You Can't Get There From Here.

This week, in my reading and conversations, the long-standing issue of mobility kept surfacing. Sometimes we were talking about the sheer number of kilometers of road we maintain and plow; sometimes about the distances we travel to work or study; sometimes about what we might do to draw mobile others (and their tourist dollars) here. In Suffering from a Want of Communication: A history of Transportation in Pontiac County (2000) Gordon Graham writes, “The key to developing the potential of any region …is the continual improvement of its transportation system”(53). I want to suggest that in recent years we have not only improved our ability to move around, but have also changed our whole attitude toward mobility and distance. What was once considered a long journey into town, or to the city, has become an every day event. ‘Here’ and ‘there’ no longer seem very far apart. How has our changed relationship to mobility and distance affected life in this community? What sort of plans are we making in response to the rising cost of mobility?