It is said the fastest speed attained by a human being is around 45KM/hr. And of course that wasn’t sustained for anything like 30 seconds, let alone any amount of minutes, so to expect that any of our species can be consistently relied upon to operate at 60KM/Hr or even 100KM/Hr is really asking for trouble. And then if we multiply the opportunities for our slow-moving species to mess up at faster than we can move, well, you end up with dead people.

People get tired, they get distracted, and they end up making a mistake that takes lives. This has been going on as long as the car has existed, and yet, we keep making our lives car centric, based on the majority of our travel being in singular cars, all producing more opportunities for something to go wrong.

We’ve all seen it. Teenagers going too fast, arrogant adults drinking a bit too much, people thinking they are good enough to 10, 20 or much more over the speed limit. Things go wrong, people die. Multiple collisions on our roads, destruction for everyone. And even if nothing goes wrong, we choke our cities with traffic wasting everyone’s time and making sure everyone has the opportunity to enjoy the deleterious effects of carbon monoxide on their health. Is this the smartest use of our time and resources?

What if we built our homes, our workplaces, with mass transit systems as part of their foundations. Fast, reliable, frequent transport that gets everyone to work, to home, in comfort, stress free, and without contributing enough air pollution to smog up our world and shorten all our lifespans. Does that sound good, or would you prefer to be stuck in traffic?

Marissa Klotzcbucher -  Thoughts and comments for public consumption