Jason Brown

1. personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/trans-jap.html

The case study that i found interesting came from the Colby Sustainable Development page and was titled “Bicycles as Transportation Policy”. The study is about Japan’ climb back from World War 2 and trying to redevelop. One of the main additions to their development is the use of bikes around Japan as a main type of transportation. Because of the nation’s lack of petroleum, bikes are a great replacement for cars and let the citizens know that the reduction of the use of fossil fuels is important. Many of the older systems of travel grew old and inconvenient for the everyday riders, so substitutes had to be found. Bike ownership went up and actions were taken to try and boost the use of bikes. Pollution went down from cars to bikes and pathways and parking was built for the bikers to use. The government continued to promote bike use by putting railway stations near residential areas so commuters didn’t have long ways to bike and still could use energy efficient transportation to get to work. Bike rentals went way up as citizens would rent bikes in the city after using the train, thus helping the economy. Japan has discouraged the use of cars with more costs of owning one in the city. But as people continue to get more money, they feel the need to get more expensive cars. So the government has more work to do to promote bicycle use.

2. http://ash.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CS-France-DRAFT-2_FINAL.pdf

The second case study I found comes from the Action On Smoking and Health global action. It concerns trying to make France smoke-free. The articles describes this as a rough change to make because of France’s background. For decades, France has had an overall society based off of cafe living, where the citizens like to relax out in the open and smoke as they eat or go about their activities. They have instituted new laws that try and weed out smokers from indoor places and also at work. Also, measures have been taken to build designated smoking rooms, but most companies are unwilling to pay for them even if it means increased productivity from their workers who smoke. High taxes and restrictions on marketing and ads were supposed to come around, but have all been shot down and not put into place just yet. The government works in a way where they can not simply institute new laws that the people do not like, or else there will be more civil protest.

3. Both of these studies play a part in where I am from. McMurray, PA is in the suburbs outside of Pittsburgh. My township is called Peters Township and over the years, I have seen examples of these case studies. Peters has had more bike traffic in recent years as we have had a number of our trails updated and rerouted to connect more main channel trails. More people have been riding their bikes to work and leaving their cars at home. New bridges have been able to let bikers reach new trails that let them get to work. Also, Peters has been trying to install more sidewalks for the public to use. More and more kids are ditching school buses and riding their bikes to school or carpooling. The second case relates to the USA because of the limitations that the government has been putting on tobacco companies. Now american consumers are learning about the dangers of smoking and they are starting to change their feelings about cigarettes. Now when I go to our local convenience stores, I have seen less ads for cigarettes and tobacco products. One impact of the downfall of smoking that I have seen around my township is that vaping and other forms of “safer” smoking have taken off. A vape shop opened up in one of our main shopping centers and has attracted all kinds of different demographics of people to come and test their luck at trying to ween themselves off of cigarettes. We can learn from these cases that people do not always want to change. We saw in case 2 that the french still really love to smoke. Luckily, in the US we have been able to make changes to the percentage of consumers that smoke. Also, from Case 1 we saw that most of the Japanese took to their bikes and liked the idea. I have cousins who live in Japan who always talk about the high number of students who walk and bike to school. Their schools got rid of their bus systems cause nobody used them and it was better for the environment. My hometown could try something like this if more people are willing to help the planet.