Second Car and Mass Transit

Living in the northern part of Mecklenburg County, I have been following the articles about the Red Line. The one with the consultant made me realize the impact of the second family car in the 1960’s. Then every driver got a car.

In the 1950’s, most families had 1 car. Early in the 1960’s it became popular for families to have 2 cars. My mom was a housewife. Dad took the car to work or we took Dad to work and then went back and picked him up. I remembered the first house we lived in we could ride the bus because it came by and stopped near our house. When we moved to a bigger house, the bus did not run in the neighborhood. Finally we go the second car.

Families also began buying cars for teenagers. However, my Dad was a holdout so I had to think about this implication a little more. I had to borrow one of the 2 cars and make sure that I was not messing up the parents’ schedule.

The affordability of cars allowed people to have more options about where they lived. People did not have to live within walking distance of work, grocery store or school (when I grew up you had to live 1 mile from school to ride the bus). We have all added this flexibility to our lives.

Any mass transit is going to have to include this flexibility. If it does not, I do not think it can work.