Reclaiming The City From The Car
The motorcar has undoubtedly been one of mankind’s most useful inventions to date, a fact which is evidenced by our continuing love affair with our four wheeled friends. They represent some of the largest investments we ever make, we spend hours talking about them, we spend small fortunes maintaining them, we cherish them, we love them.
But our affair with the car has blinded us to some of the obvious drawbacks, such as its lack of compatibility with urban life which leaves our cities clogged by semi stationary vehicles with fuming engines and fuming drivers.
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This point has not been lost on Yvonne Joos of Umverkehr, an environmental organization which recently launched a campaign to improve public transportation in Swiss cities, re-addressing the balance between the car and life in the city. Launching the campaign against a backdrop (pictured) demonstrating the difference between a car free, care free city and today’s car dominated environment, Joos told reporters “Traffic is continuously increasing in cities and agglomerations and at some point the amount of car traffic will no longer be supported.”
Explaining that a single tram has the capacity to replace 210 cars on the road, Umverker point out the numerous benefits of a less car dominated city environment. Besides the obvious improvements in air quality and noise pollution, an increased focus on public transport will make cycling safer - many commuters have rejected the bicycle on safety grounds – and result in less stress for those who must use cars and currently face ever increasing traffic chaos.
Obviously Switzerland has one crucial advantage in such campaigns – the fact that a comprehensive and reliable public transport infrastructure already exists. Having experienced the horrors of public transport in other parts of the world I am sorry to say that for many of us the car, and our love affair with it, are set to stay.
Photo courtesy of umverkehR
Additional source: SwissInfo
I don’t think people really have a “love-affair” with their cars. In fact, even Americans are now turning their backs on car culture.
$4 gasoline is helping people realize what a waste of money car ownership can be.
Check out this growing international movement here:
http://carfreeusa.blogspot.com
I have read and submitted your article to autocar-live.com. This is a social site where you can submit and vote for car/auto articles that you like
I’m afraid that I have to agree. The state of public transport here in the UK is such that the large majority are unwilling to use it. We just had our highest paying train fare recorded here. Just over £1000 from somewhere on the south coast up to Scotland.
Put that next to a £49 return plane fare and one can see that the whole system is terribly wrong.