The Oil Drum

In Seattle, students at the University of Washington can get what is called the U-Pass. For $35 a quarter we have unlimited use of all King Country Metro transportation, which primarily means city busses. But the U-Pass can also get us on the Sound Transit to Everett or Tacoma. It is a fantastic deal if you use the bus daily, but my commute is about 15 minutes walking.

I live in Wisconsin and bicycle about 4,000 miles a year over a 9 to 10 month period when the roads are free of ice. I’m definitely a senior citizen and have my share of physical aliments to complain about. However, I believe the invention of the bicycle (and modern hi-tech tricycles) is one of man’s finest achievements and I find cycling to be one of my greatest pleasures in life. Too bad the automobile spoiled this for most people. The bicycle and its “human powered vehicle” variants can easily address many of mankind’s transportation and health issues. Cold, wind, rain, heat, etc. are not the real impediments to using a bicycle. Here in the US (and many other industrialized countries) we simply have succumbed to the “Car Culture” and have embraced it with more insanity than the worst drug addicts.

I live in a “nice” community that could easily do away with 90 percent of the school buses, 70 percent of the parking lots, and 40 percent of the roadways. But, this is not going to happen any time soon. In fact, most law makers here constantly advocate more pavement, more automobile accommodation, and do not want to hear about bicycles under any circumstance – although the subject is sometimes forced upon them. As long as government leadership does not promote cycling as a serious means of transportation, the average citizen is not going to risk their lives or the lives of their children trying to compete with motorized folks who are sometimes even hostile to cyclists who infringe upon “their” roads and inconvenience them.

Mass insanity is a fact of life in our current culture and it will take some pretty extreme events to jar that mindset into considering real alternatives.

WNC - I agree about both the increase in public spaces/buildings and safe hitchhiking communities.

Public spaces/buildings: The worst place to get caught out in the rain is a single-use zone solely for the purposes of a private property owner. Some of this is something that can be done by simply creating more mixed land uses. My favorite place to pop-in during a storm is a local coffee shop, bar or pizza parlor. Libraries and public spaces inside large building lobbies also work and don't cost anything. The other way would be to create shared places on the edges of public/private property - like little sheds on the side of the road with water, air for bike tires, whatever the private property owner or local municipality could easily provide cheaply.

Hitch-hiking community: Some of this could just be accomplished through greater familiarity with your neighbors and it could also be done in other ways through technology. Many ride-share web sites allow members to build their credibility and reliability by getting ratings from prior experiences similar to e-bay. I could imagine a service that allows people to request a pick-up through their cell phone and have a trustworthiness rating sent to a potential ride going in their direction.

WNC Observer,

I rode my bike 4 and a half miles each way to college in the late 70s/early 80s. In the central San Joaquin Valley in the winter it can be very cold, like in the high 30s / low 40s. But I would prepare myself by wearing a windbreaker jacket and have a change of shirts in my backpack. I did not have a membership to the gym, so I just used wet paper towels in a men's room to wash off presperation and then dry off and be all set for classes. I prided myself on not using a car those days. Occasionally I would use the bus, like when it rained. I would have to transfer once to a another bus line on the route. No big deal. But I preferred biking since it was much faster than the bus service.

I wonder about the elderly people or handicapped people. They need to plan on being near good mass transit.

Currently I live in Baltimore near a large shopping mall, an outdoor mall, and a bunch of restaurants and such. But I drive 14 miles to work. This is not a long term situation and I plan on being back in Phoenix by the beginning of next Fall. I don't mind the commutes because I'm renting. I think I can change my lifestyle very easily when the $150 per barrel of oil drives us all to crisis mode. I've been preparing for rough economic times since 2001.

Phoenix is building light rail from downtown to Mesa. I anticipate living in the area during the crisis, perhaps within 2 miles of a light rail station. There are a lot of jobs in my industry in Phoenix and they don't rely on cheap oil. I am prepared to use mass transit again for another 15 years before the nuclear energy and solar energy solution starts to kick in. Electric cars will be very popular in a few years. In fact my other scenario is to buy an electric car and continue my commuting habits when I move back to Phoenix. This keeps sparking my interest: http://www.teslamotors.com/

With years of bike commuting and walking experience in eastern Ontario, I can vouch for the usefulness of temporary shelter. Rainy days are predictable, and they can be managed. It's passing rainclouds that can wreck a trip. Overpasses, bus shelters, churches, doorways, coffee shops, etc., these can all help prevent the dreaded soakers.

But what if you are halfway home and it starts raining?

I am wondering how "I use an umbrella" can not be an obvious response. I guess you just never heard of them.

Is there some subtle trap I am falling into?

But it doesn't have to be...

The standard of what's "too dangerous" has gotten enormously more sensitive, far more so than the actual roads have gotten more dangerous. The Abject Fear of Everything has become palpable. We are now raising the bubble-wrap generation.

In my city, we have the periodic debate about putting in a pedestrian bridge by one of the high schools, because, nowadays, even high schoolers are apparently not expected to know how to cross the street. The street in question is not particularly worse than it was decades ago, but the fear and incompetence factors sure are, and nobody's expected to grow up any more, ever. Only they waited too long. The Americans With Disabilities Act would now require it to be a huge monstrosity with 300-foot ramps (21 or 22 foot US-highway clearance, 7% max grade.) A number of houses would have to be taken out to make room. Ain't gonna happen.

No doubt there are city neighborhoods within that last top ten list of cities over 250,000 that can score high on walking to to work and depending on how to draw the line on different administrative boundaries, we could have come up with very different top ten lists.

But it is very interesting that college towns and military bases came to the top over many other small towns that could have had higher walking rates.

Thanks for your links - very good and interesting stuff.

Joule it should encourage you to learn that segregation is increasing in the US, and there have even been ludicrous happenings like blacks *asking* for their own lunchrooms in a college and things like that.

Working/middle class white rage is at an all-time high and increasing. San Francisco allegedly has Irish gangs terrorizing non-whites, and SF has been steadily becoming whiter in general.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go do some experimenting, I want to see if I can make passable "noose" finger rings or bracelets in sterling silver..... untapped market you know....