A French collaborative bike mechanics workshop, called “Velorution Ile de France) has created a high-quality isometric biked drawing. The image above is only a portion of what is available.

The image is free to reproduce and modify. Illustrations are not captioned, they can be described in any language. Commercial use is prohibited.

Find drawing here. The drawing with French captions also available here.

Read about Velorution (in French)

Showing how things could be different is fun and inspiring. Ideally, street parties can temporarily recreate a sense of community that has been all but lost to the pollution and danger of cars.

There are different levels of defiance. Community groups may want to make a noise about traffic calming in their neighbourhood by holding a legal street party. You will need to get police permission, invite the whole community and local councillors.

If you are refused permission, keep trying and then consider holding an illegal party. If planning an illegal party, the location will have to be kept secret to all but a few. Advertise a meeting place elsewhere and then take people on a mystery tour to the party.

Roles:

Location Group –

About four people decide the party location. The location must remain secret until the blockade is in place.

Blockading Groups -

These groups quickly put a section of the blockade in place. Only one person in each blockading group needs to know the location, and groups don’t need to know what the others are doing. They need to liaise with their support group, and should acquire and store their equipment in advance.

There are many different ways of blocking a road to traffic. For example, you could stage a mock car crash, erect scaffolding tripods, hold a critical mass or a pedestrian procession carrying banners. These tactics will work if the blockade is quick and unexpected. Other ideas might include street theatre, redirecting traffic with mock road signs or groups of people continuously walking across zebra crossings. A combination of these, plus your own ideas, should establish a temporary blockade.

Blockading Support Groups -

These groups reinforce the initial blockade. They assemble somewhere else, waiting for a signal from the blockading group, before moving quickly to the location. The police are likely to be monitoring support groups.

Traffic Redirectors -

Deal with traffic until the police arrive. Explain what is happening, suggest alternative routes and invite motorists to join in.

Guides -

When the blockade is in place, making the party a success relies on getting a large number of people there quickly from the publicised meeting place.

The meeting point should be a public space from which a large number of people can move relatively quickly to the target location, either on foot or by public transport.

Guides should be easily identifiable and their identifying feature must be networked through the crowd at the last minute. For example, a legal briefing leaflet distributed at the meeting place could also include a message saying something like, “Follow the people in wigs, holding helium-filled balloons”.

Press Liaison -

It may be worth setting a time and place to meet the media. Press releases should NOT include the location of the Street Party even if you embargo it. Police Liaison – This is optional. One person could take on the role of approaching the police to give them just enough information to keep them off your back. Don’t tell them anything useful, especially the secret location. If they think they know what is going on, then they are less likely to overreact. For example, give them a finish time and tell them that there will be an army of litter pickers. Use a false name. If you hear anyone saying too much, step in and chat about the weather.

Other Factors

Mobile phones in each group are the ideal means of communication but be careful what you say. Don’t specify the location until the blockades are in place. Consider using code names for people and locations. Mobile phones can be tapped and you don’t know who is listening nearby.

Information leaflets will help to spread the message of what the party is about. Separate, appropriately styled leaflets for pedestrians and motorists are ideal.

Organise some legal support to advise on the legal implications of the action and to take care of anyone arrested. Breach of the Peace and Obstruction of the Highway are the most likely charges if you block a road. Prepare bust cards and set up a team of action observers.

Now celebrate the car free space and show its possibilities. Groups can take on setting up a safe children’s play area, sandpit, cafe, music (acoustic and amplified), banners between lamp-posts, street decoration (e.g. painting, tree planting), information stalls and theatre.

These things can take up to two months to organise, as you have to book performers and persuade them to take part for free. Be sensitive to local residents—think about noise pollution and general disturbance.

Ending The Party

Tell the police (don’t ask them, tell them) that the party will end at a certain time—the music will stop, the banners will come down and litter will be cleared. It is a good idea to have a procession to somewhere else—a park or indoor venue—where partying can carry on, or where people can disperse. Telling the police this, may persuade them to let you Organize a Street Party end the party, rather than them breaking it up by force. Protect expensive equipment, like sound systems, from being impounded by the police.

It’s important to communicate clearly that leaving at a certain time is the intention of the people who planned the party—not a concession to the police. The end of the party is the point when the police may wade in heavily against stragglers. They create violent scenes which can then be used to discredit what has actually been a wonderful day.

Think about what state you want the street to be in when you leave; impassable to motor vehicles, colourfully decorated, a vegetable garden, or a beer-can graveyard.

More from “Road Raging”

Cycle Lane Painting

Painting your own cycle lanes on roads is a way of gradually reclaiming road space back from aggressive motorists.

In London, various councils stated that they would create a network of cycle lanes throughout the city. When they failed to keep to their deadline, activists went out and finished the job.

Make a good stencil from lino or cardboard, copy the official bike symbol and use the right paint. Busy junctions and traffic lights are especially good target areas.

Car Bouncing Bonanza

Radical pedestrians have taken to direct action against cars parked on pavements [sidewalks].

Choose a street near you where cars regularly park on the pavement, make some stickers saying something like “Pavements are for People”, and get bouncing! It takes about 10 people to bounce them into the road. Be gentle on your backs.

The above was written with experience from London street parties. The largest party of 1996 saw 8,000 people reclaim, redecorate and plant trees in a six-lane motorway. This text is from Chapter 11 of “Road Raging: Top Tips for Wrecking Roadbuilding”.

The impact of our cycling group changed when, two years ago, we started to act more constructively. We got our borough’s cycling officer out on a bike with us to look at some of the facilities in the borough. Instead of telling him “this is crap” we’d say “what would happen if you were to change this slightly?”

Now the cycling officer actually rides his bike to work and understands the problems much better.

We thought big but started small. State the ideal, but be realistic, e.g., “What’s needed here is a complete redesign of the entire junction, but if we were to move this island a bit and make it a bit bigger, maybe that would help.”

We started making suggestions on strategic issues, for example our idea of a local network to compliment and link into the current network of planned routes. We proposed a short route as a flagship route of this local network. We brought this up in every casual conversation with the council, promoting it as the way to get every person in the borough closer to a safe cycle route. Six months later, our council has this great idea! How about a local network?

We have built up mutual trust with the council without losing our independence. We avoid “slagging them off” in the press; there is no point jeopardising the future for the sake of a rant. Many of us take part in actions such as the London Critical Mass, but as individuals, not as a group. Image and professionalism can count for a lot.

We accepted that this campaigning lark is a long game; you can never expect instant results. We always try to get something out of our defeats as well as our victories. Pat backs when things work, look to the future when they don’t and learn from these lessons. Two years ago we would have to demand meetings with our council. Now the cycling officer and his “chief” ring us up regularly saying “What do you think of this idea?”

Teo Anastasoaie, Tinerii Prieteni ai Naturii Timisoara, Romania:

An important factor in any lobbying campaign is the position of your group in the city’s community. We are a student group based on a wellestablished student campus, a factor which cuts us off from the wider community. This has proved a significant barrier to our lobbying. A member of the city even stated, “You are not serious, you are not from the city.” We have found that by making it a conscious strategy to integrate ourselves in the local networks and seek strong contacts we have improved the situation.

Evert Hassink Milieu Defensie Groningen, Netherlands:

A strong anti-car policy was formed in Groningen in the ’70s but town officials are now becoming more tolerant towards car-traffic from the fear of losing economic development. Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Groningen) has been fighting this trend by exposing local authorities’ failure to follow their official (anti-car) policies. We’re now fighting a several-millionguilder proposal to build a giant car park under our central square. We have formed a broad coalition to oppose it, consisting of political (Green and even Christian) parties, bicycle groups, public transport users, neighbourhood groups, and individuals.

We have attracted press and political attention by emphasising that big sacrifices must be made for the sake of this project, and that projects like this have got to stop. Our efforts have helped keep non-car transport and the importance of a compact city on the planners’ agenda. To publicise our campaign, we organised a friendly blockade last winter against V&D, a big department store that has threatened not to invest in the city centre unless the underground car park is built.

Ferenc Joo, Hungarian Traffic Club, Budapest, Hungary:

We have found the environmental committee of the municipal government to be the best lobbying target because this committee has a strong voice in the assembly. Unfortunately its members can still be convinced by persuasive planners, especially as most members of the environmental committee are car users.

We have tried another approach, teaming up with citizens’ groups who organised demonstrations and blockades, against the passage of lorries through a densely populated area of South Buda. This was a success; the chief transport planner eventually promised to erect traffic signs forbidding lorries there.

Every year we try to influence the city transport budget. We present arguments in different committees about the need for better public transport, how more roads do not solve congestion, etc. It is always important to know some of the economic aspects of projects you are opposing, such as external costs, and to present alternatives.

Each year we have a petition campaign. This spring we went one step further, renting a bus, and decorating its sides with slogans such as “We are waiting for better public transport!” and “Do the decisionmakers ride with us?” We drove the bus around town for a week and as a result, 113 organizations (mostly non-environmental ones) signed it.

To strengthen our campaigns we often use a study that we ordered from a city consulting firm. We have dubbed this study “Our Shocking Transport Habits.” It shows most inner-city congestion is caused by cars travelling from the suburbs, not from circulation of traffic within the city.

Fred Rollet, Pour une Ville sans Voitures Lyon, France:

In France, a lack of environmental activists often means petitions and actions don’t work. Building a relationship with the council via letters, meetings with the “right” people, approaching speakers after public debates and discussions over a drink often proves more effective.

We have learned you must chose who you target in the council very carefully. Politicians are more easily seduced by the technicians and engineers than the public, therefore it is often interesting to try and convince these people first. It can be hard to sift through the layers of bureaucracy and find the appropriate council department to target but after a few tries you find the one which most closely echoes your ideas.

If you are to be taken seriously, you need to study the planning and transport documents that you can obtain from the council. Show that you consider the economic arguments, since you will often be fighting the commercial sector, with their “dollar-sign” philosophy.

It is not impossible to learn your facts so well that you know the files and the project proposals better than the politicians. You can then trip them up in public, at some television event or public meeting, when you expose the faults in their arguments.

Get the message across: you’re going to be able to travel around town right now without creating pollution and without running the risk of getting crushed in the middle of your local High Street (Main Street). Does your city council keep repeating that bike lanes are impossible because the streets are too narrow, it would cost too much, or car drivers wouldn’t like it? Or maybe your city council hasn’t even figured out what a bike lane is?

Well there’s one simple way to show your city that on the contrary it’s easy and cheap—that where there’s a will there’s already half a car-free way: make the bike lanes yourselves!

Line-drawing bicycles, neatly replacing the council’s heavy machinery, have already been successfully used in The Netherlands and England during cyclists’ demonstrations.

In Dijon, where the council had planned the widening of a number of the city centre’s main roads despite a brand-new air-quality law, no bike lanes were planned. So to support a cycling group that was taking legal action against the council to obtain bike lanes, home-made bike lanes were created on the various roads in question during a Critical Mass bike demonstration.

How’s it done? Here’s a rough plan which is easy to carry out and which, while it can doubtless be improved, has worked well in the past.

It’s best to use oil paint rather than the water-based kind, which may fade quickly. One good way of getting hold of free paint is to phone up paint wholesalers and manufacturers and ask them if they’ve got any substandard batches (which they’re normally happy to give away for a good cause such as “making temporary theatre scenery” or something like that).

The paint in the can must be well diluted so that it will flow fast enough into the tube and onto the ground.

It’s best to have a practice run the day before in a secluded spot, to check that everything goes as planned. The painting needs three or so people: one to move the bike, one to control the flow and press the roller onto the ground, and one to put down stencils at regular intervals.

Okay, maybe you’re not used to breaking the law. But with this irresistably fun action idea, you’ll get used to it quickly and at the same time take public space from the car and give it back to the bicycle.

“Alternatively, you could write your council, ask it to put in a bike lane, wait for a response, lobby the planning or traffic committee, write more letters, and be told there are no funds available—even though the council is building that multi-story underground car park,” says Karl of Friends of the Earth Australia. “It’s your choice.”

View the scheme and diagram instructions

Salvage wood from palettes, then nail the pieces together to make a structure like below. You need the two boards along the bottom to be rather solid. Leave two holes in the top so the “driver” can see where to go. The wheels are taken from supermarket carts. Nail and tape pieces of cardboard over the structure, then decorate and cover with slogans, such as “I pollute, I render my driver aggressive and never will I let you live until 2012!”

– Bea Burdeau

Here you can find detailed schemes of how to make your own green automobile – without motor, plastic and fuel. Enjoy and have fun on your carfree event!

The other scheme is bigger, please have a look

Okay, this may be a gender-specific idea, but life’s like that sometimes. And just to clear this up right away, the idea is not about advertising.

Grab any “men’s” bicycle and remove anything—such as water bottles, locks or pumps—blocking the area between the upper and lower tube of the frame.

Cut out a piece of thick cardboard the same size as the interior of the frame. Paint both sides solid in a light color of water-resistant paint. Then in another colour paint slogans over it on both sides, tailored to be effective in your local campaign.

Next cut small slits near the edge of the cardboard on all sides, just big enough to run something through the slits to attach to the frame. We suggest those little plastic clasps that you can tighten but not loosen. Cut off the excess length. A heavy-duty version would be those aluminium clasps that require a screw and bolt. In any case you’ll find something.

As for slogans, try something funny, embarrassing to local officials , proactive—or all three a t once. Perhaps a “sub-vertisement”—a spoof version of a real advert. You could even paste on cut-outs from a glossy magazine of the advertisement that you’re making fun of. Be sure to water – proof them. We’ll leave the creativity up to you.

Obtain a broom handle or another solid, strong but lightweight wooden pole (#1 in the illustration). At one end cut out a wedge, half the width of the pole. Fit a flat metal bar to the remaining wood (#2).

About 30 cm from this bar (or the height of your spray can), attach a support clamp on which the can will rest (#3). Fit an angle bracket on each side of the pole, about 20 cm from the end (#4).

The spray can should fit between these brackets. Tie a length of plastic coated wire to the flat metal bar (#2) and feed it through a hole in the support clamp (#3) and the screw-eyes attached along the length of the pole (#5). This wire, when pulled, will press down the nozzle and spray the paint.

An optional extra is the roll-top of a deodorant bottle, fitted to the end of the support clamp (#6). This will help maintain an even distance between the spray can and the billboard. You may have to experiment a bit to get the right measurements to fit your can of spray paint.

Although these extension rods are clumsy to use at first, with practice they become very effective. Weigh the advantages of daytime versus night. Alternatively, paint your message on a piece of wallpaper (in large dark letters) in the comfort of your own home. This can be pasted over your chosen billboard using a long-handled broom and a bucket of wallpaper paste.

This is not meant to be taken seriously; it’s purely for entertainment.

- Smashing the Image Factory: A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion and Destruction

A. Make sure the right people talk to the journalists.

Different people do different things best. Some are brilliant at building treehouses or digging latrines, but not much good at being charming to the running dogs of the counter-revolution. Some people will have just dropped a tab of acid or have last night’s vomit stuck in their hair. This won’t endear them to journalists, who in most cases will be having enough trouble crossing the cultural divide as it is.

Talking to the press is something of an art form: you must be charming, persuasive and well-briefed. Best of all, you’ll have practised, by convincing your friends to pretend to be hostile reporters.

B. Be careful, but don’t come across as suspicious.

Some of them will be there to help you, others will be there to get you. Sometimes the ones out to get you will pretend to be out to help you. The only real safeguards are: to know who they all are. Ask them who they are and who they work for. Some journalists are notorious for negativelt portraying the movement. You should find out who the dodgy ones are before the action, so you’ll know to be ultra-careful if they turn up, not to say anything stupid or risky. Be friendly towards them, whoever they are. Bite your lip, even if you hate the bastards.

C. Be a tour guide.

Take them around the site, show them what you want them to see, and steer them away from what you don’t want them to see. Introduce them to the people who’ll get on well with them, a n d keep them away from the people who won’t be able to restrain their contempt. If it doesn’t seem like a major intrusion on their privacy, stay with them, in a friendly way, and talk them through everything they see.

D. Be ready to deal with the ones who don’t turn up.

However good your publicity, lots of journalists won’t be able to make it, but might still be interested. They’ll want to know what’s happening and how things are going, so there should be at least one person on-site with a working and charged-up mobile phone whose number has been posted on the press release.

Journalists are suckers for on-thespot reports, so when they ring, put some excitement into your voice. Give them plenty of colour, make them feel they can see it.

- Carbusters 1999

Most of the load will be carried by the central cross-member of the base frame, which therefore needs to be strong and rigid—a box-section is preferred; the one shown here is formed by welding together two lengths of angle section.

If the floor panel needs more support, then additional cross-members may be added, in which case a single angle section may be used for the central member in order to reduce weight.

The floor and side panels should be as light as possible. Possible options are:

Floor

1.2mm to 1.6mm thick sheet steel (for example scrap sheet from an oil drum); 3/8”-thick plywood; wooden slats about 12 to 15mm thick.

Sides and Ends

1/4” plywood or wooden slats may be used but these are relatively heavy— the preferred option is welded wire mesh (for example, 12g wire x 25mm mesh size).

The base frame has outrigger members to support bicycle-type wheels. Standard wheels are suitable for loads up to about 120kg when operating on fairly smooth tracks, but for higher loads and/or rough tracks some form of strengthened bicycle-type wheel is needed. Bicycle tyres and axles give low rolling resistance and low friction respectively, thus minimising the effort needed to pull the cart, which is essential if it is to be used as a bicycle trailer.

This second diagram shows details of a simple hitch arrangement which enables the cart to be coupled to a bicycle. Rubber discs cut from a scrap car or truck tyre fitted over a pin on the trailer sit inside a socket made from water pipe which is welded to a bracket for bolting to the rear stays of the bicycle below the saddle.

Alternatively, strips of scrap inner tube may be wound onto the pin to form a ball which sits inside the pipe socket. This arrangement damps out impacts and provides a quiet, smooth ride.

A number of other simple hitch arrangements are also possible. The basic requirement is that the hitch should be strong and rigid in the direction of pull, but flexible in other directions to allow for cornering and up and down movements of the bicycle and trailer when travelling over uneven ground.

Diagrams and text from the book “Low-Cost Load-Carrying Devices,” page 80-81

1) Find and clip a newspaper, magazine or other photo of the person you want to puppetise. A clear head-on shot in black and white works best.

2) Go to a photo- copy shop and enlarge the image. Find a highquality copy machine that will enlarge. Some machines will enlarge more than others. Enlarge repeatedly until you fill the space of an A3 sheet (11”x17”), then keep enlarging until you have slightly more than one quarter of the image on an A3 sheet. Make sure there is enough of the image to overlap when you cut off the white edges and glue it together. Keep the image as light as you can without losing any of the dots. If it’s too dark you lose details. If you have access to an oversize copier then go on to step three. Otherwise, keep enlarging until you have one eighth of the image on each A3 sheet and skip step three. Cut off the white edges and glue them all together.

3) Some photocopy shops have “oversize” copiers that make enlargements and copies onto A2 paper (24” or 36” wide) for a few dollars or the equivalent. The oversize copier usually enlarges up to 200 percent (twice as big). Enlarge your last enlargement of the photo to the desired size. For a 3-4- metre puppet (10 to 12 foot) we usually en-large the head as big as will fit on A2 paper.

4) Cut the image out, rounding any rough edges. Sometimes it’s hard to see the edges— drawing them with marker or pencil can help. Trace two copies of the edge of the cut-out face onto blank cardboard without folds. Cut out the two heads with a sharp utility knife.

5) Paste the face onto the cardboard, trying to avoid wrinkles. Some of the wrinkling will disappear when it dries.

6) Make a cardboard tube to fit your puppet frame. Glue, staple or tape the tube vertically on the back of your facepasted- to-cardboard, once it is dry. Now glue, staple or tape your second piece of cardboard onto the other side of the tube, stapling and glueing the edges of the two sheets together.

7) Paint, using watered-down latex or acrylic paints. Highlight the light areas and darken the shadows. We often leave the texture of the photocopy visible through the paint.

The Costume

The simplest costume to make is a giant poncho. Fold over one big piece of cloth and cut a hole for the neck. If your cloth is not wide enough, sew together two pieces at their edges, leaving a hole for the frame to go through.

Contour or fringe the bottom edge. Add fringe or other decoration with white glue or hot glue. Cut a hole to look through. Staple, or attach the costume to the puppet with ties—see the picture on the next page.

Download the detailed instructions with pictures on how to create a frame

That’s the result of how it’s suppose to be operated: