Every Day is Bike-to-Work-Day in Europe!
The following video offers a look into the beautiful country of Holland, a place where transit is clean, efficient, and safe.
Translation: Everyone rides bikes and uses public transportation.
http://www.good.is/post/what-rush-hour-could-look-like-the-glorious-bike-traffic-of-utrecht-holland
Thanks to Ojai Trees for sending this video!
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
the traffic in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru is dangerous, rude and insane.
You take your life in your hands every time you cross the street.
And god forbid you should ride a bicycle.
I LOVE it!
You should try it and stop bitchin and livin in the past with your memories of Holland.
Translation: Go live in a country where the traffic is more to your liking.
Dear MK,
Your words are mean and hurtful.
I honestly don’t understand your reaction.
Are you saying that all the parents, teachers, children, health professionals, land-use and transportation planners, air and water pollution agencies, elected officials, and thousands of other bicycle and pedestrian advocates should all leave the country if they don’t like streets dominated by speeding cars?
I have a sinking feeling you have never visited the National Safe Routes to School website, the new US Department of Transportation policy pages, the Complete Street planning sites or any of the other bicycle/pedestrian educational sites…
I hope that you, your dog or someone you love never gets hit by that crazy traffic you claim to love so much…
I hope that if you have young children, you have peace of mind when they walk, bicycle or skateboard to their friends house …
I hope your 90-year old parents enjoy walking the neighborhood where they live…
When I woke up my sub conscious realized that maybe you missed the article posted underneath the video. This week is National Bike to Work Week. Maybe you saw it on the news. I did not write the video captions posted here. Most of Europe is like this, not just Utrecht.
Note to Self: Don’t read MK’s Comments when tired.
(I posted a follow-up note to cranky Comment #2 but it seems to have disappeared. Will rewrite after I “test” the system.)
This is only a test.
OK, good. Comment #3 reappeared.
MK, besides equal rights for all users of public roads, what this is about is the fact that the Planet cannot support TWO BILLION CARS (actual title of a new book on “Driving Towards Sustainability,” (actual subtitle).
Today’s vehicles, fuels, and transportation designs are functionally similar to those of 80 years ago. And transportation planners have focused mainly on the convenience of the private car.
People are waking up to the fact that we cannot keep adding more and more lanes to roads, and paving over more and more land for parking.
Bringing our current transportation system into balance by giving kids, the elderly, people of all ages, abilities and economic backgrounds choices like walking, bicycling, skateboarding and other human-powered vehicles, car-sharing and car-pooling systems, public transportation, smarter and smaller cars, etc., is part of the larger movement toward an alternative, less-polluting transportation system.
how about teleportation.
i hear there are groups in ojai (and Cusco, where i currently am and staying on a street with no car access)) working on this. upside is i wont have to look both ways when i cross the street
Yes, teleportation is the future of transportation.
I first read about it in “Autobiography of a Yogi.”
So far, can only manage it on the astral plane.
No luck yet on the material plane.
For those not familiar, “Teleportation is the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less instantaneously. Teleportation has been widely utilized in works of science fiction. In some forms, it has also appeared in physical theories.”
Or maybe you had something else in mind?
Are you in Cusco, Peru?
Here?
http://www.access-able.com/tales/feature-6-cusco.html
your comment “the Planet cannot support TWO BILLION CARS” is one of those catchphrases that falls apart when you stop to consider the possibility that 2Billion more Chinese/Indians/Indonesians/etc. are moving inexorably toward wanting their own car.
Please explain how you and the Planet are going to stop them?
Your comment that “Today’s vehicles, fuels, and transportation designs are functionally similar to those of 80 years ago” fails to account for the fact that our very own smeLLA has managed to clean up 90% of the pollution from it’s heyday of the rancid 70s when the air was yellow-black.
I often feel like you are poking at windmills, not that that is a bad thing.
But you don’t seem to have a real understanding of the great forces that are shaping the world and have come to think that our EXTREMELY comfortable life in Ojai and (Europe?) can be “exported” to every other place?
Am I wrong?
Yes, with all due respect, you are wrong in thinking I am unaware of the great forces at work in the world.
All the points you make have have been explored by experts in the field.
Will respond more later this evening or tomorrow…
for sure I am no expert.
i simply try to keep my eyes, mind and heart open.
btw you’ll be interested in knowing that i have run into several people who have bicycled all the way from Alaska or BC down to Peru and one is headed to Ushuaia.
Would be interesting to discuss his views on bicycling.
He reminded me that roads were originally built at the request of bicyclists and then turned into car roads.
And that with the coming of electricity, kerosene fuel fell into doldrums so oil magnates needed to create another revenue source thus hello automobile.
So clean energy, electricity, led to the dirty energy of combustibles.
Funny how the world works huh?
the car companies bought up the train tracks to get people off trains and into cars
To mk, so far-away…
Yes, funny how the world works…
I’m in a funny situation right now and am just here for a sec–will get back re yesterday’s comment later than I thought…
>your comment “the Planet cannot support TWO BILLION CARS” is one of those catchphrases that falls apart when you stop to consider the possibility that 2Billion more Chinese/Indians/Indonesians/etc. are moving inexorably toward wanting their own car.
Please explain how you and the Planet are going to stop them?>your comment “the Planet cannot support TWO BILLION CARS” is one of those catchphrases that falls apart when you stop to consider the possibility that 2Billion more Chinese/Indians/Indonesians/etc. are moving inexorably toward wanting their own car.
Please explain how you and the Planet are going to stop them?<
mk, i like what you say. i hope i get to meet you one day.
i volunteer at the local library on Monday mornings and mostly do shelf-reading.
u are worldly-wise. very refreshing.
p.s. oh, mk, you are not in the states. take care and be careful of speeding bicycles
nrt- the public library in Cusco was a true sanctuary.
i loved the vibe.
people were reading the newspapers, there were still card catalogs- l took a few photos of them…
wonder if they use the dewey decimal system…
with u on the sanctuary. every library i have visited around the world has been a refuge. ojai is no different.
it would be an interesting “specialty” tour – visiting libraries in various cities around the world. i’d sign up as a guide!
The library might be willing to order a copy of “Two Billion Cars.” (2009, hardcover, May, 2010, softcover).
Here are the details:
“Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability,”
by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon.
Foreword by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Oxford University Press has offices in over twenty countries, so should not be too difficult to get the book from any library.
Here’s a short bio of the authors of “Two Billion Cars.”
Daniel Sperling is Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science & Policy at the University of California, Davis, and Founding Director of UC-Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies. He also serves on the California Air Resources Board.
Deborah Gordon is a senior transportation policy consultant who has worked with the National Commission on Energy Policy, the California Energy Commission, International Council for Clean Transportation, and the Chinese government to develop fiscal policies for their burgeoning auto fleet. She earlier developed and directed transportation policy programs for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Surviving Two Billion Cars:
China Must Lead the Way
“The number of vehicles worldwide is expected to reach two billion in the next two decades. Surprisingly, China – where the demand for cars has been skyrocketing – just may offer the best hope of creating a new, greener transportation model…”
To read the rest of the article by Deborah Gordon and Daniel Sperling, authors of Two Billion Cars, go here:
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2128
Suza, you are making a convert out of me. Beautiful. Rather than think about how to afford to renew my gym membership, I can get a bicycle. I already walk a whole lot, but still want to use my car less. Several years back, my daughter’s nice bike was stolen first in pieces when it was locked up at the high school, then when those were replaced, the whole thing was stolen right off our porch, where someone rode up on a rather shabby broken down bicycle and left it sitting there and took my daughter’s bike. Ah, well, stuff like that happens.
Hi Nancy –here goes my first Comment on the new Ojai Post!
Yes –bikes and dogs help get us writers moving!
Sorry to hear about your daughter’s stolen bicycle. I could write a book about stolen bicycles right here in Ojai. It can happen in a second, right in your front yard or while dashing into the library to drop off a book or running into the market on Mother’s Day no less — for a loaf of bread…
Another time I’ll tell the funny story how the Ojai police found my a bike stolen a few feet from my bedroom window in the wee hour of the morn…