Much of my environmental justice activism is devoted to transportation issues. The way we use automobiles and SUVs, particularly in the United States, is the leading source of damage to the environment. The cultural and social justice impacts are just as profoundly damaging. Accordingly, I'm working on carfree transportation alternatives, which are better for the earth and better for human beings.

Bicycle/rail intermodal solutions are the most ecologically benign available, and they work well in many parts of the world. This old engraving shows one such solution at work in the United States.

I have other web pages devoted entirely to Bicycles and to the Critical Mass movement. This page is for the rest of my transportation justice links.

Transportation Infrastructure
-=-= Open Directory's Carfree Page =-=- Bay Area: Alliance for Golden Gate Park (c. 2002) San Francisco Cityscape This View of Density (from the San Francisco League of Conservation Voters) Trees Not Cars Transportation And Land Use Coalition Transportation for a Livable City New York: Carfree Bedford Neighborhood Open Space Coalition Worldwide: Car Busters Carfree Database (based on U.S. Census data) CarFree France carfree.com & Carfree Times Environmental Justice & Transportation International Making Cities Livable Less Traffic Planetizen Riverfront for People (Portland) Sierra Club: Stopping Sprawl Sprawl Kills Victoria Transport Policy Institute		Most people drive cars because the transportation infrastructure discourages other modes. This is the main thing that needs to be fixed to get us out of our current mess. The public transit situation in the San Francisco Bay Area is an expensive mess, as was explained very well by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in their November 5, 1997 issue. One story, Behind the BART Behemoth, describes the history of some of the region's transit planning and spending. Another story, Tunnel Vision, describes the situation as it is currently, documenting the race and class environmental justice issues involved. It's best to put this into perspective, though: Even our messiest and most expensive transit system pales in comparison to the mess and expense that goes into building the region's roads and highways.
On Foot
Bay Area: Bay Peds (Archives) Ped Safe (Archives) Reclaim the Streets in Berkeley and San Francisco Walk San Francisco Walk San Jose New York: Reclaim the Streets in New York City (Archives) Right Of Way Take a Walk, New York! Worldwide: Feet First (Puget Sound) Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center Image Library Reclaim the Streets in London and Washington, DC		Pedestrians set the pace for livable communities. Alas, too many communities are downright deadly for pedestrians. These links cover advocacy groups trying to make things safer for pedestrians, and activists reclaiming public space for our feet.
On Rails
Bay Area: 511.org (formerly transitinfo.org) Caltrain & Bike Car Status Green Caltrain Market Street Railway Modern Transit Society Transbay Terminal et al New York: New York City Transit Straphangers Campaign New York City Subway System Map (in ASCII!) Worldwide: Light Rail Now! National Association of Railroad Passengers PRT is a Joke!		Rails are the best way to implement ground transit. They're more energy-efficient than other modes (and thus the most economic in the long run), have a more comfortable ride, and encourage better land use and development. There are, of course, poorly-implemented and -maintained rail systems that lack some of these virtues, but even then the best solution tends to be better-implemented and -maintained rail.
On Roads
Crash Bonsai Crashes Aren't Accidents Les Dégonflés Human-Powered Bus PlateWire "Thank You for Financing Global Terror" Stickers		I don't like cars very much. Don't even get me started about SUVs.
"My Other Vehicle Is My Mind"
Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford City Routes, City Rights by the Conservation Law Foundation Design for the Real World [Photo] and The Green Imperative by Victor Papanek Energy and Equity and Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich Environmental Justice & Transportation: A Citizen's Handbook by Shannon Cairns, Jessica Greig, and Martin Wachs Green Urbanism: Learing from European Cities by Timothy Beatley Just Transportation and Sprawl City by Robert Bullard et al Livable Streets by Donald Appleyard The Regional City by Peter Calthorpe		In addition to these books, you can find periodicals dedicated to these issues on my Print web page.
=> Dialogue <=
·· ba.transportation  (Archive) ·· Usenet newsgroup for discussing transportation issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sadly, it's besieged with flaming, cross-posting anti-transit loons (anti-foamites, if you will.) ·· bikes-n-transit ·· Bikes 'n' transit email list. ·· caltrain-bikes ·· Bikes on Caltrain email list. A specific bikes-n-transit program in the San Francisco Bay Area. ·· CarFree ·· An email list for those of us living free of cars. (Alas, somewhat infested by guilt-ridden motorists stressing out about others' carfreedom.) ·· carfree_cities ·· An email list dedicated to "solving the problem of the urban automobile."		If you're looking for stuff written by me, most of it is somewhere on these email lists and newsgroups. Sorry about that.

A True Story

I was in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, to attend a wedding. On the day of the wedding, I noticed that my good shoes had gotten a bit shabby, and decided it was time for a new pair. There was a shopping mall two miles away. A short walk, or so I thought.

I'd walked about a mile when a police car pulled up. The officer made the inevitable observation that I wasn't "from around here," and asked where I was from. When I answered, "San Francisco," he said, "You'd better get in the car. We need to check you out and make sure you're not a serial killer."

A strange notion. It seems to me that pedestrians would be especially unlikely to engage in serial killing. Unlike motorists, we don't have roomy trunks to store dead bodies and implements of destruction in. I decided not to share this observation with the officer, for I was busy explaining that my driver's license had expired because I'd gone auto-free a few years back. Very suspicious behavior indeed, I guess, because he did a computer search of every lawbreaking Dyer in the area, asking me whether I knew any of them (I didn't).

Eventually he drove me to the town limits and dropped me off, warning me to take a cab back. Gotta support the fossil fuel industry one way or another when you're in Awl Country, y'know? Fortunately, this actually brought me closer to the mall, where I picked up my shoes and miraculously caught one of the very infrequent buses back to where I was staying -- in the nick of time to catch the wedding

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