Cars, Cars, More Cars

My slight obsession with my car got me thinking today as I was filling up my tank, I noticed how much time and money I am spending on my car. $30 in gas and about $5 more per week to wash it, amounting to $140 a month, just to use it...not even including maintenance. The reason we have to spend so much money on our cars is that we have become completely dependent on them.

The lack of convenient public transportation combined with the structure of our city has created a large revenue for car manufacturers. Practically everyone that I know in this country has a car. I know that without my car I would not be able to get to work and school on time, the bus would take way too long or there's no transportation that goes there. The public transportation system needs improvement. If we had an efficient system, I believe we would significantly decrease the amount of petroleum we consume as a nation. With a good public transportation system, people will lose dependency to their cars.

On the other side of the planet, Hong Kong I only know two people that have cars. Out of my entire family, including everyone on both my parents sides of family, only my dad and my cousin have cars. You don't need a car over there. When I was living there, I would just take the bus, train, subway, to anywhere I needed to go to. I would take the bus to school alone when I was 8. The transportation system is easy and convient.

In order to conserve petroleum and resources, we need to begin developing a efficient public transport system. Another reason would be the amount of water we would save when people don't have cars to wash. Fresh water resources are so readily available to us, but it is a very scarece resource as well...I'll leave the water resource section for another day, let's keep thinking of ways we can reduce energy consumption. :)