After a month getting around the city without a car, Guelph city councillor Phil Allt says that regional transit needs to be improved so that more people want to take it.

Allt, the councillor for Ward 3, says that building more highways just encourages people to stay in their cars.

"We can't rely on the old ways of getting around. It's inefficient, it's environmentally unfriendly, it's stressful, it's alienating. There are better ways to do things," said Allt in an interview with Craig Norris on The Morning Edition Tuesday.

"I love driving and I admit to driving fast. It was difficult for me to get out of my car," said Allt. "I do not think that a four-lane highway between Guelph and Kitchener solves anything. All it does is make people like me go far more quickly and far more dangerously."

Allt is referring to the planned expansion of Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph, with work on the new roadway starting this year. Instead Allt would like to see an increased focused on light rail transit and improving local bus networks.

"I have not driven a car for a month and to drive down the highway and to feel really quite alienated from everybody else around you and the really the environment around you as well when you're on this highway between Kitchener and Guelph," said Allt. "It felt quite a bit different. I almost felt dirty driving instead of taking the bus."

He said public transit shouldn't just be for those who can't afford a car.

"Public transit is a class issue, and we need to turn it into a classy issue so that we get more people," he said. "More middle class people, more upper-middle class people, professionals using public transit because they want to."

"I found that I walked and I biked a lot more than I used the bus," said Allt. He called his car-free month a positive public policy-making move, one that he urges other councillors to try.

Although, he wasn't the only councillor trying it. Fellow Guelph city councillor Leanne Piper also commuted by bus for a month.

"I have to give her a lot of credit because she had a regular workday schedule in which to do that. And she found that there were some difficulties with her commute," said Allt, who is retired. "Leanne was really, really challenged in what she could do."

Allt says there is change coming to Guelph's transit system, to make existing routes into more of a grid pattern to allow for more logical and convenient transfer points.