World Car Free Days: week of September 22nd, yearly

Please see the Car Buster's Magazine Issue 8, Call to Action: World Car Free Day.

In the past, I have ignored these things somewhat since in the US, they often seem an impossibility. However, even in the US, there are intermediate approaches, such as encouraging people to not use their cars that day. I used to think of it only in terms of shutting down the whole city or part of it to cars, which has been done in some places.

So I came across the link to the International Car Free Day Campaign on the google directory for Car Free Lifestyles.

Now that site seems to be run primarily for the European Mobility Week campaign.

Also on the carfree lifestyle page is a link to World Car-Free Days Collaborative, which is part of a massive site, that I find somewhat intimidating. I read on there somewhere that they started out with a "car free cities" focus and then moved to something "more positive."

I've not met the guy / people behind the site... Erik Britton or more simply, here.

On that carfree days site is a history of carfree days! (many bad links though)

And gives me a broader perspective on the movement... After all, I was thinking of the lineage as being something like Alliance for a Paving Moratorium -> Randy -> Carbusters -> US Carfree City & World Carfree Network... But I never really paid attention to the fact that carbusters started... Well no, I wasn't that far off, "Car Busters started out at the first Towards Carfree Cities conference (Lyon, France, 1997)."

Some of the big names (Todd Litman, for one) are posting on the ecoplan's yahoo group, The new mobility world transport forum, and this is a list I've not paid attention to until now. Well.. it looks like he's pro-car, in the form of car sharing? Coming from someone who has been involved in this for so long, the reasons for his viewpoint are worth considering (I don't know what they are yet).

If you go to Britton's main site World Transport Policy and Practice (currently redirecting here, as does newmobility.org), there is a newsletter that just started in May and you can email him to get on it, it looks like. In fact, it is dated today!

Now, the ecoplan history says: September 1991, New York. First International Conference on Auto-Free Cities, organized by Transportation Alternatives.

What was that carfreedays site again?

It looks like there has even been an earth car free day for earth day...

And ... he'll probably clean this up sometime, but right now it has some bios of partners.

Here's Eric Britton's world carfree day announcement listserve.

At long last, the link to the next carfree day event takes us to the seattle carfree group, and a very cool publication that has bios of carfree and nearly carfree people, "Your guide to going carfree." Almost makes me wish I was in Seattle.

They also have a vonnegut quote from a mag I'd forgotten the name of but which had an other memorable vonnegut essay. It is very cool that they have their full contents online.

Thanks for your patience with this ramble. I now understand the erik britton projects & carfreeday a bit more...