BICYCLES, TRAINS AND PEDESTRIANS
     The working title of my long-term project is "Free at Last:
the World's Best Places to Live Without a Car". It won't be
completed for some time.
     You ask, why such a project?
     Fifteen years ago, we were living in Southern California, a family of four, with three cars. It did not occur to me that there might be a better way. I had no choice. Communities in most places are structured by a concept called "single-use zoning", with residence separated from commerce. That means you have to get into a car to buy a loaf of bread. With sprawling urban and suburban design, it's also much more likely that you have to commute to work by car. It was normal to hear the daily traffic fatality reports on drive-time radio. I had no idea that more people die in auto accidents than in wars.
     I have come to believe that such a life is insane. Please bear with me as I explain.
     Some visionary people observed that automobile dependency leads to oil dependency, with wars to protect oil flow as a consequence. I did not see the connection. I simply asked myself: what's in it for me? ... driving hours a day, tethered to a 2-ton hunk of gas guzzling metal, and feeling out of shape even though I did my best to squeeze exercise into my busy life. In fact, there was never really enough time to do such exercise; exercise had become a task rather than the pleasure it should be.                                             Top Of Page
     Evolving over a period of 15 years, little by little we curtailed our car use and eventually dumped the whole notion of a car... by living in communities with mixed-use zoning, both in the U.S.A. and abroad.
     Helping me make such a radical choice were a number of superb books by writers such as James Howard Kunstler and Ray Oldenburg, and articles, as exemplified by "Zoning Kills Community Life", in a conservative publication called The American Enterprise, which documented that "the traditional pattern of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods has been prohibited" in most places in the U.S.A.
     Right now there's a whole movement in America called "Smart Growth" that includes both conservatives and liberals and seeks to restructure communities so that errands, shopping and work will be within walking distance or accessible by efficient and comfortable public transportation.  
     In our case, I had to solve the immediate situation. By choosing to live in places where we could walk to the bakery, pharmacy, supermarket, cleaners, bookstore, movie house, news stand, hospital (and for me, an OTB for my horse betting),  we would have what my wife Martha called "purposeful exercise" woven into our life. By living near reliable public transportation, more of this purposeful exercise would filter in: walking to and from subway stations or bus stops rather than going directly from the garage at home to the parking lot at work.
     (Since then, at least four studies, by such organizations as the American Farmland Trust and the Centers for Disease Control, have shown that non-genetically caused obesity is much more prevalent in sprawling areas where automobile travel is the only alternative than in regions with good public transportation and mixed-use zoning.)
     In any case, for me the stress of driving on freeways is now eliminated and I can read the newspaper or even do work in the subway. In fact, with such a way of life, I could still own a car for vacationing without needing to use it in daily life (as is the case with several of our friends).
     As a lover of trains, though, I prefer to ride the rails to my vacations, and that too influences my choice of place. Live anywhere along the Amtrak line between Washington, D.C. and Buffalo, New York and you have all kinds of new travel alternatives. One of the prettiest train rides in the world is from Manhattan to Albany along the Hudson River. Here in Paris, we can hop on the Eurostar and be in London in 2 hours and 38 minutes. In three hours and change we can be in the Alps or on the Riviera.
     Even in Southern California rail travel has improved considerably in the past decade, and I now use the Metro Link when I'm there. But Europe is still way ahead in the realm of pedestrian-friendly communities.
     We now enjoy a triple advantage of (1) improved fitness by getting exercise without it being a task or time-drainer, (2) lively and aesthetically enjoyable streetlife (no parking lot blight), (3) and not having to support the direct and hidden costs of owning an automobile.
     I would be lying if I said that I adopted this lifestyle to "save the environment". In truth, I did it for self-interest. I now recognize that if everyone saw a similar self-interest, the environment would be saved and maybe the health care system too because the general level of health and fitness would improve.                                        Top Of Page
     Though not a necessary part of the equation, the bicycle adds a substantial degree of quality to this formula. A few years ago, during a transportation strike in Paris, I went to my various language consulting jobs by bicycle. I discovered that I actually arrived at my destination as fast as the already efficient metro trains, and faster than by taxi. As an example, there's one location where it takes me 35 minutes by metro (by car it would take 45 minutes in stressful traffic). I get there in 30 minutes by bicycle. Not only do I save time but I get 60 minutes of purposeful and enjoyable exercise. It's the proverbial win-win situation. No more excuse about having no time to do exercise. Though I wouldn't recommend reading the newspaper while cycling to work.                                   
     As for pastimes, it takes me 40 minutes to get to Vincennes race track by subway and bus, and only 25 by bicycle, through the beautiful Vincennes forest. Top Of Page
     One measure of a good place to live without a car is the bicycle facilities. In some American cities today, as in London, public buses now have a rack where a passenger can place his or her bicycle. That means you can commute by a combination of bus and bike. Of course, the most important facility is a good network of bicycle paths. That's easier to do in a region not plagued by sprawl, so the community-design and bicycle-lane factors are not independent variables.  
     In Paris, London and other European cities there's an added facility that enhances quality of life. We are allowed to take our bicycles onto suburban trains at no extra charge. For one month per year, I purchase an unlimited-use all-zone transportation pass for about a hundred bucks, and do a "Tour de France" through majestic forests and centuries-old villages, by lavish castles and shining farmland. By suburban train it takes about forty minutes to arrive in truly rural territory. For five or six bucolic hours a day, the city of Paris becomes a distant memory. (You can also leave Paris directly by bike along the wooded Marne River, the factory-lined Seine River, the funky Ourq Canal, or what they call, "the Green Alley" to the south, all with fine bicycle paths.)    
     Sorry I still don't have the "best places" project finished, but in the meantime, here are a few pictures of a personal "Tour de France" I did with my wife.
     The castle in which I appear and the town in which my wife appears are in Fontainebleau, a pretty town south of Paris in the midst of a spectacular forest. The forest scene is along the Canal de l'Ourq, east of Paris. The last photo is one of the hundreds of virtually anonymous centuries-old stone villages in the rural region surrounding Paris.      Top Of Page