Team A / Blogging vol.3 / Yosuke / About Riverside

I live in International Village of UC Riverside for 45 days. I'll try to describe strong point and weak point of Riverside from the view of resident according to my daily life.

First, it's strong point that we can concentrate to study English because there are good facilities and environments of UC Riverside Extension. We can use extremely useful facilities, such as Extension Center and Lab. rooms etc. In addition, there are few activities outside of UC Riverside, so we can concentrate to study. If we were in Los Angeles or Irvine, we couldn't concentrate to study because there are so many interesting activities outside of the college, such as shopping mall, bar, club, etc.

Second, it's weak point that the transportation systems of Riverside are tremendously poor. It takes approx. 25 minutes to get to the nearest supermarket on foot. We cannot survive without cars.　Furthermore, it is too difficult to get to Los Angeles without a car. If we visit Los Angeles by public transportation, it takes more than 2 hours per one-way. Everybody says it's terrible, and I also think so.

In conclusion, I would like to strongly request to Riverside City and/or California state legislature to improve said transportation systems. If these problems were resolved, Riverside would be much better than present in various aspects, such as culture, industry, etc. Moreover, “Modal shift”, which is worldwide trend of changing of transportation methods from car/airplane to train/ship in order to reduce the total amount of exhaust gas, is one of the most important keyword to resolve global warming problems. Therefore, Riverside and/or California state legislature should change their mind and take necessary actions as soon as possible.