I know that our society is set up so that we depend on cars. I live inside Traverse City because I want to be able to get around without a car. But I know that many of you prefer to live outside the city -- and because you prefer that, you must have a car and you must use a car to get back & forth. But how much does that cost you -- cost you in time, cost you in money?
Well here are some statistics I was just given by an architect, a town planner by the name of Andres Duany. If you travel back & forth an hour each way, each day, at the end of a year you will have spent eight weeks of a year in a car going back & forth to work. Eight weeks a year -- and he makes that figure more striking by comparing it to two weeks a year. Each year we get two weeks a year vacation -- and we spend the equivalent of eight weeks a year inside a car going to & from work.
As Duany points out, these two hours a day are often the most beautiful hours of the day -- early in the morning -- break of day -- and late afternoon -- the sunset hours. These two beautiful hours each day many people spend in a car, often in snarled traffic jams that fray their already frayed & frazzled nerves. And we do that for the equivalent of eight weeks a year.
What if we were given eight free weeks a year -- and an extra five thousand dollars a year -- because the cost of a car -- each and every year -- is $5,000 a year. You know that figure is right -- between insurance, gas, repair -- the cost of a new car is five thousand dollars a year -- and we spend eight weeks a year inside that cubicle.
Andres Duany, the architect & town planner whose words I am quoting, tries hard to make us understand how many hours of possible "quality time" we are spending driving a car. Over a span of eighteen years -- the years your child will live under your roof, you will be in a car for three whole years -- 8 weeks a year times 18 years -- and those three years of quality time could have been time spent with your children -- if you didn't have an hour commute by car one hour each way each day.
I've made my point -- Duany has made his point. Is there a solution? Yes. Make the workplace, shopping place, play space, accessible by means other than cars -- by walking, bicycling, by means of public transportation. In our society the only way from here to there is by car -- and that's the problem -- the millions & billions spent on making car traffic easy, possible, preferable -- and because of that all other ways to get from here to there are impossible, unavailable -- dangerous, dirty, unpracticed.
How do we create alternatives to cars? That is another talk altogether, but first we need to see the insanity of current practices: eight weeks a year spent inside a cubicle, our nerves frazzled. Over a span of eighteen years, three years spent inside a cubicle. There must be a better way. There is, but we must plan as hard for it as we planned to accommodate cars. Billions of dollars went into making highways for cars. Billions of dollars must go into making roads for alternative vehicles -- and vehicles to travel on those alternative roads.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein