On May 16th, it will be Bike to Work Day. So I thought that it would be great to think about biking to work. After all, I have a pretty short commute, don't I?
Well, I looked into it, and I have a little shorter than an average commute. At least for the nation. According to the source referenced above, commuters usually spend 87 minutes - round trip - for a distance of 16 miles each way.
That makes biking to work pretty much impossible for your average commuter.
What can I do?
So what are my options to try and make it better? Or reduce my environmental impact?
Well, the most obvious is that I could get a car that is better on gas. But its still a car. What about a motorcycle? Or a scooter? Well, considering that I'm in the northeast - that would (at best) give me 6 months of the year for commuting. And people drive crazy around here - even on backroads. Not only that but people driving motorcyles are 5.5 times more likely to die in a given year than someone driving a car. That doesn't seem like great odds.
The Train!
Ok, how about Mass transit? Unfortunately there's almost nothing at all in the area I'm in. If I wanted to head into Boston I could take the commuter rail - that would mean a :30 drive to the train, and then an hour on the train, and then a walk - instead of a :45 minute drive (during non-peak hours). Its frustrating. I have friends in the Bay area - they have a better Mass transit system, but I think that they are fairly unique in the US. Lots of older cities have mass transit systems that don't reach much of the suburbs at all - never mind trying to get people between suburbs.
Relocation
I could move closer to work! But wait, the average tenure of someone in a particular job in the USA is only 4 years. That doesn't make sense. Moving every 4 years? I just want to mention that the next country up the list is Great Brittan, and they have an average Tenure of 10 years. More than double the USA.
I've watched too many friends and family get laid off, or have to change jobs for reasons outside their control to run my life around where I work.
So what's left?
It seems to me that if we (in the USA) want to break our addiction to commuting a couple of things have to happen.
- We have to start looking to replace/supplement our highways with mass transit. Either a bus or train going along large beltways (such as I495) in MA would open up a world of opportunities.
- We have to come up with some way of giving workers more confidence that they can stay at a single company for their entire (or a good portion of their) career.
Or we can keep going down the path of trying to make cars cleaner. I just worry that cars aren't the right answer.
1 comment:
I've got you covered. I'm moving within biking distance... ;)
In all seriousness I think the answer is in breaking the connection between energy use and pollution. Cities are a great place to do this because so much of the population lives there which allows for easy use of common infrastructure. Cars don't make much sense in the city...
But when you live out in the sticks with no access to mass transit personal transportation becomes more important. In this case buying a more fuel efficient car is reducing consumption not breaking the connection.
But what if instead of switching to a car that used less gas you switched to one that used electricity that was charged by renewable (solar or wind)?
Now the impact of that car is significantly reduced... With some clever engineering you could probably recycle the entire car...
There are a lot of technologies converging and with the right investment from our government we could see companies like Tesla, Nanosolar, EEstor and Zenn Motors completely change the face of personal transportation in the next 20 years.
We live in exciting times!
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