Car Free Cities

Could you imagine living in a place without cars? Or even in a place where there were cars,but nobody used them? That is not a place I would want to live in. I enjoy driving my car, and many of my friends enjoy cruising dirt roads in their trucks. Driving is not just a way of transportation, it is a way of life. There are some people that don't want to drive. There are some people that don't want anybody to drive. There are people and governments trying to take away the right to drive an automobile on certain days. It seems like a huge hit, which is good for the government promoting it, because if people had anything better to do, the idea wouldn't last a second. Take the "Car-free day" in Bogota, Colombia for example. It was started in the mid-1990s. My source said that millions of Colombians took alternate approaches to getting around on this day. However, I must also take into consideration that this article was written in 2002. There has been a lot of change since 2002. In 2002 I didn't even know how to ride a bicycle, and now I've got my driver's license. I can't really infer how many take part in this event nowadays, but it said millions participated twelve years ago. I would think that if that was the majority of people in the designated areas, then they would've wrote the impressive percentage of people that participated. However, they did not. The article just says millions. How many millions of people? Two million people, three millions people, ten million people? It doesn't say how many millions as if to suggest that the writers of this article think that just writing "millions" of people is enough evidence to impress the reader. For all i know, only ten percent of the people in Colombia may have taken part in Car-free day. Also, it says the fine for violating the Car-free day is $25 dollars with the exception to buses and taxis. This sounds more to me like a scam to get people to use more buses and taxis. $25 dollars where I live isn't hardly anything. I can find that much walking down the sidewalk. In Colombia, however, i do not know how much that is. Especially in the capitol city, where I'm sure there is plenty of poverty just as there is in the majority of large cities in the U.S. The article did not specify how much money $25 dollars is over there related to in the United States. So when it boils down to it, the citizens of Colombia didn't have many choices for transportation. They could walk or ride a bicycle, probably the cheapest way. They could take a bus or taxi which would most likely be free, but it would be pointless because if the reason for this campaign is really what officials claim it is- to reduce pollution, then they're just making it worse having people take buses instead of driving they're own cars. I'm positive my car gets more mpg than the buses they're using in Colombia. So I'm sure there were quite a lot of people that participated in the event, but I'm not convinces they all did it for the right cause.

I am totally against taking away cars. I do not care if they take away cars in other countries. I think it would be wrong and unfair to the people, but it doesn't apply to me, therefore I'm not concerned too much. However, if they tried to ban the use of cars in the U.S, I think there would be an outrage. My dad is a self-employed floor installer, but in his mean time he works on cars. He is good at working on cars. If he wanted to, he could easily open up a body shop out of his garage, but he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to work on cars for other people and he don't care about the money he could make doing it. He wants to work on his own cars for no other reason than that he enjoys doing it. His dad taught him how to fix cars. My grandpa was also a mechanic before he retired. He had his own small-town body shop where people from all around would bring there cars for him to fix. He did very well financially for auto-mechanic. I do not share the same love for cars that they do. When i was growing up i didn't want to be in a garage, i wanted to be in a pool or on a basketball court. That's not to say that i don't love my car though, and enjoy driving it. I'm sixteen years old, I've had my license for about six months, and I've had my own car for about 9 months. In source 4: The End of Car Culture, the author talks about her sons compared to Mr. Sivak's sons. Her sons have little interest in obtaining a license. I know very few people like that in my life. Most of my friends and I love our automobiles and we love being able to drive. It's a good sense of self-responsibility that prepares us for the responsibility we will encounter as adults.

In a world where everybody walks, bikes, hikes, or takes buses and taxis, I would be miserable. I would hate walking or biking to work everyday and everywhere I go. Every time i arrived i would be drenching in sweat. I would hate taking a bus just as much because it would most likely be crammed full of tons of people who are incapable or too lazy to walk and bike to get around. If buses today are already uncomfortable, could you imagine them twice as full? Taxis would probably be the worst. They would be the only means of comfortable transportation. Could you imagine the price of using a taxi in a world without private cars. It would skyrocket. The fare would be outrageous. I hope i never live to experience a time where i will get a ticket and fine just for driving my car on a certain day of the week.            