Welcome to the new and improved Slower Traffic, 2021 edition. I hope you like the changes. If you’re here for the first time, thanks for taking a look. Please allow me to briefly re-introduce myself, and the blog.
Two questions I get fairly often. Yes, I am the Henry Garfield who writes the Moondog novels; and yes, I am a descendent of the 20th U.S. president. I use Henry for the books and Hank for the blog, but most of my friends call me Hank.
I’m also the guy who lives in Maine without a car. The last year my name appeared on a valid car registration was 2006. In my home community this is still sometimes met with incredulity. “How do you do it?” people ask. Slower Traffic was born from that question.
The blog began in 2015 with the subtitle “Walking, Bicycling, Public Transportation, and Not Owning a Car.” Gradually, it spread to include other spheres of interest, loosely reflected by the categories at right. Mostly, though, it stayed close to the subject of cars, and how we can reduce their impact by owning and operating fewer of them. Then Covid-19 came along. Suddenly, assumptions that had seemed rooted in firm soil were laid bare.
The Concord Coach stopped running, as did most inter-city bus services. Bangor’s Community Connector did not, but I stopped riding it, and so did many other regular passengers. I hunkered down with my car-owning girlfriend. We used the car for mega-trips to the grocery store and a few trips out of town. I haven’t left Maine since May of 2019, when I returned from Bulgaria. Almost two years.
For advocates of public transportation, Covid-19 was particularly devastating. How do you convince car owners to forsake their ride for a potentially contagious bus? If anything, the pandemic has had the opposite effect, encouraging frightened riders to buy cars. The automobile, half public and half private, was an effective tool of social distancing long before Covid came along.
But public transportation will bounce back, as more of us get vaccinated and the virus wanes. The pandemic has given us pause to think about many things. It’s given us an opportunity to re-evaluate. To slow down, if you will, and take a closer look at the world we are making.
I still believe we are living in the Late Automobile Age, and that our dependence on the private car as our primary means of transportation must give way to something kinder to the environment and to the average American household budget. People want walking communities, good public transportation, and an economy that does not require millions of car trips a day between homes and workplaces. In the wake of Covid-19, I think we’ll see a long-overdue reassessment of the commuter culture.
Change like this happens slowly, of course. It requires a growing consciousness that we can do something better. Slower Traffic is intended as a pebble in a pond. Let the ripples spread where they will.
