Hey, I'm Monique. I'm a cargo bike mum with two kids, living without a car. I’ve been working in active transport for a couple of years, and I’ve been passionate about it for much longer. I’m often asked, what is active transport? It is any way of getting from place to place that involves being active. It includes walking, cycling, scooting, skateboarding, and even roller skating. It often also encompasses public transport. 

For me, learning to drive was terrifying. I put it off as long as I could. I was acutely aware of the damage I could do with such a heavy, fast moving vehicle. It felt like a weapon. 

Whereas, walking in the open air has always felt joyful. It helps me think. It gets my blood pumping. Rebecca Solnit captures this beautifully in her book Wanderlust. When I started cycling in university, I became addicted to the freedom of racing to my destination with the wind rushing past, totally powered by my own legs. 

There are numerous objective benefits to active transport that include reducing congestion on roads, improving physical and mental health, improving air quality, allowing more green space in our cities, and reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on the road. 

Active transport in a car centric world

Despite the many benefits, there are also lots of impediments to active transport. Chiefly, that our cities are designed around cars. It's so convenient to get in a car and drive. And there's a huge unconscious bias that favours car use. The academic word for it is motonormativity. It is a set of cultural norms that blind us to the realities of car use. Global Cycling Network has made a great video¹ explaining it. 

We tend to think of cars as convenient and necessary. Many people love their cars and enjoy driving. We feel safe and cocooned from the world with the windows up and A/C on. We think of road deaths and injuries as “accidents.” As Paul Daley writes in The Guardian, “The dead are rarely seen as victims of violence or of automobile homicide.”² 

We forget, ignore or don’t realise the number of deaths and serious injuries caused by our roads every year. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years.³ And motor vehicle emissions cause over 11,000 premature deaths a year in Australia.⁴

Even without the costs to health, car ownership is actually really expensive⁵ and inequitable. The cost of car ownership disproportionately affects people from lower socio-economic areas, which tend to be more car dependent with less public transport, few footpaths, and further distances to travel. 

Roads occupy huge proportions of public land, especially in cities. Yet almost a third of the population can’t drive. They are too young, too old, too disabled or simply don't have a driver's licence. When our world is designed around cars, not being able to drive can be extremely isolating. 

Did you know?

A huge number of car journeys could be replaced by walking or cycling. One in five car journeys are less than 5km, and two in five car journeys are less than 10km!⁶ Many of these journeys are walkable.⁷ 

So how come we still drive?

Active transport is often the least convenient option. It requires thinking ahead. It takes commitment. 

I grew up in a remote place, travelling at least four hours a day to get to school and back. Trains came once an hour, ferries stopped at dark, connections didn't line up. The idea that a trip might be long, inconvenient and involve getting wet comes naturally to me. But that's not the case for everyone. 

Now that I'm an adult with my own kids, we do not own a car. We choose to live in a tiny flat in the city and keep our journeys local so that we don’t have to drive. We do it because it's important to us. And because we believe that the challenges and inconveniences are worth it. We are grateful to live near the Bourke Street cycleway where people of all ages, shapes and sizes can enjoy quiet tree-lined streets on foot or by bike.

I wish everyone had access to urban spaces like that. But right now, so much of our public space is dominated by cars.

 

Adding Active Transport to Your Life in 2025

Living without a car is not something that everyone can or wants to do. 

It's understandable to feel daunted by shifting away from car use. It involves serious changes to our daily habits, our public infrastructure and even the way that we think about transport and the sort of distances we consider travelling. Adding another element to the chaos of school or daycare pick ups and drop offs is not something any of us want to consider. 

Even if we really believe in active travel, changing our deeply ingrained car brain habits is hard. It takes a lot of motivation to go against the norm.

You can start by:

1. Deciding how much active travel really means to you 
2. Differentiating the real from the imagined barriers, like is an e-bike really that expensive when you consider how much you spend on owning a car? 
3. Talk to others in your area who do it, maybe approach other parents who walk or ride to school or daycare
4. Start with something small that works for you and your family, like a weekend adventure on public transport to a nice picnic spot or beach. 
5. Acknowledge that it is hard and be kind to yourself. This is a systemic issue, not just an individual one. 

Here are some ideas for things to try:

1. Walk or ride with your kids to school. If it is too far, you could drive part of the way and walk or ride the rest. 
2. Hire a Lug+Carrie to try out life with an e-bike - you can put the kids and a big grocery shop on the back and still comfortably get around town
3. Walk whenever you can
4. Check out your local cycling and walking advocacy groups. They are incredible resources of information, often host group activities, and tend to be super welcoming. 

About the Author: Monqiue Ewen

Monique is a Sydney cargo bike mum with two kids, aged two and four. Monique is extremely passionate about rolling back car-centric planning and developing people-friendly streets and has dedicated time to working and volunteering for advocacy organisations such as Better Streets NSW and Bicycle NSW. 

References

1. Global Cycling Network explainer 
2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/23/christmas-holiday-road-toll-benign-term-road-deaths

3. https://www.who.int/health-topics/road-safety#tab=tab_1 
4. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/february/vehicle-emissions-may-cause-over-11,000-deaths-a-year,-research-shows 
5. https://bicyclensw.org.au/are-e-bikes-really-so-expensive/ 
6. https://www.atap.gov.au/mode-specific-guidance/active-travel/2-key-characteristics-of-active-travel
7. https://uk.motor1.com/news/264144/drivers-car-walking-distance-journeys/