Car Culture

Those of you who are sick of reading about DOT's plan for Park Slope's 9th Street and the small but well-organized group of car-owning residents who are opposed to it, will be pleased to know that whole affair may soon be resolved.

The Financial Times reports that China's cities will participate in this year's World Car Free Day. These actions have a measureable effect. A recent study found that when Beijing ordered 800,000 cars off the roads for three days last year, local nitrogen oxide air pollution fell by 40 per cent.

In this month's issue of the Boston Phoenix, a 20 page supplement called the Bicycle Bible offers advice on bicycle safety and how to stay alive on the streets of Boston. Although there is a nice piece on Boston's Livable Streets Alliance, the paper may have done more harm than good. With subtitles like "Urban Bikers Need to be Careful, Prepared, and Paranoid" and "Biking on the Defensive," bike commuting is presented as a fringe activity for people with an urban death wish.

 Beer good, ethanol bad 

First off, please accept my apologies for continuing to torture you with the intensely parochial drama taking place on Park Slope's 9th Street. I justify all of this coverage by imagining that this story may be useful for advocates working towards Livable Streets goals in other neighborhoods.

 Janette Sadik-Khan has one week to go before taking over as the city's new transportation commissioner. Not surprisingly, a public appearance Friday found her well prepared to push Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC congestion pricing program.

So this morning I read, and then linked from Streetsblog, a story about how the mythologized "new car smell" is actually caused by a mixture of potentially carcinogenic toxins. A short while later the ad pictured above showed up at the bottom of an incoming e-mail.

Sources say that first-term Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams has delivered a lengthy letter to Department of Transportation Acting Commissioner Judith Bergtraum expressing opposition to DOT’s 9th Street traffic safety and bike lane plan. Though the Senator, a former cop, has no urban planning or traffic engineering background, he questions DOT’s assertion that its plan … Continued