Deep green transportation.

• Author: Fitz, Don

Increasing the number of trains and buses on the road is not deep green transportation. Increasing the amount of car-pooling and car-sharing is not deep green transportation. Not even increasing the number of scooters and bicycles is deep green transportation.

Riding a bike is good exercise. Riding it through a park can be great recreation. But let's not delude ourselves into believing that giving a bicycle a ride on the back of a car going to a park does anything for the environment.

Deep green transportation means reducing the number of autos and trucks on the road--by a huge amount, not by a little bit.

Increasing trains and buses could be deep green transportation--but if and only if it is part of an actual decrease in the number of automobiles. Likewise, increasing bicycles, scooters, car-pooling and car-sharing is truly green transportation only if it is a piece of the big picture of reducing cars.

Otherwise, all of these are nothing more than eco-gimmicks that are part of the problem in a double way. First they require the manufacture and distribution of even more consumer items, which is the opposite direction of where we should be going. Even worse, eco-gadgets give people a sense that they are helping to solve problems when they are not.

Again, protecting the environment as well as our lungs requires a massive decrease--not an increase--in the number of vehicles on the road. Here's a 10-step plan that could lead to a 90% drop in cars in most US cities:

1. Reduce the workweek to 32 hours (or much lower) and guarantee jobs to workers who manufacture and operate vehicles. Reduction in the number of hours worked is probably the most important environmental demand there is.

2. Expand mass transportation, especially by havingnew lines and lanes dedicated to trains and buses. The goal should be to expand mass transit so much that people are confident that they can get to where they need to go without owning a car.

3. Require new homes to be multi-family. This not only saves enormous energy in construction and use of homes--it also increases urban density, which is the basis for an efficient mass transit system.

4. Require new workplaces to be adjacent to afford-

   able residential areas, with workers and communities having the power to halt toxic production. Being able to walk or ride a bike to work is a very old pattern of urban design. A major reason that workers wanted to live far away was not wanting their families to be poisoned.

5. ...