Pray At The Pump movement brings down our gas prices

Praise be to Market Forces Rocky Twyman and his homedude, God. The Pray at the Pump movement, previously blogged about here, is taking credit for the recent drop in oil prices.

I'm not making this up.

[Twymans's] first pilgrimage to the pump was prompted by fellow volunteers at the First Seventh Day Adventist Church in Petworth, a working-class neighbourhood of the US capital, who were struggling with higher gasoline prices.

He led them down the block to the local Shell gas station to pray. And over the months since then, he has held similar prayer meetings at pumps all over the US.

Prayer warriors

"We were down in Huntsville, Alabama. We finished praying," Mr Twyman said. "Immediately the owners came out and changed the gas prices. They brought it down. We had marvellous success down in St Louis, Missouri."

Still, they don't believe in prayer without action and have been advocating a change in driving behaviour: "So we've encouraged people to car-pool more and organise their days more, because it's a combination of faith with these other factors."

Safety video for cycling in traffic

I thought this was well done, demonstrating how to operate a bike as a vehicle, under all rules of the road. In particular, controlling the lane is demonstrated well here. This was a hard lesson for me to learn when I first started bike commuting as I didn't want to delay anyone or be "in the way". However, nearly getting doored when feeling pressured over to the right taught me a valuable lesson. Unfortunately I have experienced many a honk from an angry driver who thinks I should be driving in the gutter, or who nearly sideswipes me while passing too close. However, the truth is that most drivers are fine with this type of cycling, and they would rather see you clearly and not making unexpected maneuvers (even if they are delayed a few seconds!). They may not always be happy but everyone stays alive!

Carfree Times issue #50 is up

This month has some good stuff on offer. Aside from beautiful photographs of carfree places, you'll find interesting articles about carfree living like:

Expensive Gas Drives Down Suburban Housing Values
Buy a McMansion? Bad idea. But they are cheap. And probably getting cheaper. Housing prices are probably nowhere near their bottom. (There's a scary thought.) But some neighborhoods are holding value. And it's no surprise which neighborhoods. It's the ones that aren't 40 miles from work.
[...]Near the city center, people are still buying and new listings attract plenty of interest. In the city proper, prices are actually up 3.5% over the past year. Good access to public transport is especially important to buyers.

Simply put, the longer the commute, the steeper the drop in prices.

In addition to the 10 or so articles, there's an interesting interview towards the bottom - "Cars Are Driving Us Nuts: We drive ever longer distances in order to satisfy the same needs".

Check it out.

An Open Letter to People Who Smoke While Driving

Dear smoking drivers,

When you are finished smoking your cigarette, please do not throw it out of your window. There may be a cyclist right in the trajectory of its burning ember.

Sincerely,
Your friendly nonsmoking cyclist

p.s. You could also be a real pal and refrain from honking a cyclist out of her lane so that you can illegally pull over into said bike lane where you aren't supposed to be, seeing as how you are in a car and all.

And I Thought my Bike Commute was Bad

Every time I travel on somewhere my bike I experience the heart-pounding feeling of impending death, and plenty of frustration. It seems Torontonians, especially the uptownians, have not yet realized their beloved car culture is dying. My bike commute usually consists of at least a handful of the following: people honking randomly at me as if to say "what are you doing on MY ROAD?", the delivery vehicles in the bike lanes, the cars stopped in the no-stopping-zones, the drivers too lazy to signal their lane change, the three or four cars that go through every red light, and the bike lanes with a 4 lanes of traffic and a raised streetcar right-of-way in the middle (St. Clair & Poplar Plains). Or I get caught in traffic because some impatient yahoo in a huge car wondering what's the blockage ahead (not considering that the blockage is more huge CARS) has to pull all the way over to the right to have a look, leaving not enough inches for wee little me and my wee little bike to get through.

But, I must say, my commute has NOTHING on this guy's.

The Revolution Will Not Be Motorized: Tomorrow is World Carfree Day

Plan to be in Toronto this weekend? Check out the World Carfree Day festivities on Queen Street West.

Why not have a parking meter party around 1:00 pm? Here's how:

• Scout out a parking spot where you'd like to spend the afternoon
  
• Park your non-motorized "vehicle" (bike, trike, roller-skates, dinky-car etc.) along Queen West
  
• Pay the meter: for $1.50 per hour the spot is yours! (Be sure to display your parking receipt on the "dash" of your "vehicle")

Or, go a-paradin' at 6:00. Meet at 5:00 at Trinity-Bellwoods park. One tip: I don't suggest driving down to the parade (or if you have no other method of transportation, why not consider one of these).

More festivities on Sunday. Details here and here

If you feel so inclined check out these related links:

Do Motorists in the US Pay Their Own Way? No. They are subsidized by taxpayers. Check out the UC Davis study (PDF) that proves it. Bookmark it for use the next time some taxpaying motorist complains about subsidizing public transit.

And, yes, it is within our power to create carfree cities. Don't believe me? Check out the book that proves it.

Today is also Park(ing) Day. Who knew? A whole day in which parking spaces are transformed into parks. Like this on a larger scale. Sweet.

And next time you get into a car by yourself, for goodness sakes, check the passenger seat. Darn evil dictators, always bumming a ride!

World's Smallest Cars

Of course, I prefer no cars at all, but failing that, and all other things being equal, smaller is better.

Here are many teeny weeny itsy bitsy street legal cars.

Save Money on Gas by Driving Less

Or you could just establish your global hegemony to secure foreign sources of petroleum.



Or you could vigorously oppose better fuel-efficiency requirements. (Via desmogblog)

It's always easier to blame the gas tax than to blame those who are really profiting, anyways. Good thing we are supporting North American Energy Security by guaranteeing our oil to a foreign country.

Cars are Killing Us

People love their cars. Why? I guess it must be because cars are:

• Dangerous: In the U.S.A. during the first two weeks of September 2001, more people were killed by automobiles, than by terrorism and AIDS combined!
  
• Unhealthy: Polluting, resource guzzling, carbon distasters that encourage inactivity
  
• Unsustainable: "Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." -- Walter Kulash, a traffic engineer, Orlando, Fla.
  
• Inefficient: 95% of the energy goes towards moving the CAR -- not the cargo/passengers.
  
• Expensive: A light rail line can move the same number of people at peak travel time as a 12 lane highway, in a right of way 20% as wide at 30% of the cost. So why do we pay fares for transit when almost all roads are toll-free?
  
• Isolating: "Enclosing ourselves in little bubbles, utterly separated from the rest of the world while we drive to our isolated house cut out of a forest so we can pretend we are alone in the world and not have to deal with anything that might be unpleasant, even reality."
  - Mostly taken from CarsStink.org
  

This is not new information. We have known the problems with cars for a long time. This, for example, was written in 1977:

The fact that cars are large is, in the end, the most serious aspect of a transportation system based on the use of cars, since it is inherent in the very nature of cars. Let us stats this problem in its most pungent form. A man occupies about 5 square feet of space when he is standing still, and perhaps 10 square feet when he is walking. A car occupies about 350 square feet when it is standing still (if we include access), and at 30 miles an hour, when cars are 3 car lengths apart, it occupies about 1000 square feet. As we know, most of the time cars have a single occupant. This means that when people use cars, each person occupies almost 100 times as much space as he does when he is a pedestrian.

If each person driving occupies an area 100 times as large as he does when he is on his feet, this means that people are 10 times as far apart. In other words, the use of cars has the overall effect of spreading people out, and keeping them apart.
- A Pattern Language Christopher Alexander, et al. (read the book or get more info)

It is almost 30 years later, and public transit is still underfunded, and sprawl continues unabated. Unfortunately, unless pedestrian-friendly cities become the rule rather than the exception, people will remain car-dependent.

Cars are killing us, but we are supposed to fear terrorist evil-doers, Anthrax, West Nile Virus, wedded gay people, Mexicans...

More on the Environment & Urban Issues.

Traffic Gridlock Costs Billions

According to a new Transport Canada study, [gridlock] costs the Canadian economy $6 billion a year, with the G.T.A. absorbing some $2 billion of that tab.

So why do people oppose putting more into public transit? I just don't get it.
More Details

Topic: Urban Issues

Carfree Cities (Book Review)

Carfree Cities by Joel Crawford is an excellent book imagining the city without the automobile.

He starts out by expounding on the problem: why cars in cities are bad. He covers environmental, social, and aesthetic problems, as well as an analysis of the danger of cars. He contrasts automobile-dependent cities such as Los Angeles with pedestrian cities such as Venice. The sprawling automotive cities offer a lack of safety (large number of traffic deaths & injury), incredible levels of environmental pollution, a weak social community, and an ugly landscape.

Then he offers a theoretical solution with a reference design for a carfree city. His suggested topology incorporates a large amount of public space and green space with moderately dense development.

The city is based around small, pedestrian districts connected to each other by a rail-based metro (subway) or tram (streetcar) system. His public transportation system is cheaper and faster than car transportation, and at least as convenient and comfortable (even suggesting first class luxury train cars). He also offers a detailed solution to freight transportation, using standardized shipping containers.

The last portion of the book offers some more practical suggestions for transforming existing cities, creating new ones, and variations, such as a bicycle-based city.

You can order the book, join the discussion on Yahoo Groups, and get more information at Carfree.com.

Topic: Environment - Urban Issues, Book Reviews