Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

SUBURBAN DODGEMS

 

            I’ll play for you a scene in which I’ve often been an actor.

I am driving to the supermarket for essential shopping.  Most often, I’m the one who provisions the house. The route takes me up a long rise. As I drive up the rise, I see a car coming down the rise, heading straight for me. If we both keep on the courses we are following, we will collide. Thankfully, while still driving uphill,  I am able to manoeuvre nearer to the kerb and the other driver is able to manoeuvre nearer the opposite kerb. We pass each other without incident.

But why had we been on a collision course in the first place?

Because, on a relatively narrow suburban street, there are cars parked on both sides. The useable road is diminished to about one-and-a-half lanes. Drivers approaching each other from opposite directions can pass in safety only if they are fortunate enough to find a few metres where cars are not parked. If there were no such spaces then, logically, one driver would either have to stop in a vacant space to let the other pass; or in an extreme case have to back up. I always have to dodge approaching cars as I drive up the rise, so I’ve come to call this game suburban dodgems.

How did it come about that we have to play this game?

I live in a suburb which was laid out when it was assumed that all cars would be parked in private driveways or home garages (“car ports” if you want to be pretentious). There might be the occasional visitor to a house who parked on the road, but not so many as to block it. Only on major arterial routes was it considered necessary to make streets wider. But, where once there were only one-family houses, there now is much “in-fill” property, and many two- or three- storey apartment buildings – not urban high-rise, but nevertheless making for denser population and more vehicles needing to park somewhere. Solution – they park on the road.

I’m not going to launch into a Green utopian dream of banning cars and insisting everybody ride bicycles. As cities are now set out, and as many thousands of people have to drive a long way to their places of employment, such a dream is simply not practicable. Cities would have to be completely re-designed (and flatter!) to make pedal-power a universal choice, so please do not tell me about the joys of Amsterdam or Christchurch. But I am saying that there should be more and much better public transport which takes passengers to more locations than our current public transport does. This would eliminate the need for so many private cars. And I am saying that when they are built, all future suburban apartment blocks and in-fills should include, by law, off-road parking space.

Otherwise we’ll keep playing suburban dodgems until we collide.