For the past 24 days, I have been avoiding my car like the plague, by not driving as an experiment. I wanted to see if I, and perhaps by extension other car-driving Americans, could live a fulfilling life without driving. Next Friday (the day after Christmas) my experiment will be over, and then I will decide whether I should give up my car for good.
Traveling home from school, my experiment felt counterproductive. I spent the weekend after final exams in Vermont, visiting my roommate (who will be away on co-op next semester) and his family. My experience was excellent, and I am very happy I went. But, on the way home, I really wished that I’d had my car with me: To bring me back to New York, my father drove all the way to pick me up. Round trip, he took his car about 350 miles instead of the 175 it would have been if I had brought my car to school with me. Total negative impact on the environment: 175 miles / about 21 miles per gallon = 8.3 gallons of extra gasoline. The EPA calculates that about 19 pounds of carbon dioxide gets generated for every gallon of fuel burned. (For real! Here’s an explanation.) That means all the extra driving pumped about 160 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere more than was necessary, because of my no-car experiment.
Still, I’m not blaming the experiment for all the wasted carbon I’m now responsible for. Instead, I’m blaming my lack of planning and clear thinking: I should have arranged to take a bus or train home from Vermont. It would have made the day easier for my dad, and it would have given me the time to sit back and enjoy a book, write, or just take in the excellent scenery.
Granted, it wouldn’t have been that easy. While writing this, I spent about 2 hours looking for effective public transportation from eastern Vermont to the Hudson Valley. Apparently, buses just don’t go that way, and the best Amtrak route I could find would have taken me 8.5 hours (by way of New York City) and cost me $80. (Correction: I could have taken the Ethan Allen Express from Rutland to Poughkeepsie for 4.5 hours and $46, with about 2 extra hours of driving. That probably would have been the best route.) These figures are extremely impractical. My conclusion: public transportation in the United States is broken. It needs to be fixed. We need viable alternatives to car transportation and we need them now.
In the short term, my transportation dilemma would have been easily solved had I driven home on my own. On the other hand, America’s shocking lack of public transportation is exacerbated by the fact that everyone drives everywhere. Because we all have cars and that’s the easy solution, nobody needs trains to get them places. Put another way, if we want to increase the availability of public transportation, we need to increase demand for it.
So maybe that extra CO2 I used wasn’t wasted after all.
The more I consider taking my car back, the more stressed and frustrated I get. I don’t want to have to think about fixing my dashboard lights, changing my oil, finding a parking spot, or removing 2-inch-thick layers of Potsdam ice from my windshield. When necessary, I can help other people do these things.
No Impact Man’s blog has really been influencing me lately. His words inspire:
We don’t have time to wait around to see what might help change the world. We simply have to begin stumbling forward and beginning to try to make a difference, rather than sitting around wondering if we can make a difference or not.
If I feel so guilty about my car, then there’s really nothing to consider. I need to let it go. It’ll be my first real stumble toward making a difference, and I hope that I keep making more.
Photo credit: "Northbound Amtrak," by Flickr user jonlewis, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license.
Comments on this post
I really think that the nice part of driving yourself is the privacy and autonomy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-13-ithaca-podcar_N.htm
http://www.podcar.org/ithacaconference/
I think that Mr. Schwarzenegger has a valid point of view and probably a good way about solving the economic problems right now. If we were to move things along and make companies realize that the current models aren't selling, we can avoid the bailout (which I find so awful, personally).
New technologies are very appealing to people, and I think that "selling" environmentalism to people as "new" stuff would be more effective. Just check out the second link below on Toledo's change from an auto-factory economy to a glass economy again; they're making solar panels and making money.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4680649n
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20081208&id=9434585
I still plan on using it only when I absolutely have to, and I'm especially committed to this now that I've read your blog. Thanks Xam!
-Dnerb
@Dnerb: That's really unfortunate. I'd expect Ithaca, of all places, to have adequate public transportation. Weird that I expected that in Woodstock, too, and it's not there either! Anyway, glad to renew your commitment to not driving whenever you can ;-)
Leave your own comment