Clarissa Bye: Cars cancelled as climate crazies use money to cramp our freedoms

In the not-too-distant future, everyone will be ditching private car ownership – so say the climate crazies and bureaucrats who want to use your money to cramp your freedoms, writes Clarissa Bye.

The dull, vacant stare of the model climate change zombie who used the potent symbolism of a bike lock to put a spanner in the works of Sydney’s traffic is only the most ­extreme face of an all-out assault on motorists.

She’s just a foot soldier in the cargo cult of the mindless green movement that has our cars and freedoms in its sights.

In countless government departments, ivory towers (sorry univer­sities), think tanks and planning bodies, there’s an ongoing war against private car ownership.

I’ve sat in high level briefings by top bureaucrats who say with a straight face that the younger generation don’t want to own cars anymore and all the hassles that go with it.

That in the not-too-distant future, everyone will be ditching private car ownership.

Heavy traffic is seen on the M1 Motorway.

We’ll all be cycling and using ­“mobility as a service” apps – yes they already have the clunky acronym MAAS for this – to book autonomous self-driving vehicles to take us to the train or bus network. Millions of dollars are already being spent on trials.

Cars might be used for bigger trips, they conceded, but we won’t own them, we’ll just hire them as needed for those rare longer drives.

They talked in government jargon about “micro-mobility options such as e-scooters, bike sharing schemes and e-skateboards” and drone deliveries of our shopping.

Give me a break.

My independent 88-year-old ­father-in-law, who lives with us, isn’t swapping his trusty Honda Accord for an e-skateboard anytime soon.

He drives to the doctors, the podiatrist, the dermatologist, the pharmacist, the local shops and bakery, the cafe for occasional dine-in breakfasts and lunches with friends.

E-scooters may eventually be your only fast way around Sydney, if climate crazies and bureaucrats have their way. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Meanwhile, the document supposed to be governing our state’s transport, the Future Transport Technology Roadmap 2021-2024, says this: “We have achieved major progress in the single most significant transition facing transport in many generations, with the arrival of automated, connected, electric and shared vehicles.”

Notice the word “shared”.

And Infrastructure Australia says this: “Automated vehicles are currently being trialled in Australia and have the capacity to revolutionise all aspects of our travel, from the need to own a private car at all.”

You can see where this is headed.

Cars will become an expensive, elite, luxury item – businesses and rich people who can afford the taxes and distance and time-based tolling will have them and the rest of us will make do.

Forget Henry Ford’s original dream of more than a century ago for universal cheap cars, bringing massive freedoms for everyone, regardless of income — and particularly women and families.

They’re going to use money to cramp our freedoms.

A Sydney commuter launched an explosive tirade at a climate protester who locked herself to a car, blocking the Harbour Tunnel.

A NSW cabinet sensitive document leaked in May showed the State Government looking at a proposal for a congestion tax for Sydney’s CBD – and distance-based road user charges.

It’s the nirvana of many bureaucrats – charging us based on how many kilometres we travel and using time-of-day tolling to control our ­behaviour. Like this suggestion, from the Committee for Sydney: “To guard against unnecessary increases in ­vehicle kilometres and congestion, dynamic pricing should be used that builds in incentives for shared ­mobility and travel at less busy times.”

The City of Sydney Council, not content with churning up so many roads with their bike lane mania, has more cycling lanes planned for Castlereagh, King and Pitt streets in coming months.

There’s a movement around the world called “Open Streets”, that uses the blinkered lens of Marxism to say cars have been “privileged” over pedestrians and the remedy is to shut roads.

The State Government has partly jumped on board with its post-pandemic project called “Open Streets”, which has doled $500,000 each to 13 councils to shut down roads to host temporary street fairs.

In Brighton-Le-Sands they barricaded off the main thoroughfare of Bay St for two days and caused traffic delays all around.

It sounds positive – let’s reinvig­orate local shops and temporarily get people walking around.

But it’s part of a bigger toolkit being pushed by left-wing inner city planners around the world.

They explicitly suggest pop-up trials of street parties and fairs in order to get the community accustomed to road closures, before pushing for them to be permanent.

Closing laneways in the city, which is already happening in Melbourne under a 10-year plan, and here in ­Sydney down near Circular Quay, is another step in the plan.

The other goal is to keep dropping speeds down. The Melbourne plan aims for 30km/h limits.

In Sydney’s CBD it’s down to 40km/h and the Inner West Council wants to bring that in for all its streets.

40km/h speed limit road sign. Councils in Sydney and Melbourne want to lower the limit further.

Transport boffins imposed a 30km/h speed limit on Liverpool St in 2020 but fed up locals were not happy and the mayor is now asking the ­government to go up to 40km/h.

Where will it all end? Let’s have a proper debate about Sydney’s mig­ration levels if the argument is we can’t handle so many cars.

Electric cars are supposed to be a solution but until some genius solves the battery problem they remain ­expensive and more limited than what we have enjoyed for more than a century. The nutty climate protesters who enjoy all the fruits of fossil fuels – the power that runs our civilisation and all our modern conveniences ­derived from petroleum-based products – have kicked an own goal with their attack on regular people around the world.

But it’s the busy bureaucrats who worry me, with their endless quest to control our lives and shape social policies, based on passing fads.

Beat author Jack Kerouac’s classic counterculture book ‘On The Road’ in the 1950s became a cultural metaphor for the individual’s pursuit of freedom and the endless possibilities of travel.

Sadly, that expansive world view is being shut down just like our roads, by closed minds in thrall to a doomsday apocalyptic vision of the world.