So, the humphrey posts an internal site where students can look one another up, and read one another’s bios. They wanted us to answer a few questions:
- Education: undergraduate college(s) and degrees, including year graduated; undergraduate major(s); other graduate degrees if any.
- Work or internship experiences
- Travel/studies abroad;
- General interest in public affairs (what you plan to study; broad career goals);
- Hobbies or favorite activities.
Here’s mine.
I am a bit of a nomad, born in Illinois, raised in 5 or 6 different midwestern cities, mostly in Ohio. I’ve called 4 more cities and several different apartments home in the 10 years since then. I studied Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, graduating with one BS in 1999, and the other in 2000. I’ve worked in technical support, in computer science research, and in education.
Most recently, I lived in Berkeley, California. While there, I was a medic at the Gay Men’s Health Collective of the Berkeley Free Clinic, actively involved in the Howard Dean campaign, and a part time researcher for the US Navy.
My youth spent in rural, then suburban Ohio, followed by my urban college experience, and my prototypically suburban first home after graduation, kicked off what has become a very strong interest in issues of transportation studies, urban planning, ecological development, and related topics. It was this intense interest which led me to the Humphrey.
For fun, I have a number of athletic pursuits, including swimming, weight lifting, skating, biking, yoga, gymnastics, and wall climbing; several geeky pastimes, such as esoteric strategy board games, anime, online gaming, and blogging; and a few more domestic activities, mainly cooking. I make up for the time thus consumed by almost never watching TV.
… do you have any postings (lj or otherwise) or suggested reading on alternative methods of transport?
As a comprehensive subject? No.
Is there a particular question you had? I mean, alternative transport could mean rails, it could be bus rapid transit, biodiesel, bike and pedestrian centric development, personal rapid transit, etc, etc. I’ve seen transportation as chapters in a book, or books on subsets of alternative transport, but not so much a book on alternative transportation per se. If you want to narrow it, or don’t mind a broader look at things, I could probably come up with some reasonable recommendations.
well, it’s my honest feeling that we’re nowhere near solving the transportation problem – nothing we’ve come up with seems like a really good solution. so, i was wondering what other thoughts were out there – since i saw it was an interest of yours…
for instance, whenever you rely on a hub based system (for flights, or even if you have a direct flight but have long airport trips), you lose a lot in time and convenience, but gain efficiency (i guess). but whenever you DON”T have that, you have a lot of people (say, cars) going to very similar places but wasting a lot of space storing the cars there, energy driving them there, etc.
Like HIV, I don’t think “the transportation problem” is a solvable problem, it’s a manageable one. That’s an important and non-trivial distinction. But we cannot make it so that everyone’s needs are seen to perfectly until we have zero cost teleportation and even that doesn’t cover the desire for a pleasant stroll/bike/drive. That having been said, we can do much better than we are currently doing.
We have alot of good solutions, none perfect of course. And they could probably be better interconnected, but one of the biggest problems is the nearly monomodal approach that the US has taken. This results from subsidizing roads to a degree vastly beyond that with other modes receive.
But this also ties into issues of city design and structure, and a number of other topics. I could go on at length in a real post, critiquing the current US transportation system, and offering suggestions for alternatives, if you like.
yeah, i’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on it!
it’d be one of those lengthy friends-journals i _actually_ read 😉