New Start, Mass Sacrifice | Teen Ink

New Start, Mass Sacrifice

May 16, 2008
By Anonymous

I was always the type of child that lived in a small town where everybody knew everybody and almost anywhere could be accessed by bike if the time was willing to be spent. School wasn’t bad except for morning traffic when I was taken there by car. The only real congestion in that town was during school hours by the schools so it wasn’t really that bad. My dad would come home late complaining that traffic was bad and the family would hear about the infamous rush hour.
It wasn’t until the first family vacation that I had even seen traffic that was all that bad. I remember our trip to London. Not only did my grandmother have to get used to driving on the left side of the road; she also had to drive through a vast land with tourist attraction written all over it. Even Dallas, I started to realize, was bad with traffic problems. Sadly, despite all of the car owners crowding the streets, I couldn’t wait to get my license. Now that I have it, I don’t even want to drive around metroplex areas, and I won’t if someone else offers to take me. It saves me gas money from stopping and going and keeps me from having nervous breakdowns when I have to wait to get somewhere.

By my freshman year in high school, I had realized that individual transportation was taking its toll on the economy. Greenhouse gases were and had been destroying the ozone for awhile, wrecks became more common, gas prices rose, and consumption of foreign oil was skyrocketing. I actually felt bad for driving just to get out. At this point, buses, planes, and boats seemed to look more and more appealing because of all of the rising gas prices compared to low fare to go anywhere local. I figured out that mass transit is the key for anybody that wants to save money, time, and the environment.

Basically, mass transit is beginning to remerge as the better and safer method for transportation. People can tend to get angry and sometimes violent when traffic gets bad. Road rage causes accidents and is mostly brought about by congested traffic. Rush hour traffic is the worst but could be lessened if there were more cars off the road and more people in busses. Ultimately, mass transit can bring more people off of the road thus making it safer and less time consuming for the average American. One of the main benefits of mass transit is the job opportunities that it can provide. Jobs like bus driving pay alright and all that is needed to drive one is a class B license. For transportation business, revenues often shoot up in places like New York City where there are always people needing to go somewhere. Jobs such as these also keep those employed off of the roadways in their single cars. When roads get congested, delays take effect, accidents increase, people get frustrated, and most things go bad. If workers are shuttling people around, then not only are they saving money for thousands of us each day, but they are also making the world a greater environment for themselves.
There are many things that are trying to be done to help slow the rise of gas prices. A lot of people are starting to watch what they spend their money on. People nowadays are beginning to realize that one of the reasons for America’s gas shortage comes from the types of vehicles that are being driven and how long they are being driven. Large trucks guzzle gas like there is no tomorrow. Most of them will only get up to twelve miles to the gallon. These trucks are starting to look less and less appealing to the public. If individual transport is unavoidable, hybrid vehicles are a very good alternative of saving money and gas. The last resort should be using the least amount of gas as possible. Hybrids are the segue from now into future technology and advancement. People should be looking at these vehicles if mass transportation isn’t available to them.


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