The toll of roads – on us

Do you remember noticing more birdsong during the Covid lockdown? You weren’t imagining it.

Scientists who were studying the impacts of traffic noise on the songs of urban white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco found that their songs – normally louder, higher-pitched and less complex – reverted to the quieter, lower and more complex songs of their rural cousins, and could be heard more than twice as far.

This is just one story from Traffication by my former colleague, scientist Paul Donald. His book brings together all the scientific research on what’s known as road ecology, a subject that hasn’t received a lot of attention in the UK.

Roads are pervasive in the UK. In road-dense England, 92% of land falls within one kilometre of a road, and 75% within 500 metres. That last statistic is significant because the average bird is affected up to 500 metres from a road. Some sensitive species are affected at much greater distances. Birds, mammals, amphibians, insects and plants can all be affected.

It’s not just noise pollution, but the contamination of air, soil and water. There’s roadkill too; think of how many squashed hedgehogs, badgers, foxes or deer you’ve seen by the road, and those are only the ones that haven’t been removed by scavengers.

Donald shows, convincingly to my mind, how roads can deplete the wildlife from our countryside for miles around. In a country like the UK, almost nowhere is exempt from this environmental toll. It’s a matter of human health too, which should matter to all of us, highlighted by the tragic death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah after an acute asthma attack in 2013. The coroner’s report in 2020 was the first to establish air pollution, which arises mainly from traffic, as a cause of death.

That’s why it’s sad to see initiatives to tackle air pollution becoming a party-political football. The Mayor of London’s extension of the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) to the outer boroughs has been cited as a major factor in the outcome of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Elsewhere, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods – an attempt to encourage walking and cycling as well as to tackle pollution by reducing speed limits and limiting through traffic – have stoked conspiracy theories about people’s freedom to use the car. Oxford has been a flashpoint of confrontations between residents and angry drivers.

Donald’s work has also reminded me that electric vehicles are not an environmental panacea. Although more than a year after buying one I don’t regret it (especially as in the summer it has a range of 300 miles on a single charge), and it has zero carbon emissions, it still produces polluting particulates from brakes and tyres, and over 30mph it’s as noisy as conventional cars.

What can Christians do for good creation care in their travel? If you can afford it, I still recommend switching to an electric vehicle. Most of us could walk and cycle more, especially for local trips, or use public transport where it’s available.

For churches, this can be something of a dilemma, especially as public transport outside London is patchy, and all the more so on Sundays. Years ago, as part of a student project, I compared people’s home with where they went to church in my home town. Members of nonconformist churches tended to live further away from church and therefore travelled further. There’s a lot to be said for finding a like-minded church with good Bible teaching, but travelling some distance by car may not be setting a great example of creation care.

If you’re elderly or disabled, a car may be your only option, and many churches are good at arranging lifts for people in need. What more could you do to share cars? Or – here’s a radical thought – next time you move home, make it a priority to live near your church so you don’t need the car at all.