cc Titom - www.titom.be/

Regular Carbusters contributor Debra Efroymson has started a blog.

The invasion of our streets by cars causes any number of horrible problems, but perhaps the worst one is our failure to recognize how avoidable the car invasion and all its problems are. We could retake the streets for people; we could redesign existing cities and our transport systems to save lives and enormous amounts of money. But for those of us working to do so, there is another daily toll: the fatigue and frustration of trying to change established mindsets and fight powerful opponents such as the oil, road, and car industries. In the hope of helping others keep their spirits up, and in an attempt to find ways to explain some of the issues with relative brevity, I have started a blog. Although not exclusively about car-free issues, the desperate need for drastic change in our thoughts, our policies, and our cities will be repeatedly discussed. Although I write from Dhaka, the issues are universal, at least until we retake our streets and our cities for people, not cars! So please visit, and comment on, my blog: “Reflections of an Optimist”: www.healthbridge.ca/debra_efroymson_blog.html And may the carfree movement gain daily in strength until we sweep the whole world along with us!!!!!!!!

This year’s Winter Olympics has been branded the “Greenest Games”, but they are linked to a massive freeway expansion scheme. In Vancouver, Canada activists are working hard to scrub off the greenwash and getting public money spent on real priorities such as public transit and affordable housing.

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada have been branded the “Greenest Games”. They include feel-good measures such as energy efficient buildings and a green roof on the new convention centre. But, the Games are linked to a massive freeway expansion scheme which is already boosting consumption of tar sands oil and funnelling dirty money into the pockets of Olympic sponsors such as General Motors, Petro-Canada, the Royal Bank and TransCanada Pipelines. They should more appropriately be called the “Freeway Olympics” or the “Tar Sands Greenwash Games”. The previous Winter Games in Italy were bad enough, but at least they included a pledge to avoid any major roadway expansion. The current Games demonstrate a huge step backwards for environmental standards at the Olympics.

The Olympic Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion from Vancouver to the ski hill at Whistler was not needed – the existing rail line and highway would have been sufficient with modest upgrades. But, Olympic insiders insisted on a C$1 billion highway expansion, deciding that a few saved minutes of travel time for VIPs is worth increasing climate change and destroying wildlife habitat. That public money could have paid for quality passenger rail services across the province for years to come.

To draw attention away from this waste and destruction, the provincial government decided to spend C$90 million to experiment with only 20 inefficient hydrogen-powered buses – a ridiculously expensive public relations exercise, given that the same money would be way more beneficial if spent on cost-effective electric trolley buses or electric passenger trains. Hydrogen buses are now widely seen as a technological dead-end after many similar pilot projects around the world.

Owe-lympic Games

The Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion is now complete, and people in British Columbia (BC) will be paying off the debt for decades to come. But, the Sea-to-Sky Highway is only one part of a massive freeway and highway-building binge in BC. Just two of the Gateway Program freeways in Metro Vancouver (Highway 1-Port Mann Bridge and the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road freeway) would cost about C$5 billion. Start adding up all the freeway projects planned across the province, and the bill quickly surpasses C$10 billion, in what many BC residents are already calling the Owe-lympics.

The proposed South Fraser freeway, planned for the banks of the Fraser River – one of the planet’s most important salmon rivers – alone could take C$2 billion away from transit and other public priorities. Only minor preparatory work has been done on this unnecessary and environmentally disastrous project; it is not a done deal. The Gateway freeways are only partly funded, and the post Owe-lympic financial mess will provide a unique opportunity to re-assess our public spending priorities. The question is whether people in BC will stand up and say “No” to continuing the multi-billion-dollar freeway expansion binge that started with the Sea-to-Sky highway.

We are working hard to scrub the greenwash off the 2010 Freeway Olympics, which is essential to getting public money spent on real priorities such as public transit and affordable housing.

Eric Doherty

“If we go ahead, my projection is that about a century from now there will be 600 million of these vehicles in active use. Unfortunately, they will be directly responsible for killing around one and a half million people a year. Their emissions will be a major contributor to the growing problem of global warming, which will threaten all life on earth. Accommodating so many of these vehicles will require that we spread tarmac over huge trenches of countryside, while many towns and cities will end up with much of their surface area devoted to roads. Not only that, but my invention will damage the social fabric of communities, cause social isolation and result in massive urban sprawl. The need to put fuel in the tanks of these vehicles will dominate foreign policy orientations of the major powers and lead to decisions that will cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and cost trillions of dollars. And did I mention the noise and pollution?”

The Dragons look at each other and sigh. They love the idea, but they put their chequebooks back in their pockets. One Dragon comments, “No politician, planner or policy maker will ever let this happen. Any health or environment minister would try to ban it. The scientific and medical advisors to governments would have a fit. And can you imagine what the health & safety guys would say?”

You know the rest. And now those same politicians, planners and policy makers are coming to the conclusion that something has to be done. Some countries are making some progress, but most societies have become re-structured around the car, which makes disengagement even more difficult – even assuming there is the political will for change. I have been carfree since 1995, and I’m now working on some initiatives, which try to persuade other people to go the same way. So what do I bring to the carfree party?

While I’m all in favour of people giving up their car for the greater good, it’s a sad truth that there aren’t enough of us out there willing to do this. So my focus is not on the impact of car ownership on everyone else. Instead, I’m concentrating on the costs of car ownership for the car owner: not just the financial costs, but the increasing evidence which shows that owning a car makes you fat, makes you unhealthy, and eats up your time. In fact, when you start to think about it, the total costs of car ownership often outweigh the benefits. It’s just that most people haven’t got round to doing the analysis. Yet.

As an increasing proportion of the world’s population live in urban areas, the scope for going carfree is increasing. So I aim to provide access to some of the facts which may persuade people to think differently: to think that a car-free life is a better life, that you can give up your car and have more money, more time, be fitter and thinner, be happier, and more free. It might even save your life.

By Stephen Young

www.GiveUpYourCar.com
www.TheCarDelusion.com

Brendt Barbur

How and why did you start the first BFF?

I have no idea why! For sure one turning point was when I was hit by a bus in New York 10 years ago. I also got arrested at a Critical Mass ride around the same time, so I really wanted to do something positive for the bike culture.

I decided to use the medium of a film festival. Events centered around bike culture was not necessarily an original idea, as some people were already doing it for a long time, but the Bicycle Film Festival attracted many people from different backgrounds who were really enthusiastic by this idea. Mostly the artistic community of New York committed themselves to the project and we made our first festival in the city 9 years ago. It proved to be a success and it was obvious that people were really into it.

Did you expect such success nine years later? How did it spread to so many cities?

From the beginning I was quite ambitious about the event in New York, but I never imagined it would spread to 39 cities.

Now we have a team based in New York and we work from there like a web to other festivals, as a kind of franchise. We are like a big family, most of the teams have been working with the festival for a long time and are great friends of mine, others are new to me this year but our relationship is strong. I do the film programming for each city, so it’s not that they use our name and we send movies over; it is a real collaboration between the homebase in New York and the various teams worldwide.

Do you get some help from cycling activist groups?

We try to work with bicycle organisations and support them. For instance the San Francisco Bike Coalition provides parking for bicycles and we give them a bunch of free tickets. Activists have their role to play, but we also try to get artists and other organisations involved in the festival – it’s an urban-cultural event first.

How about the impact of BFF? What is your main aim?

Our main objective is of course to promote bikes for everyday life and hopefully we can inspire people to do so, but we also want to have a good time. Many people face obstacles allowing them to use their bicycles everyday and change will take time.

One of the biggest problems is infrastructure: I have to ride to work with a suit; is there a shower? Is there a place to park my bike? Is it safe to ride to work? For instance, in New York many people are frankly too afraid to ride to work, but there is mass transit there that takes people out of their cars. Another problem concerns lifestyles. In the western world in particular, we have many kinds of mass advertising telling us that to get from A to B you have to drive a car. Car culture is strongly implemented in our minds, and we’ve got to break out of that.

What is your take on the carfree movement?

On a personal level, I support the carfree movement. I’m really excited to see what’s happening in New York: some major streets are being turned into public spaces. We would never have thought that Times Square would close to cars, and that we’d be able to sit down in the middle.

What are your hopes for the future of transportation?

The car has changed the way people live and is strongly connected with consumer society. It creates many problems like urban sprawl and affects social relations. Therefore, I really hope that bicycles can change the way people live, the way our cities are built, and the way people interact with their communities. I believe the bicycle can help to give more spontaneity in our social relations and to give a new face to our cities.

By Marko Thull

What caused this thrill about being rid of the car? A dislike of urban driving; living in a country that has a police force zealous for playing cat and mouse at traffic stop signs; two-hour parking spaces; car repair bills; and a pace of life that is hyper enough without the tendency of a car to multiply that speed. I put my recycling trash out each week for collection and try to live a somewhat ‘green’ lifestyle but environmentalism wasn’t a factor in the car sale. Adventure, and the removal of the ‘burden’ is how I sum it up: “Sell your car – an easy, quick way to getting some instant gratification!”

Jeremy Holmes of RIDE Solutions, an organisation that advocates for car-light lifestyle and I met up the day after I sold the car. Still caught up in the thrill of carlessness, I quickly took Holmes’ challenge: to commit to six months without car and to blog about it. This could be fun I thought. We quickly created the blog: “CarLessBrit: Living in Roanoke without a car, a 6 month experiment” and other social-networking pages.

Roanoke, Virginia, is a city in the US, where the car continues to rule and living environments continue to be designed with the car at the hub of the wheel. But in the US, as Holmes says “while talking about sustainable transportation in the context of climate change, carbon footprints, air quality, is getting attention from a new audience… there is still a certain crunchiness about it that limits its appeal.”

After six weeks of daily carless documentation in social media, we successfully sent press releases to local traditional media outlets (TV, radio and print). Even a much bigger city, Richmond, a three hour drive away considered it a story worthy of almost a whole page in their daily newspaper. Why would one person choosing to walk and ride a bike instead of drive be considered newsworthy? Holmes, attempts to sum up the appeal,

“River, notably, is not an environmentalist. River leaped into carlessness as an adventure, and watching his videos and reading his blog entries it is readily apparent that he is not approaching the effort with the sort of sombre morality that can sometimes be a part of a dark-Green true believer. The people he interviews, the stories he tells, are just pure fun and adventure. When he shoots a video of himself listening to birds, or talking about a favourite musician while walking home, it shows that there’s nothing particularly difficult or earnest about what he’s doing. Even when he’s wading in to environmentalism, it’s still with a sense of adventure, experimentation, a ‘what if?’ context.”

RIDE Solutions documents a spike in alternative transportation interest since the experiment began; emails arrive from around the US and even Europe telling of how CarLessBrit has inspired bike riding, walking to work or simply catching the bus; and schools and universities have asked him to speak to their students. CarLessBrit is now working on a movie, a party and a biking-wear fashion show.

It is definitely refreshing to see someone giving up his car not driven by values, not even driven necessarily by money, but simply because he thought it would be a great adventure.

www.carlessbrit.tumblr.com

By River Laker