Many 'bad seeds' much worse than Critical Mass.

"Cars: subsidising the urban elite.
Friday, August 21, 2009
By Ahmad Rafay Alam
The American astronomer Carl Sagan once observed that if Aliens were
ever to land on earth, they would quickly conclude that the human race
was enslaved by the automobile. Why else would humans spend so much
time and money on them, buying expensive fuel and laying down billion-
dollar expressways for them? The situation in Pakistan proves this
observation...

....Recently, the news editor of the Vancouver Sun responded to an
editorial in his newspaper criticising the city’s Critical Mass.
Critical Mass is a monthly cycling event that takes place in over 200
cities around the world and aims to raise awareness about cycling as a
healthy, environment-friendly form of transport (there’s even a
Critical Mass group in Lahore that meets the last Sunday of every
month). Cyclists take to the streets in large numbers and often take
over automobile traffic. For this, the Vancouver Sun editorial
suggested that the members of Critical Mass should be jailed for
causing traffic congestion.

In his response, news editor Gary Engler defended Critical Mass and
said that if anyone really wanted to penalise and arrest the people
who caused traffic, they could start by arresting all the developers
responsible for sprawl-inducing housing; all the politicians and urban
planners who agreed to the sprawl and who continued to agree to build
roads, bridges and underpasses that only brought more traffic onto
streets; all those who argued that roads should be wider (because all
evidence points to the conclusion that more cars and more congestion
are the inevitable result); all those who drove to work when they
could walk, use a cycle or public transport; all those who opposed
densification of family neighbourhoods; all those who owned more than
one car; and “all those who promote an economic system that requires
us to choose between ever more growth or the misery of depression/
recession. In this car-addicted society that inevitably means more
automobiles and therefore more traffic jams. One could argue that
these people are the worst of all and should go to the top of the
list, as the ultimate bad seeds.”..."

Mo
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=194022

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World Carfree Network
http://www.worldcarfree.net/
Help for your car-addicted friends in the U.K.