The next generation

The stats
From 2001-2009, among Americans aged 16-34,
Driving is down 23%
Biking is up 24%
Transit use is up 40%
Among those with a household income over $70,000, transit use is up 100% and biking is up 122%.
Source
Article about the report


Recently a friend told me about her son’s trip with some friends to a national park out west. They took the train. I thought that was an indication of their environmental awareness, but no—she said they took the train so they could play the whole way.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but young people today don’t want to do one thing at a time. They don’t want to make separate trips for everything. They don’t want to begin and end their day with an hour of sitting behind the wheel looking at the bumper in front of them. They want to be able to work, relax, or connect with friends on the way to work. They want to be able to shop on the way home. They want to live upstairs from a fun restaurant, down the street from a great bar, and around the corner from a movie theater.

The next generation will take transit not because it’s green but because driving is boring. They’ll live in walkable urban neighborhoods not because it’s fashionable but because being dependent on a car is such a hassle. To these kids, the idea that they would have to work the first two hours of the just to pay for owning, fueling, insuring, maintaining, and parking a car, which they would be stuck sitting in for a further two hours of the day just to get to the office and back, all so they can live in a suburban development where there’s nothing to do, is plainly insane.

What they want is to live in a streetcar neighborhood. The streetcar is a catalyst for economic development—the kind of development based on convenience, efficiency, comfort, and a socially interactive and vibrant urban lifestyle.