Traffic Power Structure

Planka.nu Planka.nu

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781629632650
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Transportation & Navigation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The modern traffic system is ecologically unsustainable, emotionally stressful, and poses a physical threat to individuals and communities alike. Traffic is not only an ecological and social problem but also a political one. Modern traffic reproduces the rule of the state and capital and is closely linked to class society. It is a problem of power. At its core lies the notion of "automobility, " a contradictory ideal of free movement closely linked to a tight web of regulations and control mechanisms. This is the main thesis of the manifesto The Traffic Power Structure, penned by the Sweden-based activist network Planka.nu.

Planka.nu was founded in 2001 to fight for free public transport. Thanks to creative direct action, witty public interventions, and thought-provoking statements, the network has become a leading voice in Scandinavian debates on traffic. In its manifesto, Planka.nu presents a critique of the automobile society, analyzes the connections between traffic, the environment, and class, and outlines its political vision. The topics explored along the way include Bruce Springsteen, high-speed trains, nuclear power, the security-industrial complex, happiness research, and volcano eruptions. Planka.nu rejects demands to travel ever-longer distances in order to satisfy our most basic needs while we lose all sense for proximity and community. The Traffic Power Structure argues for a different kind of traffic in a different kind of world.

The book has received several awards in Sweden and has been hailed by Swedish media as a "manifesto of striking analytical depth, based on profound knowledge and a will to agitation that demands our respect" ( Ny Tid ).

High-Speed Society

“One day, I would like to have a word with Ronnie Peterson and Kenny Bräck and all the race car drivers in their pathetic toy cars who destroy everything around them only because they think they can drive fast when and wherever they want.”

—Sara Stridsberg

Our culture’s obsession with speed is fascinating. Although it is evident that speeding kills, everyone keeps on doing it. Everything has to move faster and faster. We need cars with more horsepower and with dashboards promising rides beyond speed limits. Who hasn’t heard the complaints about boring old social democratic Sweden and its refusal to abolish speed limits on motorways? At least the race car drivers on TV can live out our high-speed dreams; dreams that are as compelling as ever despite everyone being aware of the consequences: rising fuel consumption, more CO2 emissions, fatal crashes. But shall this stop us from racing? Must we say goodbye to the highest form of freedom?

The real question at this point is the following: If speeding is the highest form of freedom, what is freedom really worth? And what kind of freedom forces us to work ever more so that we can move ever faster? What kind of freedom leads to our workplaces moving farther and farther from our homes—which forces us to move even faster?

High-speed society may manifest itself most clearly in our fascination with airplanes and high-speed trains. We will look more closely at both soon. First, a clarification: it is dangerous to formulate a critique of high-speed society with the help of romantic references to “slowness” or “authenticity.” Yes, one may take local trains rather than express trains or indulge in slow food rather than fast food. But neither is a true “choice,” because most people cannot afford the luxury to make such choices; most people are at the mercy of high-speed society and the only choice they have is to hang on as tightly as they can. They are forced to commute to work under a lot of stress and to eat disgusting food at gas stations—everything to save time.

There is no individual emergency break other than burning out. Unless the entire train comes to a standstill, we will all be forced to hop on. People of certain professions, academics and freelancers for example, may be able to afford longer journeys on local trains, but to think that individual choices of that kind will beget social movements is ridiculous. The only emergency brake that counts is the collective one, the one that says: No one is going to continue this journey!

High-Speed Trains

Today, high-speed trains are hailed by many as the number one solution to the transport problem: fast, efficient, and socially as well as ecologically sustainable. Among the advocates of high-speed trains are a majority of the political parties and all sorts of climate, environment, and community activists.¹ The goals are to make high-speed trains a more attractive option than airplanes, especially on domestic routes, and to diminish car traffic. But there are a number of problems involved. If we take a step back and think about it all pragmatically instead of lapsing into premature euphoria, we can easily see that even if high-speed trains have advantages, they are in no way a solely positive contribution to the transport system.

Let’s use the discussion about a high-speed rail network in Sweden as an example. One of the main arguments of its proponents is—just like anywhere else—efficiency: high-speed trains can make journeys, for example the one from Stockholm to Gothenburg, faster. At face value this seems convincing. There is nothing wrong with making it faster to the Gothenburg harbor or to Grandma in Stockholm, is there? And with a clean ecological conscience, too. Yet it seems legitimate to wonder how much of a difference this really makes. Depending on whose calculations we can trust, a high-speed train would save us anywhere between ten and forty-five minutes on this route. For people who only travel on occasion for pleasure, that’s not all that much. What the high-speed frenzy really is all about is making it possible to commute to work from Stockholm to Gothenburg and vice versa. Once that is possible, people will feel forced to do it when the opportunity arises—and if they won’t, the employment agency will make sure they do. This stands in complete contrast to positive urban development, which needs to overcome the separation of duties and the necessity of covering ever-longer distances.

No matter whether it is by train or not, forcing people to travel ever-longer distances is not the way to save natural resources and halt climate change. Not to even mention how tiresome it is to have to commute to work four hours every day. The high-speed train is a product of the age of transport. It belongs to the ideology of the twentieth century. If we really want things to change, we need other ideas.

Climate-Smart or Simply Dumb?

High-speed trains are faster than regular trains and ecologically more sustainable than airplanes. These are truisms. But they don’t necessarily mean that we have to build high-speed trains. The planned high-speed rail networks shall exist for at least one hundred years. That’s a long time. Must we not investigate the most probable consequences very carefully? Must we not look into possible alternatives? Projects like Förbifart Stockholm have been criticized for being planned without considering alternatives. The critique is justified, but it also applies to high-speed trains. Even a government commission came to the conclusion that possible alternatives to high-speed trains were never considered before the latter were propagated as the solution to our transport problems.²

In current transport planning, one often hears the phrase “avoid—shift—improve.” It is a response to any big development project—and the idea of traveling itself—having ecological costs. In Sweden, government agencies subscribed to a “four-step principle” in the early 2000s, which echoes the “avoid—shift—improve” approach. According to the four-step principle, there are four possible steps for resolving transport-related problems; the earlier a viable solution can be found the better:

1. reducing the need for transport and strengthening socially and ecologically sustainable means of transport;
2. making use of existing road and rail networks and their infrastructure;
3. authorizing minor reconstruction projects;
4. authorizing major reconstruction projects and development.

The way in which the government has handled the high-speed train issue clearly violates this. Major development projects were planned without considering any of the other options.

If we are so excited about high-speed trains being better than airplanes, it is only because we remain locked in the age of transport. It is business as usual. The arguments of the high-speed train enthusiasts confirm this: “The current rail network is under too much pressure,” they say, or: “We need to transport more goods by rail.” If we approach these issues not only from the angle of efficiency but also from an environmental one, it is clear that business as usual—that is, an ongoing rise of transporting people and goods—is not sustainable, regardless of the exact form it takes.

In the last decade, at least two comprehensive studies exploring the significance of various social factors for global warming were published in Sweden: Tvågradersmålet i sikte? (Is the Two-Degree Solution in Sight?), published by the government’s Bureau for Environmental Protection, and Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge, published jointly by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Friends of the Earth Europe.³ Both studies reached very similar conclusions: not even the most optimistic technological outlook allows the assumption that the climate issue can be resolved if the volume of traffic increases at the same rate as it has in recent decades. Now, what does this mean for high-speed trains? After all, high-speed trains will inevitably increase the distances traveled on a regular basis. The expansion of traffic options always leads to more traffic. Not only because it offers people more options to travel but also because the investments need to pay off—in the case of a high-speed rail network in Sweden, we are talking about $15 billion.

Let’s consider the ideal case: the high-speed rail network is built and high-speed trains replace many domestic flights, much of automobile traffic, and a fair amount of conventional train traffic. Still, our future wouldn’t look any brighter. Too many of the fundamental problems of our transport system would remain. The high-speed rail network would be affected by the scarcity of resources predicted in all areas. Peak everything. Peak oil is only the best-known example. With a future energy crisis being inevitable, we need means of transport that aren’t only climate-smart but that also help us save energy. Nothing advertised as “high-speed” can do this. An increase in speed means an increase in energy use. There are no exemptions from this rule. Per Kågesson, who studies the connections between ecological systems and energy use, claims that high-speed trains would increase the energy use of the Swedish railway system by at least 60 percent.⁴ In addition to this, enormous quantities of oil, steel, and copper will be needed to adjust trains, stations, and other parts of the railway system. And we don’t even want to go into the ecological consequences of building new railway lines …

So, the government proposes to build a high-speed rail network for $15 billion, and we must not forget that the budgets for projects of this magnitude are almost always exceeded. Think of all the things that could be done with this kind of money if it was used to improve public transport. There is no doubt that the latter must be the priority if our aim really is to reduce, as efficiently as possible, the ecological damage caused by the transport sector.

A European train corridor is one of the prospects that gets high-speed train enthusiasts excited. In Sweden, however, this is hardly relevant, because there won’t be any high-speed trains crossing Denmark.⁵ For this reason alone it is more sensible to focus on other things if you want to reach the European continent by train: better services, lower prices, and more night trains.

How about the cheap flights replaced by high-speed trains? Of course, we have nothing against limiting air travel. But what exactly would it mean to replace cheap flights with high-speed trains under current circumstances? In the first place, it would make long-distance travel much more expensive and exclude many people who cannot afford high-priced train tickets from the possibility of long-distance travel altogether. The Swedish government says that high-speed trains would not increase the cost of train tickets. Apart from the fact that the cost of train tickets is very high as it is, this promise is not very credible. Lars Hultkrantz, professor of national economy, considers it to be completely unrealistic, and even an investigative commission appointed by the government had to confirm this.⁶ Routes where high-speed trains are already operating, for example between Paris and Brussels, show that conventional train traffic has practically collapsed. People who cannot afford to take high-speed trains must now make their way with local trains, which is very slow and requires numerous transfers. True, businesspeople and EU bureaucrats now often take the train and continue their crazy commutes with good ecological conscience—but is this really what we envision by climate-smart transport for all?

Drive and Fly to Never-Never Land

In April 2010, we spent a few beautiful spring nights on EtherPad to study air traffic: the myth of freedom attached to it, its ecological consequences, and its relation to automobility and high-speed society. Suddenly, something entirely unforeseen happened: from one day to the next, there was an almost complete ban on air traffic across Europe. Our wildest dreams had come true.

The emergency situation that followed revealed a whole number of things, one of which was that organ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Traffic Power Structure
• Accessibility
• The Metropolis
• State and Capital Travel in the Same Car
• The Age of Transport
• High-Speed Society
• Speed and Discipline
• Suffering in Traffic
• The Highest Stage of Liberalism