‘Ōlelo No‘eau

Maluna mai nei au o ka wa‘a kaulua, he ‘umi ihu.

I came on a double canoe with ten prows.

I walked. The double canoes are one’s two feet and the ten prows are his toes.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will be able to describe the environmental impacts of different types of transportation systems.
2. Students will be able to imagine carbon free transportation alternatives for the future.

How We Move and What that Means for the Planet

The ability to move freely over longer distances is a requirement for much of modern life.  We all need to be able to move around in our daily life. We walk, drive, bike, or take public transportation to work. We travel on planes or car trips for vacations. Most of what we purchase is shipped or flown across the planet to reach us and the raw materials to make it have crossed the globe multiple times. Our globalized world is made possible by the constant movement of people, information, and stuff across the planet.

Concerns with COVID-19 has disrupted some of these supply chains as the movement of people and things have slowed or gotten jammed up over the last several years. This has illustrated our dependence on these global supply chains. When everything is working, these supply chains provide us with access to cheap food, clothes, and stuff from across the planet. They also drive the global economy and create jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries and globalization drives economic growth and prosperity. Alternatively, most of the movement is made possible with burning oil and this is threatening the health of the planet. This chapter examines the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of transportation.

Cars

Although the first car was made in Europe, it was America that developed and popularized car culture. We drive to work, doctor’s appointments, school, stores, and to the beach. We take it for granted that this is a requirement to fulfill our responsibilities. We learn to drive as a teenager as part of growing up and assuming adult responsibilities. Our cars have become vehicles for the expressions of our individual identity. The type of car we drive says something about who we are, and then many personalize it further with stickers and other markers of political, personal, or environmental beliefs. Even our homes and cities are designed around cars, with garages and driveways in front of homes, and stores located in commercial centers some distance from residential areas with expansive parking lots built everywhere people might want to drive. There is a massive infrastructure of highways, freeways, roads, parking lots, and gas stations that need to be maintained to make driving convenient. Many conflicts with new business construction, the development of housing, beach access in Lanikai or Laniakea, or trail access are actually more about traffic and parking than anything else.

Cars are also the primary place that we directly engage with the fossil fuel industry. The price of a barrel of crude oil is directly reflected at the price at the pump and we have all observed the rising and falling of gas prices because of the intricacies of the global fossil fuel supply chain. Recently we have watch as new fracking technologies have increased supply and reduced gas prices, or embargos and global conflicts reduce the supply of oil and prices rise. Because so much of our lives revolve around the car, we are vulnerable to these larger global processes beyond our control, but it is hard to imagine life without a car.

All this driving has a huge environmental impact. Driving accounts for about 20% of total US carbon emissions and all transportation (planes, shipping, etc) accounts for 30% of US total emissions. These are the emissions that we theoretically have the most control over, although we are all making decisions within the constraints of a system we inherited. The average American spends about 152 hours commuting each year, the equivalent to 19 days of of working 8 hours a day and probably more than most spend  on vacation.^[1] Traffic and the waste of time, energy, and planetary destruction are a good symbol of the unnecessary impact caused by cars.

Even more tragically, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in people under the age of 54, with about 40,000 deaths annually in the US and another 4.4 million injuries.^[2] To put that in perspective, 58,000 American soldiers were killed during the 9 years the US military was in Vietnam. For the most part, we simply accept these deaths as a necessary part of life, which is kind of crazy. Driving also kills an enormous amount of wildlife with a global estimate of 5.5 million animals slaughtered per day, resulting in billions of deaths per year.^[3] All of this is a relatively recent problem, with widespread car ownership really only happening in the last 70 years in America.

In addition, the sheer amount of space dedicated to cars in terms of roads, garages, and parking lots is immense, often accounting for 40-50% of a given footprint of a city. There are an estimated 8 parking spots for every car in the US. All of these roads require materials and labor to build, they interfere with animal migration corridors, and shape how our society interacts with each other. This infrastructure exists because the government has prioritized building it, often instead of bike lanes, sidewalks, or public transportation networks.

In 2021, the State of Hawaii paid $155,728 per highway mile for maintenance and administration but despite this spending was ranked 47th out of 50 in terms of quality of the road and cost effectiveness.^[4] Construction of new roads and the huge additional costs needed to protect highways from sea level rise associated with climate change will make these costs significantly higher in the near future. Already the state is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to stop Kamehameha Hwy from washing away in Kaaawa, Hauula, Kualoa, and near Sunset Beach but it is ignoring the estimated 15 billion to protect the vulnerable roads statewide.^[5]

This infrastructure has reshaped American cities and towns in mostly negative ways.   For example freeways were often built through low-income communities of color, dividing these communities in half and exposing them to the pollution that comes from constant car traffic. In addition, cars have changed American neighborhoods, with garages replacing front porches at the front of homes and changing how people interact with their neighbors. In communities dominated by foot traffic people have more opportunities to interact with their neighbors which creates a stronger sense of community. This massive infrastructure, along with government subsidies for oil, amount to an enormous government subsidy of car manufacturing and car ownership.^[6] Because of these subsidies, owning and traveling by car makes the most economic sense, despite the enormous social and environmental costs.  Now that we have built entire cities around cars, it is even more challenging to change. One of the challenges is zoning. Current zoning laws often exclude commercial uses from residential areas, making it impossible to put small stores closer to where people live. Mixed use zoning is one way to encourage more walkable and bikeable cities so that people can shop near their homes. In many downtown areas, like downtown Seattle, urban planners are actually removing freeways to reintegrate neighborhoods disrupted by them. Although it is counterintuitive, removing freeways can actually reduce downtown traffic because without the freeway, more people end up biking, walking, or using public transit, reducing the total number of cars on the road. The presence of a freeway can encourage driving and create traffic. Alternatively, good public transportation alternatives can often convince even the most car loving members of society to try something new.

The most commonly offered solution is to replace  fossil fuel powered cars with electric cars. Electric cars produce zero carbon emissions while being driven and their overall emissions depend on the type of electricity used to charge the battery. Some cars, like the Aptera, are even being developed with solar panels so they would hardly need to be plugged in at all, especially in a sunny place like Hawaii. Used in conjunction with a clean energy grid, they can significantly reduce our carbon footprint from transportation. In addition, they fully utilize the massive infrastructure we have already built for cars. However, they do nothing about wasted time in traffic, fatalities and injuries from car crashes, and the space in communities devoted to cars. In addition, the production of individual cars for each adult is a huge use of resources and can be expensive with costs for financing, insurance, registration, and repairs. Despite all this, electric cars are a significantly better alternative than gasoline powered ones.

Our failure to imagine an alternative to the personal car is a critical failure in reimagining what society could look like. Many of the alternatives to cars are also more socially just,as they are equally available to those with lower incomes, disabilities, or the elderly. If people cannot drive in our society, they are often excluded from certain activities. In order for other options to become safe and viable, we need to rebuild our cities to include sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transit. Doing this could provide millions of jobs and enormous public benefits but is hard to complete politically. A case in point is the massive failure of the Honolulu Light Rail Project.

To imagine life without a car, we need to simply go back in time. For most of human history, for most humans, most daily activities took place within walking distance of where they lived. In some cities, this is still possible. In New York, the majority of households do not have a car, the only city in the US to have this distinction. This is similar to many cities across the world. In these cities, there are corner markets, bakeries, coffee shops, and butchers within easy walking distance as well as residential areas mixed with commercial areas with restaurants and shops. You can often do all of your shopping within a few blocks of your house. There is a reliable and extensive public transportation system that can get you to work and play. These are often some of the most liveable cities in the world and people pay money to visit and experience these conveniences.

Walking

Humans are bipeds. The ability to walk and run uprightly was the first and most important evolutionary difference that set us apart from the other great apes. Only much later did our brain size increase, teeth get smaller, and the host of other evolutionary traits that distinguish us. Because of this, walking is very good for us. Experts recommend we walk 10,000 steps a day, or about 5 miles, which is also about what the average New Yorker walks getting to the subway stop, to work, the store or wherever else they need to go. This has significant health benefits, but it is a challenge for most Americans who simply walk to get to the car and whose work and errands are often much farther than can be comfortably walked.

Walking is now considered a leisure activity when we go to nature to hike on the weekends or before or after work. When we go on vacation, we end up walking all over, along beaches, or through old European cities or the downtown areas of older American cities, designed before cars were commonplace. Many people enjoy these experiences but are still stuck in their cars once they return to their normal schedules. This is because the choices we make are constrained by the society we live in and we are essentially required to drive to function in today’s society. Creating walkable cities and neighborhoods is an important part of creating a sustainable future.

Public transportation

The Honolulu rail projects began in 2004 with an estimated completion date of 2021 and an estimated budget of 4 Billion or 200 million per mile. Since then estimated costs have ballooned to almost 12 Billion with an estimated completion date of 2031. During all of this, the rail line keeps getting shorter with no clear decision on where it will end. New data suggests that the many current rail locations could be underwater with sea level rise by the end of the century, encouraging construction to shift mauka. There is endless debate about whether or not people will even use the rail once it is built. Of course, the money is being spent and some people are making a lot of money.

These kinds of delays and rising costs are similar to other kinds of projects like these across the country. Approved in 2008, a high speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed in 2020, now it is estimated to be completed in 2033 at a cost of $100 billion dollars.^[7] As we embark upon building new infrastructure for a green economy, we need more infrastructure across the country and we need to get better at building it. Economic systems that can account for carbon emissions will make driving and flying more expensive, making it more economically viable for trains and other types of public transportation.

Once built, rail systems almost always are used and provide a huge benefit to the public. Public transportation systems in New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities generate huge amounts of productivity as they allow people to move easily around the city without needing parking, roads, and other infrastructure that driving personal cars requires. The most productive and livable cities in the country are those with quality public transportation networks. These networks benefit the entire population, but especially those who work in jobs that require physical labor. These are the essential workers who don’t have the option of remote work that is becoming increasingly common for many jobs in the information economy.

The Honolulu Light Rail is similar to the Kahuku wind turbines and suggests that the devil is in the details. Theoretically good ideas can do more harm than good when implemented poorly. A shift toward sustainability that doesn’t benefit people who need to most help, but does benefit large corporations and governments, threatens the legitimacy of the government’s response to climate change. People become anti-wind energy or anti-public transportation because of their distrust of the government bureaucracies and corporations that benefit from these projects. The way we implement these projects is just as important as the projects themselves. They need to be both socially just as well as sustainable or they will fail on both accounts.

Other public transportation options, like public buses, should be even less controversial. Buses do not need the construction of any new infrastructure and each bus can remove dozens of cars from the road. The problem with TheBus on Oahu is that it is neglected and underfunded.  In 1995, TheBus was by some measures the second most successful public transit system in America, following only New York. It was awarded America’s Best Transit System in 1994-5, and 2000-1, the only system to win twice. Then Mayor Jeremy Harris publicly encouraged City and County employees to use TheBus, even riding it to work himself.  Honolulu has many advantages that contribute to TheBus’ success, a dense urban core and mild weather.  Despite this, ridership as a percentage of population has been steadily dropping. As costs per rider rise, fares increase and routes are cut. In reality, if we had to calculate the subsidies for individual cars with gas prices, road and parking construction, then the bus would be the cheaper alternative. However, because most of the infrastructure is already built and provided for free to drivers, it makes cars a cheaper alternative. Some cities have begun to charge drivers for these services which are currently provided for free in the form of tolls or congestion pricing, where drivers are charged to use certain roads, or charged for entering a certain area during a certain time. Although predictably opposed by drivers, once in place, many drivers actually like congestion pricing because it decreases traffic and provides funds for better public transportation. Currently, most people using the bus are younger or older or poor who don’t have access to cars. If the bus were free and ran on time and to more places, it would be a better alternative and be more heavily used, benefiting everyone.

Bikes

The most efficient mode of transportation, however, is the bicycle. They can move people cheaply, quickly, and efficiently. In Honolulu, where the city is relatively compact and flat, extensive bicycle lanes could easily get people throughout the city. In a 2021 study, Honolulu was ranked 5th for the best biking weather and 182nd in safety.^[8] In other words, we have the perfect climate, but haven’t developed safe bike lanes to enable cyclists to take advantage of it or for non-cyclists to feel comfortable enough to consider riding a bike.^[9] Those bicycle lanes that have been built are heavily used and provide important spaces for outdoor recreation as well as commuting. The Waialua, Pupukea, and Malaekahana bike paths in rural Oahu as well as the East Kauai bike paths are constantly used for recreation and transportation. Imagine if there were bike paths that circled each of the islands and allowed for people to safely travel by bicycle from one place to another. Without this infrastructure, sharing the road with cars on rural roads without shoulders or busy urban streets is unsafe and bicycle use is unlikely to expand.

If you have ever visited Europe or Japan, you will find cities where public transportation is easy and affordable, there are extensive bike lanes, and the large sections of the city are walkable. In general, these kinds of cities are lauded as some of the best places to live. The Honolulu Outdoor Circle established many of the public parks, including Kapiolani Park, after some of its members visited Europe and admired the public parks and open spaces. We should continue to borrow the best ideas in urban planning and develop public spaces that allow us to move from place to place easily without using fossil fuels. What if we took the 12 billion dollars to be spent on rail and instead dramatically increased bus services and built a truly comprehensive network of bike paths across the state.

Of course, one barrier to more buses or bikes is that to do them properly would require reclaiming public space that is currently being used by cars.  Although they already have the vast majority of public space, many drivers are opposed to ceding any ground, literally, to other forms of transportation.  To make meaningful changes, politicians need to be willing to risk the anger of the primarily car-driving public.  Unfortunately, such politicians are in short supply.

Air Travel

Air travel is by far the most carbon intensive activity that most of us participate in on a regular basis. Living in Hawaii, almost all travel is air travel. Our state’s economy is based around tourism, which is entirely dependent on cheap air travel. Air travel is particularly challenging for a green economy because, unlike many other areas of sustainability, we do not currently have the technology to transport people and goods in the air without producing carbon emissions. Technology is being developed to use hydrogen to power aircraft, or even electric power for shorter flights, but the technology is still some ways off from being commercially viable.  This means there is no good solution except not traveling or perhaps traveling by boat.

One alternative is carbon offsets or carbon credits, in which the person pays money to remove carbon from the atmosphere to offset the amount of carbon released from their air travel. Many airlines are already offering carbon credits but it is challenging to document that these projects are actually pulling the carbon out of the air. For example, projects that plant trees are important but these trees may not grow as planned or may get burned in expanding wildfires caused by climate change. In addition, some of these projects can have impacts on indigenous land rights when they are removed from land slated for conservation. Although carbon offsets are a great idea in theory, especially in areas like air travel which we don’t have the technology to decarbonize, they are a lot trickier to implement effectively.

Classroom Ideas and Disciplinary Adaptations

Social Sciences

Examine the impact of cars, highways, and road on American culture and environment.

Natural Sciences

Calculate and compare the energy expenditure of different modes of transportation.

Math and Business

Explore the market potential of electric vehicles.

Explore the economic benefits of public transportation systems.

Art and Humanities

How are cars and car culture depicted in films and literature? What does this teach us about the environment?

Supplemental Materials

Books

Lewis, T. (2013). Divided highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. Cornell University Press.

Post, R. C. (2007). Urban mass transit: the life story of a technology. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Wilt, J. (2020). Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?: Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk. Between the Lines.

Articles

Anderson, L. (2019) ‘Ford v Ferrari’ is the climate change horror film nobody needed | Grist

Semuels, A. (2015) Highways destroyed America’s Cities: Can tearing them down bring revitalization. The Atlantic.

Sparrow, J. (2019) The Car Culture That’s Helping Destroy the Planet Was By No Means Inevitable www.lithub.com

Thompson, C. (2022) The Invention of ‘Jaywalking’. In the 1920s, the public hated cars. So… | | Mar, 2022 | Marker

Websites

The Automobile Shapes The City: Introduction

Dangerous By Design 2021 – Smart Growth America

Films

Olson, M. and J. Klein (1996) Taken for a Ride – The U.S. History of the Assault on Public Transport in the Last Century

Paine, C. (2006) Who killed the electric car?