By Micheline Maynard
We’re kicking off a regular feature at Curbing Cars called My Transportation Diary. 
We asked you to send us a week’s worth of your regular transportation use. It’s a great way to see how you’re getting around — car, public transportation, bike, walking — and to gauge what you’d like to hear about from us.
Our first installment comes from a unique point of view. John Miller writes the Blind Travel Blog, and I’ve gotten to know him on Twitter. He was inspired by our request for transportation diaries to write this blog post. We’re republishing it with his permission. Thanks, John, for taking part. We’ll have more from him — and from you — in the days to come.
John writes:
“On Twitter I follow Micki Maynard, a reporter who just announced the Curbing Cars Project. This is an effort to get a sense of how and to what degree our transportation choices may have changed in the last few decades. In short, how do we get around?
I’m participating, by keeping a diary for a week on my transportation interactions to collect data that will then be used, along with many others, to get a sense of wider trends.
As a person with a visual disability, I obviously have never been able to drive. This may well change in the future, though, as companies like Google and others continue to make strides in creating cars that won’t really need much input from their drivers in order to cruise the streets.
I suppose there are reasons to be leery of this invention, and as many say in reference to that the idea of blind people in such automobiles by themselves will be slow to catch on even if they are proven safe, mainly due to what some call social capital. This means that the general attitudes will have to moderate, which will likely take many years.
So until that beautiful time comes, we have to cobble together the easiest way to get across town and to hit the road. Many would say that would be paratransit, but, well, that just depends. Continue reading →
