commuting – Page 2 – Person versus Automobile

Public Transportation Desert (guest post, Marc Syrene)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

[Marc, from southern Colorado, has turned his Mercedes into a car that burns the diesel fuel he also makes. Following is a post he wrote on the dilemmas with which he struggles. — Louis]

Driving Less in a Public Transportation Desert

AeroKroil, my latest hope in the fight to get my 1995 Mercedes diesel back on the road.

Embarrassment, the key motivator to pull her in to my garage to figure out why she is smoking so bad when started cold. I pulled the fuel injectors to test them and two of the crush washers, which all need to be replaced, are frozen in there with carbon deposits; hence the AeroKroil. AeroKroil is supposed to be the “best” penetrating oil out there. The gun toters like it to clean their guns cuz it dissolves carbon.
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Person Meets Police

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

This is “person meets police” not “person vs. police,” please note.

Tuesday, April 2, I discovered late in the morning that I had a business meeting in Denver. The only bus that would get me there on time is the “LD2,” a regional bus that happens to skip my home town. So I decided to run out to highway 287 to catch it, which isn’t a big deal or a long run (about a mile), except that there was no bus stop where I expected one.

So I began to run south along the wide-shouldered highway toward the real bus stop, a mile away. Meanwhile, time was running out, so when cars came by, I turned around and stuck out my thumb, hoping someone would give me a short ride to the next stop.

Hit in a Crosswalk (Part 3)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

The previous post explained how the City of Boulder addressed the flashing crosswalk where Laura was hit by an SUV. In short, they addressed it gloriously:
(1) they upgraded to a light that first flashed, then turned solid yellow, and finally turned solid red (putting the fear of Officer MacDougal in drivers), and
(2) they later made the supreme fix: building an underpass
to completely insulate pedestrians and bikers from those big, heavy chunks of metal and plastic that accelerate more easily than they brake.
Continue reading “Hit in a Crosswalk (Part 3)”

Hit in a Crosswalk (Part 2)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

The previous post was about Laura’s experience of getting hit by a car while in a flashing-light crosswalk (2007). The crosswalk where the accident occurred was replaced by a high-intensity activated crosswalk (HAWK, which provides a flashing yellow light followed by a solid yellow light followed by a red light). After installing the HAWK, Boulder went a step further, replacing it with a pedestrian underpass (the best and costliest solution).

Pedestrian underpass on Baseline Road, east of Broadway, Boulder, CO

Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 4)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

This follows the third post that draws upon the book Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring, by Carlton Reid, 2015.^[1] This is the final post dedicated to that worthy book.

To re-cap the main drift of the book and my purpose for drawing upon it: roads were created for animals and pedestrians (think of Roman soldiers), and (skipping ahead a few thousand years), after being ignored as a result of the railroad, were resuscitated by cyclists (bicyclists and tricyclists).
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Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 3)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

This follows the second post that draws upon the book Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring, by Carlton Reid, 2015.^[1]

When automobiles were introduced in Britain and America, they were by historical fact newcomers and outsiders, unwelcome on many or most roads. They lacked legislative backing and social appreciation. But within about a half of century, they had taken over the roads and the minds of many.
Continue reading “Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 3)”

Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 2)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

This post follows the first post that draws upon the book Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring, by Carlton Reid, 2015.^[1]

The beauty of not knowing a particular history is that we can attach our own histories to the present. For example, if we do not know that roads were built first for pedestrians; second for carriage (stagecoaches and, later, carts and “carriages”); third for bicycles; and fourth for automobiles, we can assume that, outside of a few exceptions, roads-as-a-recognized-right-of-way came with the advent and appreciation of the automobile.

In short, ignorance allows accidents of history to acquire the status of natural law: automobiles, it seems, always have owned and always will own the roads.
Continue reading “Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 2)”

Roads Were Not Built for Cars (Part 1)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Accordingly, this post (continued in Part 2) will recapitulate some key points from the book Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring, by Carlton Reid, 2015.^[1]

Roads Were Not Built for Cars, Book Cover

Modern Negative Consequences of Autos

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Accordingly, I present some free verse:

Modern negative consequences of automobiles include …
Vanishing non-renewable fuels,
So long dinos, you’re not coming back,
Nor will your remains remain;
Increase in death by vehicle;
Not knowing your own neighbor,
The one who parks inside the garage,
Let alone not knowing your community
Who mostly are insular, behind the wheel,
Maybe in a Dodge, definitely getting out of Dodge,
Spending money at stores one dare not walk to,
Stores who couldn’t care less about your Main Street;
A rise in obesity and sickly hearts;
A liberal dose of greenhouse gases,
Which sound nice and, well, green,
But turn Earth brown;
Urban sprawl and appalling parking lots;
Marginalization of pedestrians,
And if not marginalizing,
Running them down outright (happens);
A stunted railway network;
Noise pollution (what did you say?)
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