Bicycles are the answer

Bicycles are one of the best things ever. They're a joy to ride, good exercise, and give you great mobility (in Chicago biking is faster than the el up to maybe 12km / 7-8mi). And most important they solve all the problems of cars: air pollution, global warming, huge amounts of space taken over by roads and parking lots, encouraging sprawl, killing people right and left, breaking down all the time, &c, &c.

Of course bikes have important limitations: they're bad for transporting stuff, they're not much fun in winter and rain, they're not too desirable for distances past about 15km, and as long as cars are so dominant, they're dangerous to ride on the street. But if we built our cities around bikes and public transit instead of around cars, most of these issues would be mitigated or eliminated.

It's just not that hard to imagine cities that could function well without any privately-owned cars. Think about it: a multi-branch light rail system running high-speed expresses and local lines. An efficient public bus system running on main arterials. a few roads devoted to emergency vehicles, freight-moving trucks, and trucks that deliver heavier items directly to people. Other streets given over to bikes, rollerbladers, and pedestrians.

It's true that such a city would mean more walking and occasionally less convenience. (Tho more walking is probably a benefit considering what sedentary life has done to most people's health.) But the improvements in city life would be huge. First, we'd save huge amounts of money. Right now local and state taxes heavily subsidize the costs of cars: roadbuildng and maintenance, parking lots, dealing with pollution, emergency costs associated with accidents. (Compared to these costs, subsidies for public transit and biking are currently miniscule, and even at this inadequate level they are often better choices.) Plus, individual car owners pay thousands to buy their cars, repair them, pay for parking, &c. All of these costs would be eliminated.

We would reclaim huge amounts of wasted space. Roads, parking lots, and street parking often take up 25 percent or more of urban space, and even then parking can be extremely tight. Imagine how many more public parks we could have, or how many trees we could plant. Imagine what we could do with all the space occupied by eyesores like gas stations and parking lots.

But the most important benefits would be better health, fewer deaths, and environmental protection. Air pollution from cars makes us all sicker, with unknown longterm effects on our health, and helps cause the asthma so many children suffer from. Car accidents kill tens of thousands every year just in the United States, and cause over 3 million injuries (think about the hysteria if Al Qaeda were capable of such devastation). And cars are the single biggest source of greenhouse gases, whose buildup will cause an environmental catastrophe if we don't change things soon. These problems would all be significantly improved if we made our cities friendly to bikers and walkers and made public transit the prime mode of transportation.

Instead we build ever more roads — and fewer sidewalks. We subsidize driving to no end, but can't be bothered to build even a handful of bike lanes. Public transit, where it exists, languishes low among budget priorities. And we're all driven to rage just trying to drive a few miles in congestion. How much road rage do you see among bus passengers?

We have a choice: change now, or try to pick up the pieces when our currently unsustainable systems collapse.