Movement

A ‘vehicle hour lost’ refers to a car stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, or 60 cars stuck in a tailback for a minute each. The aim is to reduce the number of vehicle hours lost as far as possible. ‘If the models that produce the prognoses show that traffic intensity is going to exceed capacity by a long way, traffic engineers say the number of vehicle hours lost is going to increase,’ explains Korff de Gidts. ‘And then you get demands to make the roads wider. The media talk about bottlenecks, gridlock and clogged arteries.’

But in a system based on the logic of vehicle hours lost, something fails to happen that should, says Korff de Gidts. Motorists aren’t offered any alternative, such as cycling or taking public transport, because vehicles can’t make such a choice, and vehicles are the focus of the system. ‘But people aren’t vehicles.’

Nor is the notion of growth for growth’s sake questioned.

‘The new motorway will attract more motorists again, and that, paradoxically, means it’ll produce an economic profit, because road users can drive faster and new road users will be sucked in. That’s how the asphalt machine keeps on going.’

So more asphalt is laid, based on a line of argument that applies to vehicles, even though we’ve already known for a long time how people will react to the expansion: they’ll travel even longer distances.

Korff de Gidts’s account reminds me of the DOCTOR [Dutch Objective Conflict Technique of Operation and Research] evaluation: people as projectiles. Similarly, the models used by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and by Rijkswaterstaat take precious little account of human behaviour or of how people respond to and interact with their surroundings. And they take no account at all of the fact that people, unlike their vehicles, are capable of making choices.

The metaphors of clogged arteries and paralysis suggest a collective problem that threatens our very lives. That’s precisely why I was so keen to help solve the issue of road congestion through bike highways. They call new motorways ‘missing links’ and ‘bypasses’, but you might equally well call them ‘wounds’ or ‘scars in the landscape’.⁵¹ Adding more lanes to a motorway in order to tackle road congestion is rather like a fat man loosening his belt to combat obesity.⁵²

Is it being trapped in the cramped space inside a car, unable to stand up, that can make you feel so frustrated? Or is it the fact that you spend so much time looking at people’s backs, rather than their faces? That’s what Tom Vanderbilt says in his book Traffic, describing how driving affects people. It’s like trying to talk to someone walking in front of you, as opposed to someone you can see face-to-face. Vanderbilt quotes sociologist Jack Katz: We’re looking at everybody’s rear, and that’s not how human beings were set up to maximize their communicative possibility! This ‘muteness’ makes people feel angry.

On top of that, you’re stuck in a machine that blunts all the finer points of your communication and amplifies everything: a voice is replaced by a honk on the horn, the blink of an eye is replaced by a blinking light, and if you move your foot a couple of centimetres, the car moves several metres on the road.

What’s more, speed gives most people a thrill, which is addictive.⁵⁸