Wendy Tran

During this past week I had been staying in San Diego with my brother and as a challenge for the both of us, I encouraged us to use his car as little as possible. While at home, I often find myself driving short distances instead of biking or walking mostly because the streets around my hometown are not very “walkable” or “bikeable.” However, while in San Diego, specifically in the La Jolla area, I noticed that the sidewalks were wide and there were a lot of bike lanes. Additionally, my brother owned 2 electric bicycles, which made it a perfect opportunity to start this challenge! While I was there, we mostly walked to places that were about 1 - 1.5 miles out from his apartment. This definitely helped break up my day and partake in physical activity since recently most of my days have been filled with zoom meetings. For further distances, like the beach, we used the electric bike. Not only was riding the electric bike fun, but it also was surprisingly efficient. It took about 6 minutes longer to get to the beach by electric bike compared to a car. However, if you factor into account looking for parking, it ends up being about the same amount of time. I think I would get an electric bike in the future in order to reduce my carbon emissions; however, I would have to consider how “bikeable” the city I’m living in would be. Since my brother lives near the UCSD campus, the streets were built in a more accessible manner for walking and biking to accommodate the large population of college kids. Living in LA, I don’t think that is necessarily always the case. Just looking at the streets around Westwood, I’ve noticed how hilly the streets are and how they are also often filled with potholes. This would not make for a good bike ride; however, I can try to walk and utilize public transportation more to reduce the amount of driving short distances. The streets are also very busy and biking around the city seems more daunting. I hope that in the future cities are planned out better such that there is more accessibility to public transportation and streets for pedestrians. This would not only encourage those to drive their car less, but would make for a “healthier” community as more people would be able to get out and walk more.