by Susan Ow

Created on: October 29, 2008

With the wake-up call on the rising gas price in the past few months, alternative fuel vehicles are being explored and developed and people were shifting to fuel efficient cars. Gas price is down right now, but America's heavy dependence on fossil fueled on transportation still a huge debated environment and economic issue. Similarly, more roads and freeways are built; however, traffic congestion issue still emerges from time to time. It shows us that these solutions are short-lived; ultimately, we need to take a serious look on alternative transportation.

Alternative transportation promotes and encourages us to use alternative transportation mode to you travel to other place as often as possible other than driving in a car alone. Examples are bus riding, walking, car-pooling, van-pooling, and cycling.

Promoting alternative transportation is the most efficient and effective way to enhance quality of life and reducing social costs. In the last century, increased automobile usage has overwhelmed the quality of life, caused the stress on cities' infrastructure, and increased pollution and valuable losses to natural environment. These are hidden social costs and eventually will be paid by city. Alternative transportation results in less cars on the roads, therefore, reduces automobile gas emissions and traffic. It leads to cleaner city and healthier citizens as air quality is improved and stress from traffic is reduced. Natural resources can be saved and wildlife can be rescued from losing precious source of food and shelter as less freeways being built. City can save on its budget before expensive scientific research being done on civilization diseases and extinct animals.

In addition, alternative transportation means revitalize. Imagine a picture with cars lining on both side of street, along the street are shops offering a wide range of merchandise, restaurant, and entertainments spots. Pedestrians are walking up and down, children are playing at the corner, and you can hear people yelling. Twenty years later, the street becomes serene, quite, and you barely see a person walk by. This is the picture of an abandon downtown and happened in East 14th street
in East Oakland. During 1960's, factories and local canneries that employed local residents began moving out. As a result, unemployment and poverty rose. In 1990s, the city announced it was going to build a 500-car parking garage at its Fruitvale station and the concept of Transit Village was born. The concept is

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