A ramble on car free day

national | environment | opinion/analysis Wednesday September 22, 2004 01:41 by paulc

Critical Mass Cork and Dublin see events for details. A report with video and photos of last months (monthly) critical mass.

Reclaiming the Hyperlink

I'm no expert but here some things I've come across please correct me if I'm wrong.

Critical mass is the spontaneous meeting of cyclists in a car clogged cities which started in San Francisco in 92 and now occurs on the last friday of every month in hundreds of cities across the world. The world car free day idea has been adopted by officialdom but there are many ways and levels at which you can participate.

Minister Cullen yesterday said it was up to the public to make it a car free day, yet when some people take that on board they get harassed!

A recent development has the Thursday Project which suggest having a car free day on a Thursday, any Thursday?, every Thursday? to show what can be done.

The Galway Cycling campaign have highlighted questions over cycle lanes, which simply encourage the idea the cyclist are second class citizens on the road, is red paint markings on the road enough?

The government although it claims to be participating in Car Free Day, seems not to have read the memo, Car _Free_ Day, which means that on this day significant areas of city streets should be closed to cars. The government should already be doing more to facilitate a car-free world every day of the year and not just a token effort on this day. Perhaps there area some people at Ireland's offical body for organising Sustainable Energy Ireland and councils across the country interested in reducing car dependancy but there unwilling to fully challenge the powers that be. Dublin has reduced its participation in recents years and moved to the suburban areas. Some roads are closing in cities like Cork and Galway but im unfamiliar to the extent of these areas. The free tickets on buses and trains for this day only go to highlight the lack of long term changes they are willing to make. The walking bus project for school children is also a good idea but then again children can't vote.

I believe that there are several disused railways lines including one running along side the proposed road to be rebuilt in the Tara Skryne valley, you would think they would redevelop this to take the stress off the road first.

The ministers will I'm sure congratulate themselves for progress on public transport initiatives such as the LUAS which (flawed and disconnected as they are) are welcome, but we are still decades behind in the struggle to make Dublin a liveable city for people and not just an economy.

As the DCC has rightly pointed out the National "Safety" council is a farce, "the NSC contains no cyclist, pedestrian or public transport user representative and only the motoring industry lobby groups are represented by specific appointees to the NSC board". And indeed is chaired by a insurance underwriter which says it all.

Any idea of a carbon tax has been axed because the government thinks it can manage the percentages, and somehow avoid large fines for not implementing EU directives on environment.

An increasing number of cities have become completely car free, it can happen, for some reason people think Dublin/Ireland is some sort of special exception it's not. A Wiki of Car free places across the globe. Here is a proposal for a car free district in Cherrywood.

We have cycle lobbies and rail lobbies but in the US there are walking lobbies who have to campaign to get pedestrian access to urban areas let alone the countryside.

Critical mass is about bringing a little fun and chaos to the streets and is inspired by the surrealist ideas of old and continued by such groups as the Space Hi-Jackers.

There have been increasing problems of a unnecessary heavy police presence and action at critical mass rides particularily in North America. Here's a report from Montreal and we had our own excessive presence last year.

Info on Reclaim the streets and previous Car free day parties at RTS-Dublin and also many reports and support of previous rts-type events at Workers Solidarity Movement website. World Car Free Network Car Busters