In an editorial in The Des Moines Register, Rox Laird writes:

With gasoline nudging $4 a gallon and people increasingly aware of the need to walk or bike more and drive less - for their health and the health of the planet - interest is growing in transportation alternatives to automobiles.

The trouble is, it is nearly impossible to navigate the modern city without an automobile. It’s time to rethink the way we design cities.

Transportation planners in the Des Moines metropolitan area are beginning work on a new transportation plan for the next three decades that will help determine how tax money will be spent on streets, highways, rails, trails and public transportation. For Des Moines, this is a perfect time to start thinking about how to modify the plan to make it easier for people to choose alternatives to driving. There is no reason a new Des Moines plan that would make it easier for people to get around without automobiles could not be a model for other cities in Iowa, and the nation.

In the 20th century, the mass production and mass consumption of automobiles liberated cities, and we have built a marvelous network of streets and highways that allow people to live far from work and to travel great distances with relative ease for shopping, entertainment and other activities.

The automobile not only changed cities, but the way we live by allowing us to work in one town, to shop in another and to transport kids to school, baseball practice or violin lessons in still another, all the while traveling distances that would have consumed a day or more in our ancestors’ time.

Today, the transportation system of greater Des Moines consists of a 2,700-mile network of streets and highways. According to a study by the Des Moines Metropolitan Planning Organization, 93 percent of all trips are made by automobile, 5 percent on foot and 1 percent each by bus or bicycle. The vast majority of driving trips are not commuting to work - which represent just 16 percent of the total - but for personal trips for church, recreation, shopping, running errands or going out to eat.

Making these trips by car is largely a personal choice, to be sure, but the choice is greatly influenced by a lack of alternatives. If people could walk to the corner store, or wander in and out of shops along Main Street, they might be encouraged to do so. But few urban residents have that option.

Laird writes that the movement toward making cities more walkable and bikeable is an effort to “turn back the city-planning clock to rediscover what worked in the past and what still works in most every small town in Iowa.”

But, he says, no changes will take place “until the public demonstrates that it is ready to embrace a new direction in how cities and communities are planned. So, citizens should let their elected officials know they are ready for urban planning and commercial and residential development that account for means of transportation other than just automobiles on four-lane streets.”