Lessening Air Pollution: A Car-Free Approach

Millions and millions of people in the U.S. use cars every day for errands, whether it’s for 5 minute or 5 hours they still use a car to get the job done. But they don’t realize that every time they start the car their hurting the environment. There are many simple ways to eradicate or at least decrease the amount of air pollution we give off. For instance, we can take a couple of days off from cars every month. Everyone would either bike, walk, or take public transit if they had an errand to run. Yes, it would be a big adjustment for everyone in the United States, but if we look at other countries who have tried this approach it has worked out quite well. We can take Bogota,Colombia for an example. The mayor has banned the use of cars and only permitted the use of buses and taxis, and this is their third year going car free with a capital city of 7 million. Those who fail to comply to the no car policy pay a $25 fine. “ Millions of Colombians hiked,biked,skated or took buses to work during a car-free day yesterday, leaving the streets of this capital city eerily devoid of traffic jams. “ according to Andrew Selsky. This quote suggest the the car-free day was a major success,

“ On Monday motorists with even-numbered license plates were ordered to leave their cars at home or suffer a 22-euro fine ($31). The same would apply to odd-numbered plates the following day.” ( stated by Robert Duffer in ‘ Paris bans driving due to smog’).Even with this system there are still some complications, such as the fact the nearly 4,000 drivers were penalized, and some people even had their cars impounded for their response the to penalization. But after all it was partially successful the cities car traffic went down a whooping 60