It wasn’t long ago that Boston was labelled the worst city for bicycling in the United States. This was during a time that Boston’s advocacy groups fought separately, with limited success, to improve conditions for their individual modes: walking, cycling, handicap access, transit, trains, and cars. Boston-area advocates for transportation, public health, city planning, smart growth, environmental protection, watershed conservation, and park and green space preservation hardly talked to each other.

LivableStreets Alliance was started in 2005 to bring these different groups and people together around a common strategic vision – a belief that improving our transportation system provides enormous leverage for making Boston a healthier, friendlier, more sustainable, and affordable place to live, work, play, shop, go to school, raise families, and grow old. Key to that vision was transforming the fragmented pieces of our transportation networks into a coordinated whole that balances transit, walking, biking, and handicap access with automobiles.

The organisation practices an “inside and outside” approach to advocacy: working closely with government and private sector professionals who support positive policies and projects, educating and mobilising the public to pressure those who do not. We try to work within the tension of wanting radical changes and achieving realistic victories. It is important to know if a possible compromise design for new infrastructure allows for future incremental improvement or if it locks in unsafe conditions for the next 50 years.

LivableStreets Alliance has helped change the nature of Boston transportation advocacy – and many aspects of official transportation planning. Working with the City of Boston and has helped reform parking policies, road designs, and bike parking in nearby urban municipalities. We also have seats on state-level advisory committees.  By combining advocate mobilisation with calls to state agencies, has helped to convince Boston transportation officials to improve plans for a major street – even though plans were already approaching completion. The original designs contained no bicycle accommodations, had narrow sidewalks, poor pedestrian signals, did not prioritise public transit and included an additional car lane. As a result, significant improvements were implemented – although there is continued monitoring of future developments.

When a deadly bridge collapsed in Minnesota, it pushed Massachusetts to finally focus on its own dilapidated infrastructure. The state originally planned to simply rebuild its bridges as they were, despite their notoriously lack of safety for pedestrians, bikes, buses, and even cars! In response, we suggested well designed options, and safety improvements highlighted which could change a hostile public into a cheering squad. After months of public and private discussions, the state came around and adopted a more multi-modal approach.

Reaching out the People

The Boston advocacy group pays attention to media and public education as much as advocacy. Our weekly summary of transportation headlines and our monthly StreetLife newsletter reach thousands of policy-makers, advocates and citizens. Our monthly StreetTalk presentations introduce innovators from around the world to a growing local audience, while our special events creates awareness that ripples through the community.

Because our organising principles include quality of life, health, vibrant neighbourhoods, and economic vitality, we face the challenge of dealing not only with transportation issues, but with urban existence as a whole – housing, economic growth, employment, recreation, health, and more. We need to be holistic while remaining focused on making gains in particular battles.

We are hopeful. National and state level transportation planning is changing, at least rhetorically. The externalised costs of our car-centric transportation system have finally become too obvious to be ignored.  After the collapse of the deregulated financial industry and now that the auto industry has (at least temporarily) lost its normal political clout, the opportunity has arisen for ideas promoted by progressive advocates to have a larger-than-normal impact on local, state, and even national transportation policies.

It is unlikely that we will be able to win our most radical demands, but by uniting around a core set of structural changes and finding ways to take advantage of the current economic and political turmoil, there is a good chance of making some key advances. It is this vision, of a broad multi-issue coalition united around a vision of “active, sustainable, transportation” that motivates us and shapes our strategies.

By Steven E. Miller

The car park, planned to accommodate 400 vehicles, is part of the Cvjetni project planned by Hoto Group (a Croatian corporate group), along with luxury flats and a shopping centre set in a sterile temple of glass and steel, slap-bang in the heart of Zagreb’s already heavily congested old town. It is expected to lead to complete traffic chaos in the surrounding streets, as well as destroy part of the pedestrian zone and deny the possibility for its much-needed further expansion.

The project is also tarnished by the unmistakable whiff of corruption, with the city authorities declaring it to be a project of public interest on the flimsy (and no longer truthful) grounds that there would be a passage from one side of the block to the other. Taxpayers are paying for the construction of the entrance ramp in spite of unprecedented opposition from various groups, ranging from architects’ associations to youth organisations and the Lower Town local district council.

The campaign has already lasted for three years (see Carbusters #31) and has formed a focal point for much of Green Action’s work on urban mobility during that time. Far from being a single case, it is one of several similar projects planned in Zagreb’s city centre, where it was previously forbidden to construct public car parks due to the resulting congestion.

The campaign has focused on a combination of relentless use of official procedures, such as spatial plan changes, meticulous media work involving a wide constituency of respected figures to critique the project and propose alternative investment priorities for Zagreb, and public actions, including civil disobedience and direct action where necessary. One of the key principles has been to concentrate on challenging the city and state authorities rather than the investor – as they balance the public and private interests. Another crucual point was not to use up all the action ideas at once, but to carefully pace the activities.

On February 10 the campaign attracted its greatest attention yet, when a demonstration gathered around 4,000 people. (read more about this in the action report on page 9.)

There are now two official bodies which could stop the project: the Zagreb city assembly and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Spatial Planning and Construction. However, both are trying to evade responsibility and the next few weeks will tell whether they will finally stand up and do the right thing.

The evolution of this project will have a great impact on other planned projects in Zagreb and indeed on the whole governance of the city. In any case the campaign, in combination with other political developments, has already borne fruit. In the coming months, there will most likely be another change of the Zagreb General Urban Plan and there is a good chance that the ban on construction of new public garages in the city centre will be reinstated. This would stop plans for the construction of several new public garages. In addition, the project has shrunk, as Hoto Group was unable to buy one of the existing buildings; the project has been massively delayed, providing a disincentive to other investors to act in a similar manner; and the composition of the city assembly has changed to be more critical of the mayor.

The challenge now is to build on the momentum, not only to stop the project but to make long-term changes in Zagreb’s corrupt and antiquated spatial planning system.

More information: zelena-akcija.hr

Pippa Gallop

It is in the spirit of this environment that the Bicycling Empowerment Network (BEN) was established, in Cape Town in February 2002. The main mission of BEN is poverty alleviation through the promotion of the use of the bicycle in all of its forms – to enhance low-cost non-motorised transport and to improve health through linking exercise and mobility. Together with local and international partners, BEN facilitates the transportation of bicycles from Europe to Southern Africa, the establishment of bicycle workshop projects, the distribution of these bicycles to strategically selected groups of recipients and the planning and introduction of bicycle user paths and integrated linking networks.

Bicycles are for mobility and job creation, for sharing and unifying communities. Over the past five years BEN has explored and implemented the establishment of bicycle projects in nine rural and urban townships; delivered more than 4,000 new and 3,500 used bicycles to schools, places of work and farms – with community-based organisations and outreach events. BEN has trained the young and the old in bike maintenance, road safety and brought about a growing understanding of the value of bicycles as a form of mobility. The nine new BEN bicycle empowerment repair businesses have been established in areas where there is a great need for low-cost mobility and the newly employed project managers provide long-term support for the community and indeed their bicycles. BEN serves on a committee with the Cape Town City and Province of the Western Cape to look at bicycle infrastructure for the city and surrounding township and rural settlements.

As a result of these partnerships and programmes a bicycling city is emerging in Cape Town. But much still needs to be done. For BEN, these are (a) more bicycles being used for more purposes by more diverse population groups (b) greater interest shown by various beneficiaries, stakeholders and potential partners in this outcome (c) greater involvement and commitment by the relevant city and provincial authorities in these programmes so as to ensure the necessary policy and infrastructure is realised and (d) parallel programmes and events to help promote of these ideals.

During the past five years, Cape Town and the Western Cape Government have taken small strides to realise this vision of a bicycling city in supporting BEN in the distribution of these commuter-style bicycles. These commuter bikes complement the established racing and recreational market already existing in South Africa. More bicycles are now being used on Cape Town roads, for a greater variety of reasons and purposes. Kids are cycling to school in townships, suburbs and rural areas. Many have received training in the maintenance of their bicycle and safety on the roads. Adults are beginning to use more bicycles, for more reasons – as they begin to realise the efficiency, low cost and health benefits of this activity. BEN was invited as a partner and contributor to the strategic planning of the future of Cape Town and the Western Cape in respect of roads and transport – and how communities move and go about their daily lives. Many events are being planned at regular intervals – Bike to Work Days, Car Free Days, School Bike events, all of which helps to raise the consciousness and status of cycling in South Africa and, it is hoped, this will extend to other parts of Africa.

With a growing population and a struggle to access education and employment, the bicycle may just prove to be the answer to communities in need of low-cost, efficient and environmentally sound forms of transport. Cape Town is beginning to demonstrate that, with successful partnerships, this can be achieved.

By Andrew Wheeldon

For more information, please visit www.benbikes.org.za

If, however, you split it in two halves, and write it like “Auto*Mat”, it actually means “Check-mate for automobiles”.

This explanation alone would be over-simplified. We like to split the word in many other different ways and give it a whole variety of meanings.

Auto*Mat is an organisation and a movie. The movie is about the organisation, which is based in the city of Prague, Czech Republic. It also discusses the love for the automobile and the thinking of people in early 21st century Europe. The organisation is the movie. The two are inseparable. We make the movie, we watch the movie and we live the movie.
Czech newspapers have recently reported that the number of cars in our admired historical capital will soon outnumber people. Prague, with its narrow and curvy old town streets, poetic tinkering gas lamps and excellent public transport, has more cars per head than any other European capital.

Much as a consequence, Czech people generally dislike the city. What we call the “weekend peak-hour” happens every Saturday when masses of people leave the town for their countryside cottages. There are too many cars and they are everywhere: parked on streets, on pavements, in the reflection of gothic church windows, in frames on the walls in homes, and in people’s heads.

In Auto*Mat, we believe in the importance of images. A pianist appears out of nowhere in the middle of a busy highway in the town centre and facing the halted traffic, on a grand piano and accompanied by a full orchestra that materialises on the pavement, he starts to play a song. The song is about a circle that’s closing itself. Then he disappears and the traffic starts flowing again.

Another day, beautiful white angels wearing mouth screens appear all across the city. Some of them are helping people to cross the street. You see them smiling about something hidden in the middle of an ugly and busy intersection and you wonder, what does it all mean. Then you get home, turn on the TV and you see them again in the evening news leading a group of several thousand happy cyclists, apparently celebrating something in a city where hardly anybody cycles. The camera is rolling as they drive on a highway bridge that the communists had once tested with rows of heavy military tanks. And you wonder even more.

When we draw Auto*Mat on pictures, we playfully think of it as a machine which runs through the city streets, auto*matically eating the automobiles, the dirt and the banality of the space, while leaving behind trees, cycling children, high quality public spaces, outdoor cafés and places to meet. We sell these images on T-shirts to people and we also sell them to politicians and journalists.

It is a well-known story in Prague that the man who started assembling this machine died a few years ago when out on his bicycle. He had complained to the city about this particular intersection many times before, saying it was potentially deadly to cyclists and pedestrians. Did he suspect back then that he would be evidence to prove it?

The crossroad didn’t change much even after this sad accident except for the reminiscent white bicycle and occasional candles. We still lobby to fix it. But there are other things that did change. There are visibly more cyclists in the streets nowadays, and under our pressure the city has finally started to systematically create provisions for bicycles. Some big projects for sustainable transportation have been undertaken to make the streets more friendly to people. Our current battle is about Magistrala – an expressway built right through the heart of the city by the communists 40 years ago, cutting important squares and whole neighbourhoods in half. The city wants to keep it, but we want to turn it into a city boulevard. The fate of this construction is now in the process of being decided.

But we continue to ask – what really matters? There is yet another meaning behind the way the word Auto*Mat is split in two by an asterisk, which is more subtle and not so obvious. If you think about it, automatism is the opposite of creativity. When some engineers think of traffic, they automatically think of highways. Or when we think of a street, we might automatically think of heaps of cars and ugliness. It’s the asterisk in the middle of the word that breaks it into pieces. It’s the pianist in the middle of the highway or the angel in the dirty intersection which undermines the whole essence of automatisms.

Article by Hynek Hanke

For more information: www.auto-mat.cz