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 Burlington Free Press
It's My Turn
By Phil Hammerslough
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120108/OPINION02/201080339/My-Turn-botany-desire-transportation
Recently, my wife and I watched this wonderful documentary about plants managing humans, (much like my cat manages me), and the flaws of monoculture crops vs. crop diversity. It's a wonderful documentary and I heartily recommend it.
While I was watching the theme unfold I immediately started thinking how our transportation system in the U.S. is pretty much a monoculture when it comes to our roadways. We have morphed from thoroughfares where people, vehicles and animals shared the space, to roads that are dangerous to anything other than a car. And, like monoculture crop production, it easily breaks down and obliterates the advantages it offered.
It is clear as we finish the first decade of the 21st century that this system can no longer maintain itself. We cannot afford to fix the roads and bridges we already have, and building new roads will only compound the problems of traffic, pollution and maintenance, as well as strangle our cities and towns, choking them with a gridlock that goes nowhere.
Producing more fuel-efficient cars does not rid us of traffic. It does not reduce the epidemic of obesity, improve our neighborhoods or reduce noise pollution, nor does it solve our parking problems. What we need to do is rethink how we want to get from A to B. We need to realize that the main reason we want to go somewhere is usually about getting access to goods and services. As such, we should use a variety of ways to access what we want.
For example, Internet sales this holiday season increased 60-plus percent over last year, and over $1 billion on Cyber Monday. The Internet is used for telecommuting, conferencing, video and, of course, texting, tweeting, etc. It's almost instantaneous and uses less fossil fuel, but I think it causes more food consumption while working from home. It sure doesn't cure obesity.
In the world of urban/suburban planning, active transportation is part of the jargon, as is TOD (transit-oriented development) and TDM (transportation demand management). These terms refer to using our feet, bicycles and public transportation. They refer to rethinking our monoculture design of separating our homes from stores, shops and where we work foot or bicycle.
Our transportation infrastructure is breaking down in much the same way as a plant infected with blight. Maybe it's time we started applying what we learn about healthy plant production to our transportation system.
Phil Hammerslough lives in Burlington.
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