To-ing and Fro-ing

[Ron Force <rforce@moscow.com>]

An interesting excerpt from an online newsletter:

WORTH THINING ABOUT: TO-ING AND FRO-ING Author Jane Holtz Kay writes:
"Statistically, most of our expanding hours behind the wheel, nearly
eight of every ten vehicle miles we travel, have nothing to do with
work. Neither are these miles vacation trips or long-distance travel,
the reasons Americans give for buying the first--or second or
third--automobile. Such holiday trips consume fewer miles than might be
expected, a scant 8 percent of our total mileage. "What sets the
odometer reeling is something else. It is something less critical than
life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. And that is errands.
According to the highway administration study one-third of the miles we
travel go to consumption and family chores. A bottle of milk, a tube of
toothpaste, a Little League game, taking grandma to the hospital or
junior for eye glasses spin the miles. The ministuff of life clogs the
nation's roads. Another third falls under the "social and recreational"
category. These are the hours of amusement and friendship reached by
wheel: a workout, a movie, a dinner. Total these lifestyle choices and
tally the chores to consume, survive, and fraternize and we have covered
two-thirds of our driving miles, more than half of the ten to twelve
thousand miles of travel per car per year. "'Trip chaining' is the
traffic engineers' word for these serial pickup trips. They come to six
round-trips a day per household to cover the so-called family and
personal category of our car-dependent lives. This eternal need for a
ton of steel creates the shop and drop cycle that runs us ragged. To-ing
and fro-ing, we spend our time and our horsepower on an endless round of
errands. And we don't much like it." 

Jane Holtz Kay's "Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America,
and How We Can Take It Back."