Do we benefit from things we don’t use? Some say we don’t. In the debate over regional council’s approval of light rail transit for Waterloo Region, the project was assailed by some as a white elephant.

Indeed, some went further, decrying the investment the region has made in all public transportation this past decade. Nothing, they argued, was going to get them out of their cars and into Grand River Transit’s buses. And if they weren’t going to use the GRT’s buses, why should they have to pay for them through their taxes?

Such thinking is short sighted. Most of the region’s drivers benefit from the money spent on public transit.

GRT’s ridership has doubled since 1996 (from 9.1 million riders to 18.0 million today). In that same time, the region’s population increased by just 28.4 per cent.

Imagine if most of the region’s nine million new riders had instead chosen to go by car last year, and you can see why car drivers benefit from increased transit use.

In cities throughout southern Ontario, transit is a relief valve for our road network, keeping congestion from being even worse than it is. Transit has saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing the need for new road construction and maintenance.

But more than that, while drivers may find driving more convenient than taking public transit, circumstances can conspire to rob them of their choice. In 2009, car use dropped for the first time in the history of North America. People drove less because oil prices made driving too expensive. Given the nature of the resource, it seems unlikely we’ll see 50-cents-per-litre gas again.

Medical issues can also intervene, as my wife discovered when she was diagnosed with a neurological condition and found herself unable to drive.  Suddenly, an independent, prosperous adult had to depend on others to drive her around.  We fell back on walking, biking, and public transit.

We were lucky. Where we lived, we could easily walk or take transit to where we needed to go. However, dedicated drivers should look at their own neighbourhoods and ask themselves what life would be like if they couldn’t use their car.

How would they get to work? How would they get to the store? How would they get their kids to school or to the library? In neighbourhoods where a car is a must, parents become chauffeurs for their children, and drivers who find themselves unable to drive are trapped in their own homes.

This is going to be a big issue. Last year, the first baby boomers turned 65. More and more of us going to reach the age (80) where driving exams have to be re-taken, and the push is on to require seniors to take road tests every two years. Doctors are legally obliged to fill out paperwork which strips us of our drivers’ licences should we become medically unfit to drive. The older we get, the less likely we’ll be able to drive, and how will our neighbourhoods serve us then?

Transit provides an important service for everybody in the region. It increases the carrying capacity of our roads, and it provides mobility for those who would not otherwise have it. That could be any of us at any time.

If we want our neighbourhoods to be good places to live, then we need to ensure that transit is available, even if we don’t use it right now.

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James Bow is a writer and a father of two in Kitchener, Ontario. You can read more about him at http://bowjamesbow.ca/