Give Them an Alternative

Following up on the previous post, it probably bears mentioning that a lot of folks who spend three hours (or more) per day commuting back and forth from their homes to their jobs aren't doing it so much because they love driving as much as there aren't any viable transit alternatives that can get them to their destination more quickly than a car. This is especially true for people who live in outer-ring suburbs or exurbs, and while we city-dwellers can scold the suburbanites for their wasteful and profligate lifestyles, we need to acknowledge that some people would rather live away from the city center for any number of reasons that are perfectly legitimate to them (school districts, for example). Now, this doesn't mean the suburbanites---or even country folk who live 100 miles away---should have to settle for long commute times as the cost of living away from the city when there are modes of transit that could lure them out of their cars and speed up their commutes. We simply need to build them.

---Baron V