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Whitney Turner | 30 Sep 2000 13:55
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Re: LAB solicitation

Actually, I was planning on putting mine on my left bucket pannier...... :-)

Whitney "drives a two-wheeled truck" Turner

At 08:43 PM 8/29/00 -0500, you wrote:
>We received a solicitation letter from the League of American Bicyclists a
>few days ago seeking money for their campaign to reduce road rage. If you
>gave $35 or more, LAB would send you a free bumper sticker for your car.
>Doesn't this strike anyone as being a bit ironic?
>
>-Jim
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FolderPete | 1 Sep 2000 01:39
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Re: Yet another reason to bike commute

In a message dated 8/30/00 4:08:42 AM Pacific Daylight Time, BuddhaB writes:
> 
> Much much lower i would guess that the whole bike to work group in the
> US is under 1 percent
> any one have some hard data

According to the US Statistical Abstract for 1999, 
Cars (& trucks) = 91.4%
Public Transit = 5.5%
Other = 3.1%

so "other" would include walking and biking; so you are probably 'ballpark' 
with your estimate.
http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec21.pdf
FP
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John Snyder | 1 Sep 2000 03:04
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Re: Re: Yet another reason to bike commute

FolderPete@... quoted:

> According to the US Statistical Abstract for 1999,
> Cars (& trucks) = 91.4%
> Public Transit = 5.5%
> Other = 3.1%
<snip>
> http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec21.pdf

In conjunction with the above stats for vehicle choice, it might be
interesting to note that Ischemic heart disease was the leading 
cause of death during 1999. In North America the grim reaper's 
number five choice of weapon was the motor vehicle accident, 
which was a scant one-tenth of one percent behind lung cancer.

Reference:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779147.html

It's tempting to make a logic leap by combining these two elements 
(epidemic use of motorized transport, and leading causes of mortality) 
to the recently published AMA study's conclusion. Daily bicycle
commuting exhibits a preventive effect in regard to fatal 
heart disease. 

One thing is certain. Walking and riding your bicycle as often as 
practical is a healthy and responsible adult behavior.

Jeanne Calment who recently passed on, lived to be 122 years old. "She 
reached French retirement age, of 65, the year France was invaded by
Hitler's Nazis in 1940. But Calment's resilience kept her cycling until
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Karen Sandness | 1 Sep 2000 19:41
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Re: Magazines

CarFree@... wrote:
___________________________________
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 15:00:17 EDT
> From: StephenDPHosking@...
> Subject: Re: Magazine - Try A2B magazine
> 
> Sorry if this topic has now died out but I'm still reading my mail from early
> August.
[snip]
> Actually I agree with the suggestion that getting articles into newspapers
> and Readers Digest is probably a lot more effective than a stand-alone new
> magazine - the difficulty with a lot of 'specialist' magazines is that one is
> preaching to the converted. Getting car-free living into mainstream media is
> likely to be rather more difficult.
> 
Unfortunately, the Readers' Digest would be one of the most difficult
outlets for an article on car-free living. For one thing, it's made up
mostly of articles adapted from other publications. For another, the
magazine has a noticeable and consistent conservative bias, at least in
the United States, and its commissioned articles tend to be
anti-environmentalist, anti-labor union, and anti-government anything
(except, of course, the police and the military, which are mysteriously
seen as not being part of the government).

A better move would be to write opinion pieces for your local paper (or
even Newsweek's readers' essay column), try to pitch an article to your
local or regional "lifestyle" magazine (Sunset, Southern Living, etc.),
or try to get a feature on your local TV news during a slow news period,
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Theo Schmidt | 4 Sep 2000 11:29
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SlowUp

Yesterday 3.9.00 saw the first "SlowUp" semi-carfree day around the Lake of
Murten in Switzerland. It was a great success and most probably a record of
some type for this rather rural area. In spite of occasional rain, 20'000
cyclists and skaters showed up to ride the 30 km around the Lake of Murten
mainly on roads closed to motorised traffic. A constant never-ending stream
of mainly cyclists (also skaters, some HPVs, a few scooters and kickboards,
a kinetic sculpture) went around the lake in both directions during the
whole day, partaking of the local culinary specialities on the way (mainly
fish and wine). This was superbly organised by the Human-Powered Mobility
group for the Swiss national exhibition expo.02. Unfortunately the
organisers were always at pains to explain that the event was not
"anti-car" and indeed the 6 extra cyclists' trains to the event weren't
very well occupied, whereas the car-parking spaces were, so the gross
environmental and safety effect was probably negative, in spite of an
enormous fun factor and public relations effect. The graphically pleasing
but rather slow web site http://www.slowup.ch may still be active, as it is
planned to repeat this event in coming years, also at other places.

Theo Schmidt, Switzerland
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Mark Watson | 5 Sep 2000 18:01
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Fwd: Car-Free Month press release

----Original Message Follows----
From: Jason Meggs <jmeggs@...>
Reply-To: carfree_cities@...
To: Carfree Cities List <carfree_cities@...>, Car-Free Day 
<carfreeday@...>
CC: SF Bike List <sfbike@...>, BFBC-Talk 
<bfbc-talk@...>, SFCM list <sf-critical-mass <at> topica.com>
Subject: [carfree_cities] Car-Free Month press release
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 02:37:12 -0700 (PDT)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	Contact: Jason Meggs
September 4, 2000 Page: 510/720-2818

SEPTEMBER IS CAR-FREE MONTH
September 21 is International Car-Free Day

Activists plan first annual Car-Free Month full of events, actions, and
teach-ins to "celebrate and support those who live car-free, and to
remember those who have been disabled or have lost their lives to the
automobile".

A vibrant and diverse international movement is gathering steam to
significantly reduce automobile use and abuse. From the Mayor of Bogota,
Colombia who plans to eliminate automobile use from his city by 2015, to
the much-celebrated landmark text, _Carfree_Cities_ by J.H. Crawford
(2000), to the global Critical Mass movement which was born in San
Francisco eight years ago this month, a common passion is emerging for a
new (but very traditional) way of life "free from the danger, noise and
pollution of the automobile".
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ped | 12 Sep 2000 02:47
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voluntary surrender

Well, in honor of the first Car-Free Month and the upcoming World
Car-Free Day I decided to make a personal statement and part ways with my
driver's license. My wife and I have been car-lite for two years and have
decided to part with it for good this month as well.

My actual license was stolen two months ago, and I hadn't bothered to do
anything about it until yesterday. I went to the DMV to try and get the
stolen card replaced with a state i.d. card rather than with another
driver's license. I anticipated some confusion, but the woman behind the
desk simply asked if I was sure I wanted to do that. I said yes.

The normal cost of replacing a lost or stolen card here in NC is $10. As
she ran it through the computer, she realized that in order to give me a
state i.d. card I needed to "voluntarily surrender" my physical driver's
license. Since mine was stolen, I needed to pay $10 to have them make me
a new driver's license, hand it back to them, and then pay another $10
for the state i.d. This I did, reluctantly. 

And so now, after an hour wasted, $20 shorter, and surrendering for a
crime I'm choosing not to commit, I am officially a non-driver. It feels
great.

Seth
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ecopl@n.adsl | 7 Sep 2000 16:03

PCFD organization!!!

Dear Seth (sorry I don't have your surname),

Do you happen to know the  <at> World Car Free Day site at
http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday? I ask you that because I was interested in
your note to the Car Free site, and wonder if I might talk you into
declaring a Personal Car Free Day officially to the group - email address
carfreeday@... Let me give you a bit of quick background to what
may seem like a strange request.

For a dozen years or so I have been pushing the car free day concept as a
way of coming to grips with the car/cities and car/people impasse, and while
I think that the European concept of an administered or, in the words of our
CarBusters' friends "bureaucratic car free day" is not to be sneezed at, I
also think that we need to widen our sights considerably. If you look at
our Thursday proposal for this, you will see that there is a section
entitled "And what if you do not happen to be a city?" That is where I see
people like you coming in.

The idea would be to see if we can begin to develop a certain number of car
free days of a much broader kind. Yours of the 11th (was that it?) strikes
me as a good one - and all the more since you have decided to build on it to
make it permanent. I think that's a terrific story with a fine moral. I
would like to see it given more visibility so that others might begin to
think themselves about organizing their own PCFD!!!

Thanks if that works out. And if it doesn't, well just sincerest
congratulations.

Eric Britton
(Continue reading)

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L Danish | 7 Sep 2000 17:19

school daze

If its spring... it must be time to discuss kids and school.

I just heard that my son's elementary (K-5) school has banned skateboards,
skates, and scooters (razors) entirely from campus. I'm sure the impetus
for this rather drastic action was the veritable explosion of "Razors".
(for those of you who may not know, a razor is a folding aluminum
foot-powered scooter, it uses two large roller-blade wheels. the handlebars
collapse and fold down parallel to the base very compactly and only weighs 6
pounds. They are *everywhere*)

I haven't gotten the official parents letter yet which decrees the ban -- so
I don't know the stated reasons but I would expect it goes along the lines
of: kids getting bumped in the halls when carried, no room , etc.
The ban so far has been announced over the P.A. to the students, so I got it
third hand.
This will only serve to encourage more kids to be driven to school.

If anyone has any ideas for pithy aruments to be used against the ban, let
me know.
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Lanyon, Ryan | 7 Sep 2000 17:35
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RE: school daze

Sounds to me like a ban will do more harm than good. The school should work
to educate kids (and parents!) about how to use the equipment safely both at
school and away from school. This could probably be done easily with an
assembly or newsletter in partnership with local government, a non-profit or
a retailer, or incorporated into a phys.ed or geography curriculum.

That way kids will be skating/scootering (?) safely off of school grounds,
too. And we know they're not going to stop, so why not make sure they're
always safe?

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	L Danish [SMTP:ldanish@...]
> Sent:	Thursday, September 07, 2000 11:19 AM
> To:	CarFree@...
> Subject:	[CarFree] school daze
> 
> 
> <http://click.egroups.com/1/8976/7/_/625440/_/968340040/>
> 
> <http://adimg.egroups.com/img/8976/7/_/625440/_/968340040/WarningElectroni
> cs468x602E.gif>
> eGroups <http://www.egroups.com/>	My Groups
> <http://www.egroups.com/mygroups> | CarFree Main Page
> <http://www.egroups.com/group/CarFree> | Start a new group!
> <http://click.egroups.com/1/8150/7/_/625440/_/968340041/> 
> 
> 
> If its spring... it must be time to discuss kids and school.
> 
> I just heard that my son's elementary (K-5) school has banned skateboards,
(Continue reading)

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Gmane