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: October 28th 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 aegus 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* October 1, 2008 "Drill-Baby-Drill" vs. "Public Transportation"? Dear Friends of Auto-Free New York: Why isn't better public transportation a key issue in the Presidential campaign this year? Americans now face multiple serious crises related to the car. Soaring gasoline prices, worsening climate change, chronic traffic congestion, peak oil, the meltdown of the American airline industry, and the political chaos caused by American drivers giving terror-sanctioning states abroad huge amounts of oil money, have led even the most rabidly car-hugging suburbanite motorists to start looking at what if any transportation alternatives they might have. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns, in speeches, debates and advertising, have studiously avoided mentioning the words, "public transportation." Of course, the Republicans are much worse on energy issues in general. The whole world was sobered last August on witnessing an arena full of Republicans chanting "Drill-Baby-Drill" at their convention. Meanwhile, Democratic VP candidate Senator Joe Biden's mode of travel home each night after a session in Congress -- he uses Amtrak -- has gained some note. But a discussion on Federal support for better urban, regional and intercity public transportation, including Amtrak, seems to be lost in the smog of talk on alternative-fueled cars or subsidies -- yet more rescue cash -- for Detroit carmaker executives. The time might never be better to have an actual dialogue with the American people about public transportation. America's unsustainable yet corporate-planned overdependence on motor vehicles for passenger and freight transportation is destroying our environment and our economy before our eyes. Find out what the candidates want the Federal government to do to move us toward a more sustainable country -- and planet. Join us at our next Auto-Free New York meeting this October, as Jeffrey Gold, Vice President of IRUM, hosts an open forum. Local representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns have been asked to present their views. 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. Next meeting: Wednesday, October 29, 2008. 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 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 Summer 2008: AFNY Chair George Haikalis, above, enjoys a few moments of carfree Park Avenue at Grand Central. The viaduct is normally overrun with gas-guzzlers careening around the hairpin turns, but for three Saturdays in August, Mayor Bloomberg gave us a little sample of what NYC might be like without cars. Promptly at 1pm, car chaos was restored. For the future, an auto-free Madison Avenue -- not just for a few hours on three early Saturday mornings but all the time -- would really be great, maybe throwing in a light rail line as well. Oh well, all journeys begin with a first step. 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 ANOTHER MOTORIST BURNED TO DEATH IN QUEENS CRASH "It's Getting Hard Out Here for a Global Warming Denier" Upcoming Auto-Free NY Meetings for 2008: Tuesday, October 28, 6-8pm Open Forum on Key Transportation Issues *Moderated by Jeffrey Gold, Vice-President, Institute for Rational Urban Mobility.* Tuesday, November 25, 6-8pm 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. By subway: take either the R or W train or the 1 train, to Rector Street, or the 4 or 5 train to Wall Street. Our meetings are always FREE and open to the public. 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 is the state-funded Teatro Argentina. Sophisticated cities the world over are acting now on dramatically better transit and genuine auto reduction, while NYC, the laughingstock of urban planners worldwide, continues hiding its car craze behind slick public relations, backwards bureacracies, "baby steps" of progress, "public" authorities well-insulated from the public, and the bald-faced buying off of critics. 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 2008, 2007. All rights reserved. Auto-Free New York. This page last updated October 15, 2008.