In the Guardian today: #Paris will increase parking fees for SUV in the city in order to address “#AutoBesity”. May it be a source of inspiration for #Berlin
So excited for todays #anchorage#CriticalMass ride I couldn't wait. Had to try on my over the top gettup and get even more stickers on my #radpowerbikes gotta get the drivers attention ya know
Really great presentations at the latest infrastructure for cyclists work session 2023-65
Also really exciting to see the #anchorageassembly have so many members enthusiastic about bike lanes and bike infrastructure. Especially the personal stories of bicycle vehicle collisions from my representative Kevin Cross. Also municipality traffic engineering introduced Zach hardman ex dot as the new pedestrian and cycling lead
Trying my hand at stirring up some local action. Printed off 30 or so flyers for a meeting that my anchorage assembly person is putting on about housing challenges and zoning reform in #eagleriver and put them on the porches of a bunch of my neighbors. Included my mastadon just in case it helps anyone find the instance #strongtowns#waroncars#urbanism#localaction
@notjustbikes It's a shame that you're having that experience. My experience has been very different maybe in part due to following just about every urbanist related account I could find, as well as a few hashtags like #waroncars, #biketooter, #urbanplanning etc. My feed is alive and interesting, and there's no shortage of content to keep me engaged. I have no desire to go back to a walled garden where a single entity can make unilateral decisions about the platform.
Today was my second year going to Open Streets JP, where the city of Boston shuts down several miles of roadway to car traffic. There were huge crowds, bicycles everywhere, kids laughing and playing, and it really felt like the social fabric was being woven right then and there. Living in Burlington VT for so long and seeing the impact of pedestrian-only spaces like Church street, I wish we could see more of this in Boston. #Boston#WarOnCars
#WarOnCars I spent the whole Queer Eye episodes yelling at the screen; 'IT WAS CRASH NOT AN ACCIDENT!'
The kid lost his family and is left in a wheelchair because of a Ford150. Car Culture seems to be Queer Eye's one blind spot. At least they are driving a slightly smaller SUV this season. #CrashNotAccident
I keep thinking back to this Microlino at Fully Charged Live. Reusable water bottles became acceptable, being vegan is now cool, and so is wearing vintage clothes. So who is going to step up to the critical task of making small cars fashionable? The trend towards giant SUVs is ludicrous, incredibly wasteful and dangerous, and bad for our cities. If you must use a car, it should be as small as possible. Where are the micro-car visionaries/influencers? WE NEED YOU. #cars#SUV#climate
What must come hand in hand is infrastructure and regulations that are friendly for smaller vehicles. The large dangerous trucks should be heavily taxed to discourage their use, not get subsidies. This unfortunately isn't the case in many places of the world.
When the majority of drivers choose to drive ridiculously large vehicles it also forces others to get larger ones just for their own safety. Even if they would otherwise drive smaller vehicles.
It can be argued that electric vehicles are an improvement when replacing ICE vehicles.
But that misses a much bigger point — which is that the very best car is not an electric car. The very best car is no car at all!
Building electric cars requires massive use of fossil fuels, including petrochemicals for the manufacture of plastics. In addition, mining of lithium for batteries as well as trawling for other minerals in the deep ocean is environmentally disastrous, killing biodiversity while polluting our water, soil, and air.
The kind of “Green Growth” championed by capitalists and politicians, which features more electric cars, a bit of solar, and a few wind farms — along with continued use of fossil fuels — is not a good answer. It does not solve any of our problems, and in fact only makes them worse.
Say NO to more cars, of any kind. Push instead for active transportation and for improved public transit.
Continued economic growth is unsustainable. Period. The only logical choice for us and for the biosphere is de-growth.
I plan to write a letter to CVS Pharmacy (Corp). Once again I pedaled my bike through the "drive-thru" and was told that bikes and pedestrians are not allowed because there had been a "vehicle incident". Pharmacist said they had received a memo from "Corp Office" stating this policy. I asked if motor cycles were allowed? Yes - they were not in the memo. I also suggested a speed bump be placed in the lane before the window. Any thoughts/solutions for my letter are appreciated. #waroncars
I posted a version of the post below last year, shortly after I started on Mastodon. At the time I had maybe a couple of hundred followers. Now that I have more than that, I’d like people to see this who haven’t seen it before…
🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶
If the United States had made walkable and bike-friendly cities a priority beginning in the 1950s or 1960s, or even in the 1970s, and had used federal funding to heavily boost low-cost mass transit rather than spending 💵 billions 💵 on the interstate freeway system, then we could have had a much better world today. CO2 in the atmosphere might still be under 350 ppm instead of at 420 and climbing, and we would have a realistic chance of keeping climate change under control.
Of course, that would mean that the auto industry and the oil industry and the paving industry and the suburban building industry would not have made billions (trillions?) of dollars in profits for their owners, so who am I kidding... The capitalists always win.
Now, it's too late to make a meaningful difference in avoiding a dreadful future. Of course we'll still get lip service from politicians and their pet journalists about the great strides we're making in this direction, but at this point that's mostly just #greenwashing.
Car culture kills cyclists.
Car culture kills clean air.
Car culture kills children.
Car culture kills wildlife.
Car culture kills fitness.
Car culture kills the environment.
Car culture kills friendliness.
Car culture kills pedestrians.
Car culture kills equality.
Car culture kills the atmosphere.
Car culture kills serenity.
Car culture kills!