Transportation today is of major concern to our society. We live everyday traveling to and from workplaces, stores, schools and homes — especially in San Diego. Most of us use cars, mostly because public transit in our city is slow and inefficient. Cars are one of the main causes of pollution in San Diego, while also producing greenhouse gases. To prevent these negative effects, we need to spend less money on expanding freeways and more on promoting an efficient public transportation system, coupled with a more widespread carpooling system. Our local government now spends a considerable amount on expanding and maintaining our freeways and roads. The main cause of this is the high density of vehicles on the road. This dense traffic around our city easily causes congestion and delays. Much of our driving is unnecessary and can be reduced. The delays and congested roads that our driving causes contribute to longer transit times for the large amounts of cars. The solution is apparent; reduce the number of cars on the road. Unfortunately, the solutions proposed are many and sometimes difficult to realize. The best way to reduce car density on our roads is to increase the number of passengers per vehicle. This is attainable through the efficient use of trains, buses and our cars themselves. Even though a public transit system for all is economically impossible, we still need to improve our buses and trains to be faster and more enticing for the urban commuter. By reducing the options for normal car transportation in our urban areas, we will need to utilize public transportation, which will provide for our needs efficiently if expanded. Our public transportation’s buses and trolleys need to adapt to provide service to more individuals at convenient times. When we make public transportation cheap and affordable — so long as it works efficiently — we can change our mentality toward transportation, moving away from conventional cars and learning to embrace public transit as an option. Carpooling is a great alternative because it, too, can reduce the number of cars on the road, while also slowly adapting our mentality away from normal car travel. Carpooling benefits the environment by removing up to four cars on the road per carpool, reducing pollution, traffic and congestion. Carpooling also helps reduce the money spent on gas by the participants, making it very enticing for the everyday commuter. In the short term, to help reduce the effects on the environment and the problems with transportation in San Diego, we need to stop the expansion of freeways and roads and focus more on solutions that reduce car density throughout the city. These solutions will not only reduce pollution, but also reduce the number of cars on the roads. By promoting and improving our public transportation, we can slowly become less dependent on cars. By using carpools when available, we reduce the cars on the road. These two solutions, coupled with improvements to our technology, can reduce pollution, congestion and traffic. — Rollin Grimmett is a senior at High Tech High International in Point Loma.