Does this slowdown on the road point to a new form of protest?
DETROIT -
Protesters blocked all four lanes Friday morning of southbound I-75 near Mack in Detroit.
Michigan State Police eventually pulled them over just before the I-375 split and helped direct traffic.
The protesters have been on area freeways before rallying against Detroit’s emergency manager. The cars drive slowly in the lanes, backing up and blocking the flow of traffic.
You have probably seen it on the internet and perhaps you’ve participated in one. But when ultimate frisbee students took the Harlem Shake a mile high on a Frontier Airlines flight the FAA wasn’t laughing. In this news report you can see the video and the response from the FAA. Of course whenever we are dealing with transport and people, safety first, right?
This video however has had me thinking of a concept known as ‘elasticity’ in transport studies. Have a look here to familiarize yourself with the concept:
Road Transport Elasticity by Activity
The concept of elasticity is very useful to understand the economic behavior of transport supply and demand. Depending on the transport activity, a movement is linked with different elasticities. Emergencies tend to have low, if any, elasticity. Commuting has also a very low elasticity as this category of movements is related to a fundamental economic activity that provides income. This fact is underlined by empirical evidence that shows that drivers are marginally influenced by variations in the price of fuel in their commuting behavior, especially in highly motorized societies. Since work is a major, if not the only, source of income, commuting can simply not be forfeited under any circumstances short of being cost prohibitive. Activities that confer limited economic benefits tend to have high elasticities. Social and recreation-oriented movements are commonly those whose users have the least cost tolerance. Consequently, as transport costs increase, recreational movements are those who experience the fastest decline.
Please see this graph to visualize the concept better: Elasticity
From Rodrigue, J-P, C. Comtois and B. Slack (2009), The Geography of Transport Systems, Second Edition, New York: Routledge.
Of course, elasticity here refers to road transport but this video has had me thinking about the last sentence; “Consequently, as transport costs increase, recreational movements are those who experience the fastest decline.” But what if transport was more elastic towards recreational use. Or can this be measured in other ways? Are we missing the point maybe? There are so many activities that I can think about that involve fun and recreation and that we do even if they are ‘expensive.’ Road trips, back-packing, joy-rides, scenic-travel etc. What if it was the priority of national governments to subsidize recreational travel, would we travel more often? What if we didn’t have to pay for transport? Capitalism ≠ fun :-/
I guess that for now people will have to continue exploring other ways and more ways and more ways to have fun with our current transport systems. Point is, we need more elasticity and we need to look at the ways human and non-human actors push the boundaries of the concept.
From our friends at Anticapitalist Initiative
“VIDEO: JAIRUS BANAJI ON THEORY, NEOLIBERALISM, AND THE LEFT
In the second of our Radical Voices interview series we spoke to Marxist scholar Jairus Banaji, author of “Theory as History”, about the impact of neoliberalism on every aspect of our lives, the role of theory in radical politics, and how to reconstruct a new left today.”
http://anticapitalists.org/2013/02/23/video-jairus-banaji-on-theory-neoliberalism-and-the-new-left/
believes the subway system should be for the benefit of everybody, not the enrichment of a few bankers at the expense of millions of working and unemployed New Yorkers. New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the history of the world; the MTA doesn’t have to extract more money from the people who can’t afford it.
Please check out No Fare Hikes at http://nofarehikes.net/
Also follow them on twitter with #swipeback
We are happy to announce the beginning of talks to launch the interdisciplinary Center for Critical Transport Studies between students at the CUNY GC and at Columbia University.
If you would like to be part of the CCTS please shoot me an email:
hagredano@gc.cuny.edu
Stay tuned for more details.
:tg:
