The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

~Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

Do people drive because things are far away? Or are things far away because people drive?

–Micah Posner

Think of bicycles as ride-able art that can just about save the world.

~Grant Petersen

 

Problem

The transportation system in the United States heavily relies on personal automobiles, which negatively effect the environment, the economy and society. The problems associated with unsustainable transportation include:

• Spur climate change
• Reduce air quality
• Create noise
• Foster the inefficient use of land
• Create waste
• Cause excessive deaths and injuries
• Deter people from healthy activates such as walking or biking
• Disadvantage lower income families and individuals

Solution

1. Improve your fuel vehicle commutes: carpool or take mass transit
2. Carpool. If every commuter car carried one more person, it would reduce the use of an estimate 600,000 gallons of gasoline and 12 million pounds of CO2 would be kept out of the air (UCS).
3. There are many online resources, which aid in carpooling. Here are some examples:
4. Rideshare on Craigslist (www.craigslist.org/rid)
5. Carpool World, a free worldwide carpool matching service (www.carpoolconnect.com)
6. E-Rideshare, a ride matching service for daily carpool and more (www.erideshare.com
7. Take Mass Transit. For Davis, Yolobus, Amtrak and Unitrans are inexpensive alternatives.
   1. Amtrak (www.amtrak.com)
   2. Yolobus (www.yolobus.com)
   3. Unitrans (www.unitrans.ucdavis.edu)
8. Bike. Biking is efficient, effective, healthy and fun.
   1. Davis has many bike resources
      1. UC Davis Bike Barn
      2. Bike Shops downtown
      3. Davis Bike Collective
9. Walk. Americans make 123 million car trips each day that are short enough to be made on foot.
10. Keep your car well tuned
11. A car that is not tuned properly produces 10-15 times more pollution than a well running car.
12. Keep you tire pressure at optimal pounds per square inch, under inflated tires can cause a 5% decreases in fuel economy
13. Change your behavior
    1. Learn to rely less and less on your car, and more and more on your own muscles to transport you.
14. Buy locally made and locally grown products
    1. Buying items that are made or manufactured locally means that transportation costs are significantly reduced, fewer pollutants are spewed into the air and there are fewer vehicles on the road.
15. Live close to where you work or go to school
    1. Factor transportation into your choice for where you want to live

 

Activities

• Write letters to your lawmakers encouraging investment in public transportation and alternative fuel research

 

Books:

• Two Billion Cars – Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon
• Biodiesel America: How to Achieve Energy Security, Free america from Middle-east Oil dependence and Make Money Growing Fuel – by Josh Tickell
• Plug in Hybrids – Sherry Boschert
• Environmental external costs of transport – P. Buckel
• Asphalt Nation: how the Automobile took over America and how we can take it back – by Jane Hotlz Kay

Documentaries:

• A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil
• The End of Suburbia
• Fuel
• Who Killed the Electric Car?

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 8:55 pm and is filed under transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.