The Automobile Idea

This week I have been working on a research proposal for an ecology class as well as thinking about Earth Day which is coming up tomorrow.  I will be spending Earth Day playing a round of golf after work, in case you were wondering.  But that is besides the point of this short blog post.  

Traffic was horrendous yesterday and it took me an extra 20 minutes to get to school, which put me in a bit of a sour mood but it was no big deal.  As I was taking the bus looking out the window trying to figure out why traffic was so bad, other than the fact that it was 420 and all the potheads and stoners were out and about, I realized that almost every single vehicle on the road that was not commercial in its use was occupied by a single driver.  There were no passengers anywhere to be seen.  

This fact got me thinking about the traffic issues that face the greater Denver area, what if people actually carpooled, or better yet took the same public transportation that I was taking at that very moment.  So I did a bit of a thought experiment.  I thought of the most common places of work in the Denver area and realized that there are really only three, so the chances that a neighbor or even an acquaintance would be working within the same area were pretty high.  This led to the next phase of my thought experiment which had me counting private vehicles that had just the driver in them.  I counted 55 out of 56 cars had only one person in it.

What would happen if just two people drove together every day?  I thought maybe, just maybe traffic would be cut by 50% during the rush hour time slot.  In my mind this alone would cut travel time by roughly 5 minutes each way saving you and your new carpool buddy 10 minutes of aggravated driving each day and if the work week was 5 days an entire 50 minutes per week.  

Now let's think about the old carpool ads from the early 90's where every seat in a vehicle is occupied by coworkers all traveling with their coffee and breakfast alternating who drives each day.  So that would be 4 people per vehicle during the rush hour time or a whopping decrease in vehicles on the road by roughly 75%.   Now we are saving 8 minutes each way and a giant 80 minutes each week!  Now we are talking.  I am not writing this with the environment in mind even though that is where this all started, but what is the biggest cause of delays on a commute besides volume?

Road Construction.  If everybody just carpooled the need to widen the roads would not be there since the amount of cars would stay low.  This means that big construction projects at least for the near future would not be happening.  Road maintenance would not be as frequent since the normal amount of vehicles on a road would be a lot less as well.  

So to look at the overall outcomes of just carpooling or taking the many options for public transportation we would have a happier, healthier community.   Let's all do our part.