Karen Tkach Tuzman
Our most impactful New Year’s resolutions are generally the ones where we take small steps forward, even as big leaps remain out of reach.
It can be particularly challenging to scale back on things that play central roles in our lives but are toxic in excess. We often think of the small computers in our pockets, but the 4,000-pound machines in our driveways pose even bigger questions about balancing practicality, safety and quality of life.
We know vehicle exhaust is wrecking our environment, but the threats to our safety run deeper than the fuel in the tank, and won’t be solved by even a complete switch to zero-emission vehicles.
Beyond the air pollution from brake pads, cars remain a leading cause of death and injury, a problem made worse by the proliferation of SUVs.
Cars also drive so many daily discontents — the traffic that robs hours from each day, the noise and visual pollution sucking charm from our streets, and the way being in separate metal containers makes otherwise kind people flip out over minor inconveniences.
Yet cars are essential tools for getting around our sprawled communities and carrying the heavy loads of work and family life, and may be the only place some people get a moment to themselves or have a roof over their heads — situations made worse by the pandemic.
So how do we thread the needle between the harm caused by cars and their pivotal role in our daily lives? While some may be able to cut cars out entirely, for most of us on the Peninsula, that is a non-starter. Yet smaller steps can have major impacts at the community scale.
Is there one regular trip that could be done by walking, transit or bike? Nearly 50% of car trips in the U.S. are three miles or shorter, and 20% are under one mile.
Could your next vehicle be a cargo e-bike? If it needs to be a car, could it be one whose safety rating includes the impact on pedestrians — a mandated part of ratings in the E.U., but not in the U.S.?
Is there a mostly unused vehicle on your street that could be sold or donated, freeing up space for kids to bike or play?
What about choosing a more centrally located home that allows you to walk, bike or take transit for more day-to-day activities?
These changes may seem like drops in the bucket, but they give people up-close views of how alternative transportation could be safer and more convenient, building the political will to get it done.
Even if these shifts are off the table for you individually, you can act at the community level by driving slowly around cyclists, voting to fund public transit, advocating for car-reducing policies, or even checking the impulse to oppose them for inconveniencing drivers.
For officials, the potential for impact is even greater. Twentieth century policies baked car dependency into our Peninsula by zoning most housing away from shops, limiting public transit’s reach and mandating parking minimums that gave us more office parks and strip malls than downtowns.
Now there are opportunities to reverse course, such as turning parking spots into parklets, creating bus-only traffic lanes, and permitting housing in jobs- and transit-rich areas, giving more people the opportunity to use cars less.
Changing what we’re used to can be uncomfortable. Yet every January, so many of us overcome discomfort for the sake of our future selves. Halting climate change is the largest embodiment of this principle, but other examples hit closer to home.
For parents schlepping toddler gear, fewer SUVs and trucks with front blind zones mean their kids can experience the mobility and independence so fondly remembered from their own childhoods, when streets were safer.
For those who bought single-family homes in the hills decades ago, apartments downtown represent opportunities to remain independent when driving is no longer an option.
And officials facing pushback on policies that favor pedestrians, cyclists or transit riders over drivers should consider that such changes have proven overwhelmingly popular around the globe despite initial resistance, as seen for pandemic-era safe streets.
The challenge is that community shifts rely on policy changes, and vice-versa.
Few residents can choose transit-adjacent housing until more is zoned for and built, and bike commutes will remain rare until infrastructure gets safer. The crises caused by cars, and the benefits of loosening our dependence on them, mean we can’t afford to wait.
Resolutions are all about stretching for the bigger picture. They’re a lot easier when we’re in it together.
Karen Tkach Tuzman is a California Democratic Party delegate representing Assembly District 22.
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(4) comments
Yes Karen, I worked my whole life looking forward to getting warehoused in an apartment building. No, I will continue to savor my house in the hills with a few cars at my disposal. That is, of course, until Karen, aka AOC, comes for me and redistributes what is left after taxation and regulation. Another reason to steer clear of the Democratic Party and its members. Such experiences in other progressive countries of Northern Europe have failed to sway people from owning cars although they are now stuck in many cases in awfully small apartments looking out over vast parking lots.
Dear Dirk, Thanks for expressing your opinion. I'm of the mind that all of our opinions matter, and we all benefit when someone shares theirs, so thank you for getting the conversation started.
I will share my own opinion below as well, partly in response to yours, and would be very grateful for your thoughts on it.
Dear Sonia - I don't think our motives are too divergent on this climate issue. I do take exception to your assertion that the referenced climate changes are a relatively new phenomenon. This State has always had wild fires and temperature extremes. I recall that we have had drought cycles since I moved here in 1970. We are not at a crossroad as nature tends to correct itself over time. I am in that sense a cautious climate change denier. Professionally, I have managed several multi-million dollar energy efficiency projects in order to mitigate our carbon footprint. During that process it always became clear that most stakeholders who had to foot the bill were reticent to participate. Thus, if the economics of any effort cannot be justified, only unpopular taxation and regulation can result in an outcome that is desired by the movement that Karen appears to represent. Is that what we want? Ultimately, we need to feather our own nest, and not leave it up to folks who pretend to know better.
Right now our city, like so many others, is environmentally at a climate crossroads. A now-annual fire season and the smoky air that accompanies it are an increasing threat to our community as our planet warms up. At the same time we have a respiratory illness pandemic whose seriousness is directly linked to air pollution exposure.
We have to reduce our community's dependence on traffic-congesting, single-occupancy vehicle travel, including school drop-off traffic, while increasing people's ability to use active, sustainable transportation modes and public transit safely whenever possible.
Most people have heard that "the flap of a butterfly's wings' is all it takes to set in motion the compounding forces that can change the trajectory of a hurricane on the other side of the planet. But what’s crucial to recognize is that butterfly is US, and its wing-flapping is our own small actions that have the power to compound and alter the trajectories of events and weather patterns all over the globe.
It's easy to think one's own or one's local community's actions are irrelevant in the big climate picture, but nothing could be further from the truth. How we get where we are going--whether we walk, bike, scoot, skate, roll, take a bus, train or carpool in an electric vehicle to where we're going matters. Every action we take affects not just our community, but the entire planet. There are no exceptions.
It’s also crucial to recognize that not everyone in our community has to give up driving for climate change to be mitigated. Some people need to drive and depend on their single-occupancy, private vehicle and always will. And this is ok, because THOUSANDS of others in this community are already more than willing to do the walking, biking, skating, scooting, rolling, bus/train-taking and carpooling--they just need a safe and accessible bike-lane and public transit infrastructure to do so safely.
Bicyclists, wheel riders and public transit takers already give of their time, their convenience, their comfort and their sense of personal safety for the benefit of the rest of the community -- they must be encouraged, not discouraged, through how we redesign and reimagine our streets.
Thank you Karen for inspiring those who are able and willing to make the sometimes difficult choice to do what's best for our community, not what's necessarily easiest for us personally in the moment. We all have to do what's best for ourselves, but when we find that what is best for ourselves aligns with what is best for our community, that's where true miracles, and the positive change and decrease in unnecessary suffering they beget, can begin to happen.
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