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Title: A City in Common
Author: Tom Murray
Date: April 2016
Language: en
Topics: transport, city, urbanism, climate change, Common Threads, sustainable development
Source: Retrieved on 21st January 2022 from http://www.wsm.ie/c/city-ireland-eco-transport-struggle
Notes: Published in Common Threads Issue 1 — April 2016.

Tom Murray

A City in Common

Could climate change become a catalysing force for radical social

transformation in Ireland? Recent struggles around public transport in

Ireland prompt us to think along these lines.

During the spring of 2016, Luas workers went on strike for decent pay

and for terms and conditions similar to workers in other public

transport services [1]. Similarly, in Autumn 2015, Irish Rail workers

went on strike, primarily in opposition to the EU Commission and the

Irish government’s gradual moves towards privatisation [2].

Previously, in Spring 2015, Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann workers went on

strike over plans by the National Transport Authority to tender out 10%

of public routes to private operators. SIPTU’s banner at Liberty Hall

outlined why: ‘Say No to Privatisation; privatisation results in fare

increase, reduced services, a threat to free travel, a bad deal for

taxpayers and job cuts’.

SIPTU and NBRU members and strike organisers have emphasised the damage

privatisation will do to society, primarily concentrating on the loss of

community services and the race to the bottom in bus drivers’ terms and

conditions [3]. The striking workers deserve our support and their

claims should be taken seriously.

This is definitely the case when the regime media adhere to a deeply

unimaginative line, loudly declaiming traffic disruption to an imagined

city of angry consumers and silently accepting the hollowing out of

public services [4].

At the same time, however, we also need to think about what’s not being

said, about the words that don’t make it on to the papers or the banner.

The missing planet

In these recent clashes between the defenders of public services and the

agents of privatisation, an articulated concern for the planet’s

capacity to sustain life is strangely missing.

This is, perhaps, unsurprising. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the crisis of

2007 and ensuing recession have provided governments of both left- and

right-wing hues with a pretext to accelerate fossil fuel extraction in

pursuit of ‘growth’.

Fighting austerity, it seems, has swept discussions of climate change to

the margins of electoral and movement-based politics. All the while,

capitalism’s ‘grow or die’ imperative continues to take a toll on a

finite planet. The same week as the Dublin bus strike, scientists

observed record carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere.

This 400ppm (parts per million) record is a milestone for global warming

and comes nearly three decades after what is considered the ‘safe’ level

of 350ppm was passed [5]. Public transport clearly plays a crucial role

here: each full standard bus can take more than 50 cars off the road

while a full train can eliminate over 600[6]. In these circumstances,

failing to link public transport with environmental sustainability is

not just strange oversight but suicidal blindness.

Part of not seeing the problem involves seeing phantom solutions. As

Prole.info puts it, whenever the need for a real critique of the

capitalist system is strongly felt, distorted, self-defeating,

pseudocritiques multiply [7].

“an estimated 380,000 people living in rural areas do not have access to

the transport services they require”

The climate crisis will not be resolved in such a way as to sustain a

life-supporting ecosystem by corporate philanthropy, by miraculous

scientific fixes or by individuals greening their consumption habits or

lifestyles. Similarly, the profit margins that might attract private

capital into green production or sustainable transport are not there

[8].

A good example of this occurred in March 2014 when air pollution in

French cities reached danger ously high levels. Officials in Paris

decided to discourage car use by making public transit free for three

days.

Private transport operators would strenuously resist such measures, and

yet these are precisely the kinds of actions that need to occur to

battle increasing levels of atmospheric carbon. “Rather than allowing

bus fares to rise while service erodes, we need to be lowering prices

and expanding services – regardless of the costs’ [9].

While there may be debate and discussion about the best way to respond

to climate change, there is absolutely no scenario in which we can avoid

large-scale social transformation while sustaining decent human

survival. Wartime mobilisations provide the closest historical precedent

for reducing carbon emissions on the scale that climate scientists

indicate is necessary.

During World War Two, for example, as pleasure driving was virtually

eliminated to conserve fuel, the use of public transport increased by 87

per cent in the US and by 95 per cent in Canada [10].

Today, it is no mystery where the vast work of ecological transition

needs to take place. Much of it needs to happen in ambitious

emission-reducing projects – smart grids, light rail and public

transport systems, citywide composting systems, building retrofits, and

urban redesigns to keep us from spending half our lives in traffic jams

[11].

These changes need to be fair, so that those people already struggling

to make ends meet are not asked to make additional sacrifices to offset

the consumption and carbon emissions of the rich [12].

Climate change really does provide us with compelling reasons not just

for the defence of public transport services but for their radical

re-imagination, reconstruction and expansion. So why isn’t this

happening?

From the climate horrors to mass direct action

The problem at the present historical conjuncture, in Ireland as

elsewhere, is that we have ceded our capacity to shape our socie ties to

capital, to an aggressive, for-profit logic that runs directly counter

to the sustainability of the planet’s ecosystems and to humanity’s

survival as a species [13].

In Ireland, rampant capitalist development has ensured we have much work

to do to arrive at even decent emission-reduction projects. In a recent

Environmental Protection Agency report, 100% of respondents to a survey

of local authorities felt that local public transport services were

inadequate in their local areas; an estimated 380,000 people living in

rural areas do not have access to the transport services they require

[14].

While starving public transport of resources, boom-time governments

encouraged private car ownership and usage. Between 2001 and 2009,

instead of improving national and regional roads, the motorway system

grew by 430% in Ireland.

There are now 2.5 times more kilometers of motorway per per son in

Ireland than in Britain [15]. Meanwhile, the good people at Transport

for Ireland encourage walking as the most environmentally friendly form

of transport. (‘Walking can support local shops and businesses, as

pedestrians have the freedom to ‘pop-in’ to pick up goods [16]).

Clearly, we have a lot of work to do. What form might that work take?

Starting from the current struggles, full support for the Luas, bus and

train workers is in all our interests. If workers and unions wanted to

circumvent hostile media and win over public opinion, they could refuse

to collect fares [17]. We don’t need privatisation — we do need a free

public transport service, operated for passengers and run by the people

with the best knowledge, the transport workers themselves. All of us

have a role to play.

In Stockholm and Gothenburg, commuters are taking the initiative in the

fight for decent, free public transportation financed from progressive

taxation. The “Planka” encourages people to ‘free ride’ on public

transport. If you become a member with a monthly subscription, the group

will then pay your fines if you get caught. Planka free-riding becomes a

clever way to save money and, at the same time, is a political act for

free public transport [18].

In the past, worker direct management of Barcelona’s transport system

during the revolution in Spain in the 1930s illustrates the ability and

ingenuity of working people to directly manage the industries where they

work.

Today, achieving a large-scale, green transition will necessitate

combining direct actions against environmental destruction and mass

mobilisations to pressure states into adopting green policies while

supporting the popular creation and expansion of local, co-operative

economies in food and energy [19] [20].

In Ireland, similarly, we need to trace the green links from community

opposition to extractive projects in Mayo, Leitrim and Fermanagh through

struggles over inhabiting city centres to the development of

comprehensive programmes that make low-carbon lives possible for

everyone.

Today’s striking transport workers are not just defending their

livelihoods they are also fighting for environmentally sustainable

cities. An injury to one really is an injury to all.

[1] The Luas workers’ claims were more than justified. Over the previous

six years Luas increased passenger numbers by 5 million and revenues by

30%, with Transdev paying a dividend to its parent company of 2.8million

in 2013/14. Source: Busworkers Action Group. See Brian Fagan, 2016, LUAS

workers ‘spitting on the constitution says right wing nut’; available

www.wsm

. ie/c/luas-workers-spitting-constitution-says-right-wing-nut

[2] Tom Murray, 2015, We defend Public Transport! (Of Irish Rail and EU

Privatisation) Available http://

www.wsm.ie/c/defend-publictransport-irish-rail-eu-privatisation

[3] See Scott Millar, ‘Save Our Bus Service’ in Liberty, April, 2015.

Available at

www.siptu.ie

/ media/media_19045_en.pdf

[4] Number of Irish newspaper Nexis results with words ‘strikes’ and

‘chaos’ in headline: 288. Number of Irish newspaper Nexis results with

words ‘privatisation’ and ‘public transport’ in headline: 3. Via Richard

McAleavey, Facebook, 1^(st) May. See

hiredknaves.wordpress.com

/ ; see also Tom Murray, ‘Luas Strikes: Rage Against the Regime Media’,

February, 2015. Available http://www.

wsm.ie/c/luas-strike-regime-media-bias

[5] Adam Vaughan (6.05.2015) ‘Global carbon dioxide lev els break 400ppm

milestone’ in The Guardian. Seehttp://

www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/06/globalcarbon-dioxide-levels-break400ppm-milestone

[6] Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland, AU. ‘Benefits of

Public Transport’. Available at

translink.com

. au/about-translink/what-we-do/ benefits-of-public-transport

[7] Prole.info, 2012, The Housing Monster. PM Press.

[8] Naomi Klein, 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the

Climate. London: Penguin.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] See Murray Bookchin, 2005, The Ecology of Freedom. AK Press.

[14] EPA, 2011, ‘Barriers to Sustainable: Transport in Ireland.

Available at

www.epa.ie

/ pubs/reports/research/climate/ CCRP%20Report%20Series%20

No.%207%20-%20Barriers%20

to%20Sustainable%20Transport%20in%20Ireland.pdf

[15] Robert Emmet Hernan, 2011, Transport Policy in Ireland: Real and

Imagined. Available at:http://

www.irishenvironment.com/reports/transport-policy-in-ireland/

[16] Transport for Ireland is the “single public transport brand” which

the National Transport Authority has developed to promote and integrate

public transport provision in Ireland. “Good for the Environment and the

Economy”. See

www.transportforireland.ie

[17] NBRU and SIPTU workers refused to collect fares when on strike in

July, 2003. See Workers Solidarity, No. 76 published in August 2003.

[18] See

planka.nu

[19] Naomi Klein, 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the

Climate. London: Penguin.

[20] See Murray Bookchin, 2005, The Ecology of Freedom. AK Press.