Let’s Play: What If?
Dave Moulton, our favorite local, acclaimed bike-frame building blogger, read an article that examined the effect of gas rising to ten dollars a gallon. Dave shared his own vision of that future:
Yes, many will still drive and even some will still drive SUVs; they will become even more of a status symbol. There will be more compact cars or the road, and a lot more motorcycles, scooters, and mopeds.
Not everyone will ride a bicycle, but for those of us who do, share the road will be a lot easier.
Public Transport will make a comeback, which will ease congestion further. Even long before gas reaches $10, we will see less joy riding in cars on the weekends, leaving roads less congested and more pleasant for bike riding.
Personally, I wonder what will happen to our small towns. What are your thoughts?
Heather @ May 19, 2008
The first three comments on this post from the USA, England, and Holland. Interesting perspective from the different countries.
Though I don’t join the doom and gloom crowd thinking that things will never get better, I am intrigued by the idea of public transportation. When I was living downtown off Calhoun Street, I biked to work and caught the bus as often as needed. A ride from downtown to North Charleston is about 2 hrs one way by bus, and about 15-20 minutes by car, right? This is a trip not for the impatient, but it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up on reading, listening to a audiobook, or meeting people and making new friends. I would often make a day of it, and had a great adventure!
Having grown up in a railroad town, I was enthralled by stories from my elders about the good ole days when the passenger trains came through. Back then many small towns thrived on business from the rail, and apparently no community was too small to drop off a rider, much like a taxi today.
I’m less worried about small towns than I am ex-urb bedroom communities. If you’re living in a small town because you work in a small town and your kids go to school in a small town and there are jobs and stores in your small town, then you should be fine. But if you’re living in a small town or a bedroom community or an outer-ring suburb because you could get more house for the money and you’re driving 45 minutes to an hour to get to work, and school is a 20-minute drive, and there are no sidewalks that connect you to a grocery store….
Well, then you’ve got trouble. Your property values could fall, too, and your public transport options aren’t great because your population isn’t dense enough. My guess? The best thing for these places to do will be to radically revise their zoning regulations and try to create as many village-style downtowns as possible, as quickly as they can.
Mike Burleson’s comment about railroad towns is apt and I see urban parallels in places like Washington, DC: Your property values in suburban DC are very connected to your proximity to a METRO station. If you can bike/walk to a train station, you are, in a sense, only minutes from downtown. A rail system in a big city is the closest thing on the planet to a teleportation device.