We had a beautiful spring day here in the Twin Cities and a spring thunderstorm tonight, changing the face of the city; from grey and dirty and tired looking to green and fresh and full of hope.

And I was lucky enough to be out in it for a bit. I spent the morning at the Garage, getting an oil change and a once over for the big trip to Omaha on Thursday. And I got to stay there and work from their high-speed wifi for a three whole hours while they kindly put new brakes on my car. So now, not only will I make it to Omaha, and points beyond, but I’ll be able to stop when I get there.

At first I was rather bummed out about the brakes, because as you know, that sort of thing doesn’t come cheaply. But I realized that I do a lot of city driving and that has a lot of stopping involved. More stopping than it used to, or so it seems. So two sets of brakes in 95,000 isn’t so bad, really.

I did begin to think about that 95,000 miles though. How much longer will this car make it? Used to be you were pushing your luck to get a car to turn over 100,000. It was a rare and momentous occasion back when I was growing up. It indicated a guy (usually) who was meticulous about his machine. And I think it took longer back then; probably because we weren’t driving as much as we do these days. This car is a 2001 and in only a bit over 7 years I’ll have driven 100,000 in it. Sad really.

And another good reason to look for ways to cut back. And for getting a motorcycle. Even though intersections are the most dangerous spots for motorcycle riders (I learned that in my class.) Still, I can’t help but think that more and more people are going to be looking for ways to be smarter about the gas we’re using. Especially with oil at over $117 a barrel today.

It might change the face of our cities. As I was dropping off a little money at the closing office (I needed to pay a bit at closing and had been told I would get a bit…so didn’t have my checkbook.) ANYWAY, the ladies in the office were speculating if “all the foreclosures on the north side” would start to get “snapped up” by people looking to live closer to where they worked.

So many people in my area live “out” and drive in 40, 50, 60 or more miles one way. There isn’t a mature and reliable public transportation system that allows the bulk of people to ride in, like in Chicago, New York or even Seattle to some extent. We have some of the worst urban sprawl, according to some measurements.

But now, if all the people who could afford to live out there decide it would be better to “snap up” a foreclosed property (in what the people around here call a “questionable” neighborhood) it seems to me that we would then see the people who used to live in close because that’s all they could afford, being pushed further and further out from the center of the city. Where they could more afford the housing but won’t be able to afford the gas to get to the job that’s in the city.

We better hope that we get a viable transportation system in place before that becomes a reality. The more affluent currently have the power to get the transit built to serve them. If we can build it while the affluent are in the sub- and exurbs, then, when the less privileged are forced out there they’ll have a way to get to their jobs.

Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll end up like a big scale Aspen, where the people who work in the service jobs that keep the privileged feeling privileged won’t be able to afford to live where they work. At least Aspen has a valley bus system that runs frequently enough that people can actually live in Grand Junction and work in Aspen without having to drive that distance themselves twice a day. Or at least they used to.
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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Hope it rains tomorrow 2007
What I saw at 3 am 2007

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Hope it rains tomorrow 2007
What I saw at 3 am 2007

— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Hope it rains tomorrow 2007
What I saw at 3 am 2007

Posted on April 21st, 2008 under justice issues, politics. Tags: gas prices, mortgage crisis, transit, urban sprawl. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.