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Leave your car at home

Many people seem to be quite amazed that people in todays day and age can still get around town without a car. It seems that we are becoming more and more dependent on motorised transport to get us places. In some cases I have known people to drive the distance in a car that you could have walked in 3 minutes.

When I was a student, it seemed that students always complained about their financial situations, but still owned cars. Many of them seemed unaware that they were throwing thousands of dollars each year into their car.

With this over zealous use of cars, come many problems, including.

Traffic
Pollution
Health
Money
Time

Health

According to the New Zealand Ministry of Health web site:

Half of all New Zealand adults are now overweight or obese
One third of New Zealand children between 5-14 years are overweight or obese
Obesity is a major factor in many chronic diseases
and More than 1,000 New Zealanders die each year from obesity-related diseases – thats double the annual road toll

After reading further, I found out that Obesity rates are increasing and in 6 years time, it does not look good for New Zealand or the World.

Traffic

What about the traffic problems most cities are facing? It seems that many cities are always adding new roads and upgrading the current to handle more cars. More cars means more pollution and It is a well known fact that many cities in the world today have major pollution issues. Do all the cars on the road today contributing to a cities roading and pollution problems? Yes

Money

In the past year the Oil prices have been at record highs, but are there less cars on the road since less people can not afford them? No. The fact that it costs over $2000 a year to run a car does not seem to concern most people, including students. The amount of money that it would cost to run a car is nearly half the cost of some students fees. Yet students complain about fees and still drive cars.

Time

One of the reasons that many people seem to drive cars is to get places fast. But just think to the last saturday morning you were in town. Remember how you had to go around and around the city blocks, just to find a park? Or you paid even more money for your car park.

Now consider this, it would take me 20 min or so to bike to town and I do not have to look for a park. Not only that, I do not need to spend as much time at the gym.

In my case, I save time by not having a car.

So how do we fix our problems, to

Lower the obesity rates
Decrease traffic problems
Slow pollution,
save time
and save money?