We at the Pioneer Valley Relocalization Project in Amherst, MA (in the Connecticut River Valley, rename the Pioneer Valley by chamber of commerce types back in the 1930s) are putting political pressure on the old industrial Democrats in our nearby town governments to tell them that, yes I know you are having trouble meeting budgets, but besides getting more local business in town -- to take the pressure off of rising home property taxes -- you have to lower the cost of living for people by offering bike paths, carpools, minibuses, 25 mph speed limits 3 miles from town center so more people will take bikes when they can. Total reliance on the single passenger car is not only increasingly killing middle class pocketbooks since cars cost $7,000 a year to run, it is also killing the Earth in the process, since the single passenger car is the most carbon profligate of all forms of land transport in terms of passenger carbon per mile. We recently went to our state representative and also our US Congressman to ask them to pressure on our local knucklehead town mayors and town managers to cooperate, find monies, and dramatically change our built environment when it comes to the layout of dwellings and to the infrastructure of transportation. If dwellings are closer together via mixed-use new urbanism buildings in the town centers, then we can rein in sprawled single family houses, and that lowers transit carbon. Bikes are 1/60 of cars and walking is 1/30 of cars in carbon emissions for getting around.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 16:05:41 +0000
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