Bicyclers Unite - Ban Automobiles

Absolutely. I ride a recumbent which means my head is about 2-3 feet closer
to tailpipe level. It seems every winter after getting a cold I develop
bronchitis, and can't ride to work for weeks, because the exhaust
(especially diesels) sets it off.

Just another deferred cost others pay for drivers. Just start adding it
up - how much property value is lost because of proximity to noisy roads?
How much did they pay urban dwellers when they sliced their cities up with
walled off interstates. No wonder we fled the cities - urban freeways were
the #1 reason cities became less livable.



"Kevan Smith" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 03:05:17 GMT, "Robert Haston"
from
EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net wrote:


I don't like them because they cost so much, yes, but I really don't like
them
because they smell horrible when they pass me belching crap from their
exhaust.



--

What mistakes did you make last time?
91

It is wear as much as tear freeze/thaw cycles, rusting rebar, etc. Although
your point is important, the amount trucks pay versus the damage they do is
far apart. Look at an old unused runway - it falls apart all on its own.

"Curtis L. Russell" wrote in message
...
On 17 Feb 2004 09:03:39 -0800, (Bill Meredith) wrote:

As to energy, we fail to add in the energy required to make and service
cars
and build and repair roads, which together is about as much as the cars
themselves burn.

A few things come to mind, first you need to maintian roads for the
bikes and the truck traffic in any case, so ther would be little
saving there.

Since one loaded truck causes more damage than many automobiles - I
read somewhere that automobiles were effectively not impacting the
road repair process much at all - banning cars and keeping delivery
trucks would produce few savings.

If no trucks used the road, evidently weather has a bigger impact than
that of the small users, like cars and bikes.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

"Bill Meredith" wrote in message
om...

There is no problem with energy limit even at our current level of
technology, we still can fall back on the atom and the coal supply in
the US is still a thousand year one not a hundred as you wish to
claim.

HA! - Prove it

The accepted figure is 200 250 years. If you used it to replace oil, this
cuts that figure by over half. That doesn't include the costs of converting
it to usable forms, to replace petrochemicals such as asphalt and coal oil;
which eats up much of the energy content. If it becomes evident that we
can't afford releasing the massive amount of carbon (that's why coal is hard
and black) this would take an even bigger chunk.

Wrong. Our cities evolved in a society where we pay people up to a 100%
subsidy to drive. For example, what if taxes paid for school (education)
but not bussing (transportation) People would pay more to avoid paying a few
bucks a day to bus kids. They would live where city bus excess capacity
could carry schoolkids (like East Albuquerque). They would demand connected
neighborhoods and safe streets. Most kids would grow up riding a bike as
transportation, not as a toy. The seeds and fertilizer are subsidies, the
mature plant is sprawl.

Besides, it is just stupid to fight bad laws with otherwise unnecessary
urban planning laws.

"Daniel Ballagh" wrote in message
ink.net...
So get rid of your cars and
start riding your bike. Does anyone know how to get this revolution
going?

The biggest problem is urban sprawl. With commuting distances growing
farther every year we are creating a society that will be unable to bike
commute realisticly unless your willing to ride 50 to 100 miles a day
spending 2 to 4 hours to get to work and back. We need better city
planning
to make bike commuting feasible.

Dan.

"Robert Haston" wrote in message link.net...
"Bill Meredith" wrote in message
om...

There is no problem with energy limit even at our current level of
technology, we still can fall back on the atom and the coal supply in
the US is still a thousand year one not a hundred as you wish to
claim.

HA! - Prove it

The accepted figure is 200 250 years. If you used it to replace oil, this
cuts that figure by over half. That doesn't include the costs of converting
it to usable forms, to replace petrochemicals such as asphalt and coal oil;
which eats up much of the energy content. If it becomes evident that we
can't afford releasing the massive amount of carbon (that's why coal is hard
and black) this would take an even bigger chunk.

Lord you do have to laugh, a hundred years ago would have been 1904
and you would have been yelling that we was about to run out of whale
oilgrin. I can just see you stating that in only a few decades we
would need to give up our lamps, as we ran out of whales and therfore
should start now to go to bed earlygrin.

Two hundred years, ok I will go along with your nonsense that would
mean that we would need to worry in the year 2204 about giving up our
cars!

Somehow given the rate of technology advance, a two hundred year time
frame to come up with other energy sources seem to imply that we don't
have a problem for now or in two hundred years.

Of course looking for non-problems seem to be a disease for some of
us, such as the y2k problem.

Hmm I wonder if I do a google search I would find your name on
postings dealing with the end of our culture duue to all the computers
shutting down on Jan 1, 2000.

Come on nonsense is nonsense and there is no lack of energy now or in
the future.

Bill Meredith

I really don't get why people are so willing to buy houses so close together
you can practically lean out your windows and shake hands - as long as your
houses don't touch.

I guess part of the problem is there are really no American examples of
"hi-low" development, where the worthless side yards, etc. you save by
living in a row house get returned as a nice playground, pond, etc. Europe
has lots more of this. Watching the Tour de France I was paying more
attention to how you would see miles of country side, then houses all
clustered together before more countryside. I saw the same thing in Sicily
coming back from Iraq.

"Kevan Smith" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 00:16:46 GMT, "Daniel Ballagh"
from
EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net wrote:

So get rid of your cars and
start riding your bike. Does anyone know how to get this revolution
going?

The biggest problem is urban sprawl. With commuting distances growing
farther every year we are creating a society that will be unable to bike
commute realisticly unless your willing to ride 50 to 100 miles a day
spending 2 to 4 hours to get to work and back. We need better city
planning
to make bike commuting feasible.

Or people willing to live closer to work even if that means no lawn and no
single family dwelling.


--

Water.
45

Wrong. Our cities evolved in a society where we pay people up to a 100%
subsidy to drive. For example, what if taxes paid for school (education)
but not bussing (transportation) People would pay more to avoid paying a
few
bucks a day to bus kids. They would live where city bus excess capacity
could carry schoolkids (like East Albuquerque). They would demand
connected
neighborhoods and safe streets. Most kids would grow up riding a bike as
transportation, not as a toy. The seeds and fertilizer are subsidies, the
mature plant is sprawl.

Besides, it is just stupid to fight bad laws with otherwise unnecessary
urban planning laws.


What I was trying to say was that our cities are growing so spread out that
a typical commute for many major cities is often 25+ miles one way. That
make it very time consuming to cycle to work and prevents most people from
doing it.

Today many cities are trying to re-vitalize themselves by getting people to
live closer to the downtown areas. This of course helps the downtown areas
economically but it also reduces traffic since people are able to walk or
even use public transportation rather than drive. Of course this concept is
not new, the older cities like New York have been doing this for years but
when the automobile became popular the urban sprawl began. This has caused
longer commute distances and traffic jams. Unless we re-visit our city
planning/public transportation we are only going to make matter worse.

Dan.