Dr. Mozhgan on Sustainbility

We must reduce global warming, or else it will reduce us.  It is not enough for the City’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations to express its wishes for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

For sustainability, locally and globally, we need a concrete reduction in cars. That means the City Council needs to appoint AAATA board members who will provide us with more mass transit now. 

The bus (or paratransit) should pick you up everywhere, frequently. Those buses, increasingly, should be electric as their cost goes down and battery capacity goes up. 

The City Council should support millage renewals to fund the transit we need.

That is much cheaper than effectively telling everyone to shell out $20,000 for a car. To the extent that our City can push for meaningful regional transit, we should do that too. 

That is cheaper than the current situation, where everyone functions as their own individual bus company, with their own personal fleet of buses in their own garage, adding to the congestion of our streets, highways, and city space.

The car culture alienates Ann Arborites from each other, as we sit alone in our vehicle and rarely see each other in any public space. Why would such a population, walled off from each other, support public libraries, schools, transport, housing, or social services for each other? 

Fortunately, Ann Arborites still do support the public good, but let us not slip further into the car culture. A city packed with cars costs us too much, in our own personal environment, and in our own personal finances.

The single biggest protection we can have, against global warming, is a big increase in our mass transit services, when and where we need them.