Stress
Imagine a World Without the Tyranny of Personal Automobiles
Personal Perspective: How mass transit promotes personal and societal wellness
Posted August 11, 2025 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Dependence on cars can lead to increased personal and societal stress.
- European mass transit systems demonstrate a different approach to transportation.
- Travel by train or bus removes a host of daily stressors and encourages healthier habits.
Every year, I spend several weeks in Switzerland with a bunch of undergraduate students. Besides the stunning beauty of the region, what often deeply impresses them is the country’s train system. It is clean, fast, precise, and extensive. It can get you to almost everywhere in the country within a few hours. It links seamlessly in-country with other modes of transportation and with the train systems of several surrounding countries. It is so pleasant and so convenient that none of the students mind the three-quarter-mile walk from our facility to the local station (though buses are available).
Riding in the region, one observes passengers of all ages partaking in the system. Flocks of school children board, then get off at a stop or two down the line. Handfuls of people board with bicycles. Many board with luggage, camping equipment, or hiking gear.
For longer trips where the trains may reach speeds of 200 kilometers per hour, there are often special cars for dining, traveling with younger children, or doing quiet work. Transfers between lines are near-seamless, with every train arriving and leaving within seconds of their appointed times. The system is so effective that the average Swiss citizen travels somewhere on the order of 1,700 miles a year by train. Things seem similar in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Austria from what I can see.
In Scotland, the oft-criticized BritRail system also worked remarkably well. And in Edinburgh, at least, in-town travel is serviced by a robust line of trams and double-decker buses that are also clean and timely. Again, gaggles of uniformed school children jump on, ride a few stops, and get off at their schools—no interminable lines of parents in cars waiting their turn to drop their progeny off at the school front doors.
Travel at Home
Having experienced these worlds of effective and efficient mass transit, I have to say that it is beyond charming and refreshing; it is soothing and re-charging. I can’t help but think how much more pleasant and healthy it would be to have access to such a system when I periodically make the two-hour trek from my hometown of Black Mountain to the Charlotte airport.
Black Mountain actually has an old train station, but it’s now an art gallery. Trains still run right through the center of town (or did until Helene ravaged the area), but they carry only freight. So the trip to the airport or to points north is one taken at 70-plus miles an hour, hands clamped upon the steering wheel, drivers bobbing and weaving around me, trucks riding my rear bumper. Then there is the requisite period of stop and go as we merge with some other massive interstate, and then back to 70-plus miles per hour.
The drive into Asheville for dinner or a show is similar, but thankfully only half an hour. To visit various Eastern seaboard friends and family, it may be four, eight, or 12 hours of constant vigilance and surges of stress hormones, which I am certain parallel the density of trucks I must contend with and the number of lanes in which to do battle. And don’t get me started on my former home city of Washington, D.C.
Escaping the Strain of Driving
Enumerable studies demonstrate the mental and physiological stress that driving routinely engenders. The worse the conditions, the worse it gets. And when in modern American urban or suburban landscapes is it ever “good conditions”?
Think of the potential benefits of a clean, safe, efficient mass transit system. First, a car may not even be necessary. The potential savings in up-front cost, maintenance, insurance, licensing, parking, etc, are stupefying (estimated at nearly 9,000 dollars per year per car).
And consider how the reduction of traffic congestion would encourage bike use and pedestrian thoroughfares. Pollution would be reduced. Obesity reduced. The risk of bodily injury would be drastically reduced. The need for constant vigilance in travel would be a thing of the past.
The need for any vigilance beyond recognizing one’s stop would become an anachronism. One could think. One could reflect. Or read. Or write. Or converse with others. Or sleep.
Selfish, anti-social behavior would be diminished in that everyone would be sharing the same journey. Everyone would be heading for their objectives at the same speed. There would be no one flouting the speed limits and zipping around and between other vehicles. There would be no tailgating. No need for horns or middle fingers. Nobody would risk their own or your life by driving drunk or texting with both hands as they drive (it happens all the time around me—at least on Interstates 40, 77, and 81).
There is even an opportunity for social integration, cooperation, and community-building. It’s a joy to watch riders assist the aged, or someone with heavy baggage, or someone with a disability. Unlike a plane where loading and unloading is a trial of “hurry up and wait,” presumably designed by Satan, entrance and exit are near carefree. And train stations require no TSA lines and pat-downs (at least currently). One can arrive minutes before departure time and, with the flash of a ticket, access their transportation immediately. And some of the old world stations are architectural marvels to behold. When was the last time you thought that about a city parking garage?
What If?
We had an extensive train system in the U.S. in the past. It could have served the majority of us had it grown with us. Instead, somehow, we got talked into a belief in the superiority of the automobile. An addiction, really. This at significant family financial stress—cars often representing the second leading household cost to a family after housing.
And this addiction has led to the greater consumption of natural resources, higher levels of pollution, greater carbon burden, the demise of city and town centers, the unbridled sprawl of suburbia with attendant destruction of greenspace, the appropriation of productive city or town land for parking, the need for far greater housing footprints (for two or three-car garages), the isolation of the elderly and the disabled, road rage stress and violence, health care access inequity, and frankly, for many, several hours a day spent in agitated and often angry misery. The social and psychological toll is immeasurable.
Could we, would we, ever trade in our cars for a European-like system? Unlikely. And such is the pity.
References
Nishigaki, M. (2025). Mass Transit and Active Transport Are a Boon to Health — and Climate. Medpage Today. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/climate-checkup/116884
Scott-Parker, B., Jones, C. M., Rune, K., & Tucker, J. (2018). A qualitative exploration of driving stress and driving discourtesy. Accident; analysis and prevention, 118, 38–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2018.03.009
Jafari, Z., Kolb, B. E., & Mohajerani, M. H. (2018). Chronic traffic noise stress accelerates brain impairment and cognitive decline in mice. Experimental neurology, 308, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expneurol.2018.06.011
Zhou, X., He, G., Zhu, H., Wang, Y., & Zhang, W. (2024). Evaluation of driver stress intervention with guided breathing and positive comments. Applied ergonomics, 114, 104144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2023.104144
Swaby, S. (2021). The Health Benefits of Public Transport. The Healthcare Review at Cornell University. https://www.cornellhealthcarereview.org/post/the-health-benefits-of-pub…
