De-Mobilize

On Monday I rode the bike to work. I had the benefit as well of taking light rail downtown at lunch to listen to a presentation by John Pucher of Rutgers University on promoting safe walking and bicycling. This guy is apparently renown in the field of public health and urban design. He spoke at a packed SACOG boardroom and presented information on what the Europeans are/ have been doing.

Quite a bit, I should say...compared to the utter lack of promotion of such here in Sacramento. He’s got a nice presentation, and a striking slide that shows that as Europeans get older, they walk and bike more. Compare that to here, where we make efforts to de-mobilize the elderly. We’ve built environments where it’s impossible to safely move from B to A if you’re healthy, let alone on the fringes of age, young or old. Today at work, I was able to caper about on foot to get a new key made for my bike locker, to get lunch, and to accompany a co-worker to get coffee. If things are laid out on a human scale, such things are possible without cost. No pollution. No noise. And a bit of exercise. I hardly work in a pedestrian friendly realm (boxed in by a highway and three thoroughfares), but it can still be done.