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Wednesday, July 2, 2014

no car niehgborhood

I live on a noisy street, kids on scooters, but mostly cars that incessantly drive by at all hours of the day and night. I would love it if after work when I drive home I could just stay parked at the grocery store and carry home what I need that day in order for the cars to be off my street, at least at night when I want to sleep, but if they daytime could be without cars, we could let our children play on the street.  However since I live on the main street to the school, I guess I am stuck with the traffic of all the parents taking the kids to school, strange thing is that no one in my city is even eligible to go to the school down the street from me, instead of us walking 2 blocks to school, we have to drive our daughter 2 miles to a school in the right district, I really want to be able to send our daughter to the school down the street.

However back to the idea of no cars, if we had to walk to our homes, we might entirely abandon the car in favor of maybe a bicycle and buses, which are easier to send to a central collection point anyhow and wouldn't we all breathe easier if we achieved this?

Don't get me wrong, I used to love to drive and sometimes the car is a real convenience, but I wish that as a society we could get out of it more and do other things to get from here to there. Telecommuting is a big one, one-line shopping can really help, but I think there is a economy of scale in that last mile if we all simply park at our neighborhood store and walked home.  In order to realize this we probably also have to be less individual about owning our car, and share cars more, otherwise the parking might not be enough.  The point though is we can probably get this done with the current infrastructure.