Article written for SF Bay Guardian which went unpublished due to space limitations:


Auto assassins
 world car-free month takes a stab at the hegemony of the car
by A. Clay Thompson
 
You'd think the auto industry would be hurting. Around the globe fuel
prices are soaring -- causing highway havoc abroad and driver migraines
here. Near-permanent gridlock grips the highways. Ford and Firestone are
emerging from the tire fiasco looking like a pair of corporate serial
killers with a multinational body count. Then there's that hole in the sky
-- partially car-caused -- and the recent report by scientists that the
south pole is melting. 
But our romance with the automobile shows few signs of waning. Detroit,
rather than withering away, is selling record quantities of bigger, ever
more earth defiling vehicles. A century after its birth, the car has
become a super-killer impervious to any attack.
On the margins, though, the auto's foes are pushing urbanites to abandon
their gas-guzzlers in favor of public transit, walking, and biking -- and
to promote that goal the anti-road warriors have dubbed September "World
car-free month."   
In the Bay Area, cyclists in Marin held a memorial [TK what day?] for
Cecelia Krone, a San Anselmo biker killed last year by a drunk driver. In
Berkeley, activists staged a raucous "Reclaim the Streets" protest [TK
detail, what did they do?  How many people?] And this Friday Critical Mass
will ooze onto the asphalt of San Francisco.   
"I think there are many hopeful signs," says J.H.Crawford, author of the
recently released book Carfree Cities. "We're starting to grow up and to
realize that we have limited energy supplies, a serious environmental
situation directly related to burning fossil fuels, and are starting to
acknowledge that while we may have a very high standard of living, our
quality of life isn't so great. 
"Given that the car is one of the root causes of so many of these
problems, I think it's a relatively easy jump to at least consider carfree
urban areas," Crawford says. "We don't have to start with an entire city
-- we can do it a piece at a time, learning from the experience as we go." 
In his 320-page book, Crawford, an American ex-pat living in Amsterdam,
offers a coherent plan for reclaiming urban space from the car and
showcases towns -- Venice, Italy chief among them -- that are already
renouncing  automobiles.  
In Europe, the car-killers, long associated with militant
highway-barricading protests, are mobilizing the mainstream. The
Economist, Britain's influential news mag, ran a cover story a few years
back pointing out the problems with dependence on the auto. And in a huge
symbolic action, the European Union last week sponsored car-free days in
cities across the contintent. 
 Closer to home, San Francisco is experiencing countervailing trends.  The
Bay Area's unceasing population boom is clogging roads with More and More
traffic.  Crossing the street has become an extreme sport, and motorists
are slaying a growing number of pedestrians.  
At the same time, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition -- which champions
"a transportation system not reliant primarily on the car" -- has
blossomed into a serious political force over the past five years, its
ranks swelling from a few hundred to 2,800. Candidates for public office
now court the coalition for its blessing. 
The coalition is pushing a trio of transit bills that are currently
languishing on Governor Gray Davis's desk. Together, the proposals (SB
1772, SB 1629, and SB 1809) would put tens of millions of dollars annually
into new cycle- and pedestrian-friendly transportation projects. 
The farthest reaching piece of legislation is SB 1629, Byron Sher's
(D-Stanford) "Good Roads bill," which would require that all new state
roads include space for bikers and walkers. "It's being touted as the
biggest bicycle bill of all time," says Leah Shahum of the Bike Coalition.
"It would be huge if it went through."
But car-free month is about more than sidewalks and bike lanes. At a small
Sept. 21 protest in downtown San Francisco, one demonstrator summed it up:
"It's about challenging the total hegemony of the car."
 
 
E-mail A. Clay Thompson at: ac_thompson-AT-sfbg.com
 


Back to the Bicycle Civil Liberties Union.

Back to the  Bike the Bridge! Coalition.





          
 
          

          
          
          
          

          
          
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