Advocate for car alternatives

I appreciate Abby Schwimmer’s Nov. 12 column, “Oil addiction,” for calling attention to the difficulties we face in weaning ourselves from oil. However, I differ with her assessment of where the bulk of our efforts should be focused. True, we can’t change the way our country was built, but we can change the way it is being built right now. Decisions are being made every week in our own City Council and various city departments that affect the way Bloomington’s transportation system works. True, it may take a long time to truly move to a more sustainable urban model, but any efforts we make toward pushing those changes will help us to actually kick the habit of inefficient car travel, instead of substituting one costly addiction (oil) for another (electricity/hydrogen), which may or may not have a lower net impact on the environment.\nTo address a few of the specific reasons Ms. Schwimmer mentions for sticking to cars: No, the buses in Bloomington are not always as fast as you might need them to be (although with careful planning they can work pretty well in many cases). So why not lobby BT for more express routes? Why not lobby the City Council to shift some of the money spent subsidizing cars to subsidizing buses, allowing BT to run the buses with greater frequency? And yes, it’s nearly impossible to travel away from Bloomington without a car. So why not lobby the state government to increase funding for high-speed rail? (Indiana currently lags behind our neighbors on this project.)\nFor more information about efforts to advocate for alternatives to car travel in Bloomington, contact Bloomington Transportation Options for People (B-TOP) at info@b-top.org or www.b-top.org.