29 - Nov. Transportation E-dialogue

Submitted by Marilyn Hamilton on Wed, 11/29/2006 - 3:05pm.
This was a lively discussion today with many excellent questions. Here is one I especially liked: The e-audience asked"/answered: Will commuters be willing to drive longer if they have to do it less often, yet further expanding the suburbs? It certainly is true for me. I commute to work once a month and it is a 300km drive one way. Once at work though I do not move an inch for 3 weeks. These are unusual circumstances, but I'd confirm your thought about driving longer less often. As a note, this arrangement has significantly reduced the number of KM's I travel each year"." I feel the same way about commuting and even vacationing (to recover from jet lag and time zones). I have some kind of built in mechanism that tells me what I value (and where I'm going to experience it), in relationship to how long its takes for me to get there. I wonder if this is a natural homeo-static condition of the human species?
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I think this is important

Submitted by Levi. Waldron on Mon, 12/18/2006 - 7:20am.

I think this is important too. Transportation planning should be done not just based on present and "projected" traffic volumes, but on what kind of place we want to live in.

How we want to live

Submitted by shelley on Wed, 11/29/2006 - 4:48pm.

I agree with you Chris that our present lenses for Transportation seem to very shuttered. I think the Mayor of Bogota asked the right question that sits at the root of it "how do we want to live? ". And I would ask also "what do we want to live for?" This goes much more to the heart of sustainability -- what are we trying to sustain and why?

There seemed to be so many

Submitted by chrisling on Wed, 11/29/2006 - 3:22pm.

There seemed to be so many circular problems with transport issues - much more so than with energy. For example teleworking leads to people living in bigger houses further out in the countrysise. This all led me to think that transport is a symptom of unsustainable living rather than a cause.

In holistic medicine one looks beyond the symptoms to the illness behind - is this the same attitude we need to take with transport. Unless we address land use planning issues the unsustainable transport will keep coming back?