Culture of Convenience: Mobility

Issues regarding mobility vary between each person and their needs.

For many people in the western United States, finding the means to pay for your vehicle is the greatest transportation concern.

When pressed with the challenge of finding a solution to an issue facing transportation that impacts me personally, I came to the realization that convenience may be the root of my problem.

It sounds counter intuitive, right?

Each day, I drive nearly everywhere; to school, to the grocery store, to my job, to the ski slopes, or to my friends houses.

I'm the product of a culture of convenience. What informs many of my decisions is how many minutes I can save in travel time, and how I can reach my destinations in the easiest way possible.

Owning a car is great, it allows you to have access to virtually anywhere that is drivable. Unfortunately, it also burdens your wallet, and plays a large role in sacrificing both the health of your immediate environment and global climate. It too plays a role in eradicating the opportunity for public spaces to be utilized in other ways, and most importantly, distracts people from utilizing a more sustainable means of transportation.

Creating a world that will ensure prosperity for future generations begins with sustainability. Mounting evidence supports the fact that human activity is impacting global climate, due to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A great contributor to this spike in atmospheric carbon is due to our beloved cars and our perceived reliance on them. I say that our reliance of them is perceived, because many of us don't see alternative ways in which we can reach places.

That being said, when you are living in a more dense urban environment, it is likely that these public transportation options are more commonly used and accessible to people. However, in smaller towns, such as the one I was raised in, riding the public bus is stigmatized to be inconvenient and unsafe.

City buses and trains aren't usually utilized by those who own a car, why would it be when convenience dictates our actions?

The transportation issue that I want to discuss in further depth belongs to those of privilege. By privilege, I mean people who have the means to drive a car at their own convenience, and don't experience it as an immense financial burden. To put it clearly, the issue is the perceived dependence of automobiles and peoples' overarching attitude towards public transportation.

As an individual in this position of privilege, I have always been told by my mother that public transportation isn't safe for girls to travel alone. It has been silently, and not so silently, stigmatized to serve "bad people," and "poor people." I've overheard my Mom warning her friends of dangers of drug dealers on the city buses, and that they shouldn't allow their kids to ride them. Having known nothing other than the backseat of my Mom's car, until I got my own license and car, I retained a bias of public transportation that I didn't even know I had.

Although we have city buses in most cities and towns, utilization of these means are often viewed as unattractive and inconvenient compared to travel by car. Unfortunately, my perception growing up is common to many teenagers of privilege in the United States. When there isn't

The culture of convenience dictates our lifestyles, degrades the health of the air we breathe, and even sacrifices physical fitness for luxury. It also influences the mobility of people without much money, if there isn't a demand for public transportation then the city won't feel incentivized to invest in it. This can disadvantage members of the community, and can perpetuate a culture that doesn't readily accept and embrace public transportation.

Ways that we can break this stigma, that some people hold regarding public transportation, would be to help the youth see city buses, public trolleys, or light rails as accessible and useful. We could teach the current generation of children in our public education system to understand the sustainable benefits of these modalities. Similar lessons of teaching children that idling cars can be harmful to health has rallied political will to implement idling laws. When children hold tight to an idea that they see as beneficial for themselves and the environment, they usually accept its importance because it intuitively makes sense to them.

As for adults, we could require companies to incentivize public transportation benefits to all of their employees. I know that the company my Dad works for does this, and results in many of their employees utilizing TRAX. We could also implement more routes of high speed commuter rails to enhance the connectivity of these lines, making them more attractive and accessible to a wider array of people. Of course, drastic and expensive expansions of these routes would need to be backed by public will. This would begin with a new generation that cherishes the culture of sustainability more than the culture of convenience. Hence, educating the policy makers of tomorrow about the benefits of electric trolley lines, high speed commuter rails, and city buses.

We can also make a future with less automobile dependence by implementing a cap and trade model of policy for single occupant vehicles. That way, people would be hyper contentious of their automobile trips, and would inclined to limit their trips in order to save money.

Ultimately, in a culture of convenience, we need to make sustainable lifestyles more glamorous and attainable for people from all walks of life. We could also use the "Theory of Fun" to help people feel more inclined to take public transit. The money generated from the cap and trade model could be used to reward the people who track the distance that they go on public transit, or the frequency of their uses. This would mimmic the Volkswagon speed calculator that tickets people who speed, and reward those that drive the speed limit.

The Theory of Fun could also be used to introduce the idea of active transportation, namely biking, to the people who usually drive everywhere the need to go. We could have priority lanes for bikers, with their own stoplights that could be seamlessly implemented into vehicular traffic. Contributing to the culture of sustainability, this would normalize biking from place to place, and would inspire more people to pedal to their destinations. Not only would this be sustainable, but it would be efficient and convenient.

We've got to get people out of their cars.


If these practices and policies were combined, I feel confident that they would play key roles in blending the culture of convenience and the culture of sustainability.


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