If Life Were Only Like Car Commercials:

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Jaunts through the countryside, exploring unspoiled arctic wilderness, cruising through downtown hotspots. What freedom!

These commercials never show people stuck in traffic, alone, honking and screaming at each other. They never show cars spewing over 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of gas burned. They never show oil spills, suburban sprawl, or oil wars.

It wasn’t always like this. Cities were once designed for people, not cars. The first roads were paved for bicycles. Over the years the automobile- and automobile corporations- redesigned our cities. General Motors and other manufacturers, for example, invested millions of dollars in a company called National City Lines, which sought to wipe out streetcars and promote gasoline-powered buses (in 1949, they were found guilty of violating antitrust laws).

The United States now has over 200 million motor vehicles and 3.9 million miles of paved roads (that’s enough to circle the planet 157 times). Investing a fraction of the money spent on roads into mass transit would make our communities look, and feel, much different.

What would a sustainable-transportation commercial look like? People reading the newspaper or online during their commute via subway. People coasting through quieter streets on bicycles. People walking through their towns, instead of driving past them, and seeing their community in a new way. And you? Maybe you’d be biking for fitness, to save money, or for the grin that comes from coasting downhill.

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What can you do?
If going car-free sounds scary, take things one step at a time. For that next trip to the store, walk, bike or take the bus. Bike to work a few days a week (instead of dreading the commute home, you might look forward to it). Does all this sound impossible? If so, why live so far from where you work, shop and relax? Bicycles can take you take you places that cars can not.

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Check Out:
>World Car Free
>Surface Transportation Policy Partnership