Public transportation has taken a toll on the environment drastically. If there was a decrease in individual transportation, it would lessen pollution in the community. Did you know that it is “estimated that public transportation in the U.S. saves 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually,”? With this, we could create healthier communities by decreasing the air pollution. Not only would this decrease air pollution, but it would better the health of those who have “respiratory ailments such as asthma and even cancer.” Although most people think of gas being the main pollutant from cars, they also contain other harmful chemicals such as antifreeze, which is extremely bad for the environment. With decreasing cars in a community, this could allow prevent a demand for roads to be built. Less roads could also benefit the environment and wildlife. Finally, less roads with less cars means that there would be a noticeable decrease in noise pollution. A decrease in noise pollution would benefit everyone in the environment.
Originally, my working thesis was trying to focus on questioning why we do not have a public train transportation in our community. Although, I believe that my original focus has been skewed a little due to the fact that I could not find any articles about pursuing a train system in our town. I decided that the best decision would just to lock into one of my questions and go into a more in depth research about it. The questions that I used for inspiration were: Could this benefit the environment by decreasing individuals dependency on cars, would this improve gas and oil waste, and could this be more of a disadvantage towards the animals in the community? This article allowed me to focus more on the affects of what individual transportation does to the environment. Overall, I still found the article I chose to be insightful, despite it skewing off of what I originally was interested in learning about.
Article used for information: https://transportation.ucla.edu/blog/5-environmental-benefits-sustainable-transportation#:~:text=Less%20Pollution%20and%20Clearer%20Skies&text=Compared%20with%20driving%20alone%2C%20taking,atmosphere%20and%20improving%20air%20quality.
This statistics, “public transportation in the US saves 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly,” truly caught my attention because I believed that public transportation increased rather than decreased carbon dioxide usage. I also like how you mentioned not only air pollution but also noise pollution. I believe this makes your argument more interesting because you have a new scope that you can show your audience, giving you the opportunity to develop a really strong argument !
I agree that the article does provide some interesting insight on how we can be green. However, I think that because our town isn’t populated as much as a big city, we wouldn’t benefit as much from a train system. If leesburg/ashburn had a large office park where many commuted to or maybe a city center it might make sense. Although, since we are not populated “that much” I think that it would be a huge waste of money to make a train system in our town.
I agree that the article you wrote about provide an interesting information on how we as people can make the world more “green” and how it can improve pollution. I find it cool how through your research your idea and initial through shifted in the opposite direction. Overall, I think your blog post was very well written and it shoes clearly what stance you take on this argument.
I think it´s great that you decided to change your thesis and go more in depth about transportation in the community and the environment. I am sure that this research can be backed up by many more articles in addition to the one you already have. Maybe down the line you will end up finding a little information about creating transportation in Leesburg, anyway.