Dual exhaust

[spacekadette]

Thanks to Scott for posting this.

I don't necessarily agree on ALL points in this article but I did find it thought-provoking.

Cars are the new smoking?

http://www.squawkfox.com/2008/07/25/cars-are-the-new-smoking/

Point #6 hit me in the heart and gut

Comments

[jadedusoliel]

1. No but mass transit can get you a lot of places and the more it is funded and built on the more places you can go.

2. In that instance there are bikes and walking (or wheeling in my case some of the time)

3. There are many add-ons to bikes that can carry all sorts of large items and cargo. If you get a group of people together you can move from one place to another using that method. A friend of my husband's did that here in Portland.

4. There are many attachments to bikes to carry children.

5. There are many styles of bikes that are adapted to people with disabilities, such as ones that are pedaled by using the arms, and there many wheelchairs that are designed to be used on rougher terrain.

Add to mass transit programs like Zipcar (which is a car-sharing program) and the need for individuals and households to own cars all their own becomes smaller and smaller.

The biggest obstacle to moving away from cars is urban sprawl. When you live in one place, have friends in another, all your food, shopping and doctors are in a third place, and your work is in a forth (like if you live in Queen Creek, your friends are in Chandler, your doctor is in Scottsdale and you work in Phoenix which is quite similar to the situation I was in most of this year) then having a car is the only way to get around in a reasonable time, especially in the heat. The only way that's going to change is if people start moving closer to each other and to their workplaces and using the businesses there. Businesses will follow the people.

To the poster I understand how insanely hard it is to get around without a car in the metro Phoenix area, though Tempe has one of the best transit programs in the Valley but that's not saying much. At the end of October I moved from the Pinal end of Queen Creek to Portland, OR and gave my car to a friend there who needed it for work. It'll be a long time before the Valley will change it's ways enough for everyone to not concern themselves with cars. However the stigma of car ownership is spreading in places where there are plenty of viable alternatives, like here.