Encouraging Better Transportation Choices

Aaron M. Joy is a local historian, writer and thespian and graduate of WWU. His articles have been printed in The Bellingham Herald, Entertainment News NW and the New Spirit Journal. He’s published the spiritual novella “Da Eyes: The Striptease,” available on Lulu.com, and “A History of Bellingham’s Parks” (out of print), which spurred a 17-part series on city parks for Whatcom Watch that ran from July 2000 to April 2002.

For three years, while teaching kindergarten in Osaka, Japan, I joined the daily morning rush and experienced life as a sardine as I jammed myself onto an eastbound train car with about 200 others. Witnessing half a dozen equally crowded cars strung to mine was not at all a comfortable situation to be a part of, let alone to witness. It was only through the miraculous hibernating effects of my walkman that I was able to vanish away in such a situation.

A few of my schools did allow me to regularly skip the train and walk home, when I didn’t have a time restraint and the weather was good, and thus I only had to suffer confinement once a day. Though my preference is for walking, many of my Japanese compatriots preferred to bicycle around town and for their work commute.

A statistic from Washington State Energy Office Extension Services from around 2001 reported that 15 percent of Japanese commuters bicycled to work, while only 1.6 percent of U.S. commuters bicycled.1 From youth to adults, businessmen in their best suits to retired seniors, the Japanese are without doubt, whether recorded with statistics or just from first-hand observation, fans of bicycling.

Though, it is possible to contend that this is primarily borne out of economic necessity versus environmental concerns or for exercise. Some observers might also say the Japanese are also avid fans of bicycles with poor brakes, one gear and a rather loud and annoying hand bell.

Where I lived, which was a 15-minute train ride between Kobe and Osaka, it was rare to find a native household without at least one bike per residence. Most of the neighborhood stores had at minimum bike racks, while public markets usually had a large bicycle parking lot.

Exactly as its name implies and foreign to America, bicycle parking lots are designated areas, sometimes covered and/or gated, that had racks for at least a hundred or more bicycles and motor scooters.

However convenient trains, walking and bicycling are, many Japanese claimed that the private automobile was the fastest and most convenient form of travel.

I always felt that with the dominance of one-way streets in Japan, reminiscent of downtown Bellingham or Vancouver, and narrow one- lane roads where a passing pedestrian must cower in a doorway to make room for a vehicle, down to the turn in front of my house where delivery trucks were typically too long to maneuver it, made it impossible for me to believe in the convenience of the automobile.

My own home didn’t even have a garage or parking space, which was not an uncommon situation. This is totally ignoring the argument of the high price of gas, cost and limitation of parking areas. And, for those who argued that the trains were uncomfortable modes for people transporting goods, including groceries, they only had to look at the number of riders who did just that to know, outside of rush hour, it was not impossible.

But, however convenient mass transportation is in Japan and however much we Americans can learn from it, we’re far from being close to any sort of transportation revolution that would bring us in line with Japanese transit habits. Our Amtrak, which feels more like an airplane, is largely for pleasure and not at all like the sterile and uncomfortable trains of Japan, which were built primarily for commuting.

Our wide streets promote the further purchasing of large uneconomical cars. And, bicyclists, largely banned from the sidewalks here, often lack safe riding places on the street, let alone safe and convenient places to store their bikes. It would seem that our culture has largely lost the ability to create a better transportation infrastructure.

Back in my former home of Bellingham, I work as a demographics research assistant for Socialdata America, a transportation research company based out of Germany, funded through fines from local refineries, that is studying local transportation patterns.

Through a random sampling of 3,000 households in the greater urban area we’re examining all forms of transportation, including walking, bicycling, public transportation and private cars. Our method of surveying includes mail-in survey forms, phone conversations and face-to-face interviews stretched over 24 weeks.

Besides discovering the existence of peculiar answering machine messages, angry people who hang up when they hear a strange name and many elders who are housebound and lonely, my fellow demographers and I are often asked what good will a transportation study do as realistically no one is about to give up their car.

However idealistic we may want to be in the office or in the community about lessening congestion, it’s true that the private automobile is not on the way out. We might encourage some people to cut back on their car use through our survey and marketing work, but the numbers are going to be quite small.

And, however much I may miss and endorse the Japanese train system, America is a long way from creating anything similar. We are not a culture that knows how to use such modes of mass transit. A century ago this was not true, but we’ve grown privatized and lost that cultural knowledge.

But, it’s not necessary to be completely pessimistic. Though we may not cut back on private cars, there are other things that are possible in creating a better travel environment. We can encourage the production and purchasing of cars with better gas mileage and that use alternative fuels.

However comical it may seem to see Willie Nelson with his own alternative fuel, his effort is well intentioned. The Ferndale school system has already started a biofuel system this year for its buses.

But, in my opinion, there’s an even greater situation that is possible and perhaps even easier to create. For me, the goal is not to try to imitate foreign cultures or even discourage private car usage but to create a better environment for those who choose alternative methods of travel.

We must make things better so the incentive to bike or walk or take the bus will remain for those who choose these options. Countless times at work I’ve heard someone say that they stopped using their bicycle for anything but recreation because the paths didn’t connect or there weren’t safe areas to ride.

As for residents like myself, who live out in the county, public transportation is not a reasonable option, but we can encourage and accommodate those who have the option and do use alternative means of transportation. This is really where the key to future transportation development will occur. In the end we may not have a system like Japan, but we can at least have one a little less problematic than our current situation. §