Blueprint for Design

I grew up in the Washington DC area, a metro area blessed with a well funded transit system. As a kid I could take a bus or subway into DC. I grew up a few blocks from the deepest subway station in the US, I used all the time. When I skipped school I didn’t hang out at the shopping mall, I headed for the Mall in DC with all of the free Smithsonian museums. Later I went to school in Chicago, a fantastic transit town. The L, an extensive commuter train system, and pretty good bus service. I went for 7 years without a car, and I took that system for granted.

Now I live in Puyallup Washington, a small town east of Tacoma Washington, part of Pierce county. For the last few weeks my car has been laid up needing some repairs. To get around I have been using Pierce Transit and King county transit. It is a different experience.

Those of us who would like to see oil consumption reduced, our carbon foot prints diminished, and everyone using as much public transit as possible forget that America has really poor public transit outside of the major metropolises. I am going give kudos to Pierce transit for that they have very modern hybrid compressed natural gas – electric hybrid buses, a free light rail in downtown Tacoma, and have worked hard to have tight schedules. However – as we move to more transit and less individual cars – we really have to rethink our towns. “Downtown” Puyallup could be a set for the Andy Griffith Show, (though St. Charles Illinois is the unofficial official Mayberry), it is walkable and has a good connection to the train line that serves Tacoma and Seattle. But that core quickly becomes sprawl a half-mile in every direction outside of that main street location.There are few sidewalks, and it then quickly becomes farms and industrial parks.

In order to transition from our gasoline car based life style we need to improve the quality and quantity of our transit resources. Not just in the big cities and towns, but focus on the small towns and suburbs, and really find ways to overlay light rail, more bus service, car and van pools in these areas. If the quality and availability isn’t there, everyone’s first choice will still be to own a car. Even an electric car contributes CO2, most of our electricity comes from coal. Our real solution is more mass transit, get the cars off the road. We have to choose to do it, no politician, lobby or group is going to mandate it, but they can fight for more transit dollars to expand service and improve quality.

In the winter of 1997 it was terribly cold. I was working as a temp just out of college in the Greek Town part of Chicago, west of I-90/94. It must have been -20 air temp and a windchill of -30 at least. The rails froze above ground and we had to get off the train and get the Clark St. Bus to get back to Rodger’s Park. In that 90 minute wait I swore I would save every penny I could to by any car – just so I wouldn’t have to stand in weather like this again. I didn’t care if I would still be stuck driving in the slush for 2 hours, I would be warm and dry. If the bus had come sooner it would have been just another Chicago winter day, instead the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) just sold another car.