Public Transit is fun and can shrink your carbon footprint

Living in Gogebic County we do not often think of the public transit option. Most people who use Mass Transit are urban dwellers who use subways, trains, and busses. For instance, 3 million Londoners use the “Tube” on an average day.  This scale of public transit has incredible benefits to both the person who uses the service and the person who drives.

For the person who drives, can you imagine 3 million more cars hitting the road in London each day and the resultant congestion and gridlock? This could be played out in any major metropolitan area world-wide if the mass transit systems closed. And even if all these people could get to work, where would they park?

Mass transit options are usually inexpensive, so the users of these systems have reliable, and cost-effective ways to get around. Vehicle ownership is not just purchasing title to a car, it also means fuel purchases, maintenance, insurance, registration, renting or building a place to park at home, and parking fees at work. If you include all the costs of car ownership besides simply buying a vehicle, public transport is often the keystone of a family’s budget. If mass transit is widely adopted by the community the financial basis of the system is bolstered and broadened and fares can potentially be reduced further.

For both, use of mass transit systems means less noise, less pollution, less congestion, and less traffic accidents. With fewer private vehicle accidents, there are fewer insurance claims, fewer ambulance rides to the emergency room, and fewer heartaches.

Efficient well used public transport with high occupancy rates drastically reduces our carbon footprint. Less tailpipe emissions in our air means less harmful particulates, less volatile organic compounds, and less ozone. Again, this means less health problems like childhood asthma, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. This, again, brings us back to fewer trips to the ER or the doctor. Lower medical service demand means our health insurance rates should lower.

Most of my exposure to public transport has been as a tourist. I have enjoyed them all. Some, more than others. These include reborn colorfully painted American school busses in Central America, ferries, gondolas, collectivoes, trollies, sub-ways, motor scooter taxies, tuk-tucs, dhow river boats, Greyhound busses, trains, funiculars, streetcars, and monorails.

 With each new means of getting around comes a mini adventure in machine and man. Man seems capable of all means of invention to get around this lovely planet. When you use public transportation, you meet the public. Using public transportation opens a little window into the experiment we call civilization. The public transport user, for a short period of time, is immersed in a foreign culture.  This has never failed to entertain and to educate me.

 What do we have for cost effective public mass transit here? Once I returned home from Montana by Amtrak. The train took me to St. Paul. From there I took the bus to Duluth and Indian Trails took me home to Wakefield.

 When my Jeep was in the shop and my bicycle was impractical to use, I took the Gogebic Little Blue Bus to get me around.

I may have used more exotic ways to travel, but it is my opinion Amtrak, the Indian Trails Bus, and our Little Blue Bus are as clean, friendly, and as comfortable as any public transport I have hopped on worldwide. The fleets of trains and busses are maintained by professionals and driven by professionals letting you relax to read, chat, or to just enjoy the safe comfortable ride.

As they say, half the fun is getting there.  Using public transport here and in other countries has always been enjoyable for me. Now, as governments seek to electrify public transport, we can expect it to be just as enjoyable, while our carbon footprint gets a little smaller with each trip.

May I wish you a safe and entertaining adventure whether it be a short dhow trip across the Dubai Creek, or a bus ride to Marquette. Happy trails.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address - 335

Lincoln gave two great speeches: the Gettysburg Address and his second Inaugural Address. His second inaugural address must have come as a surprise to most Americans. He had just won a landslide election, and the Union Armies had defeated the Confederate Insurgency. You would think he would have taken a victory lap. But the President was wrestling with God's purpose. Why had the nation, both sides, suffered so grievously? In a country of only 32 million, 650 to 750,000 soldiers had died. Lincoln believed the nation was being punished for the institution of slavery. The South for creating its wealth on the backs of the blacks, but also the North for being too slow to challenge the appalling injustice of slavery. Seven times in his short speech, Lincoln referred to the book from which he had learned to read. The book he referenced was the King James version of the Bible. Here is his speech: "Fellow countrymen: at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidenti...
Read more

Right Wing Wokeism - 344

China Must Be Thrilled Donald Trump was elected to manage borders and curb left-wing wokeism, but his right-wing wokeism—attacking electric vehicles and renewable energy because they don't fit MAGA ideology—is equally senseless and against national interests. Ironically, his own base benefits from renewables. The five states with the largest share of wind power are red states, generating at least a third of their power from wind. This is about geography, not politics. Rural America has vast solar and wind potential and is already capitalizing on it, regardless of voting patterns. More critically, Trump's "drill, baby, drill" approach at a time when artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and autonomous technology are advancing will not make America great again. Instead, it risks making China great again. Trump once boasted about sending Americans to Mars. The real question is whether a Chinese astronaut will greet them there, asking, "What took you so...
Read more

Power Corrupts - 342

A Link between Slavery & Big Oil   Noam Chomsky, one of the world's most quoted authors, expresses his opinion of the Big Oil misinformation campaign: "I don't know what word in the language—I can't find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word 'evil' doesn't begin to approach it." Was there another time in US history when evil ruled?  Let's look at the United States before the Civil War. In the South, there were 4 million enslaved people. The slaves, or their parents, or grandparents, or someone in their lineage had been kidnapped, shackled, and shipped to the Americas to spend their lives with no freedom whatsoever. This criminal operation started in 1619 and accelerated until the Union forces ended it. The black humans had no rights and were conveniently labeled as les...
Read more