As our big-sibling site EcoGeek reported, Paris will launch a new city-wide car sharing service by the end of 2009. As Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced last week, Autolib will feature 4,000 electric cars available for rent.
Autolib will operate in a manner very similar to Paris' wildly popular bike-sharing program, Vélib. The electric vehicles will be available for check out and return at 700 locations throughout the city. Car-renters can reserve vehicles online and book a return destination, where they can be recharged and prepped for the next customer.
The service costs about $390 per month – but that covers all operating and maintenance costs (fuel, parking, upkeep, etc.) for the vehicles. That base price covers a maximum of 60 miles per day.
We're big fans of car-sharing programs as helping hands towards a partial carectomy. Most people's cars spend the majority of their lives parked and wasting space. Car-sharing enables dozens of people to share one efficient vehicle as needed.
For many of us, there are occasional load-intensive ventures that are easier by car. Car-sharing programs offer a great, green solution. Electric vehicles make a good thing better by increasing efficiency and decreasing emissions. For shorter around-town jaunts, the limited range of an electric vehicle isn't an issue.
A recent Hungarian ad campaign attaches an orthodox incentive to commuting to work via bike: Extra endurance that you can apply to, um..., other aspects of your life.
Now that gas prices have crept over $5 per gallon in some parts of the U.S., citizens are starting to squirm. Driving patterns and transportation choices are changing, and opinions abound about how best to solve our problems.
Perhaps I should be relieved when I come across websites such as California Political News. Just read their recent headlines: Al Gore is Chicken Little, Alaskan Polar Bears are not Threatened after all, Ethanol is actually a great idea, and global warming has been falsely touted by the media. PHEW – what a relief! Time to fill up the SUV and head to Wal-Mart!
Democrats have assured us of $5 gas, high energy prices, high food prices and lost jobs. The blood is on their hands.
Now reality has hit, just as Republicans said it would. We are paying the price for dishonest politicians buying votes. Instead of self sufficient energy supplies, the Democrats have forced the redistribution of trillions of our dollars to foreign nation, making the U.S. dollar weaker.
The time is now to apologize and quickly move to develop our own energy sources. Over night, when the policy is in place you will see foreign oil drop by half, just to try to stop us from being independent.
Pedalpalooza is where always-bike-friendly Portland, Oregon gets the chance to truly flaunt it's spectacular two-wheeled culture. The 2-week festival boasts 219 events, hosted by volunteers, featuring everything from family-friendly group rides, bike-in movies, and bike polo, to a Swingers' ride and a Bowie vs. Prince mobile dance party (described as a “slow pace with frequent dancin' stops”).
From SHIFT's website:
SHIFT revels in expressing Portland’s creative bike culture through performance events and bike fun intended to highlight the positive contributions of bicycling for the community at large.
As such, SHIFT brings to the Portland community an absolutely mind-blowing variety of bike-based activities as well as a group Move-by-Bike initiative and a free monthly Breakfast on Bridges for morning commuters. (If you haven't already seen our post and video of a Portland bike-move, check it out here).
SHIFT and the World Carfree Network are currently involved in co-hosting this year's “Towards Carfree Cities,” taking place in Portland. This year's conference, “Rethinking Mobility, Rediscovering Proximity,” targets “urban livability and mixed-use development.”
Jeff Mann is an artist who works in a unique medium: car parts. Mann takes apart cars, collects the parts, and reassembles them into sculptures. The artist finds beauty and complexity in the components that make up automobiles, although he has disdain for the complete cars themselves.
Mann's latest exhibit, Car Repair, is on display at the Belmont Gallery of Art in Belmont, Massachusetts from June 20th through 29th. Mann hopes that his works will both be aesthetically pleasing and spark a dialog about transportation choices. Says Mann, "I am not simply using any found objects; I use car parts because I believe the car is the largely invisible shaper of our world, the subliminal cultural informer and the frankensteinian monster that may eventually cause our destruction."
I came across the above photo on Carfree Portland's website while checking up on their Towards Carfree Cities conference - which is taking place right now. The numbers made me do a double take, but these prices are for real as of June 6th. Expect the rest of the nation's pump prices to follow soon!
Cars are the most inconvenient convenience we have. We're required to have them, but increasingly, we dislike them. At Carectomy, we're trying to figure out how to extract cars from people.
The operation is a little bit painful, but life afterward is much more awesome. If you're interested in carectomies, sign up to our newsletter, or subscribe our RSS feed below.
