Q: What do call it when everyone is driving a hybrid?

A: A traffic Jam!

This weekend I was heading up the Maker Faire to see what kind of crafty inventiveness that people were dreaming up of coming parts, trash and other things to well new stuff. A highlight was hearing Adam Savage of Mythbuster fame as he described his obsession with making film prop replicas and the adventures in constructing facsimiles that were pretty darn amazing. He had on display an bull whip from "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the mega pistol from the "Fifth Element" and even a reconstructed Dodo from the 18th century. As cool as the event was, getting to the event really sucked...

The event has grown huge since its origins 2 years ago, and it really gnarled up traffic. What struck me was that even if you're driving a hybrid you're still making up traffic. Especially if you are a single driver, and that includes all the roads, parking lots, etc. It took upwards of two hours for some people to get off the freeway and parked. Unless....

You took mass transit. I heard about the hideous travel situation, and with it being National Bike Month, decided to ride my bike to the Caltrain, put my bike in the bike car and ride from the train station to the fairgrounds. A nice bonus was that the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition had set up complimentary valet bicycle parking. I was able to walk right in.

Hybrids are a huge improvement over standard combustion engines, however they're not the full answer. The infrastructure to support cars is often forgotten. It's like a fish, they take water for granted, we take roads for granted, it's what we swim in. But when the roads aren't enough we have to "think different" or at least "ride different"