Blog changes and public transportation

I have the honor this week of announcing a few changes in BlogSupergroup! After a long series of emails among each other, we’re going to be adding some new regular bloggers and creating space for some guest bloggers as well. Our guest bloggers will include a few names you’ll recognize as regular contributors in our blog and comments sections as well as some new faces. I’ll let these people introduce themselves with their first post.

I will, though, introduce a new regular blogger, Martin, who went to school with Glenn and me and currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. Martin has a lot of interesting stuff to say, and certainly adds a different point of view to the blog. Now that I’ve vouched for him, he has to come through or I’ll loose face with these 'friends of ours' (or maybe I’ve been watching too many mob movies lately). Hope you enjoy the changes, and we’ll always take feedback. There will be another addition to regular bloggers later in the week as well.

Now to the topic of the week…

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I was talking with a friend recently about one of our favorite topics (especially now that Sopranos has ended), climate change. We agreed that one way to help the problem is to encourage people to use public transportation more often instead of their personal vehicles. When we talked about how to do this, however, he called me a Republican and threatened to end our relationship. Good naturedly, I assure you. :)

I happen to live in a city with a very good and safe transportation (compared to a lot of other places) that I use everyday, so it’s hard for me to step back and see these things from the point of view of someone who chooses to drive themselves rather than use the subways, buses, or trains when they’re available. Full disclosure: I own a car that I park on the street and use exclusively on the weekends to either leave town for a weekend trip or to do grocery shopping and Target runs in Virginia.

The first thing most of us consider is to make driving for regular commuters cost prohibitive. I worry, though, that too many changes would make owning a car impossible for any but the rich, especially in urban environments. Raising the price of parking and car taxes mostly hurts people who live in the city and probably already take public transportation because they’re already close to where they need to go. I’m probably one of the only people who think that rising gas prices are not a terrible thing (although, I’ll admit that I do complain about them when I stop every month or two to fill up). However, they don’t seem to do much in the way of encouraging drivers to find other ways to get where they need to go. So what would?

London instituted a commuter tax in 2003, when I happened to be there studying for a semester. There was a big uproar, naturally, from the people who would have to pay 5 pounds every day to enter the city, but most of the media seemed to be in favor of it. I laughed with snarky glee at some of the editorials that lambasted the opponents of the tax as rich suburban snobs who were too stuck-up to endure a ride into town surrounded by their fellow citizens. But honestly, I laughed because I didn’t have a car in London and took subways, buses, and long walks to wherever I needed/wanted to go. This commuter tax idea was mentioned in Washington not long ago, but died quickly and without a whimper. Could something like this ever pass in the US? And is it even working in Britain ?

Obviously, increasing the availability of public transportation is essential to promoting it. As long as people have an excuse not to use it, they won’t. Some of us, at certain points of our lives can make choices around this. For example, after college, two of my best friends asked me about moving to south Florida with them and sharing a house. I said no largely because I can’t stand the idea of having to drive down the interstate or a major highway just to stop by the store after work. I find south Florida, especially the Ft. Lauderdale area, to be too sprawling and inaccessible for my taste. Being fresh out of college and unemployed, I had the option to choose a more metropolitan area where things were close enough together to make public transportation feasible. But having that kind of freedom is not something that happens too many times in one’s life.

And what about places like San Francisco? I don’t have a link to back me up here, but I understand that they have a pretty good transit system, but most people drive anyway. Why?

What does it take to get people less reliant on their own transportation and more willing to use energy- and pollution-efficient public transportation? Will the federal government ever pass bans or limits that force people into taking better care? Or maybe I’m looking at this all wrong and there are better, easier ways to save our own hides (besides those $4 florescent light bulbs that Al Gore talked me into buying…grrrr)? What do you think?