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Car lovers: Cheap public transport cannot compete with the privacy and comfort of driving

Andrew Taylor
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Toni Purnell sounds apologetic as she explains why she prefers her car to public transport.

"I don't want to sound like I'm anti-environment or public transport but I just find I couldn't do those things on a train or a bus," she said. "I couldn't have conversations with mum or girlfriends with people all around." 

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The future productivity and quality of life in Australia's big cities will hinge on the efficiency of our transport networks.

Ms Purnell lives in Annandale, close to a light rail station as well as bus services, yet she is in the car every day ferrying her teenage sons to sporting activities across Sydney as well as driving to her workplace in Marrickville.

"I've probably been on a bus less than half a dozen times and a train probably a little bit more," she said. "And the light rail, because it's close to home, probably once a month."

Research by Jennifer Kent, a research fellow in the Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Sydney, suggests cost and convenience are not the only factors influencing driving decisions.

"It is an attachment to notions such as privacy, autonomy and predictability, as well as comfort provided by things like air-conditioning, private sound systems," she said.

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Dr Kent and urban planner Giovanni Cirillo discussed why many Sydneysiders prefer driving in Motor enthusiasm: enduring attachments to the privacy, autonomy and comfort of driving as part of the University of Sydney's Festival of Urbanism on Tuesday.

The NSW government has various policies to discourage car usage, from the billions of dollars spent on new public transport infrastructure to limits to car parking and a parking space levy.

A Transport for NSW spokesman said: "We need to minimise congestion to keep both commuters and the economy moving and offer alternatives that reduce the need to travel by car during peak hour."

He said new transport infrastructure would make "non-car solutions" more than competitive with the car for many journeys. The Travel Choices program encouraged people to change their time and mode of travel, reducing inbound traffic into the city by about 9 per cent between the 6am to 10am peak.

But Dr Kent said: "We have underestimated what it will take to get people out of their cars, and building additional freeways like WestConnex is only going to reinforce that.

"If the current state government is serious about reducing private car use with resultant health and sustainability benefits, what is required is a full-scale evaluation of transport and land use to see which policies might be inadvertently, or quite obviously, perpetuating car reliance and car appreciation."

Dr Kent's research found people were willing to endure a longer commute if they could do travel in the privacy, comfort and autonomy of the car: "Monetary cost was not well understood by participants who failed to appreciate that the cost of driving includes the cost of owning the car as well as the cost of petrol, tolls."

Privacy and comfort may also outweigh the environmental and health impacts of cars as well as the prospect of traffic jams.

"For many people being asked to reduce the amount of privacy they experience in the workplace – for example, with hot desking – and at home, for example, with higher-density living, the car remains a space that they can call their own," she said.

Jam-packed trains and buses in peak hour, with people coughing and sneezing during the winter cold and flu season, are not an appealing way to travel to and from work for Ms Purnell.

"I work in an open-plan office, all day there are phones, colleagues, we all chat, there's constant noise, all this activity going on," she said. "That doesn't concern me in the workplace but sometimes at the end of the day you just need a bit of peace."

Ms Purnell said the moments after she has dropped off sons Rowan, 15, and 13-year-old Oliver at water polo, basketball and other sports or when she is driving to work provided a rare opportunity for quiet time.

"On winter mornings, I pop my seat warmer on, I pop my music on and I don't find the traffic all that stressful," she said.

Driving also provides her with the privacy, space and time to have conversations with family and friends: "Again it's one of the only windows when I haven't got kids to deal with or my husband."

The push for higher-density living in Sydney also needed to accommodate people's attachment to privacy, Dr Kent said. "We need to feel part of a community, but we also need to have the ability to retreat when we want."

She added: "As for whether the car is one of the few places where we can escape the world, ask a mother who has just dropped two screaming kids to childcare and has a precious 30-minute drive to the office, enveloped by nothing but the radio, the heater and her own thoughts."

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