I was a very independent teenager. I was already dating the man (boy?) I would eventually marry and we would spend our weekends and many afternoons exploring the city. We easily got around by walking (I personally never quite got the skating right), trains and taxis, and occasionally hitching (sorry mom).
Yet, we craved the “independence” a vehicle promised. Such was the narrative sold to our generation, and those before it.
The entitled teenager within still sighs in recollection of how much never getting a scooter frustrated me.
At 18, we did the obvious thing for our generation and got our first jallopie — old “limping biscuit” — a beige 85 Opel Record that could fit more drunk teenagers in the boot than most contemporary hatchbacks can fit in the entire car. Such a large car was impractical for students at Stellenbosch, where we found independence mostly came on our own two feet, mostly walking places, and we soon “upgraded and downscaled” to Spongebob (an 85 yellow Citi Golf).
At some point we stopped naming our cars, and at the start of this year we sold the last one (also a Citi for whatever it’s worth).
You see, despite the “independence” a car offered, I was still using taxis and trains much more often than my car.
When people hear that I don’t have a car (I’m a well paid privileged white woman, after all) they are surprised and often say “I could never live without a car”.
“Independence” is a word frequently used. Cars are so deeply associated with our sense of independence, that the word is even used in a proud, righteous tone. There’s a sense of horror — I must be somehow mad to forgo independence.
I wonder, though, independence from what?
The opposite of independence is dependence. And like any car owner, I was dependent on mechanics, insurance companies and oil companies (and if I behaved more like most of my peers and splurged on a fancier car, I could throw the banks into this mix).
Not only that, my car had become something I worried about — living in Obs with no off-street parking and frequent attempts at theft, I was certainly not independent of security and police (what a waste of everyone’s time to wake me up to tell me a car I hardly ever used was around the corner, again).
My car no longer offered me a sense of independence, it was a burden.
Without it, I feel more independent than ever.
At a recent Open Streets strategy session a team member used the word “connection” to describe the intention of our work.
Not only do I feel more independent than ever, I also feel more connected using public transport. More connected to myself (walking with buds in my ears is my meditation, yo), to my city, to my community.
You see, my current mobility mix (minibus taxis, trains, buses, Ubers and the very occasional Avanza) is working out cheaper than owning a car (petrol, insurance, parking, fuel, maintenance, equity/debt/investment opportunity cost) and getting from A to B is often faster (especially if factoring in inner city traffic and parking woes). But more than that, it also gives me the time to read, to listen (really listen, constructively listen), to observe my city, to connect in surprising ways with the people I share this city with. Using public transport is also a way to honour my connection to the earth, by choosing a lower-carbon option.
When I wrote “Welcome to 2016, welcome to congestion and racism in Cape Town” and promised to sell my car (which I immediately did), there was a small part of me that thought that by now I’d have caved and bought something new, and would be sheepishly writing about why public transport wasn’t working out. Or, at the very least, that I’d have some frustrated examples of how it wasn’t working and some ideas on how to hack it as a public transport user.
That assumption was based on no evidence — I had, after all, already been using public transport as my #dailycommute for ten years, and while the system and our spatial form is far from perfect, I was well aware that with Uber, Taxify and the local Avanza, and my means, I could complete that imperfect system.
No, that assumption was based purely on that car-peddling narrative sold to me in my youth.
So, I have no hack to offer, other than to reframe the idea of “independence”.
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This post is in support of the #AtoBChallenge | @OpenStreetsCapeTown | @WWFSouthAfrica
If reducing your dependence on oil, and contribution to climate change, through adapting your daily commute appeals, check out the work of Open Streets Cape Town on low-carbon mobility in Cape Town.
