Posted on 09/18/2005 5:13:25 AM PDT by Our_Man_In_Gough_Island
Hundreds of towns and cities across Europe begin a week of events designed to persuade people to choose forms of transport other than cars.
More than 900 towns and cities in Europe will be taking part in the annual European Mobility Week event.
The high point of the event, the fourth of its kind, will be "no-car days" when towns and cities bar all non-emergency vehicles from the streets.
The EU says the theme of this year's event is called Clever Commuting.
Cars may have set mankind free but cities across the developed and developing world now groan under their impact.
European Mobility Week aims, for a few days, to open up the possibility of a different world, one where cars do not dominate the physical environment and where people are not harmed by the pollutants that pour from them.
Challenging commuters
Each week is themed. Two years ago it was accessibility, last year safe streets for children, and this year it is "clever commuting", trying to encourage more sustainable transport to work and schools, such as cycling, walking, public transport.
If there is really no alternative, car sharing.
Some of the campaign is simply about trying to make car users think about the alternatives.
The "commuters challenge" is an attempt to make drivers think about just how quick their journey might be by an alternative form of transport.
Ok, but are people really falling for it? And pictures. We need pictures!
Jeez, the left thinks Europeans are just like us. I marvel that European town and city governments can just decide to not let anybody drive for a day. It doesn't sound voluntary to me. Thats exactly the kind of power that Red China exercises over its citizens. What about people who are disabled?
Screw what you have to do today. I wonder how much that day is going to cost European economies.
Jeez, the left thinks Europeans are just like us. I marvel that European town and city governments can just decide to not let anybody drive for a day. It doesn't sound voluntary to me. Thats exactly the kind of power that Red China exercises over its citizens. What about people who are disabled?
Screw what you have to do today. I wonder how much that day is going to cost European economies.
And the difference between this trash and ChiCom and the old Soviet Union is?
Big Brother loves you. - George Orwell, 1984
What about the people who have to go to work?
Not a bad think when public transport is able to be developed in many land masses equal to or smaller than one state in these United States. Been there, didn't have a car. Did everything on bike, streetcar, bus, train, taxi, and foot.
Our economy and the distance involved just in finding a food store, or work, prohibits this type of transportation. I couldn't even begin to carry what I need daily for my job if it had to go in a knapsack.
The tourism industry would suffer greatly, and what is the point and agenda to attempt to change the direction of the transportation industry backwards fifty or a hundred years.
That magic pollution word is not well hidden in the article, and the boob that wrote it wasn't even alive when pollution as I know it was alive and well.
Todays cars shouldn't even have pollution mentioned when discussing them, but to the pollution Nazis nothing will ever be good enough.
It seems sometimes that the powers do not want people to "work". They would just as soon be the source of all needs. After all, people that go to work more than likely go to some big, greedy, poluting, plundering corporation that deserves to be driven out of business anyway.
Great idea to grind the already faltering Euro economies further to a sputtering halt.
The "greens", the PETA types, the "environmentalists", the leftists/socialists/commie fruitcakes, etc., do these people have even a remote clue as to how the world really works?
“Being a (sic) idiot is no box of chocolates.”
Forrest Gump
No, no, no - this is a GREAT thing for the US. Greeenies and the socialist nitwits in Europe need to RAISE the taxes on gasoline even higher so cover the well benefits of the Islamofacists and unemployed as businesses in Europe continue to tank and unemployement there continues to rise.
If Euroweenies don't drive, that means less demand for fuel there - which means more available for the rest of us to consume - which should reduce the price (lower demand - lower the price = basic economics).
Try enforcing a no driving day in the US and many parts of the country would shut down. Out here on the Midwestern tundra driving is the only means of seriously getting around.
I'd be tickled pink to give up my vehicle for a day if I could telecommute to the grocery store, Home Depot, and the duck blind.
Best be careful, I believe it was only a month or so ago that a few french cleaning women got sued by a bus company because their carpool arrangements were deemed to be unfair competition with the bus line.
LOL!
Try hiking across Belgium without food, let alone France and Germany. Do a google search on how big European countries really are.
Notwithstanding petrol prices which you deem high, most European cities, roads and motorways are still clogged with traffic, so anything that might reduce that strain is welcome.
From a European viewpoint, sounds like a perfectly dreadful place to live.
I'll stick to Europe, thanks, and we Europeans get around a lot, whatever petrol costs.
France 211,208 square miles -- "almost the size of Texas" per http://www.visiteurope.com/france.html.
Germany 137,838 square miles -- "slightly smaller than Montana", same source.
Belgium 11,781 square miles -- "the size of Maryland", same source.
Fine . . . now your point again was?
France has 59,000,000 Muslims and 1,000,000 Native French spread over their 211,000 miles.
Texas has 261,914 square miles of land and 6687 square miles of water. Texas is 790 miles long and 660 miles wide. The highest monthly temperature average is 98.5 degrees F . . . the lowest is 21.7 degrees. All with a population of 21,000,000.
Is that enough Googling for you? Believe it or not, some of us Texans even have indoor plumbing now. By the way, to save you time . . . http://www.netstate.com/states/alma/tx_alma.htm . . . was the source of my Texas info.
So . . . Texas has 1/3 the population of France and 27% more territory. Think you'd like to hike it? Come on over . . . give it a try.
I know all that. So your view is that Texas, Montana etc., being comparable in size to European countries, are also "postage-stamp" states you can walk across without taking a packed lunch? Better start early in the morning, eh?
>France has 59,000,000 Muslims and 1,000,000 Native French spread over their 211,000 miles<
Patently false, but I assume this is an attempt at a joke.
>Texas has 261,914 square miles of land and 6687 square miles of water. Texas is 790 miles long and 660 miles wide. The highest monthly temperature average is 98.5 degrees F . . . the lowest is 21.7 degrees. All with a population of 21,000,000.<
Sounds rather nice, but underpopulated. I keep hearing people saying the USA is being flooded with immigrants. Why, you've got plenty of space for them!
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