Semster Essay 10

Prompt #21: Many cities suffer from serious air and noise pollution-as well as endless traffic jams- because of too many cars. Some people feel that cities with extensive public transportation systems should ban passenger cars and force people to walk, bike, or use public transportation. Do you think this is a good idea? Why or why not?

            Everyone knows that popular, busy cities like Los Angeles suffer from serious air and noise pollution as well as endless traffic jams on a daily basis because of the fact that there are too many cars. Many people say this problem can be solved by banning cars and forcing people to walk, bike or use public transportation. I say that this is a huge problem that definitely must be taken into deep consideration but not solved with these suggestions but with other resolutions. This is definitely not a good idea because the alternative ways of transportation are already dangerous, it takes up too much time of one’s life, and those forms of transportations are not always available outside of your house at any time of the day.

            In busy cities, there may be many forms of transportation but most of these transportations are dangerous in the way that many things can happen. Whether it may be walking, biking, or public transportation, you just never know what can happen. Suppose Los Angeles bans cars and forces everyone to walk, bike, or use the bus. If there are already a lot of cases of rape, murder, kidnaps and assaults, today (with the privilege to utilize cars), and the chances of getting ran over and of all the previous are as high as they can be. If there were no cars, the cases of rape, murder, assault, kidnapping  and the chances of all these horrifying things would most definitely go up by a huge percentage. Some people utilize cars for their protection while transporting from one place to another because of personal experiences that they’ve encountered before. 

Many people utilize their cars to save themselves a bit of time. There is only 24 hours in a day, and everyone tries to make the most out of those 24 hours. About majority of the drivers have many priorities that they have to get through in a day, and that requires them to transport from one place to another. Those drivers rely on their car to transport themselves, without their car they would lose a lot of time because they would need to walk to the bus stop, which takes longer than driving. They would need to wait for the bus until it arrives, then wait patiently throughout the ride over to their destination (including all the stops it makes). If people chose to bike, it would be much faster than walking but you still risk your life because of the possibilities getting ran over. Many people would not be able to walk because of the percentage of assaults, kidnapping, and rape there are.

Besides the fact that walking, biking, and public transportation is not safe, time consuming, it is also slow and not available outside in your parking at any time for whatever reason you need it.  Everyone is used to going outside their house onto the streets, straight to their car and without the existence of cars in the city, they would not be able to go out for emergencies and make it in time. Cars make it much safer for one because if you chose to bike or walk in the rain, you risk the chance of getting ran over, murdered, raped, assaulted and the worse. 

Although busy cities suffer from serious air and noise pollution, not to mention endless traffic jams on a daily basis because of cars I think that banning cars in the city and using the alternative ways of transportation is not the way to go because of all the horrifying things that can happen. The alternative forms of transportation are already dangerous and life risking as they are and banning cars in the city would only increase all these horrifying situations. The problem must be taken into consideration, but not by using this strategy. I would suggest for everyone to use eco-friendly cars rather than petrol cars because eco-friendly cars do not pollute the environment as much as petrol cars do.