Auto-Free New York!

	AUTO-FREE NEW YORK!
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WHAT IS AUTO-FREE NY? A movement aimed at exploring and achieving the upper limit of "devehicularization" of our nation's largest city. Get cars out of our parks. Curb the reckless motorists who dominate our streets. Increase pedestrian space and safety. Invest in new transit options and expansion and make bicycling better. A livable city is possible! • NEXT MEETING: June 23rd Auto-Free NY has been holding FREE monthly meetings, featuring a wide variety of guest speakers, since its founding in February, 1989. Usually held in lower Manhattan, they are open to the public, and no reservations are needed. • The Livable City Transport Plan is an affordable, comprehensive vision of our city, designed to be achievable in just one four-year mayoral term. Using innovations now common in more sophisticated and democratically run cities here and abroad, this plan would raise New Yorkers' quality of life through better functioning public transit, a noticeable reduction in car use and much more auto-free space in the core of NYC, the most densely populated city in the nation. As always, we look forward to your thoughtful review and comments. CURRENT EVENTS: • The City's plaNYC 2030 • Lower Manhattan • Light Rail in NYC • Regional Rail Working Group FEATURES: • Glossary • AUTOMOBILE HORROR! • 42nd St. Trolleys - Recent History • What's so Great about Streetcars? • Light Rail in the Lincoln Tunnel! • New York Streetcar News Index • East River Bridges • Rockaway Beach Line (Qns) • Other Voices • New Orleans Streetcars post-Katrina • Life's a Beach for Paris Mayor • Berlin: Transport Politics • How to Join/Donate • Visit These Links • Recent Books • The Five-Minute Activist • Previous "Letters from George" • Remembering Steve Dobrow • Earth Day, April 2005 • Brooklyn's Fulton Mall (web pgs. under construction) CONTACT US! Auto-Free NY operates under the aegis of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, Inc. (IRUM), a not-for-profit organization with 501(c)(3) status. Note: this website is best viewed with Text Size set to "Smaller" or "Medium." If Car Names Were Honest: Audi Saudi PR Chevy Fistfight Chrysler Criminal Dodge Tumor Ford Poluta XS GMC Denial Honda Discord Hyundai Enslava Lexus Segregator Lincoln Alienator Mercury Dioxin Saab Flatus Saturn UrFaddas Scion Boxian Smeli-Pootr Subaru Deforester Toyota Runovia VW Smoggia	*Letter from George* June 1, 2009 Trucks in the City: Can Rail Freight Cut the Stampede of Diesel-Belching Monsters? Dear Friends of Auto-Free New York: Some of the noisiest and most polluting vehicles in our neighborhoods are giant trucks. Almost completely unregulated, spewing diesel fumes, blaring interstate airhorns at all hours, often with unsafe equipment or poorly trained drivers, these huge vehicles substantially lower our quality of life, even as some of the trucks deliver essentials and struggle to remove the prodigious amounts of waste New Yorkers produce. Rail freight is yet another transportation area where NYC lags decades behind other more sophisticated cities. Putting freight, garbage, imports and mail on rails rather than trucks has the potential to remove a substantial number of these harsh vehicles from our streets. Come to our June AFNY meeting to hear two experts bring us up to date on developments here. Sincerely, George Haikalis, Chair P.S. Please also attend the monthly Regional Rail Working Group meetings. This group showcases the efforts of individuals from a variety of transit advocacy groups to awaken our region's sleeping giant, its commuter rail system. Our next meeting, on Wednesday June 24, 2009, will be at our normal location on Washington Street, two blocks below the World Trade Center site. P.P.S. The marvelous Vision 42 website lays out the case for restoring light rail to 42nd Street (and for a historical perspective, we lay out four dramatic years of late '90's newsclips about the previous trolley proposal). Finally, with more than 800 million cars bearing down on our planet, and multi-national corporations buying up governments in order to more easily double that number, it's time to get active! The organization Carbusters hosts a World Car-Free Day every year. WISHING TRAFFIC AWAY IS NOT EFFECTIVE This car-hugger illustration appeared in the New York Times, which has a longstanding grudge against doing serious transit journalism.	The NY Times Vaporizes the Metro Section More Books Added to our Books Page Planet-Hating Congressman Dingell Forced Out of House Post Upcoming Auto-Free NY Meetings* for 2009: Tuesday, June 23, 6-8pm Advancing Rail Freight for a Uniquely Truck-Dependent City Benjamin Miller, Senior Fellow, CUNY Institute for Urban Systems; and John McHugh, Counsel, East of Hudson Rail Freight Task Force Tuesday, July 28, 6-8pm Topic to be Announced Special Guest to be announced * DIRECTIONS: All meetings (except where noted] are at 104 Washington Street (just north of Rector Street) in lower Manhattan, in the NYPD Downtown Center's ground floor community room, generously provided by the Alliance for Downtown New York. Another SUV smashed by its reckless driver: The bulk of these top-heavy, inadequately braked vehicles makes their driver feel invulnerable, and so they drive worse, and crash more. Big business, attuned to wasteful and overdesigned products in principle, embraced SUVs as prime subjects over the past ten years for one of the most intensive marketing and indoctrination campaigns in US car company history. But eventually American price supports for lower cost gasoline are going to end, while the realities of declining world oil production and increasing political, military and climate chaos will grow more stark. Once the true costs of our national gasoline orgy start being paid by US motorists themselves rather than everyone else, these gas guzzling giants will quickly end up more worthless junk - and we will get the quality public transportation -- and the sustainable economy -- we deserve. ROME, Oct. 2004: A modern trolley waits quietly on the Via Arenula, at the terminus of the popular #8 Argentina line, about 3 blocks south of the Pantheon. Behind the trolley can be seen the state-funded Teatro Argentina. Sophisticated cities the world over are acting now to dramatically expand transit and reduce automobile use, while NYC languishes in a smog of cars, public relations and political decadence. AFNY's web manager stands in foreground. Photo: Wayne Fields. Be a patriot - use mass transit! Auto-Free New York . . . more than just bollards and paintstripes
Auto-Free New York George Haikalis, Chairman \| One Washington Sq. Village, #5D, NYC 10012 \| Phone: (212) 475-3394 \| geohaikalis@juno.com © Copyright 2009, 2008. All rights reserved. Auto-Free New York. This page last updated May 30, 2009.