Transporting future solutions

Solar-powered buses and trains and commercial sailboats could be the reality for the Illawarra if Coledale resident Keely Boom has her way.

While local stakeholders and politicians are digging for funding for infrastructure to support industrial transport from Port Kembla, Ms Boom, a Legal Officer for the Australian Climate Justice Program, hopes to begin plans to encourage residents to forsake personal cars in favour of environmentally sustainable public transport.

She said the region needs to break away from the idea that to own a car is to have freedom, and believes that a rapid change to sustainable means of public transport is a real possibility.

“I think it is definitely realistic,” she said.

“The only thing that holds us back is (the idea that) a car gives you freedom.”

According to Ms Boom, having a car is just another form of slavery, because you have to fork out for petrol, registration and upkeep to keep it running.

Ms Boom will speak tonight in Wollongong at a public transport forum about a new initiative that has been accepted into a number of towns in the UK and started to take hold in parts of Australia; Transition Towns.

The initiative aims to switch towns from reliance on oil to more sustainable energy sources through the power of local community.

Ms Boom said she has had a lot of interest in a local Transition Towns group.

The first Transition Towns meeting in the Illawarra will be held this Saturday.

The other speaker at the public transport forum will be Dr Phillip Laird, a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Informatics with the University of Wollongong.

Dr Laird has conducted research into rail freight, passenger development and energy use in transport.

Tonight’s forum has been organised by Wollongong Climate Action Network (W-CAN) and will be held at Boat Harbour Hotel in Wollongong from 7pm.

W-CAN spokesperson Rowan Huxtable said reducing our reliance on oil is crucial.

“We need to reduce our dependence on crude oil for economic, environmental and national security reasons,” he said.

“Expanding and improving our public transport is essential to this change.”