| Speaking in Volumes: Cars, Buses, and Bikes |
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| Written by Joshua Liberles | |||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 14 January 2008 | |||||||||||||||||
 The photo above (larger image here) illustrates yet another resource that cars waste: public space. This triptych shows the amount of room needed to transport the same number of people by car, bus, or bicycle.
In addition to polluting our air, contributing to global warming, being unsafe, requiring a huge infrastructure of pavement, highways, and "free" parking, and making us all generally less happy, cars just take up too much damned room!
The coolest thing about this image: it's a poster on display in the City Planning Office in Muenster, Germany. Muenster is known for its progressive stance towards alternative transportation and its well-developed network of bicycle routes.
Can you imagine if it were typical for city planning offices to have posters like this one displayed as a model for change? The world would be a very different place.
Via Emiliano, PushingPedals.org.
Comments (8)
Allison D
said:
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Does anyone know how to get a copy of this poster? I'd LOVE to hang it in my office. And perhaps we can mail a copy to the police Chief here in Tucson.  |
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More people need to be aware of this reality! Think of how cities would change if personal vehicles weren't allowed in. This poster is great, it doesn't even need a caption to convey its message. |
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Wow. This really puts things in perspective. I'm glad one of my resolutions was to take more public transit. |
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I would like to order a poster to :-) Or can someone find a better quality of the picture above ? Peter |
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The Portland Bicycle Transportation Alliance did a similar poster several years ago. It's available at: http://www.bta4bikes.org/gear/poster.php . |
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I'll make the same comment here I made on Ecogeek.org. While that is a neat picture re the cars/bus triptych. It is CRAP, and I'll start my rant now. I love how they cropped the image with the cars to make it look like there wasn't enough room on the street to hold all the cars. BOGUS! LOOK CLOSE. It makes the "green" minded people look bad with this type of bogus trickery. Same kind of thing the "green" would hammer Bush on. So let me hammer away. BOGUS BOGUS BOGUS. There is at least 50 yards x 25 yards of street missing at the top of the picture with the cars you could probably fit another 20-30 cars on the street behind where the image is cut off. The image is bogus, then if you look again you can count the arches on the first floor and you will see there are 5 arches missing to the bottom left of the car photo. Which means if you overlaid the 2 images the back bumper of the bus is about even with the front bumper of the first row of cars. so your looking at about another 8 cars that will fit on that stretch of road. Bogus misleading crap advertising!!!!! Just calling it like it is, I've ranted now I feel better smilies/grin.gif PS I agree with getting the cars off the road and walking or riding a bike, and buses. but lets all vote for TRUTH IN ADVERTISING. Not misleading people with feel good LIES. |
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These pics are not meant to show how many cars can fit on the street but how much space is saved not using cars. I looked at the cropping you pointed it out but it doesn't make a difference how or if they cropped it. To prove my point...park your car inside your living room and stand beside it. Now get rid of your car and stand in your living room. Notice the difference in space? Common sense would tell you a lot of space is saved without cars, picture or no picture. Could they have messed with it and cropped it to make the scenerio look worse....Sure! Some people will go to the extreme to prove a point. Or maybe they just had a bad photographer that couldn't take the picture at the same spot....but neither of these possibilities changes the fact that a car takes up space. Now add all the cars up together....see what I mean? |
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I have to agree with Mark. They have deceptively cropped the car image to make it look like they take up more space than they do. The cars *do* take up more space than the bus/bikes and it would be amazing if cars were banned in city centres, but it's pretty sad that they cheated to emphasize this. |
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