The Car

This is hard to admit being from the country that mass produced the automobile, but I have fallen out of love with it. Do I need to relinquish my citizenship? Until recently, I truly earnestly believed that to give up my car would give up my freedom. But no more.

I grew up in the suburbs and always loved the convenience of having a car. I biked a lot when I was younger, but my experience with public transit was limited to an extremely unsatisfactory Greyhound Bus trip to the Midwest and the occasional fun excursion on BART into The City. If someone took the bus, I always asked if their car was in the shop.

It was a somewhat more organic trip of Europe which included all kinds of public transportation. Planes, buses, lots of walking, metro and underground, Vaporetto (water buses), and rail. This was going to be a real treat and with my husband's experience with public transit in San Francisco, I had faith we would get along.

Here, from my mouth to yours, is the truth about European public transportation: delightful! It was fun figuring out the timetables and how to read the wall maps on the Underground. It was fun learning how to get from a train to a bus to a metro all in one day. It was even fun hauling luggage up and down stairs and over and under bridges and to discover trains have little luggage alcoves built in. We felt like locals as we sprang on and off boats in Venice and took ourselves down uneven stone streets on flimsy luggage wheels that held up remarkably well. We did, too!

There were memorable people along the way. It was even ok to wait in lines for tickets and advice. It was good to recognize and appreciate the hard work of those who kept the trains on time, safe and clean. And the biggest discovery was the myth that this kind of travel is hard or inconvenient.

A few American cities have put top notch public transit systems in place, but there are woefully few of them and often not self-sustaining by the people it serves.

It was wonderful to observe a successful system that attracts people from all walks of life, who good naturedly spend part of their day together every single day. The families we met have cars for weekend excursions but chose public transportation as a daily routine.  It is hard to imagine how transformed our country would be with this type of national option.

Every type of public transportation was clean and free of graffiti and vandalism. Look at them! There was no trash in the aisles, no guards. It's as though traveling on a well-devised system breaks down the barriers within the community and brings out the best in them. People in Italy and England recognize and respect the system itself, something we definitely could benefit by learning.

And that brings me back to our insane love of cars. How unfortunate it is to have such an affordable option as owning a car and being a solitary driver and be willing to sit five lanes wide in traffic for hours wasting gas and without the benefit of meeting or talking to or learning about anyone around us.

Life (and the environment) would be so much better off if we would.