Monday with Ms. Marvel: public transportation

In+her+weekly+column%2C+Monday+with+Ms.+Marvel%2C+Wingspans+Trisha+Dasgupta+reviews+different+political+issues+and+relatable+topics+in+everyday+life.

Morgan Kong

In her weekly column, Monday with Ms. Marvel, Wingspan’s Trisha Dasgupta reviews different political issues and relatable topics in everyday life.

Trisha Dasgupta, Staff Reporter

Americans love their cars, but it’s time to face the music; our use and ownership of personal cars are one of the leading factors of carbon emissionsn. What’s better: twenty people taking twenty cars to work, or twenty people taking one bus? The answer is simple, and yet there have been no significant strides to make public transportation in the United States cleaner, more effective, and safer for citizens to use. 

An argument frequently made is that America is just too spread out to make public transportation convenient, which is a popular misconception that isn’t true at all. We just need to look at Canada to see that this isn’t the case. Canada hosts a variety of wide reaching and consistent forms of public transit, including trains and buses, despite being as spread out as it is. While it may be harder to bring public transportation to sprawling suburbs, it is possible to connect these suburbs together through bus and train routes. 

However, the implementation of more public transportation won’t matter if we don’t take actions to make it a safer and cleaner method of traveling. The United States is ranked 16th in the world for public transportation, which is ridiculous for the world’s richest economy. And it’s not due to a lack of paying, as tax-payers pay around $120 billion dollars for public transit. So why is our public transportation so bad? Well, it’s a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. 

Americans notoriously love cars. We love cars so much that most would happily choose to own their own car rather than pay less to use public transport. So now we own cars, and rarely use public transit, which means that our bus and train systems start to be neglected. This results in malfunctions, buses breaking down, trains being delayed, and other inconveniences that eventually end up being even more money for tax-payers. So basically we’re paying more money every year to fund a public transit system that isn’t getting better. And that needs to change, and luckily it can.

With the recent conversations about climate change and global warming many people are trying to actively seek ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Reusable water bottles, going vegan/vegetarian, and many other environmentally friendly lifestyle decisions are being more widespread, and it’s due to a rise in marketing for these choices

If we start to popularize public transport as a viable and efficient way of travel, it won’t be long before people start to use transit more and more. When more citizens start to actively use public transportation, there will be a demand for cleaner and safer transportation, and sooner or later our system will be transformed into a better way to travel, not only for citizens but for the earth as well.