Trucks, cars and whatever wheeled vehicle you can name are the prime users and, naturally, through that use are the prime abusers.
However, there is another critical abuser — the weather.
Yes, our road network, as immovable as it is, is vulnerable to the machinations of the weather, be it hot, cold, wet or dry.
And the Goulburn Valley’s road network has been the target of much criticism of late, as wet weather of the past few years, including floods in some parts, has left our roads in rather sad repair.
Governments, at all levels, have been criticised for their failure to attend to our deteriorating roads.
The complaints have been constant, being directed at all levels of government, particularly the Victorian Government.
I’ve frequently wondered for some years about the reason for our road/highway network and who the main beneficiaries are, and of course, the popular and almost unanimous answer is: you and I, the owners of motor vehicles — trucks, cars and motorcycles.
But let’s not forget there is another major privately owned sector that profits immensely from this publicly provided facility — the manufacturers of those trucks, cars and motorcycles that frequently jam up our road network.
Presently, road funding and maintenance are primarily covered by state-based vehicle registration fees, compulsory third party insurance, and the federal fuel excise included in the price of petrol and diesel.
So, you and I dip into our wallets to cover those costs, along with paying for the vehicle, enabling us to use that network.
So how about we tip it all upside down and have the vehicle manufacturers, the ultimate beneficiaries of our roads, pick up all those costs.
I can hear the bleating already, as I’m sure the manufacturers would load all those costs on to their vehicles, making them more expensive than they already are.
Maybe, because of that added cost, people would turn to public transport and with the pressures of paying for and maintaining and paying for an expensive and complex road system gone, our governments, at all levels, could concentrate on the greater good, and create a sophisticated public transit system.
Reading A.C. Grayling’s book The Challenge of the Future: What Should We Keep from Yesterday as We Rush into Tomorrow?, the philosopher said:
“The automobile has transformed cities and the way people live in them, for a major example. An aerial view of a large city shows what a stranglehold its roads have on it. Like poisonous serpents, the major roads leading into and across cities blight what is around the greater part of their routes; look at the space beneath a flyover interchange – a wasteland; look at the sterile high-rise car parks, the blocked veins of minor streets along which, between the rows of parked vehicles, other cars and buses squeeze their way. The noise and pollution reach hideous levels — but the convenience trumps all.”
Reading a pre-release edition of The Preventioneers by Barry R. Davis, a Texas physician-scientist, biostatistician, and clinical trialist whose career has centred on prevention, and preparing to interview him, I shaped a question about the ‘Semmelweis reflex’.
That reflex explains an aspect of human behaviour that rejects new information because it conflicts with long-held conventions, viewpoints and paradigms.
Our road network, which is a long-held convention and paradigm, is a human construct, and as its architects, we can reshape it.
The move from privately owned vehicles using and abusing public facilities, something we all pay for and curse about when they deteriorate, has a huge bonus as an all-electrified public transit system, which is vastly less carbon-intensive, would make our world a safer and happier place.
The change takes imagination and, with the reasons clear and irrefutable, the will to change.
5°C