Changing our mindset

Change in Transportation

Transportation is one of the fields that needs major changes, in applying, doing, and thinking as well.

As it affects so many fields and so many sectors, and so many people globally.

Everyone is complaining about traffic, gas prices, wasted time, accidents, pollution, road quality, and recently global warming.

These are some of the major complaints’ worldwide, that can be reduced and solved by doing and applying some simple changes in the field of transportation.

How?

In general when solving any problem we break it down to smaller parts or tiny pieces, then we start looking for all the parts or items that we have in hand, we start evaluating each piece how can it be solved and its impact on the overall parts or the whole problem that we started with, the aim is to solve hundred percent of the problem all the time, but sometimes we can’t reach this or do it all due to so many reasons, so we evaluate how much can we solve and what the highest percentage that we can achieve at the end considering the cost involved in solving the whole problem.

This is the concept in general, so how can we apply this on the transportation field? Taking into consideration that the resources, or the funds are very limited in most cases and most countries.

First, we need to work on changing our mindset as individuals worldwide. some are forced to do this already in some of the places due to lack of finance or lack of having personal cars, as it is considered a luxury means for moving from one place to another, that mindset is controlling almost every human being now everywhere.

We all forgot the main reason of having a car, which is the ease of movement and going from one point to another point whenever I want to go, it is there in the garage ready for me to go. It was replacing the horse in the staple that was waiting for me to go from one point to another.

The idea now is that we all need to work on it is, changing our mindset to use public transportations even if we are rich or having cars, or can afford to buy one. if we can accept this concept or this idea all of us to start with, this will solve big portion of the problems mentioned above to reach maybe forty to sixty percent from the current situation everywhere.

If we accepted the concept, then the rest is very easy to apply with some durable changes that can cost far less than the cost of fixing some of the current problems or current situations.

Some suggestions to apply on the public transportation:

o   Having direct routs to most popular working destinations, that can run every half an hour, having public shuttles waiting in the stations to drive groups to downtown or their workplaces.

o   Replacing current trains or modifying them to be faster, use the new technology to upgrade them all, even build the newer ones to be more advanced and quicker. 

o   Using the solar panels on top of the train roof, all the cars, which can be connected to the main cabin or even having few  batteries that can be connected together to recharge the train engine all the time while moving, the sun rises at 6 am and sets down at 6 pm on average, but in some areas it is longer than half a day, that can fueled by the solar energy.

o   We can use the same concept of adding solar panels on top of the roof for big buses too that we can use again to move between far places or far towns or cities.

o   We need to use smaller buses inside the cities which can run more frequent and quicker too, especially going to the school routs in every city, middle and high school students can use public transportations if they are safe, quick, and reasonably cost effective, each school most of her students lives close by or around, when the district cancelled school buses service, all parents had to drive their kids back and forth to and from school. Which was bad decision in my opinion, even if they were trying to reduce costs, this was not the best solution out there considering its impact short term and long one too.

We need to admit the main problem behind why not so many are using public transportation if they want to, the problem is wasting time. Yes, current system actually is not serving this purpose at all, check how long does it take to go LA, or SB, or SD from orange county here in CA.? driving your car will take with heavy traffic two hours, to reach Los Angeles or San Diego and 4 to 5 hours going to Santa Barbara, check and see how long does it take using the train? How frequent does it run or go too during the day? Moreover, the ticket price, is too expensive to be used frequently and daily, so people will rather use their cars as it is cheaper and quicker too, it is more convenient as well.

 So, in order to encourage majority of people to use public transportations, we need to reevaluate cost prices and see how can we reduce them and still make running profits.

We also need to make direct lines every thirty minutes from all stations to all major destinations, (remember the direct flight request we talked about it earlier).

When you run a train with so many cars, or fewer cars, to reduce your cost, you are actually losing more customers who can use your service, which will impact on raising your prices to cover your expenses. The solution in the balance of having enough numbers of train cars more frequently, this can be noticed and adapted to the right quantity of people using during the day, you can have long one during the rush hours it make sense, but not all the time during the whole day, the same to different destinations too.

To conclude, the major solution to all problems mentioned above is using public transportations. Everyone even if having a car, this is not going to prevent you from using your car, or having one, or trying to upgrade the car you currently have. But you can use it less if you have too.

This solution will reduce accidents on the roads, will reduce polution, reduce global warming, reduce infra structure replacing or renewing time, will save money on a personal level and nations economic level too, will reduce stress for humans, will increase their level of social interactions, or their education level, they can read in public transportations which is not available in their private cars.

We need to return reading as a nation, and apply this concept everywhere globally, the British people uses the underground all the time especially on daily commuting to workplaces or going to shopping long time ago and still up till now, most of them were holding a book to read while in the train.

The Chinese people most of them uses public trains as well, even when they have cars.

Japanese, French, most of the European nations do the same.

So why can’t we do the same here in the States? Why can’t we improve our local transportation system and do our share in real solving the global problems as our economic problems and social problems.?

It is not going to make us less or feel less or value less, on the contrary we are setting the examples to everyone elsewhere to follow and behave the same way.

If we succeeded to apply this and spread the idea worldwide, we can all feel the impact and feel the positive change in economy, gas prices, roads, stress levels, employments, manufacturing sectors, innovation challenges, solving some of the global human problems.

If everyone is ready to apply personal changes on his personal behaviors and his personal believes, then there is a real hope in solving the rest of the problem, we need to start acting, we need to replace talking and promises with real positive actions, we need to maximize our recourses and get the maximum benefits of current situation with the minimum cost to feal the major impact on us locally and globally in general.

We need to act on changing the idea that only poor people, or those who can’t afford buying a car, they are the only ones who can use or should use the public transportation because they have to, they do not have any other option.

We need to work more on our behaviors, way of thinking, especially here in the USA and similar people in different parts of the world who are doing the same act.

Thank you for considering and thinking about it.

Noran Zahran

Aug 26, 2023