Transportation Technology Awareness

On the same day the Missouri legislature debates funding a gap in St. Louis transit agency Metro’s budget, I had the opportunity to hop on my soapbox for a bit during a business lunch. We were talking about housing, but the conversation meandered – as it does so often these days – to the economy. A less logical jump was somehow made to hybrid vehicles, where it stayed for a bit.

One of the guests at lunch mentioned he’d recently driven a hybrid (Prius) for the first time, and while he found the car novel, he would never purchase one. His stated reason was that it is too small. But elements of his comments, along with those of the other people at lunch, showed the lack of awareness among even people of higher education and higher means about transportation technology.

I carry the burden and relief associated with being motivated by issues green, and specifically those surrounding transit. As a society addicted to personal mobility, we constantly struggle between funding public transit and subsidizing our addiction to combustion engines through the construction and reconstruction of poor quality roads and car-oriented development, not to mention the billions handed out to oil companies. After the man’s comment, I made sure to point out that my wife and I own a Ford Escape Hybrid and that we loved it.

At that point I began to talk about a speech Robert F. Kennedy made recently in St. Louis, which my wife and I attended. While the event covered all sorts of environmental topics, a good amount of time was spent on personal mobility and the efforts of Better Place, a company currently working to convert Israel into an electric car country. I also brought up Tesla Motors and discussed the technology of electric cars. People seemed genuinely interested and asked questions, but they were never truly engaged. This may have something to do with my inability to capture an audience but I’ve tested that skill repeatedly to better results. I’m fairly certain the issue was the subject at hand.

What’s frightening is the lack of enthusiasm among people who have the means to make a difference. The general feeling after the discussion seemed to be one of, “well that was interesting, back to reality”. But people, this is reality. How do we get people to learn about electric cars, which undoubtedly are the future of personal mobility? Similarly, how do we get people to learn about other environmental issues that effect them so dramatically, but often so indirectly?

If you have an answer, please tell me. You can have all the credit, and all the resources I can spare to help spread the word.