[Bent] Car Free centers

[Tapio Antero Osala]

I am not an cultural anthropologist but I am curious and willing to
make observations about people behavior.
It is a bad habit to make generalizations after a few observations and
can't hold them in my self...

You have right.

This forum is not the right one to comment your domestic characters. I
should only compare my feelings with my countrymen who have
visited/lived over there.

I apologize.


-----

But  what about this issue;

"helping solve the car free areas was the bicycle."

Unfortunately I have not yet managed to test your bicycling routes.
How are they? Totally car free? Are there coming more in the future?

What about countyside? Do you have separate lanes along the high-ways
for bicycles?
In any state?
Are people commuting in NYC-area with bicycle?
Is it possible to take a bicycle in a metro?
Is it possible to use bicycle from New Jersey to Manhattan without toll?

----
In Finland people have generally accepted the idea of car free city
centres just a couple of decades ago.
The process has just started in major cities.
In Sweden/Denmark this progress is about 40-50 years old.

All business people were against it strongly at first but times are
changing and business wants to have their stores along
car-free-streets.

I think it is freedom not to be obliged to use a car every day. (I am
such a lucky guy).

You have a wonderful public transportation system. That is functioning
only in Helsinki in Finland.
In small cities like Vaasa people mostly use cars but more and more
use bicycles.


Tapio, from Finland







2010/1/11 Clay Mikolasy <clay at njsouth.com>
>
> Tapio's factual comments comparing car-free areas in different places may have been right on. However, comments he made such as the following are feelings that perhaps were best kept to himself:
>
> "I have got the influence that Manhattanties would perhaps be more
> tolerant, anti-rasist, "free-minded", perhaps not so fundamentally
> religious, than people on most other places (e.g in Hershey).
>
> (Of course all North-America are friendly. "May I buy you a drink,
> what do you like about America". The interest / knoledge about
> Europe/rest of world is generally not very strong.)"
> ________________________________
> I, personally, would not go to someone else's country, or even an unfamiliar part of my own country, and make public comments such as those. Nor do I think would most people. I am sure that if any one of us went to various parts of Europe, we would have, along with the mostly positive impressions we had, perhaps also some negative ones that we might not necessarily want to point out on a website frequented mostly by people of that particular country.  IMO, Mr. Rothberg was correct in his reaction and in what he said.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: JOHN TETZ
> To: NY/NJ/CT/PA Metro Area Recumbent Society (MARS)
> Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 10:42 PM
> Subject: Re: [Bent] Car Free centers
> Hello Tapio;
>
> I feel your comets were right on particularly about the lack of car free areas in US cities.
>
> Back in 1996 I went to the week long Car Free Cities Conference held in Copenhagen. I gave a talk on my Up Hill assist for the simultaneously held Bike Culture week.
>
> There were as I remember 35 or so cities from many European countries were present. No US cities were there. High on the list of helping solve the car free areas was the bicycle.
>
> That was back in 1996. Since then more and more European cities have adopted car free city centers. So naturally you would be very sensitive to the lack of this here in the US.
>
> John Tetz
>
>
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--
Tapio Osala
tapio.antero.osala at gmail.com
Vaasa gsm +358400761185