What's It Like Being Stranded in Your City? (Part 2)
This is part two of a two-part essay. You can read part one here.
(Source: Unsplash/formulanone.)
I returned to the States from my six-month-long Europe trip in March, a day after my 30th birthday. After a brief stop in Providence, Rhode Island, I headed to Austin, Texas, where I would house and dog sit for friends for a few months while they traveled. Freshly immersed in waves of “re-entry,” or reverse culture shock, I spent most of my days working, grieving not being in Europe anymore, and debating leaving immediately on the next available flight back to Paris.
But I also spent a lot of time raging against Austin’s car dependence. In the (lovely) house where I stayed, there was no way to access grocery stores or cafes on foot or by using the bike in the garage; all errands required using the car generously left behind at my disposal. I was so grateful for the car and I know historically, this amazing feat of technology was intended to enhance my personal sense of freedom, but in all my life I had never felt less free.
I don’t think my frustration was with the car per se, it was with the way our entire built environment has been reconfigured around the assumption that driving is the only appropriate mode of self-transport. My time living in New York City and traveling Europe had exposed me to the convenience (and tradeoffs) of multi-modal transit, to the joy and dignity of being allowed to choose what was best for me. Sitting in that house in Austin, I found myself deprived of such freedom, confronted with a more hostile landscape and forced to navigate an abundance of undesirable opportunity costs. I assure you, I was not the most fun person to hang out with during that time. Bursting into tears randomly was not an uncommon experience.
These costs became acutely clear to me one weekend when I decided to drive to San Antonio for a friend’s event. Now, mind you, I hadn’t been “lifestyle” driving for about seven years now and Texas’s fast-moving highways are not for the faint of heart. Add to this a “bump bump” sound in the front right tire, and I could hardly keep from hyperventilating despite the assurances of the car mechanic that nothing was wrong. So I set out for my trip, saving a few Panera Bread locations to my Google map in case of an emergency. I was still too poor to turn on cell service, but I knew I could get free Wi-Fi at this café and use that to text friends in case of an emergency (#budgettravelhacks).
About an hour into the drive, my worst fear came to pass: the front right tire popped. Providentially, I was already in the right-hand lane and the exit nearest me featured a variety of car shops lining the frontage road. I literally rolled right off the highway and into a Suzuki parking lot. Shaking, I walked inside and explained what happened to the gruff-looking Texan men behind the counter. For some reason, I was terrified they would intuit I was from the East Coast, discover I was recently returned from Europe, and proceed to chase me out of town, but they promptly referred to me as “ma’am,” offered me water, a chair, and a phone to use while they looked at the car.
Sitting there, my mind—still in the throes of reverse culture shock—stumbled around trying to find a solution. I was grateful for these kind Texans, but looking out the window at a highway full of cars, I couldn’t help but consider the role of the built environment in my ability to take care of myself right then and there. If I was in Europe, I compared internally, the solution to this kind of situation would have probably involved walking or taking a train to a nearby town, grabbing a spot at a hostel, and walking to a local pub for a beer and cheap food. The built environment around me would make my stranded state much easier to navigate with dignity and resourcefulness.
No such options existed for me here in this land of interstates and stroads. I didn’t have the language at the time, but the effects of single-use zoning, car-based design, and sprawl were all hitting me in the face. There was no public transit that could get me across the highway (let alone home). The amount of cars and traffic made it impossible to walk to a McDonald’s, let alone a café. And there were no hostels to crash for the night, which became necessary: car repairs would have to wait until morning.
Fortunately, charitable solutions emerged: one of the shop staffers offered to drive me to the Panera across the highway (one of the ones starred on my phone, if you can believe it) where I ordered food and sat at a table, thinking. I knew no one in Austin; the only option in my mind was to call a college friend whose parents I had met and whom I knew lived in Fredericksburg, not too far away.
When I explained the situation to my friend’s mom, she immediately called a nephew who lived closer to me with his wife, both around my age. They drove 20 minutes to pick me up and shuttle me to the store where we bought ice cream before heading back to their house. I sat in the back seat, a funny combination of embarrassed, amused, and grateful, their good-natured humor putting me at ease. The next day, they packed sandwiches for me and took me back to the shop where we found a formerly overlooked spare tire in the trunk. In no time, I was back on the road heading back to Austin.
It’s been five years since this adventure, but it’s one of those experiences that has remained with me ever since and shaped how I think about city design and transit. In the years since, I’ve become even more sensitive to the opportunity costs related to car culture. Fortunately, I haven’t had any roadside mishaps, since. But weekly, I struggle with the reality that commuting even to a coffee shop to write can claim five hours a week alone, not to mention runs to the grocery store, work, the gym, or church.
A huge chunk of our “time budget” goes to traversing the city in a car, time that could be used for other ends: cooking, writing, assembling a shelf unit that’s been waiting for weeks now, exercising, or cleaning out the garden beds. Countless times in the week, it dawns on me how much simpler life would be for us if we could count on safe and reliable public transit, or if I could travel by train to cities close to Waco to see friends. Even while writing this article, I’m texting a friend who wants me to meet her in a small Louisiana town during the summer. It’s five hours by driving, but I cannot take our only car away from home for a weekend, so I check for bus and train options: 12 and 36 hours respectively! Ahh, I can feel the rage brewing again.
Ultimately, my adventures in Brooklyn, abroad, and now in Texas, have convinced me that no, we don’t need to become New York City or Europe. We just need to become more human in how we approach transit and how we approach cities. We need to design places and transit systems that take into account the variety of life situations that people might fall into. Not everyone has an extra $10,000 to spend on car payments, gas, and insurance. Not everyone has the money to rent a car. Anyway, sometimes cars can break down. We need to design cities that plan for that. We need to take into account that sometimes folks want to wander and explore their cities, not simply drive from point A to point B, that friends want to hop on a train to meet up with each other, or that kids simply might want to walk to the local ice cream shop on their own.
In other words, we need to think about life itself, with all of its variety and unpredictability, with its constant invitations to adventure and its challenges. What kinds of places and systems might emerge if we designed with that in mind?
Michael Schneider, founder of Streets for All and the campaign manager for Healthy Streets Los Angeles, joins us today on Upzoned to talk about the recent ballot proposal, Measure HLA.