Pushing Back on Cars

Pushing Back on Cars
Presentation by Jan Spencer
Tuesday, Dec 3, 6:30
River Road Recreation Center, 1400 Lake Drive

A growing number of cities and towns all over the world are pushing back on cars. Parklets, Intersection Repair, community plazas, congestion pricing, redesign of streets and limiting cars and trucks from city centers are only a few push back approaches. Nijmegen and Groningen, Holland; Copenhagen, Oslo and Madrid can boast of impressive strategies – and results – for encouraging bike, walking or transit trips rather than cars.  Barcelona, Spain’s Super Blocks is perhaps the world’s most ambitious effort at car push back to reclaim streets for people, public health and livability.  Even New York City is active in pushing back on cars.

The slide show/presentation will touch on the history of pushing back on cars in the US, describing highways in the US that have been removed such as the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and highways prevented such as the Southwest Corridor in Boston.  Critical Mass bike rides and Parking Day are grass roots examples of pushing back on cars.  Eugene’s Sunday Streets is a mild push back on cars.

Times Square in NYC is only the most well know example of dozens of Community Plazas in New York City.  The Vauban Neighborhood in Freiberg, Germany is a vacated, repurposed, redeveloped French military base that was purposefully designed to dramatically reduce the presence and use of cars.  In Eugene, turning River Road into an EmX corridor would also include new bike lane design that would give bike riders much greater protection from car traffic.

Jan will also show a new proposed bike map of Eugene that would take lanes of traffic from various streets and turn them into a city wide network of protected bike ways.

Please join us for a fascinating presentation and please forward this message.

More info at suburbanpermaculture.org  and podcasts with related content  https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/creating-a-resilient-future