Groningen, Holland Is Automobile-Free

Your foolish statements in the past -- Goningen simply being the most
recent -- have eliminated any credibility on your part. Of course there
will be a car free city in the US. You are constructing it right now in
your back yard from Leggos.

Your concept of car free is to have a few streets blocked from traffic.
Of course they would not exist without massive parking on their
periphery to support the cars. Even your major example Venice has large
parking garages to support the cars of the residents and visitors. They
also have massive use of internal combustion vehicles they just float
them. Gondolas are toys for visitors.

Your only real example Zermatt is a remote tourist town and is internal
combustion free. Although they do have electric cars.

I have looked at your web site and find it completely unconvincing.
Your car free cities are pretty much isolated shopping streets, isolated
islands with no area or population, or very old construction that is
supported by a car using periphery.

Steve Austin wrote:

Prove that I'm wrong when I say European cities are going car-free.
And prove it that no car-free cities are going up in the US, Europe, Mexico,
etc. Prove it. I have proof to the contrary. It's at www.carfree.com.


"Charles Hawtrey" wrote in message
...

"Steve Austin" crawled to the nearest keyboard
and summoned the courage to write:


Can you give me a URL?

Sure. I can give several.

http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.state.gov
http://mryamamoto.50megs.com/
http://www.cnn.com
https://www.quickbase.com/db/6vcfnaqu?a=q&qid=8
http://www.chipcatalog.com/Cat/334.htm
http://www.lemonde.fr
http://web.pdx.edu/~psu14927/zolo.html
http://www.slack.com
http://www.arcx.com/sites/GsmFeatures.htm
http://www.subgenius.com
http://www.zippythepinhead.com
http://www.geocities.com/magloaf/
http://www.bassplayer.com/
http://www.residents.com/
http://www.geocities.com/islendingaf..._bjornson.html
http://www.mipmip.dsl.pipex.com/tidbits/grauniad.shtml
http://members.aol.com/essobmcc/brak...z/commercl.htm
http://www.planetproctor.com/
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast15jun_2.htm
http://prepaidgsm.tk/
http://users.viawest.net/~keirsey/difference.html
http://www.bsharp.org/physics/stuff/shotput.html
http://www.creditunions.com/investme...042803-cfo.asp
http://www.executiveplanet.com/
http://casemods.pointofnoreturn.org/...rial-full.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/08/0....shtml?tid=185
http://www.psycheducation.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwt...t_war_01.shtml
http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/002184.html
http://www.btinternet.com/~simon.mason/page14.html
http://www.jiggscasey.com/quotes/
http://tangentsoft.net/audio/ppa/bb/theory.html
http://www.geocities.com/islendingaf..._bjornson.html
(wait... I did that one already)
http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html
http://home.computer.net/~pritch/shortwav.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm
http://hippercritical.typepad.com/hi...ench_are_.html
(actual European content in the above!)
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip...18/jiview.html
http://quotes.prolix.nu/Humor/
http://www.cwru.edu/groups/cpe/issues/winter2000.pdf
http://www.quotegarden.com/truth.html
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/course/unix/scriptvari.html
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/USB_20Power_20Supply
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~jbdavey/pubs/
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Fenn7.html
http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/contem/gaulle.htm
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP_car.html
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/g0xan/robots/chargers.htm


HTH. HAND.



--
Introverts are not impressed by personality. Having none
ourselves, except the one we drag out on State Occasions,
we do not put any value on yours. Please don't be cute,
peppy, or motivating. Instead, be polite, know your stuff,
get to the point, leave written material and invite a
response at a later date.

Frank F. Matthews wrote:
I have looked at your web site and find it completely unconvincing.
Your car free cities are pretty much isolated shopping streets, isolated
islands with no area or population, or very old construction that is
supported by a car using periphery.

The closest thing to a real car-free city I've seen is Saigon. Millions of
people and in many parts of town you'll only see one car for every 500
mopeds. Cars are so slow there that they're only used by people for whom the
prestige value is worth the wait.

Which points to the eventual reason why many cities will probably have to do
without cars: In places with truly high population density, the cars just
won't fit. Saigon's streets are completely saturated already with vehicles
that are nimbler and 1/8 the size of cars. Replace them and you'll have
permanent and total gridlock.

Anyone who's interested, I have a quick video of Saigon traffic taken with
my digital camera that I can email you if you can handle large attachments
(About 4M, as I recall). You'll see why cars won't work there.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

Still funny.


"Steve Austin" wrote in message
...
Groningen, Holland is automobile-free. It's a bicycle and
pedestrian-only city.

"Chris Elam" wrote in message news:Tr8oc.27492$xw3.1871080@attbi_s04...
Still funny.
But, Chris, Steve Austin is a man barely alive! (And I've always
wondered how he escaped massive TBI if he needed to have an eye
replaced.)

"Steve Austin"
tried his best to come across as the Don Saklad of transportation...

Nancy

Miguel Cruz wrote in message ...
The closest thing to a real car-free city I've seen is Saigon. Millions of
people and in many parts of town you'll only see one car for every 500
mopeds. Cars are so slow there that they're only used by people for whom the
prestige value is worth the wait.

Which points to the eventual reason why many cities will probably have to do
without cars: In places with truly high population density, the cars just
won't fit. Saigon's streets are completely saturated already with vehicles
that are nimbler and 1/8 the size of cars. Replace them and you'll have
permanent and total gridlock.

Anyone who's interested, I have a quick video of Saigon traffic taken with
my digital camera that I can email you if you can handle large attachments
(About 4M, as I recall). You'll see why cars won't work there.

miguel


I go to Saigon once or twice a year and each time I can't fail notice
the seemingly huge increase in the number of private four-wheeled
vehicles in the city.

Cars will come to Saigon just as they did everywhere else --
eventually. The only limiting factor is cost. After all, Vietnamese
are only in their first generation of mass motorcycle ownership.

What remains to be seen is how the planners react. Will they sweep
away the town for highways -- as they did in Jakarta, to its detriment
-- or try to construct something less radical.

George W. Russell
Hanoi

George W. Russell extrapolated from data available...




I go to Saigon once or twice a year and each time I can't fail notice
the seemingly huge increase in the number of private four-wheeled
vehicles in the city.


I suspect that the return of cars and trucks to Saigon has more to do with
money than with current congestion. A look at old photos of NYC actually
shows many streets, pre-auto, as more congested than they are today, jammed
by every sort of horse-drawn conveyance (and think of the knee deep
manure). Not that long ago, HongKong had few private autos in evidence.

I don't think Castro will live long enough to make Havana car free and care
free. After all, there is a limit to how long even the most skilled
virtuoso mechanic in the city can keep a '54 DeSoto used daily for half a
century on the road.



Cars will come to Saigon just as they did everywhere else --
eventually. The only limiting factor is cost. After all, Vietnamese
are only in their first generation of mass motorcycle ownership.

"Return", not "come". There were a number of them around for a decade or
so....(especially the black Cadillacs of Cholon).



What remains to be seen is how the planners react. Will they sweep
away the town for highways -- as they did in Jakarta, to its detriment
-- or try to construct something less radical.

No, like planners everywhere, they'll spend gadzillions building a
freeway/grand boulevard to the airport.

TMO

"Olivers" schreef in bericht
...
..

I don't think Castro will live long enough to make Havana car free and
care
free. After all, there is a limit to how long even the most skilled
virtuoso mechanic in the city can keep a '54 DeSoto used daily for half a
century on the road.

I drove a brand new Hyundai that I rented in Cuba last year in Havana. Less
than 50% of the cars in Cuba are "old Americans".

Sjoerd

Sjoerd extrapolated from data available...


"Olivers" schreef in bericht
...
.

I don't think Castro will live long enough to make Havana car free
and
care
free. After all, there is a limit to how long even the most skilled
virtuoso mechanic in the city can keep a '54 DeSoto used daily for
half a century on the road.

I drove a brand new Hyundai that I rented in Cuba last year in Havana.
Less than 50% of the cars in Cuba are "old Americans".

Can you compare that with anywhere else in the world? While less than 50%
of the cars in havana are "Old American", the other side of that same coin
is, unlike any other city outside of Cuba, almost half of the cars are at
least 44 years old and from the US. I'm sure that car rental agencies can
afford new Hyundais. How many Cubans can afford new Hyundais?

While we might argue constantly over the state of Cuban economy and the
financial outlook for Cubans, the bottom line is that as long as Fidel
Castro or a government drawn from successors who emulate his policies
remains in place, Cuba's economy and Cubans will lag behind the country's
economic potential (punished as it were for the sins of its masters, an
undeserved fate for most Cubans, and one not easily avoided).

One posting here claimed recently Cuba and Cubans were doing quite well
(well, under the circumstances). Can you imagine how well the economy and
the lives of Cubans would be, especially given the natural advantages of
geography and skills, had they had been able to lose Castro y amigos, even
keeping a nice classic form of socialism without wholesale expropriation.
After all, state-owned sugar cane plantations don't seem to be any more
efficient than oligarch-owned sugar cane plantations, and half a dozen
countries could have provided examples of both successes and failures in
reforming agriculture and landownership. Even if one applies the old
motto, "So far from God, so close to the US," used for another NAmerican
nation, Cuba's economy would have certainly moved farther than it has,
robber barons in retrospect turning out to be not much more expensive than
bureaucrats and fewer in number.

One might claim that Cuba would have profiterd greatly as an Eastern
gamblers' haven, removingg all need for Atlantic City or Bahamas casinos.
But then we'd be comparing the moral staure of Meyer Lansky as compared to
Donald Trump.

TMO

"Olivers" schreef in bericht
...

While we might argue constantly over the state of Cuban economy and the
financial outlook for Cubans, the bottom line is that as long as Fidel
Castro or a government drawn from successors who emulate his policies
remains in place, Cuba's economy and Cubans will lag behind the country's
economic potential (punished as it were for the sins of its masters, an
undeserved fate for most Cubans, and one not easily avoided).

Agreed.


One posting here claimed recently Cuba and Cubans were doing quite well
(well, under the circumstances).

One should not forget that the Cubans enjoy the best healthcare in Latin
America, live longer on average than almost all other people in the Western
Hemisphere, and are well educated. Not everything is bad in Cuba.


Can you imagine how well the economy and
the lives of Cubans would be, especially given the natural advantages of
geography and skills, had they had been able to lose Castro y amigos,

About as good as Haiti or the Dominican Republic perhaps?

Sjoerd

Following up to Frank F. Matthews

You are constructing it right now in
your back yard from Leggos.

Isn't that in Greece?
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
Wasdale-Lake district-Thames path-London "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap