Cars out of the city!
author: bike
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It's a radical idea, and a utopian dream to pedestrians and bikers everywhere who are used to dodging two-ton behemoths barreling past them mere inches from their comparatively fragile, soft, crushable bodies.
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Cars out of the city.
It's a radical idea, and a utopian dream to pedestrians and bikers everywhere who are used to dodging two-ton behemoths barreling past them mere inches from their comparatively fragile, soft, crushable bodies.
Seattle claims to be such a progressive city, yet we are all held hostage to the demands of the automobile: isolated, atomized experiences, un-walkable cities, unsafe public spaces (roads) for children, walkers and bikers, disconnected communities, road rage-filled drivers, obesity, climate change, and sprawl are just a few of the ways the car demands we act in response to its existence.
Imagine a city without cars. Imagine all of the streets turned into pedestrian malls or another entire block of housing and shops in the space the roads now occupy, with the sidewalks and pedestrian streets becoming the main arteries of transportation. It would be an improvement in the utilization of urban space from the manner roads are used, in which they are usually empty at night. Cities built before the totalitarian domination of the car are designed in such a manner, and are made to suit human beings instead of the giant vehicles they now use to get from place to place. Places designed for people instead of cars are more enjoyable to walk around in, have higher population density, a more vibrant street life, and shops close enough to stop into everyday and get fresh produce, breads and other items.
There have been attempts in recent years at high-cost, planned communities roughly based on this model, but these experiments benefit only the few who can afford to live in them, and leave the rest of us who live in the cities dreaming of such an inviting environment to live in.
How many people die or are seriously injured every year by cars in Seattle?
As someone who was recently hit by an automobile, I feel like I have the right to demand such radical changes. As I look at my bruises, my scabbed over hand and my scuffed up watch, I feel lucky that I did not end up the way so many of my friends have, in the hospital facing serious injuries and months of recovery. I know 4 people who've been hit and nearly killed by drivers while bicycling, all of whom had to endure months and months of agonizing recovery and rehabilitation, only to be forced back into sharing the roads with the machines that almost killed them to get around. So you see, this is not just some utopian dream, or an idea taken home from a trip to Europe or the old world's Medinas (old/center cities), but an idea borne out of the necessity of survival for those on the receiving end of the car's influence on Seattle. Many people in Seattle are in favoy of gun control, but cars kill many times more people than guns every year, yete we continue to give them free reign over our cities. City planners need to stop planning widened and improved roads, and Seattle needs to plan for a human-centered future and leave the outdated car-centered present behind.
We can start by NOT replacing the Viaduct with any type of car-based infrastructure, because to do so would encourage more use of cars. Build it, and they will come. The easier it is to use cars, the more people will use them. This has been proven over and over again. And the easier it is made for cars to be a main form of transportation, the harder it becomes for any other form of transportation to be viable. It is up to the city to put the infrastructure in place for the forms of transportation that are the most desirable, and I think everyone would agree that cars are not the most desirable when we have any and all wondrous possibilities open to us. Building infrastructure for cars instead of for people is how we got to this point of car mania in the first place, and dreaming of the world we want is the first step to making tomorrow the world we'd like to see. What are we waiting for?
It's time make our city a livable place for those of us who are not cars. The cars will adjust.
If we don't, we will continue to kill and injure each other, destroy our environment, isolate ourselves from each other, have few realistic options outside of becoming obese, road rage-induced stress balls who don't know many of their neighbors and whose kids can't play outside safely, and our cities will continue to be places where we must look both ways constantly lest a two-ton metal beast come barreling into us, shattering our worlds and our bones. Who wants to live with killing machines flying past us inches away if we don't have to? Don't we get to decide what we want our city to look like, and what the future looks like?
I have been mostly biking on the sidewalk since I got hit, too scared to venture into the street for long. I get sick to my stomach when I ride past the place where I was hit. I tense up and feel scared on my bike. It doesn't help that my wrists hurt so bad from the crash that it is hard to hold my handlebars and pull on my brake levers. These feeling made me realize that we are not free in Seattle; we are forced into certain spaces and certain ways of acting and interacting due to the demands cars place on us and our social environment. Until we put the demands of humans above the demands of cars our city will never be the place it could be. As a matter of fact, I may just head to Europe for a while where walking and still having time to live a full life is not such a struggle, and where I am not scared walking down the streets, hustling from one curb to another like a squirrel who scurries out of the way as a human walks by.
I hope, but am not optimistic, that Seattle will convert the streets into spaces for open air cafes and pedestrian boulevards, and add more buildings for housing and small corner markets where the roads used to dominate the space. I can't wait for the day!
www.carfree.org has more on this concept.
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Cars, as you have so perfectly described, are destructive of the atmosphere, human society, and both drivers and innocent bystanders alike. Although 3,000 were murdered on Sep 11th--considered the single most horrific incident in US history, more than 40,000 are killed in car accidents EVERY SINGLE YEAR! This doesn't count the HUNDREDS of thousands injured, maimed and crippled for life. The situation is horrible.
Exactly as you have said, the cars need to be pushed OUT OF OUR DAILY LIVES. Let them drive BETWEEN CITIES or AROUND CITIES, but not THROUGH CITIES. Communities should be build for people, not exploding death-mobiles.
Please, someone, show me ONE CITY in the U.S. that has the intelligence and guts to ban automobiles, and all the people like us will move there! It will be a paradise!
Let's do it now, and we will enjoy for the rest of our wonderful lives!
If we can't convince a single town, then we should start with a single community. Like a non-smoking restaurant, it will be a non-driving neighborhood. It will be so delightful, safe, quiet, and clean, than others will be jealous at once.
START PUSHING for change! These are our lives, our communities, our planet!