Have you filled your gas tank lately? Ouch! Unless you're one of the smart citizens who has found that taking the bus or riding a bike is a lot less expensive than driving yourself to work each day, your budget is feeling the pinch. Or you could be one of those who helps make the population of Urbana and its environs one that walks to work more than most places.

Whatever the case, we're all better off when we have choices in how we get to somewhere else. The Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Transit District (MTD) provides rides that help make this possible and even racks on the buses to bring your bike along. MTD also takes cars off the road in front of those who prefer to drive.

While a few have tried to turn the availability of excellent mass transit into a negative in our community, the writing is on the wall about future energy costs expanding demand for public transit. Champaign County has large numbers of people who live in a variety of urban areas, but who tend to concentrate on commuting to the center to work and study. Building and maintaining an expanded road system for the portion of our population who can truly afford to drive themselves in a two-ton vehicle 10 miles or more just to get to work everyday. Continuing to emphasize such highway-based transportation infrastructure will likely create more problems than it solves.

The gentle landscape of Champaign County can also accommodate something that would benefit small towns, as well as good health. One example could be selling the county as a tourist destination for bicycle sports and recreation. Riders on our gentle landscape could take advantage of easy riding, long distances, a scattered but growing public park infrastructure, and the unique character of our small towns. With a very small investment, such a project could bring new business to the small towns and rural areas of Champaign County, much of it during the time of year when much of the employment of the university leaves town.

The demand for more efficient transportation and healthy recreation will grow in the next few decades. Champaign County needs to start making bigger plans, other than just building more, wider roads in order to get around. Grants can combine with smart visions of what will bring our people together to work, study, or play over the next few decades if we play our cards right. However, this is something that needs to start now.

Imagine if someone had truly thought about this in 1973? -- but they didn't! It will now be an even more painful adjustment, but if we do it right, less disruptive than what has happened so far. It's sure smarter than reading the handwriting on the wall now, but waiting another 30 years to see again that we could have done it differently. The fact is that we're trying to catch up now with what would have been smart three decades ago. Can most of us -- and those who come behind us -- really afford to do without smarter regional transportation planning now and in the near future?