Everybody Hurts*

When driving on the freeways around Atlanta at, say, 2 a.m., the joy and freedom of owning a car in a country with an extensive network of well-maintained roads is readily apparent: light poles flashing by, the hum of the macadam beneath my tires, the near-empty lanes inviting me to push the pedal down a little harder and just keep going- if I weren’t so tired, that is, because it’s 2 a.m. on a Wednesday and why the heck aren’t I home in bed?

Venture out onto the same stretch of road anytime between the hours of 6 and 10 a.m. or 3 and 7 p.m. and instead of joy and freedom you’re more likely to experience violent rage or, at best, abject helplessness as you watch the windblown litter make more expedient progress down the road. Or maybe you just shrug, mutter a few four-letter words and wonder why we keep doing this every day when it clearly isn’t working. Traffic gets worse, we add more roads and more lanes to the ones we already have, and then add more cars. We’ll never win. There must be a better way.

But what? We always hear about more buses, more trains, more carpool lanes, not to mention making the roads bigger and more extensive, which from the rush hour driver’s point of view only serves to accommodate even larger traffic jams. In my own fantasy solution to our transportation woes we have roads dedicated entirely to bikes- pathways intended not just for recreation but for transportation, because I’m someone who is willing to ride a bike to get somewhere but I’m not willing to fight speeding cars to get there, because a bicyclist will lose that match every time. These pedal-power freeways (or maybe we’ll allow electric bikes and scooters on them as well?) will not intersect motorways, going over or under them, keeping bikes and cars segregated, and they’ll actually go places. And there surely will still be cars, some of us will just spend a bit more time in the saddle instead- when the weather doesn’t completely suck, of course. Hey, it’s not perfect.

And my little dream isn’t for everybody, I realize. That’s why I want to know what it would take to get you out of your car. Expanded bus service? High-speed rail? Airships? Nothing short of instantaneous molecular transport? Please share your vision in the comments. Until we figure it out, you can always shift your schedule around to avoid the worst parts of the day- apparently 2 a.m. is an ideal time to get around.

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