CNN named 10 places in America to "ride out a gas crisis"
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/moneymag/0807/gallery.bplive_gas_crunch.moneymag/index.html.
Four of them are small towns, and the average commute is 8-10 minutes in Marquette, Mich.; Hays, Kan.; Laramie, Wyo.; and Aberdeen, S.D. I'm not sure where people work in these small towns, except as close as the local quick-stop, school or post office.
In three places, 11-12 percent of people tele-commute from home -- Naples, Fla., Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Westport, Conn. Commuters there live in a beautiful place and are too remote, too educated and too wealthy to drive to work daily.
In a university town, State College, Penn., 42 percent bike or walk to work. That's cool. It's part of the culture. Biking and walking are the high-status ways to get around. Footpower is friendlier than car-power. Being a university town, it's also fashionable to live frugally, with fewer cars.
Outside of New York City in Hoboken, N.J., a majority of commuters take advantage of one of the nation's finest public transit systems to get to work. Only 25 percent of commuters drive alone to work in Hoboken. I'd take the bus, too, if it ran every 15 minutes, within a stone's throw of my house.
My favorite place is the Santa Paula, Call, where 29 percent of commuters carpool to work. Want to know why? They're migrant workers in the Citrus Capital of the World. The farm workers share vehicles to commute to the orange, lemon, avocado and strawberry fields.
The message here? The most devoted carpoolers in America are migrant workers. It explains why carpooling is such a tough sell, especially if you can afford the luxury of your own car. We aspire to do what the wealthy in our society do, not the poorest.
Showing posts with label behavior change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behavior change. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
"Why Won't We Carpool"
Carpooling is making it into the mainstream of American media thanks to the latest four-buck a gallon fuel-frenzy. The Boston Globe Magazine cover feature story, "Why Won't We Carpool: it's cheaper. It's greener. And nobody's doing it" by Alison Lobron, was accompanied by a photo of a crowded road and an empty HOV lane. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/07/20/anybody_want_a_ride/
Why aren't we doing it?
My carpool buddy Rick summed it up this morning, when he dropped me off. "I don't like the inconvenience of carpooling. But once I'm doing it, I enjoy it."
Like most carpools, he and John don't carpool daily. They drive together on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which leaves three other days for the American luxury of going when we want, where we want, and how we want, preferably on a "free" road without congestion, in perfect condition, to "free" parking.
John and Rick are from my old carpool -- since I moved I have formed new carpools. I called them because my new carpoolers were on vacation this week. I was lonely and the thought of $8 in gas [plus wear and tear] to get to and from work seemed a waste.
Especially in Boston, there's little motivation to carpool because we have scant HOV lanes. The cover photo was of the only HOV lane I know of in Massachusetts. Route 3 to NH was widened without a HOV lane. Route 128/95 is planned to expand to five lanes, with no HOV lane.
As Lobron pointed out in the Globe story, elsewhere in the US, HOV lanes provide motivation for people to carpool because driveres get there FASTER. 90 percent of Americans own cars, and we shoulder their exorbitant cost --because they bring us status, comfort, privacy and convenient transportation. Money is not always the issue. We can earn more money. We all have the same amount of time.
Rick and John can afford to drive alone. They enjoy carpooling. The side benefits are they save a few bucks and they are doing something good for the earth.
$4 gas is motivating people with less dispensable income to drive less. As Lobron demonstrates, we have still not hit the tipping point for the majority of Americans to change their driving habits, which would influence the transportation planners and civil engineers to include HOV and bike lanes in road design.
The crew of one of the TV morning shows taped themselves carpooling to work together. It was quaint. They made a point. Carpooling is in the mainstream media, but not in the mainstream American consciousness.
Giving up our addiction to driving alone is like going on a diet -- it's easy to talk about, it's the right thing to do, but our old friends sugar-butter-chocolate are always there and so tempting, just like driving alone.
Why aren't we doing it?
My carpool buddy Rick summed it up this morning, when he dropped me off. "I don't like the inconvenience of carpooling. But once I'm doing it, I enjoy it."
Like most carpools, he and John don't carpool daily. They drive together on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which leaves three other days for the American luxury of going when we want, where we want, and how we want, preferably on a "free" road without congestion, in perfect condition, to "free" parking.
John and Rick are from my old carpool -- since I moved I have formed new carpools. I called them because my new carpoolers were on vacation this week. I was lonely and the thought of $8 in gas [plus wear and tear] to get to and from work seemed a waste.
Especially in Boston, there's little motivation to carpool because we have scant HOV lanes. The cover photo was of the only HOV lane I know of in Massachusetts. Route 3 to NH was widened without a HOV lane. Route 128/95 is planned to expand to five lanes, with no HOV lane.
As Lobron pointed out in the Globe story, elsewhere in the US, HOV lanes provide motivation for people to carpool because driveres get there FASTER. 90 percent of Americans own cars, and we shoulder their exorbitant cost --because they bring us status, comfort, privacy and convenient transportation. Money is not always the issue. We can earn more money. We all have the same amount of time.
Rick and John can afford to drive alone. They enjoy carpooling. The side benefits are they save a few bucks and they are doing something good for the earth.
$4 gas is motivating people with less dispensable income to drive less. As Lobron demonstrates, we have still not hit the tipping point for the majority of Americans to change their driving habits, which would influence the transportation planners and civil engineers to include HOV and bike lanes in road design.
The crew of one of the TV morning shows taped themselves carpooling to work together. It was quaint. They made a point. Carpooling is in the mainstream media, but not in the mainstream American consciousness.
Giving up our addiction to driving alone is like going on a diet -- it's easy to talk about, it's the right thing to do, but our old friends sugar-butter-chocolate are always there and so tempting, just like driving alone.
Monday, July 07, 2008
When my backyard is impacted, I'll change
Unabated, our contagious love affair with the car will congest us -- our roadways and our airways -- and heat up the global mercury.
Do we have to wait until the target of our infatuation floods our backyard?
Washes away the levies in our city?
Do we have to wait until the fields growing corn and soybeans for our next meal are struck by flood, drought, pestilence, pollution or lack of pollination?
Unfortunately, the answer to those questions is YES. We humans are so slow to change our habits, to believe the science of global warming, that we must have tangible evidence or shocking energy bills before we change.
The canary in the coal mine -- the elegant polar bear and their shrinking habitat -- are a long way off from our backyard.
There are potential extinctions in my own backyard that will impact my life.
1. Honey Bees. Have you heard of the Colony Collapse Disorder in which millions of bees simply fly away from their hives and the super-fields they are consigned to pollinate?
I don't have the skills or time to pollinate my next meal, and I appreciate bees for doing that work, thanklessly.
Without bees in my backyard, we could all be pretty hungry. Google Colony Collapse Disorder and learn more. It's even on the radar of the US Dept. of Agriculture, so it must be real.
Einstein said that without bees, humankind will last about four years.
2. Bats. Have you heard about a fungus that is threatening the extinction of bats? Again, I could never do for the earth what bats do -- consume 500 to 1500 mosquitoes an hour, quietly, mostly unseen.
I prefer bats to pesticides, which could be contributing toe the Colony Collapse disorder.
We're all interconnected in the web of life-- that should be a song or a book or a website. :-0
A few weeks ago, while researching material for a speech and interactive presentation on carpooling and bike commuting, I Googled "Species Loss."
The results, solid and unmovable at the top of the organic search, caused me to stop my normal multi-task attack of my daily to-do list.
http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html, gave me cubicle paralysis.
Posted on the website are more than 100 scholarly articles proving climate change is impacting the Earth's biodiversity.
Read it and feel the fear, as I did. The following simple statement precedes the list of links to the articles:
"Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends continue, one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change."
For a decade, Prof. David Ulansey, a Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, has diligently posted articles that prove climate change is creating the greatest mass extinction of species since the dinosaurs.
This sounds like the canary in the coal mine. If half of all species on Earth are doomed, who's to say humans won't fall with everything else.
Will we read the writing on the website and change our foolish ways?
Do we have to wait until the target of our infatuation floods our backyard?
Washes away the levies in our city?
Do we have to wait until the fields growing corn and soybeans for our next meal are struck by flood, drought, pestilence, pollution or lack of pollination?
Unfortunately, the answer to those questions is YES. We humans are so slow to change our habits, to believe the science of global warming, that we must have tangible evidence or shocking energy bills before we change.
The canary in the coal mine -- the elegant polar bear and their shrinking habitat -- are a long way off from our backyard.
There are potential extinctions in my own backyard that will impact my life.
1. Honey Bees. Have you heard of the Colony Collapse Disorder in which millions of bees simply fly away from their hives and the super-fields they are consigned to pollinate?
I don't have the skills or time to pollinate my next meal, and I appreciate bees for doing that work, thanklessly.
Without bees in my backyard, we could all be pretty hungry. Google Colony Collapse Disorder and learn more. It's even on the radar of the US Dept. of Agriculture, so it must be real.
Einstein said that without bees, humankind will last about four years.
2. Bats. Have you heard about a fungus that is threatening the extinction of bats? Again, I could never do for the earth what bats do -- consume 500 to 1500 mosquitoes an hour, quietly, mostly unseen.
I prefer bats to pesticides, which could be contributing toe the Colony Collapse disorder.
We're all interconnected in the web of life-- that should be a song or a book or a website. :-0
A few weeks ago, while researching material for a speech and interactive presentation on carpooling and bike commuting, I Googled "Species Loss."
The results, solid and unmovable at the top of the organic search, caused me to stop my normal multi-task attack of my daily to-do list.
http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html, gave me cubicle paralysis.
Posted on the website are more than 100 scholarly articles proving climate change is impacting the Earth's biodiversity.
Read it and feel the fear, as I did. The following simple statement precedes the list of links to the articles:
"Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends continue, one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change."
For a decade, Prof. David Ulansey, a Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, has diligently posted articles that prove climate change is creating the greatest mass extinction of species since the dinosaurs.
This sounds like the canary in the coal mine. If half of all species on Earth are doomed, who's to say humans won't fall with everything else.
Will we read the writing on the website and change our foolish ways?
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