PETERS: With Hot Nite in the City, we celebrate our freedom and scorn more logical forms of transportation

But on Victoria Street, we’re going back in time. Hot Nite in the City brings together auto lovers for a showcase of chrome and steel.

The fascination with old cars is a very specific and powerful strain of nostalgia, the likes of which may be unique to the Boomer generation.

It’s highly unlikely people 60 years from now will gather in the streets to gawk at a perfectly preserved Ford Focus or wonder what it’s like to get behind the wheel of a classic Honda CR-V.

Cars and trucks represent freedom to us.

That’s why automobiles are so hard for us to give up, despite how much sense it makes to use alternative modes of transportation.

In the midst of this affordability crisis, using public transit is far, far cheaper than paying for insurance, fuel and maintenance on a vehicle — not to mention the purchase price.

Those payments are very literally the price of our freedom and while giving up our vehicles may save us money, we become subject to the various boundaries and limitations of our community’s infrastructure.

North Americans will only make the switch when it becomes unbearably inconvenient to continue driving and when alternative transportation reaches an unignorable level of affordability and convenience.

In an urban environment replete with traffic gridlock and parking scarcity, for example, taking the bus or train can have a massive impact on a person’s overall quality of life.

Here in Kamloops, though, where our traffic and parking headaches pale in comparison with those in larger cities, most of us will keep driving.

Not only that, we will keep celebrating the great internal combustion engine and the shiny horseless chariots that have dutifully taken us from Point A to Point B and everywhere in between.

——

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by James Peters

PETERS: With Hot Nite in the City, we celebrate our freedom and scorn more logical forms of transportation

Our Community