The trouble with "alternative transportation" is that the nom de plume indicates that any transportation mode, alternative to automotive, is secondary and not considered mainstream, or is less important. I have been hearing this term used to describe cycling, taking public transit and even walking as public dollars are being allocated to infrastructure projects. It never sounded right to me, and I had quite a hard time discerning just why that was until I had proper time to ponder (and a few beers).
Let's jump in the way back machine. The year was 1977. A younger George Lucas was about to legitimize cheesy poofs as a diet for basement dwellers, Elvis was faking his death and a bouncing baby boy had just emerged into this cruel dark world. He was limited in his mobility. Eventually he was able to roll over, crawl and dance. Years later his father built him his first bicycle, a very heavy cumbersome device that resulted in various bruises and skinned limbs but no major damage. At the tender age of 9 the young boy was moved to the suburbs and enrolled at a public school that had large yellow lumbering noisy buses, filled with larger, lumberinger and meaner kids, and so the young man got his first taste of regular public transit (to be fair, he grew up taking the bus, but these timelines are important!). At 13 he learned how to drive a car but couldn't do so legally until he turned 16 years of age, 15 years after becoming mobile on his own two feet. Let me create a list for you.
Birth
Age 0 - not mobile, mostly cold, doesn't really do much
Age 1 - walking (sans skipping or hopping but mobile)
Age 5ish - riding a bike, probably in the street
Age 9 - regular bus rider (10 times a week, 45 weeks a year)
Age 16 - auto operator
Age ? - Cruise Ship Captain
Age ? - Spaceship Pilot
Age ? - Jet Pack owner
Age ? - FTL?
As the above list illustrates, I, and most likely the vast majority of people, begin our evolution of transportation via being a pedestrian, evolving into cyclists, maybe dabbling (those primary educator years are our dabbling years) in public transit and then eventually, possibly, becoming auto drivers. So why is walking, cycling and taking the bus considered "alternative"? Alternative to what? Driving from my bedroom to the kitchen for a snack? Driving from my desk at work to the restroom to tweet? How did our infatuation with the auto come at the expense of logic and our love for freedom? On foot I can walk just about anywhere, when I am in a car I am limited to following expensive vast roads at certain speeds and I have to follow the logic of seemingly random traffic signals (same as on a bike mind you), however I have to pay for all that GAS, those poor dead dinosaurs and ferns that have undergone so many centuries of crushing and pressure and decomp just to be converted into heat and mechanical energy. Pumped from their slumber in the ground and transported across the globe (some hyperbole, I think we get most of our gas from Canada) just for little ol' me? How am I that important?
I'll stick with walking and riding for now, the most that I can. I won't give up my car or motorcycle, but I won't refer to them as my primary mode of transportation and I will continue to fight against neighborhoods and communities designed solely around the auto in lieu of the actual people that live there. It's crazy, I know, but I like myself mostly, and I want to keep it that way.
