advice. In attempting to issue a greenwashing press-release, when ACSEF speak on behalf of oil service companies who have leased a shed at the Energetica industrial estate, if they are to have us believe that these companies are truly the sort of enterprises which are committed to plotting an entrepreneurial course for Aberdeen "City and Shire" into a future beyond the exploitation of oil and gas reserves, its probably best if they stop referring to sustainable and renewable sources of energy as being "alternative energy". When executives with a background in oil and gas use language like that, it just gives the game away, see?

But, to sum it up, we congratulate ACSEF once again on their re-launch of Energetica. We think it's gone so well that they should have another re-launch, really soon.

More about Golf Greens than Green Energy

March Stones 56 & 57 ABD. K is for Kittybrewster.

In a wide-ranging exploration of just what psychogeography means in Britain today, Tina Richardson - Psychogeographer of Leeds - wrote in her blog-post "The Psychogeographical Franchise" about a strain of 'radical nostalgia' (per Bonnet - pdf) within British psychogeography. This approach whereby "loss and redemption are explored and negotiated" is said to be typified by author Iain Sinclair.

And yes, sometimes when we read the online psychogeographical output of others, we find ourselves reading what in fact turns out to be but a whimsical commentary referencing lost buildings or now-obscured geographical features. A sort of mildly-indignant melancholic short-range travelogue - very often beautifully-written - with a loose historical context. Histobunk. For our part, we psychogeographers of OtherAberdeen are aware that nostalgia has the potential to be a pitfall and have guarded a handful of times against the ease of falling into its attractive trap. But that's not to say we don't do it too - sometimes it simply can't be avoided. Often we find in Aberdeen so egregious are the harms done to once thriving neighbourhoods by planning blight and spectacularly ill-conceived development decisions that the"radical nostalgic" theory and praxis is the best searchlight to turn upon the situation.

And so, while tracing the ancient boundaries of Aberdeen - the "March Stones" we came upon the once-thriving former suburb of Kittybrewster. Here, two of our semi-regular strands ("March Stones" and "The A to Z of Aberdeen") coincide. "K for Kittybrewster": location of march stones 56 and 57 ABD.

Celtic Place-Names in Aberdeenshire
John Milne, 1912
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KlTTYBREWSTER, KlTTYBROUSTER WELL, KlTTYTHIRST WELL. In these names the first part represents Cuitan Briste, broken fold. Cuitan, dim. of cuit, fold; briste, broken. Usually, folds for cattle had water near them. Kittybrewster was in the den now called Berryden, which means watery den. Kittybrouster was on the boundary between St Nicholas and Spital parishes, on the west side of Monthooly. It is mentioned in a charter defining the bounds of the Spital lands, in the possession of the Town Council. Kittythirst is in Keig, and in this name, from association with a well, briste had become thirst. Broken- fold in Forglen is a translation of Cuitan Briste. These folds had been made by planting trunks of trees upright in the ground. When these decayed the folds had become ruinous.

Speaking to my old mum and dad, they tell of a mid-20th century heyday for Kittybrewster:

The Great Northern Road. Town meets county. A railway junction and locomotive engineering works with 20-track turntable and engine shed. A split-the-wind fork in the road, a luxury hotel, a livestock market. A huge - huge! - rail-head freight terminal at the former ancient borough boundary which follows the watercourse route of the Powis Burn. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of cattle-trucks in the acres upon acres of marshalling yards - as far as the eye can see. Tweed-clad flat-bunneted livestock owners and wranglers smoking pipes and cheroots and 'ticklers'. Impenetrable dialects. The cattle-pens all the way to Berryden. The smell! The auctioneer's cant, his clipboard, his gavel, his white coat.  Agricultural machinery vendors and motor-sales garages. Open outcry roups of second-hand harvesters and motorcars on the cinder football pitches in the suburb's Central Park. Vertically integrated agricultural business, horizontally diverse service enterprises. Cafes, pubs, restaurants. Barbers, florists, grocers. Bakers, stationers, newsagents. A diverse confluence of transport, commerce and industry at the edgeland. Integrated transport - road, tram, rail freight, passenger rail - diversified businesses. A coming together at the crossroads, money and goods changing hands, people changing trains. Aberdeen's largest ever granite built cinema, velour and polished-brass luxury next door to the deco achievement of the Northern Hotel.
A grand day, a good price - silver service, malt and cotton sheets at the best hotel in town, then first class carriage home in the morning. Prices not so good? A dormitory bunk at the Temperance Hotel and third class home to Formartine. Cattle driven from market the short downhill drove to the captured bolts and razor-sharp long knives of the slaughter men at George Street with their "Butcher's Arms".

Pre WW2 - Astoria Cinema, Central Park and Livestock Mart
with tenements behind on Great Northern Road.

There's not much to see at Kittybrewster today, other than derelict and vacant industrial and retail premises and, amid the devastation, the great-survivor that is the grade-A listed Northern Hotel. But, of course, the past is the past, and Kittybrewster is neither transport hub nor commercial nexus today. No-one could credibly suggest that the area (which is no longer suburban, rather it is very much inner-city) would be a suitable area for cattle-trading and meat-packing, nor indeed for a rail-freight terminal. No, indeed, in Aberdeen, no-one should be surprised to learn that the sites formerly occupied by rail marshalling yards, by cattle-pens and by agricultural machinery showrooms are to be swept away in favour of a radial urban expressway which is designed to deliver high volumes of high-speed motor traffic into the town centre in ever larger numbers. This radial expressway scheme is known to our urban planners as the "Berryden Corridor Improvement" [sic]. When it is opened, the destruction of Kittybrewster will be complete, and far from being the literally crucial destination that it once was, Kittybrewster will be separated even from itself by the new motor-highway.

March Stone 56 ABD.
Just to the north of the site formerly occupied by the Astoria Cinema

So the formerly economically vital business, trade and transport and community hub that was centred in the community of Kittybrewster was a diverse nexus pinning Aberdeenshire to the edge of our town like a brooch but is today a disquietingly quiet place. The already devastated area appears to be holding its breath and steeling itself for the greater devastation to come, planning blight. Kittybrewster - the "broken cattle-fold". Nominative Determinism? 

March Stone 57 ABD. Close to the railway bridge at the
southern end of Great Northern Road. By the bins.

Having walked through and thought about Kittybrewster, we return now to the analysis of nostalgia itself, and its use in and affect upon psychogeographical theory and praxis. For during our dérive through Kittybrewster an alternative analysis concerning the real effect of nostalgia upon urban liveability came to mind. Rather than sit here in our atelier, typing up this report, luxuriating in the indignant bemoaning of Kittybrewster's current situation: "oooh, it's not like the old days" and willingly revelling in wistful nostalgia, we can see that Kittybrewster is, in fact the real victim of a very different kind of nostalgia. In those urban-expressway plans which are on the cusp of being implemented we discern the realisation of a strain of nostalgia which, rather than being the harmless plaything of us dilettante psychogeographers, is actually a genuinely harmful influence on the actual situation of the forthcoming urban environment. For in their grandiloquent road transport plans we can detect in our local urban planners a longing for the kind of retro-future, the sort of spectacular 'motopia', which was first dreamt up in the centre of the car-crazy 20th century. That now, as we approach the main run of the 21st century, the planners of Aberdeen begin to implement these embarrassingly old-fashioned motorcentric plans is nothing other than the lazy indulging of a nostalgia for a stillborn future which never arrived, and which we today know very well will make for urban places and spaces which are unpleasant in the extreme.

Development corridor

Fill it with motors! 

Culture of Victim Blaming and Pre-punishing

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The cyclist travels southbound on Aberdeen’s Ashley Road at a speed somewhere between 15 and 18 mph - a usual cruising speed for level-terrain cycling around town. Ashely Road is the type of inner-urban residential street typical in Scotland, characterised by terraced and semi-detached townhouses, small-trader shops and a large primary school. The speed limit on this road is 20 mph. But it is used as a rat-run.



Passing the school, the impatient roar of motor vehicles can be heard behind the cyclist - and then a taxi thunders past, overtaking at excessive speed. Emboldened by the taxi driver’s audacious manoeuvre, the driver of a flat-bed truck decides that he too should also be in front of the cyclist. So sure is he of his right to precede the cyclist that he takes no account of an oncoming vehicle - another cyclist - who is forced to slow down and pull over into the gutter to avoid a head-on collision with this truck travelling at speed on the wrong side of the road. Both motor-vehicles, in their drivers' arrogant haste to stamp their inconsiderate and dangerous precedence on the roadspace are then pictured waiting at a set of traffic lights as the cyclist immediately catches up with and passes them, seconds later.

A couple of years ago a young boy, a pupil at Ashley Road School, was injured quite badly by a similarly inconsiderate and reckless motorist at exactly this spot, travelling at excessive speed outside the school, rat-running between Pitmuxton and Rubislaw. And as the menacing crunch-time graphs ski-jump up, plotting the upward trajectories of oil price, human population, resource depletion, carbon emissions, deforestation, inequality, species extinctions and global heat budget - what is the proposed solution - here, in this town - to the harm caused by inappropriate motoring in inner-urban residential areas near schools? Unsurprisingly, the response which is regarded as “common sense” in this town is a proliferation of pedestian-restricting railings, behind which our children are taught that the outside world is a dangerous and frightening place. Everything is done to accommodate the convenience of motor-traffic, all the while impinging on the convenience of pedestrians, eroding the utility of other modes of transport and extinguishing the right of children to behave as children.

But worse even than all this, only in Aberdeen could a situation of psychogeographcal false consciousness exist to such a high state that it leads to the invention of the “Walkodile”. Check it out:

Walkodile: It's a kind of rigid tethering system for small children. A sort of sick plastic-spined victim-prepunishing chain gang. Just because motorists can't be trusted to behave themselves around schools.



Astonishing. So, rather than consider motor-traffic management policies along principles of shared space or filtered permeability - restricting the unhindered high-speed movement of motor traffic along residential roads where primary schools and community facilities are situated - we are presented instead with measures and systems which restrict the movement of children. Rather than address the issue of irresponsible and uncivilised motorist behaviour around schools, we have this alienating response based upon rules and restrictions which pre-punish potential victims. This locally invented “Walkodile” is particularly execrable, resembling - actually no: replicating - as it does a chain gang for pre-teens. Locking them together in shackles, wearing high-vis sashes, restricting free movement, reinforcing the message that going outside is a dangerous and special activity, something which requires special planning, special clothing, special equipment and special permission. This teaches children that being outside is not something you can do independently; you are required to be part of a team which is tethered in a rigid and arbitrary hierarchy. Moreover, it conditions these kids that they will, for the rest of their lives, be constrained and chained. Freedom but a dream, they will be forever forced into rigid and arbitrary hierarchies, ordered where to go and when to go there. And this lesson will be forced upon the coming generation of Aberdonians from their pre-school days - by the time they are ready to join the workforce they will be pre-conditioned for unquestioning obedience. Indeed, they will have become dependent upon the constraints and chains which were put upon them from their earliest memory. They will be unquestionably and unquestioningly ready to service capital in the pursuit of endless economic growth. And that's all that really matters in this town, isn't it?

We hope that the business behind the “Walkodile” fails, and we hope that anyone who has invested in it suffers the humiliating loss of their capital. Below is a video of the inventor demonstrating her "product" and attempting to explain herself. If it were up to us she would be prosecuted and jailed. But then, she's already a hopeless prisoner of her own world-view, isn't she?

 


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Edit - update.

Hoho, the inventors of the Walkodile are now promoting the "Walkodile Song" which bears an astonishing similarity to those songs sung in the 'call out and reply' style by chain gangs, cotton-picking slave teams and yolked together galley-slaves. Coincidence?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjyuo_-BnEw

Carshare? No, don't think so.

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We draw your attention to coverage of the risible failures of both "Car-Free Day" and "In Town Without My Car in Aberdeen", these active transport initiatives being handled in our town by the curious quango "GetAbout", which, according to their website is "a joint project featuring [sic] several organisations". Imagine our surprise when we noticed that they'd bought airtime on STV during Dickinson's Real Deal yesterday to screen an advert which promotes carsharing. In case you missed it:

 

In the video, you can follow the heartening tale of Cartoon Graeme and Cartoon Pete, both of whom commute from Westhill to Tullos every day. With the help of GetAbout's free service, they get hooked up to share cars and so save "about half" on their fuel costs. Right. So there are a few things wrong with that. Like the fact that just how, exactly, did they expect office workers on the 8.30 to 5.30 treadmill to see a TV ad-spot at quarter to three in the mid-afternoon? (We are happy to provide this "watch again catchup" service, free!)

But more fundamentally than that, the ad implies quite correctly that motoring is expensive (and, indeed, it is - costing about £550 per month for the average person running the average car, according to the RAC's 2010 figures). Counter-intuitively, this is why car-share promotion will fail in Aberdeen. It’s true that, whenever there’s a petrol-tax-hike or price increase because of record-high oil costs, we all see the STV cub reporter sent out to do his easy-peasy hack-work lazy boilerplate on “hard pressed” motorists who are “beleaguered” by record fuel prices. And there they are: motorists-in-solidarity-on-the-forecourt being interviewed; happy to be interviewed venting about paying “more than enough”. They roll their eyes and go through the motions of complaining bitterly, but if you look closely, if you examine the micro-gestures, you’ll see that their eyes are actually smiling – laughing even – with self-regarding relish. Oh yes, the motorists love to complain because in that complaining they get to boast about how much money they spend on running their cars, and how hard they work in extra overtime hours to keep the show on the road (how does car-sharing work when you're doing ad-hoc overtime, anyway?) This demonstrates that they are cash-rich and time-poor: the very badges of high status. Thus the ever-increasing cost of motoring affords the motorist a chance to perform Darwinian status-display dances. From the young contract engineer using his soft-top roadster as a fanny-magnet to the yummy-mummy piloting her oil-tanker-vast Range Rover around the centre of town on the yummy mummy money-go-round – higher motoring costs simply and conveniently serve to enhance status, for in Aberdeen motoring is now a Veblen Good; the more expensive it is, the greater its attraction. Indeed motoring today is the high status distilled essence of aspiration itself. This is why car-sharing in Aberdeen is doomed to fail. You wouldn’t want to look poor, now would you?

You see, car-sharing robs the motorist of his or her most potent status-symbol signpost. And, as our society is hierarchical, a lack of obvious signposts to status troubles the type of people (so common in this town) who have a pathological need to signal their place in the hierarchy to those around them. While the models and levels of spec of their vehicles are distinguished only artificially and superficially, it is enough - for the little cryptic collection of numbers and letters on the boot-lip is the urgent bip-bip-beep telegraph of their pay-grade, their rank, their position on the ladder; their level in the hierarchy. While of course all hierarchies are repulsive, arbitrary, artificial and absurd - they are the compelling organising principal of our society and are evident everywhere. The language of aspiration and the impulse to 'upgrade' is woven into the fabric of every aspect of late-stage consumer capitalism, and this is why the type of people so predominant in our town cling so tightly to their motorcars - for the alternative is a mode of transport which is less amenable to hierarchical status displays. Having spent a life on the upgrade cycle gathering those letters and numbers on the boot-lip of their car - those glyphs and cartouches which so shorthandedly signify their importance - to then tell them that it was all for nothing and that they must abandon these status-displays is to so undermine the foundations of their world-view that they cannot integrate it into reasonable discourse. You might as well tell them that everything they believe in and hold dear is demonstrably wrong, and that everything they think they have achieved and hope to go on to attain is just an illusion. It's like telling a toddler that Santa doesn't exist, and taking away their lollipop at the same time. The reaction you get is not good. For this reason, car-sharing will fail in this town.

But, more fundamentally even than that, we abhor the GetAbout carsharing campaign for it's wheedling compromise. We hate compromise. The premise (now uncontroversial) is that spending an hour a day, every working day, commuting by motorcar is harmful; economically and ecologically unsustainable; unbearably costly both to the individual and to larger society. It is now clear that so egregious are the harms caused by motor commuting and the normalisation of car-dependent motorcentric lifestyles, that the time has arrived for people of good conscience to demand an end to this bizarre fixation with personal motor transport. But, rather than do this, GetAbout prefer only to ask politely that those who perpetrate the harm do so just a little less, cut down a bit, please. Like nicely asking the house-breaker to burgle only houses with odd numbers, GetAbout have missed a chance to promote real beneficial change and instead choose the compromise of hand-wringing cringing negotiation with the wrong-doer. We hate compromise and we execrate negotiation. Both compromise and negotiation are signs of an initially dishonest lack of total commitment to the original premise. We must ask, what is it that GetAbout are afraid of? And why will they not commit fully to active and sustainable transport? Rather than this embarrassing and humiliating call for slightly less motoring, why cannot they just come out and deliver the message that the perceived necessity to build one's life around such an unsustainable commute to work is something which must now be rigorously questioned? GetAbout should be demanding that people make urgent efforts through their work/life choices to create a sustainable context in which to experience that life and work. This requires demanding denser mixed urban developments which allow living nearer to work or working nearer to home. It requires demanding that employers plan for, enable and compel workers to telecommute whenever possible. It requires demanding an immediate moratorium on expensive and unnecessary roadbuilding schemes (like the Aberdeen bypass motorway with its associated radial expressways) and the vast public subsidies consumed by these projects. It requires demanding continental-style commitment to diverse modes of public and active transport and a total ban on the provision of subsidised parking spaces for workers and residents.

What it does not require is the airing of a cheap silly little counterproductive cartoon on afternoon TV to needily beg ever so politely that the wrongdoers (who aren't watching anyway) do just a little bit less wrong all the while continuing to authorise and normalise their damaging levels of undesirable activity. The time for such cringing and cringeworthy compromise is over, because existential questions are now being asked of our civilisation as we enter this age of ecological crises and societal anomie. This long emergency, the slow motion crisis: Are we in it?  Has it started yet? How far in are we? Yes, we are in it. Yes, it has started. And how we behave today and tomorrow will determine how far in we go and whether it's possible to reverse the most grievous predictions outlined by the worst-case scenarios. How's your conscience?

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