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Tyranny of cars

By Jack Sidener

"Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys".

Historians tell us that the Wild West was but a murmur in the long gasp of history, but the myths and sociopathic cowboys are still with us. Cowboys today drive pickup trucks, like the black stallion (disguised as a Light Pickup Truck) taking three spaces as his rider tied up to the hitching post (disguised as a parking meter). By our State Capitol, yet, where the old banyan tree should shade a forecourt with a magnificent fountain, not a sea of cars.

Parking lots have replaced shaded courts as the most sacred places in today's world. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Excessive asphalt for parking is the least of our problems brought on by the cowboy myth, the myth that we have the right to unconstrained mobility. Obey speed limits? No way, thank you — the Founding Fathers gave us the freedom to drive as fast as we want, without anyone or anything lurking about to give us speeding citations. Stop for pedestrians? Only begrudgingly, as evidenced by the threatening revved motor and stony glare aimed at me for being a little slow in a Waikiki crosswalk. Limit ourselves to only one fuel-efficient car? No, somewhere in the Constitution there's a guarantee of inexpensive gasoline in perpetuity.

Our governor probably can't eliminate parking by the Capitol — he can't even enforce public safety laws without a revolt. If he and the Legislature can't keep the van-cams running, they certainly can't legislate less driving for energy conservation.

Thirty years ago, I was appalled to find Kalaniani'ole Highway jammed with cars taking students to high school, instead of buses like in more conscientious cities. It's worse now — Hawai'i's people own more cars per capita than almost any other city in the world, 15 times that of Hong Kong citizens!

Even at the university, which should be a role model of sustainability and other aspects of good public behavior, more than half of the students and nearly all of the faculty and staff drive to campus where they are provided with inexpensive parking. Think the new president could eliminate parking in the middle of campus? Not before there's skiing in upper Manoa Valley! (Or so I'd have said before the current president arrived.)

How can we get out from under the tyranny of the automobile and the cowboy drivers? How could we be an island state like Hong Kong or Singapore, with their pleasant, efficient, heavily used transit systems (bus, trolley, light and heavy rail)? Executive orders clearly won't work, disincentives such as the auto import tax which helps keep excessive ownership down in Hong Kong and Singapore, and incentives to ride public transportation, are not likely to come out of a Hawai'i Legislature.

If Hawai'i had remained a territory and then a colony of England, it might have happened. The queen's power created those great transit networks, and an attitude that car ownership is a privilege, not a right as we Americans seem to think.

It is curious that democracy has created tyranny, the tyranny of cars and trucks. Public safety and the beauty of public spaces are sacrificed for private convenience, not the other way around, in this democracy. Since we no longer have a queen, it's up to citizen groups to mobilize; there is no "they should," only "we must."

I have this secret fear that before a strong citizen group arises, some cowboy in a garage workshop will design a variation of that SUV which converts into a pickup truck. This new vehicle will be able to further morph into a stealth-technology batmobile, able to hide from any radar or van-cam, and our roads will be lost forever to Mad Max and his Pavement Paniolos.

Jack Sidener is professor of architecture at UH-Manoa. He lives a double life, walking to work the part of the year that he teaches in Hawai'i and driving an SUV for protection when he's at his other home in Seattle. Hey, nobody's perfect!