First Post

As anyone who reads can tell I am new to this so please bear with me.

In this blog would like to discuss my ideas about transportation and our lifestyles and the future. There is lots discussion about ethanol and other non-petroleum based automobile transportation. I think that in the long run we will have to do a lot more. Unfortunately, in most communities we have let the automobile almost dominate our lives. This has largely happened in the last sixty to seventy years or more specifically after the second world war. Take a look at the way other cities and town were designed and the architecture of homes. Older areas have sidewalks and new newer developments don't. Children don't ever seem to walk to school. We demand that school buses pick up our children our door. We have made the roads too dangerous for our children.

What can we do? I think that we will need to learn to live more like people do in Europe. It will sort of be like going back in time and it will be very difficult and it will take a long time. I think that it will be a while before we really take the rather radical steps needed. Politics and our ingrained habits and lifestyle will get in the way. The most logical thing to do would be to significantly increase the gasoline tax, say to be closer to the taxes in Europe. Any politician that would support this idea would be out a job at the next election. And sad fact is that higher gasoline taxes would tend to hurt poor people in rural areas much more than the wealthy with big SUVs and McMansions. The only suggestion would be to vary the higher gasoline tax by county. Thus the wealthy in Westchester county NY (and similar locations) would pay more than those in poor, rural counties. Just an idea.

Getting back to my thoughts about cities and houses. It is interesting to note how the automobile has come to dominant our homes. In houses built before World War II, houses that had garages most often had detached one car garages. It was sort of like the garage was an out growth of the barn. People kept the car away from the house, like they kept the animals in the barn. With most new homes the garage almost seems to dominate the front. Perhaps we need to put the car back in the barn where it belongs. This may be both a physical and mental change.

Another interesting fact about the automobile and our lifestyle since the end of WW II. I am not someone that follows baseball but I heard on NPR last week that one reason the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angles fifty years ago was that Ebbets Field in Brooklyn did not have parking lots. With the rise of the suburbs in the fifties, baseball fans moved from the neighborhoods of the Levittowns on Long Island. No longer were they "Trolley Dodgers". Naturally, Los Angeles offered a new stadium with plenty of parking.

I guess this is enough for my first post. I will write more when I have more ideas.

So long for now.