In some ways, the story of American transit is not so unique. Europeans and Canadians also like to drive. Their countries have also built big expressway networks. The difference is more basic, yet profound: When transit service isn’t good, few will choose to use it.
Fortunately, improving American transit doesn’t necessarily demand multi-decade, hundred-billion-dollar infrastructure projects: It can be done by better advantage of existing space and existing vehicles, and then deploying them in ways that encourage people to actually use them.
In 1945, designer Norman Bel Geddes created Toledo Tomorrow, an exhibit that imagined a bold new direction for his Ohio hometown. At least part of it came true.
I’ve been thinking a lot about eventually going car-less for a few years once the 2020 decade gets underway. But here are some disadvantages to going car-less ….
While I do use transit a lot to get around town, sometimes I like to hop in my truck and go quickly to a destination.
Some trips — like to the Albany Pine Bush or even the shopping malls to buy work clothing– while serviced by transit, are much less convient then to drive up there.
Visiting my parents up in the hilltowns would require more planning on my part. I would have to either ride my bike, get a ride-share (which might be quite expensive) or find a ride.
Grocery shopping would be less convient, I would probably have to do fewer “big weekly shops” at Walmart and might have to stop more frequently at Hannaford on my way to and from work.
I would have to probably haul my laundry down to the laundromat, catching a bus and planning appropiately. I wouldn’t be able to just drop it off and do other things.
I would have to subscribe to paid trash removal, rather then bringing my bottles and cans to the recycling center and burning the unrecycable paper trash up at a camp.
While I would rent a car for big trips — maybe two weeks a year — that would cut into my savings, I still wouldn’t be able to do as many trips motoring that I do now.
I would have to do alternative things to going up to the Adirondacks and Schoharie County during hot summer weekends. I could use the town pool, or ride my bike with a hammock, but my range would be limited compared to having a car.
Opporunties to hunt and fish are limited without an easy motorized way to get up to the wilderness.
I probably couldn’t do much kayaking, as it would be difficult to bring the kayak around without a truck.
I would have to tent or hammock camp rather then truck cap camp in the summer, as I wouldn’t have a truck cap.
It’s always good to look at pros and cons before proceeding down any particular path, and I will look at the pros of going car-less in a future blog post, and how much money I could save and invest towards a better tomorrow.
One autumn day in 1865, two men sat in a tavern in Ansonia, Connecticut, calming their nerves with a few stiff drinks.
They had been riding a wagon down a nearby hill when they heard a blood-curdling scream from behind them. What appeared to be the devil himself - with the head of a man and the body of some unknown creature - was flying down the hill towards them, skimming low over the ground.
They whipped their horses and fled, while the devil plunged off the road and into a flooded ditch.
Imagine their fear when the devil himself then came over to introduce himself: the dark-haired Frenchman was bleeding and soaking wet. His name was Pierre Lallement.
The young mechanic had been in the United States for a few months, and had brought with him from France a machine of his own devising - a pedal-cranked, two wheeled construction he called a "velocipede". We would call it a bicycle.
Are you in the market for a vehicle? During the 2007-09 recession, new-vehicle sales plunged to their lowest levels in nearly 30 years. They have since fully recovered as people replace their aging vehicles with shiny new cars, trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles. Prices of new vehicles, however, are at all-time highs, leading many buyers to look for used vehicles. It can be a challenge, though, for buyers to figure out whether they are getting a good deal. The seller generally knows far more about the vehicle. Even with careful examination, the buyer still likely won't know everything the seller knows. When one party knows more about the product than the other party, there is "asymmetric information." In the case of a used car, the seller has more information—and the advantage. The opposite can also be true in a transaction—the buyer can have more information and the advantage.
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