Column

I come from the land of the automobile.

Daniel Rutherford
Ph.D. candidate
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
Stanford University

The country from which I hail proudly displays scars incurred from its century-long dysfunctional relationship with the car. Vast stretches of numbing, center-less geography where the only clue that one has made the transition from Nowhere, USA to Anywhere, USA are the fast food signs that have began to repeat themselves. A culture where getting a driver's license is less a right of passage than receiving commutation of a life's sentence of unemployment, isolation, and boredom. A population whose waistlines are expanding at roughly the same rate as the tank-like SUVs which ferry them deferentially from place to place.

I always look forward to coming to Japan, where transportation policies seem so much more enlightened. Public transportation is valued and romanticized herein a way that it is not in my country, with schemes for fare integration for regional train lines generating almost as much excitement as technical advances in car engines. Concern is paid to the need to provide transportation alternatives for the young and old alike, and the private costs of automobile use are supplemented by a long list of taxes, fees, and charges in order to better approximate the burdens that such use places upon society. This, my heart tells me, is where I belong.

Why, then, did I find my bicycle cruelly snatched away from its usual nesting grounds near the local subway station this morning? Is this not where transportation engineers and environmental activists alike say it should be parked? Alas, such arguments are lost on the local bureaucracy. In Kyoto, no one seems half as enthused about dealing with the illegally parked cars that choke the streets of downtown Kyoto as they do with hauling away scores of carefully placed bicycles near railway stations, always in a flamboyantly Orwellian fashion, all massive flatbed trailers and deafening loudspeakers.

What message should one take from all of this?

Personally, I resolve to follow city hall's lead and throw off the shackles of my current two-wheeled lifestyle. I hereby resolve to raid my savings account, buy a used car, and henceforth use as my primary means of transportation in Kyoto. This, in turn, will mean one less bicycle for the city government to worry about, allowing it to shift precious manpower to deal with all of the new problems I will gleefully exacerbate: traffic congestion, accidents, local air pollution, global climate change, energy dependence...



	English

I come from the land of the automobile.
Daniel Rutherford Ph.D. candidate Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Stanford University

The country from which I hail proudly displays scars incurred from its century-long dysfunctional relationship with the car. Vast stretches of numbing, center-less geography where the only clue that one has made the transition from Nowhere, USA to Anywhere, USA are the fast food signs that have began to repeat themselves. A culture where getting a driver's license is less a right of passage than receiving commutation of a life's sentence of unemployment, isolation, and boredom. A population whose waistlines are expanding at roughly the same rate as the tank-like SUVs which ferry them deferentially from place to place. I always look forward to coming to Japan, where transportation policies seem so much more enlightened. Public transportation is valued and romanticized herein a way that it is not in my country, with schemes for fare integration for regional train lines generating almost as much excitement as technical advances in car engines. Concern is paid to the need to provide transportation alternatives for the young and old alike, and the private costs of automobile use are supplemented by a long list of taxes, fees, and charges in order to better approximate the burdens that such use places upon society. This, my heart tells me, is where I belong. Why, then, did I find my bicycle cruelly snatched away from its usual nesting grounds near the local subway station this morning? Is this not where transportation engineers and environmental activists alike say it should be parked? Alas, such arguments are lost on the local bureaucracy. In Kyoto, no one seems half as enthused about dealing with the illegally parked cars that choke the streets of downtown Kyoto as they do with hauling away scores of carefully placed bicycles near railway stations, always in a flamboyantly Orwellian fashion, all massive flatbed trailers and deafening loudspeakers. What message should one take from all of this? Personally, I resolve to follow city hall's lead and throw off the shackles of my current two-wheeled lifestyle. I hereby resolve to raid my savings account, buy a used car, and henceforth use as my primary means of transportation in Kyoto. This, in turn, will mean one less bicycle for the city government to worry about, allowing it to shift precious manpower to deal with all of the new problems I will gleefully exacerbate: traffic congestion, accidents, local air pollution, global climate change, energy dependence...