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Carfree Cities.
Crawford, J.H. 2000. Utrecht Netherlands: International Books. pp. 329. (Book)
Why do we idolize automobiles? Just when we begin to
think that society’s infrastructure could not possibly do without cars,
Carfree Cities blends both vision and practical lifestyle to convince
you that a car-free world is extremely feasible even if you don’t live
in Portland, a city known for its fondness of bikes and light rail. Both
straightforward thinking and candid writing style blend to make this
book an enjoyable and informative piece on transportation systems and
how they affect Quality of Life.
Some of Crawford’s arguments against cars are: travel
time, land use, initial cost of a car, maintenance, and insurance costs.
He folds in the need for vehicle space on roads, which is 20 times
greater than that used by light rail, not including the space required
for parking. Externalized costs, accidental death and injury, harassment
of children and bicyclists, road maintenance costs by the public, air
pollution, climate change, and the ever-important deterioration of
human-scale public places are additional factors that go unrecognized as
elements that support cars as items of deterioration instead of
appreciation.
If, at the end of this book, you are unconvinced that
a carfree city can exist on a scale the size of say, Los Angeles,
Crawford reminds us that Tokyo, with 27 million inhabitants,
demonstrates a public transportation plan that has worked well. Crawford
finishes with a big picture perspective, taking cities that have a good
public transit infrastructure and giving preliminary plans for removing
cars from them, e.g., Manhattan, New York, Lyon, and Amsterdam. Become
inspired.
Cost-Effective
Hybrids. Kerr, A. 2006. Home Power. 113:66-71. (Magazine article)
Kerr shows us how to use the Excel software
spreadsheet function to make an informed decision about buying a hybrid
car. Buying a car is usually not viewed as an investment, because of its
depreciation. But he argues that the marginally greater cost of a hybrid
is a little different due to reduced operating costs. Special tax
breaks, subsidies, expected number of miles per year, fuel cost, fuel
economy, and oil change savings go into his equation to direct you to an
informed investment answer. Kerr’s analysis results in an out-of-pocket
marginal expenditure of $6,490 and 3.1 years to pay back the investment.
One caveat: he concludes his article with what he calls a
thought-provoking line: “the more you drive, the more you save”. Hmmm,
not sounding very sustainable. | |
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