Fuck Cars

That's basically my stance on infrastructure. If standing for political office, that would be my policy.

Except such a view is democratically unpopular. Thus if I am standing for office at all, it would be on a pile of corpses of anyone who dare oppose me.

Whence my mother, dearest Janice last visited she bought me 'bulky' things that I would struggle to buy for myself since I don't use cars. Please note, there is a 4wd sitting out the front of my house right now, probably with petrol in the tank and paid up registration and insurance that I haven't fucking touched in... I don't even know how long, I can't remember the last time I drove. Probably to drop one of my deserter family members off at some kind of aeroport.

But my mother believes me to be incapable of hauling a bag of dog food home except by combustion engine.

This is one of those misconceptions of physics that plagues city infrastructure planning. Cars are not nearly as necessary or efficient as people believe.

Does anybody remember how big bins used to be? By that I mean the bins your council picks up every week provided you remember to put them out. They used to be much much bigger. But then they got taken away and replaced with smaller bins.

And people were like 'oh my fucking god! How am I going to fit all my garbage in there?' and of course they couldn't so people changed their habits and households started producing less waste. (Or wandering around the block the night before pick up hoping somebody like me, who produces on shopping bag worth of trash a week actually put my bin out so they can fill it up with theirs.)

Well, this is what my 'Fuck Cars' stance on infrastructure is all about. Swanston st in Melbourne is a no drive zone for much of it, and most people would agree that it would both be A) fucking annoying and B) fucking insane for anybody to drive their car down Swanston looking for a park.

All my childhood memories of Melbourne are again, sitting in the back seat of beloved Janice's car looking longingly out the window at the Melbourne Museum, or Bourke St, or perplexingly the Dandenong Market, wondering why it took an hour and a half to drive to Melbourne and another hour and a half of circling a block before we could get out and do anything fun.

And sure, laugh at the hayseeds, but when I do my cycling circuit I get honked or cut off every day by people that perplexingly drive their fucking car into the CBD.

Melbourne's public transport is Shit. The city loop is no Yamamoto Line in Tokyo, but the one thing Melbourne's trains can do is take you in and out of the CBD.



But right now when I ride to town, I like to take the scenic route for the additional calories burned, and the scenery. So I ride along the Yarra River from Kew to Federation square, emerging onto Swanston st, only to find lanes dug up so they can construct 'Copenhagen' style bike paths on the one street where cab ranks aside, cyclists didn't have to compete with cars.

Fuck that shit. If I were mayor, I wouldn't be investing in building fancy bike paths that confuse peds into standing in the middle of them while making phone calls because they can't comprehend a 'road' for 'bikes', I would just close Elizabeth street to cars as well. Then Russell. Then start closing Lonsdale, Latrobe, Collins, King, Flinders etc.

A process known in Europe of 'pedestrianising the CBD' basically, you would take the Melbourne City loop and say 'inside of this loop, you can walk, tram or ride it to where you want to be in the CBD, but you do not drive your car in.

And before you say 'but what about all those shops, how do they get their food deliveries, and merchandise delivered' and the vicious side of me is tempted to say 'well retail is struggling anyway' but I have no problem with trucks and cars delivering goods into the CBD, they do it after hours and have legitimate reasons to be in the city. It's people who drive in during the day I have a problem with, because there is no valid reason to do it.

well there's a few valid reasons - they are as such: if you are a drummer in a band. if you are transporting the rest of the bands gear. if you only have an hour to pick up ramen from a decent CBD ramen shop as per your dying Japanese exchange students last request.

Otherwise, 'convenience' is no excuse to congest, aggravate and polute the CBD. Fuck Cars, people should stop using them all the fucking time.