Suburban Sprawl and It’s Effect on Gas Prices

Suburban sprawl has been an issue in many metro areas over the years.  In fact, I live in Metro Detroit, an area that has long been affected by suburban sprawl.  Essentially the population in the area was once mainly confined to the city of Detroit, and then as time went on and the automobile became more prevalent people began to venture to more rural areas outside the city.  I happen to live in one of these suburban areas myself and I enjoy it very much, but I’ve also worked in the city and experienced the troubles with commuting downtown.  We have all the conveniences of businesses, shopping, and more importantly safety in my city, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t travel downtown quite often.  The issue with suburban sprawl is that it has created a dependency on autmobiles and gasoline.  Higher gas prices means that we are handcuffed to paying more for a daily commute we often cannot change.

The United States, and more specifically Metro Detroit, is so dependent on the auto industry that we have often lagged behind other areas that have made great strides with mass transportation.  Other countries, and some cities like New York, have dependable and cheap mass transit that cuts down on the effect that ever changing oil prices have on our wallets.  I feel that we need to step up and spend more public dollars on developing mass transit throughout our country.  I’m also a proponent of introducing light rail options in the metro Detroit area as well.  I think that we can work in tandem with the auto industry to help make them the technology leader of these rail systems and rail cars.  In turn we could cut down on pollution, congested traffic jams, and our dependency on foreign oil.