In a 2 week experiment to monitor effects on air pollution, China will ban the use of 1 million cars for 2 weeks, in hopes if they do the same during the Olympic games, they will have 2 weeks of cleaner air for athletes.

Can you imagine this ever happening in a U.S. city?

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/237...php?cl=3595512

 

The best way to get around in a downtown area is by bike. Even if you can easily drive downtown, parking downtown is a totally different story!

I recently found this out when one of my aunts was staying in downtown Louisville for a conference. I live downtown and bike to anything nearby. But she was too out of shape to walk or bike, so we had to $2 to go anywhere.

 

Paris, Rome, London and other European cities are doing a similar move. They make it outrageously expensive to drive downtown or certain areas.

Mexico city has -for many years now- banned vehicle driving one day a week in the whole city. If the last digit of your plate ends in 0,1 you can't drive on Monday. 2,3 you can't drive on Tuesday, and so on.

What do all those cities have in common? Two things; a comprehensive mass-transit system, and lanes and parking areas for bikes and/or skates. It also helps that these cities are far more compact, since people do not flee to the suburbs (and now exurbs) as much.

With the exception of NYC, most US cities do not have an infrastructure or layout to ban automobiles alright.

 

um . . . it also helps to be running a totalitarian state. European cities don't so much *ban* cars as tax them out of existence. China's method is an obvious contrast.

and in terms of bicycles: China's been the bicycle capital since wwII -- until the last ten years, that's how *everyone* has gotten around. (And this is well documented in bicycling magazines, including reviews of the Chinese-built bikes.) The surge in cars there is very new, and thus a ban will be a bit easier to enforce -- most people already have bikes to hop back onto.

--doug

 

Fully agree with your opinion.

As a matter of fact, when I visited Taiwan in the late '80s, I mentioned to my Taiwanese hosts that I did'nt expect Taipei's infamous car-induced pollution and congestion, that I had expected to see more bicycles.
To which one of the hosts replied with a disdainful sneer: "Bicycles? Those are ONLY for the mainland!"

 

I'm not so sure China will continue to qualify as the Bike Capital. Yes, it was when I was there in the 80's but when I was in Beijing a few years ago, bikes were much less prominent. Most remarkable was Shanghai a few years ago where it seemed the traffic in the much of the city was just too dangerous for bikes. I only saw bikes on the side streets and not a huge number.