Auto-Free New York!

	AUTO-FREE NEW YORK!
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WHAT IS AUTO-FREE NY? A movement aimed at exploring and achieving the upper limit of "devehicularization" of our nation's largest city. Get cars out of our parks. Curb the reckless motorists who dominate our streets. Increase pedestrian space and safety. Invest in new transit options and expansion and make bicycling better. A livable city is possible! • NEXT MEETING: July 22nd Auto-Free NY has been holding FREE monthly meetings, featuring a wide variety of guest speakers, since its founding in February, 1989. Usually held in lower Manhattan, they are open to the public, and no reservations are needed. • The Livable City Transport Plan is an affordable, comprehensive vision of our city, designed to be achievable in just one four-year mayoral term. Using innovations now common in more sophisticated and democratically run cities here and abroad, this plan would raise New Yorkers' quality of life through better functioning public transit, a noticeable reduction in car use and much more auto-free space in the core of NYC, the most densely populated city in the nation. As always, we look forward to your thoughtful review and comments. CURRENT EVENTS: • The City's plaNYC 2030 • Lower Manhattan • Light Rail in NYC • Regional Rail Working Group FEATURES: • Glossary • AUTOMOBILE HORROR! • 42nd St. Trolleys - Recent History • What's so Great about Streetcars? • Light Rail in the Lincoln Tunnel! • New York Streetcar News Index • East River Bridges • Rockaway Beach Line (Qns) • Other Voices • New Orleans Streetcars post-Katrina • Life's a Beach for Paris Mayor • Berlin: Transport Politics • How to Join/Donate • Visit These Links • Recent Books • The Five-Minute Activist • Previous "Letters from George" • Remembering Steve Dobrow • Earth Day, April 2005 • Brooklyn's Fulton Mall (web pgs. under construction) CONTACT US! Auto-Free NY operates under the aegus of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, Inc. (IRUM), a not-for-profit organization with 501(c)(3) status. Note: this website is best viewed with Text Size set to "Smaller" or "Medium." If Car Names Were Honest: Audi Saudi PR Chevy Fistfight Chrysler Criminal Dodge Tumor Ford Poluta XS GMC Denial Honda Discord Hyundai Enslava Lexus Segregator Lincoln Alienator Mercury Dioxin Saab Flatus Saturn UrFaddas Scion Boxian Smeli-Pootr Subaru Deforester Toyota Runovia VW Smoggia	*Letter from George* July 1, 2008 Summer Walking Tour #1: Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards -- Is the Sky the Limit? Dear Friends of Auto-Free New York: Join us this summer for this year's popular walking tours and see for yourself how NYC can benefit from auto-free advancements in more sophisticated cities. For July we focus on Brooklyn's traffic-besieged yet transit-rich hub at Atlantic Avenue, on the edge of downtown, where a whopping ten subway lines, the LIRR's Atlantic Line and dozens of bus lines meet up with Brooklyn's tallest building, BAM and a Bruce Ratnersville shopping mall with Chuckie Cheese fast food! Across the 8-lane street from the transit hub/shopping mall are acres of open space over the LIRR's storage yards. Brooklyn is a borough rapidly gaining population and gentrifying. Developing property here is like operating your own mint, and the greedier you are the more you make. Why not add a publicly subsidized basketball arena and millions more square feet of luxury-only residential and prime commercial floor space here? As can be expected, the city's plan to encourage (ie, subsidize) all this activity at this busy hub seriously shortchanges one critical ingredient - better transit. Three of the borough's busiest thoroughfares -- Flatbush, Fourth and Atlantic Avenues -- meet in one colossal traffic mess that is a nightmare for those on foot or bicycle. Despite decades of pressure from neighborhood and activist groups, the city has no plans to curtail traffic here, and only extremely limited plans to provide affordable housing for the thousands of new job-holders who would be working in the huge new office towers or flipping burgers in the fast food joints - ie, lots more commuters! Join Auto-Free New York on a unique transportation-focus tour of this mega-hub. Neighborhood experts will be on hand to point out problems and opportunities. Note that we will meet at the street-level LIRR ticket office area in the Terminal. And don't forget to mark your calendar for our August 26 walking tour in west midtown! Sincerely, George Haikalis, Chair P.S. Please also attend the monthly Regional Rail Working Group meetings. This group showcases the efforts of individuals from a variety of transit advocacy groups to awaken our region's sleeping giant, its commuter rail system. Next meeting: Wednesday, July 23, 2008. P.P.S. The marvelous Vision 42 website lays out the case for restoring light rail to 42nd Street (and for a historical perspective, we lay out four dramatic years of late '90's newsclips about the previous trolley proposal). Finally, with more than 800 million cars bearing down on our planet, and multi-national corporations buying up governments in order to double that number, it's time to get active! The organization Carbusters hosts a World Car-Free Day every year. WISHING TRAFFIC AWAY IS NOT EFFECTIVE This car-hugger illustration appeared in the New York Times, which has a longstanding grudge against doing serious transit journalism.	New Head in Albany Troika: Any Change for NYC? Journalistic Fraud in the City ANOTHER MOTORIST BURNED TO DEATH IN QUEENS CRASH "It's Getting Hard Out Here for a Global Warming Denier" Upcoming Auto-Free NY Meetings for 2008: Tuesday, July 22nd, 6-8pm Summer Walking Tour #1: Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards Meet at LIRR Ticket Office, street level, LIRR Flatbush Terminal (entrance on Flatbush Avenue) at 6pm sharp. Tuesday, August 26, 6-8pm Summer Walking Tour #2: NJ Transit's Hudson River Tunnel West Midtown Alignment, followed by Ninth Avenue street enhancements. Meet in Penn Station, NYC at the Amtrak Info Desk, Amtrak Level, 6pm sharp. DIRECTIONS: Note that our walking tours in July and August are (obviously) held outdoors; take careful note of starting locations above. Our meetings are always FREE and open to the public. Another SUV smashed by its reckless driver: The bulk of these top-heavy, inadequately braked vehicles makes their driver feel invulnerable, and so they drive worse, and crash more. Big business, attuned to wasteful and overdesigned products in principle, embraced SUVs as prime subjects over the past ten years for one of the most intensive marketing and indoctrination campaigns in US car company history. But eventually American price supports for lower cost gasoline are going to end, while the realities of declining world oil production and increasing political, military and climate chaos will grow more stark. Once the true costs of our national gasoline orgy start being paid by US motorists themselves rather than everyone else, these gas guzzling giants will quickly end up more worthless junk - and we will get the quality public transportation -- and the sustainable economy -- we deserve. ROME, Oct. 2004: A modern trolley waits quietly on the Via Arenula, at the terminus of the popular #8 Argentina line, about 3 blocks south of the Pantheon. Behind the trolley is the state-funded Teatro Argentina. Sophisticated cities the world over are acting now on dramatically better transit and genuine auto reduction, while NYC, the laughingstock of urban planners worldwide, continues hiding its car craze behind slick public relations, backwards bureacracies and "public" authorities well-insulated from the public, and the bald-faced buying off of critics. AFNY's web manager stands in foreground. Photo: Wayne Fields. Be a patriot - use mass transit! Auto-Free New York . . . more than just bollards and paintstripes
Auto-Free New York George Haikalis, Chairman \| One Washington Sq. Village, #5D, NYC 10012 \| Phone: (212) 475-3394 \| geohaikalis@juno.com © Copyright 2008, 2007. All rights reserved. Auto-Free New York. This page last updated July 12, 2008.