“Any man who rides a bus to work after the age of 30 can count himself a failure.”

For many Torontonians, these words, attributed to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, ring as true ever.

But like much of Thatcherism, such pronouncements have started to sound more quaint than amusing. They come to us from the depths of an earlier era, one that had to be got through and which makes less sense than ever. Indeed, the world that created the Iron Lady has never seemed more distant.

Things change so quickly that a remark made within living memory can feel like something dredged up from ancient history. Even so, how could such wrong-headedness not have been obvious, even in the 1980s? But then, neither did smoking in airplanes, or, worse still, disco.

What would Thatcher have made of recent studies that reveal young people are less interested in the North American tradition of car ownership than ever? That’s not to say there aren’t countless teens out there, especially boys, salivating at the prospect of owning their own car. But it does tell us that the situation is a little less black-and-white than we like to assume.

Thatcher’s heirs still hold power, however, despite the untold havoc they have wreaked over the decades. Little wonder we feel these are such perilous times.

Here in Toronto, where the War on the Car ended with the municipal election of 2010, more people than ever are using transit. On Sept. 15, 2011, 1.71 million passengers rode the TTC. Since then, the price of gas has shot so high, the mere whiff of cheap fuel is enough to set off a run on the pumps.

No wonder getting that car is no longer the first thing on the mind of every kid who’s about to turn 16. For those lucky enough to live in a city, especially one with decent transit, the prospect of life without wheels offers the same promise of liberation that car ownership did decades ago.

Once the great symbol of individual freedom and personal mobility, the car has become a ball and chain. Slow, expensive, and surrounded by endless others, automobiles have taken us as far as they can. At this point, there are so many vehicles on the roads, they exist in a state of perpetual congestion.

Yet even TTC chair Karen Stintz, the unpromising councillor who has emerged as Toronto transit’s best friend, has talked about building the best system possible for people who don’t own a car.

That’s why transit here has fallen 25 years behind the times. The damage cars have inflicted on cities seems so ordinary now, we take it for granted. The rage unleashed by the addition of a bicycle lane to Jarvis St. and the subsequent loss of a traffic lane is a symptom of a city and society unwilling to restore some sort of balance to our streets.

But as the figures tell us, it will be the young who get us there. They’re also the ones who occupy the condo highrises that now define downtown, the whole purpose of which is that you don’t have to spend your life paying for insurance and searching for a place to park. Duh.

Public transit, bicycles and pedestrians are as much a part of a 21st-century transit system as cars. Each has a place. To privilege one over the others is counterproductive and inefficient.

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Yet we persist. If Charlton Heston had been a Torontonian, we would have had to pry those cold dead hands from a steering wheel, not a rifle.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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