From a teen's perspective: Give the roads back to the people

For the past two weeks, I virtually attended the Yale Young Global Scholars (YYGS) program. Typically, YYGS is held on Yale’s campus.  Students from over 100  countries attended so it was online again, as it was in 2020. 

I attended the Solving Global Challenges session which allowed me to listen to lectures, attend seminars, have group discussions, and meet amazing people from across  the world who want to fix the problems throughout our nations, like me.  (Side note: YYGS was a great experience  and helped me learn about our world and myself as a person. If interested, check it out here.)

One of the seminars I took was called Cars, Climate, and Catastrophe in which we discussed how car culture promotes carbon emissions and how alternative forms of transportation can counteract this. The amount of harm on the environment caused by cars is staggering: out of the global carbon emissions from transport, 74.5 percent are from road vehicles. This amount accounts for 15 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. The United States is number one in transport emissions, contributing substantially to the problem. In order for the Paris Climate Agreement to be met, the US must cut 50 percent of their carbon emissions. 

But how does this fit into Davidson County? Is there anything we can do to make the fires stop ripping through our forests and erupting in our oceans? Of course there is: give the roads back to the people. Cities, in general, devote 50-60 percent of their land to cars.  Public transportation isn’t  populous in Davidson County, even in the larger towns, which causes us to drive and constantly increase the carbon in the air. 

We don’t have to work to build large, expensive, infrastructure to help lower the US’s carbon emissions. There are two extremely cheap, alternate forms of transport that Davidson County could start promoting: walking and biking. I understand that no one is going to walk to Walmart or the doctor’s office miles away, but we can work to promote walking and biking in the center parts of Davidson County towns. For example, on Lexington’s Main St., there are shops along the sidewalk next to parking spaces and then the road itself. Instead of having parallel parking on that portion of Main St., what if we  had bike lanes? This would not only lower Lexington’s contribution to carbon emissions, but would also promote healthy habits in the community. Main St. already has bike racks but there is nowhere to ride bikes besides on the road, with  cars, which is dangerous, or on the sidewalk, which is also dangerous. 

There is plenty of parking on the side streets off of Main St., so people would still be able to drive there. By eliminating these cars, there is more space for bikers to ride up and down Main St. and stop to eat and shop from the local businesses. Along with this, car drivers would not have to worry about hitting the bulky cars parked on the side of Main St. This is a bit of a drastic change, but it would be worth it. 

If bike lanes aren’t attainable, there are alternative options. Many cities are moving to regularly close parts of their streets during certain times in order to promote economic and physical activity uptown, for example on weekday summer nights. This little act could make a huge difference in the amount of carbon that is being released into the air. Using any of these options help to shift some of the focus of the city away from the cars and towards the thing the city was built for: the people. The move towards a more people-centered city and lower car usage is urgent and necessary. The world is dying and more destruction is imminent if even the smallest towns don’t play their part in promoting a reduced-carbon lifestyle.