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Opinion :

• Time to get real - 6/19/2008
  After years of crying like a voice in the wilderness about how hecka much unnecessary gas we’re using to drive our huge cars, trucks and SUV’s everywhere, you’d think I’d be gratified that everyone else in this country, feeling the pain of $4 per gallon gas (btw you ain’t seen nothing yet) has woken up, looked around, and said, “Yipes, how did we get here?”
  
  -$4 per gallon gas and climbing - $6? $10? $15?
  -stuck out in the distant suburbs with nothing but an SUV to get you anywhere
  -higher costs for everything for which petroleum products are used in manufacture or delivery – food, consumer goods. Basically - everything. Permanent inflation?
  
  So can’t we stop fiddling around – blaming speculators, blaming oil companies, blaming environmentalists, blaming Saudis - and assign responsibility where it really belongs?
  
  With us.
  -who elected federal, state, local “leaders” who ignored the problem until now
  -who chose to live in huge house far away from everything
  -who forgot how to walk and ride our bikes
  -who fed freeways and starved public transportation
  -who never took the bus ‘cause “it’s for poor people”
  
  So stop complaining already and get on a bike, get back on your feet, grow a garden, walk your kids to school, put solar panels on your roof, talk to your neighbors about what kind of leadership we really need and BE THAT LEADERSHIP
  
  You might find that life after oil could be just fine…
  
  
  
  
• LIVING CARFREE - 4/19/2008
  From our friend Susan who recently moved back to the city and gave up her car:
  
  “I sold my car.” The words still feel a little strange coming out of my mouth whenever I tell someone. It all started last year when I decided to pack it in and leave the Carson Valley to start a new life in San Francisco. I was born and raised in the Bay Area, so it was a homecoming of sorts. Problem was, I had to downsize from a 3-bedroom house to a one-bedroom apartment. I got rid of a lot of stuff and thought I had done an adequate job until my friends unloaded everything in my new apartment. There was hardly any room to walk around and I knew more stuff had to go.
  
  Flash forward five months and dozens of boxes later (or should I say lighter?). I had settled into my apartment and had gone back to work. I bought a MUNI pass and took the bus to work every day. The only time I was using my car was to go shopping, to visit a friend, or to go to a show. As gas prices kept rising, my car just sat in the garage downstairs. I did take a few weekend road trips, but mostly the car sat.
  
  Meanwhile, I was experiencing a strong need to downsize. I realized that I was living with way too much stuff. Stuff that I rarely used, that had to be cleaned and maintained, that I was keeping merely for sentimental value. I yearned for a simpler life. I donated several car loads to Goodwill. Friends took some of my excess furniture. I sold a few things on Craig’s List.
  
  Then I started running the numbers. I figured out what owning a car was really costing me. Between my car payment, insurance, gas, maintenance, and personalized plate, I was spending $575/month. Owning a car, for me, was becoming an expensive luxury. At $7,000/year, I realized that’s a lot of cabs and rental cars. And have you ever tried to find a parking space in San Francisco? I decided to sell my car and put the money I would save into my retirement fund instead.
  
  It’s been a relatively painless experience. The only time I missed my car was when I was sick recently and had to take the bus to Kaiser. Ultimately I’ve come to love my decision to live car-free. I’ve turned into a walker and that’s how I get my groceries now. I walk to the grocery store and take a cab back. I take the bus to my friend’s house, and I get a little smug now when I think what I saved by not taking a cab. When I walk by the gas station on Van Ness Avenue and see gas priced at $3.97/gallon, I feel good about walking two more blocks to the bus stop.
  
  Granted, I have a huge advantage living in a transportation-friendly city like San Francisco. This decision would not be easy for anyone living in a rural area. But what matters is the fact that I made the choice and committed myself to living car-free for as long as I can. I’m only one person, but I’m one MORE person who’s helping the planet at the same time I’m helping myself.
  
  Written by
  Susan Codeglia © 2008
  
  
  
  
• HOW ABOUT A REAL TRAIN? - 2/28/2008
  In Wednesday's Nevada Appeal Carson City Mayor Marv suggested a eight-of-a-cent sales tax to give some more money to the V&T tourist railroad. Seems few of the participants except Carson City are willing to pony up, and the project is still several million dollars short.
  
  But how about this? Instead of giving more money to a 20th century version of a 19th century railroad (which probably will never run in the black - apparently few tourist railroads do), why don't we build a 21st century version of a 19th century railroad, and build a light rail line along the old V&T between Minden and Reno through Carson City? That would put us on the map - and make Carson City a better place to live too.
  
  If we're going to think big, let's think of the future, not of the past.
  
  
  
• OBESITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE - THE SWEET SPOT - 11/29/2007
  Sometimes I'm uncertain which time bomb is worse, global warming or the millions of obese Americans who in a few years will impose a huge burden (pun intended) on our health care system.
  But as for what we can do about it, we can kill two birds with one stone by just walking more. According to a Nov. 11th AP story, "America's obesity epidemic and global warming might not seem to have much in common. But public health experts suggest people can attack them both by cutting calories and carbon dioxide at the same time. How? Get out of your car and walk or bike half an hour a day instead of driving. And while you're at it, eat less red meat. That's how Americans can simultaneously save the planet and their health, say doctors and climate scientists. The payoffs are huge, although unlikely to happen. One numbers-crunching scientist calculates that if all Americans between 10 and 74 walked just half an hour a day instead of driving, they would cut the annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, by 64 million tons.
  
  "About 6.5 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved. And Americans would also shed more than 3 billion pounds overall, according to these calculations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering public promotion of the 'co-benefits' of fighting global warming and obesity-related illnesses through everyday exercise, like walking to school or work, said Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. 'A simple intervention like walking to school is a climate change intervention, an obesity intervention, a diabetes intervention, a safety intervention,' Frumkin told The Associated Press. 'That's the sweet spot.'
  
  This is so simple. Not, as they say, rocket science. So how come I don't see more people walking? What will it take to get you people out of your cars? Do we have to wait until we run out of every single last drop of petroleum?
  
  
  
• NEW BIKE BLOG - 10/24/2007
  Check out Jeff Moser’s new “Cycling Carson City” blog at http://bikecc.wordpress.com/about/ for some great pictures that make you want to get on a bike RIGHT NOW, links to local bike events including allycat races and poker runs, discussions on bike routes, and links to national and international bike blogs. It’s nice to feel part of a community in this land of big trucks and SUV’s….
  http://bikecc.wordpress.com/about/
  
  
• LIVE FREE OR DRIVE - 9/25/2007
  I lifted this line from Jeff Moser's blog, who lifted it from someone else...But it makes a good title for what I want to write about, which is a conversation I had with a friend who just returned from a family vacation in London. They had a great time there, went all over town, saw lots of sights. When they left her 8-year-old son said, "You know what I like best about London? You can go places without getting in a car and driving."
  
  It made me remember the first time I went to London when I was 17 and I felt the same way. I discovered the Underground and I was off and free and all over town- on train, bus, and foot. Where did we get this peculiar American notion that cars mean freedom?
  
  
  
• WHY DO SOME PEOPLE HATE BICYCLISTS SO MUCH? - 4/28/2007
  I was asked to write an occasional column for the Nevada Appeal as a part of their "Fresh Ideas" series, so naturally I wrote my first one on bicycling and walking in Carson City, and it was published last week (link below to Nevada Appeal's web page.) It was about how it's sometimes scary to share the road with big heavy machines, how it would be good to have wider sidewalks to walk on, about the new downtown plan, Bike to Work Week, and the Ride of Silence (see news at left)
  
  I went to the Appeal's web page the day after it was published because I wanted to send a link to my brother in Vermont, and I saw that there were forty-four comments on the piece. No way! Forty-four comments on a piece about bicycling and walking?
  
  
  So I read them and I was amazed at the vitriol, meanness, and overall vindictiveness of some of them - semi-literate, ad hominem (look it up) attacks. On me and, after a few posts, on each other.
  
  
  So here's my question. What's the big deal? Why do some people get so upset about sharing public space with other people who aren't in cars? Why all the hostility?
  
  
  I really would like to know. Any ideas? I'd even like to hear from some of you who flamed me on the Appeal's website. What are you so mad about? But be warned, you have to write to me civilly, or I either won't answer you or I'll flame you right back!
  www.nevadaappeal.com/
  
  
• MAYOR ON BIKE - 4/16/2007
  Yesterday's Nevada Appeal reported on Carson City Mayor Marv Teixera's bicycle commute. Too bad it took a losing his driver's license to a DUI to get him on a bike. He's quoted as saying that he now understands better the trials some of his bike-riding constituents have in getting around our bike-unfriendly town. Says he, "You're the little guy out there!"
  
  Maybe we'll get some more bike-friendly policies now, eh Marv?
  
  
  
• BE ACTIVE-MAKE A DIFFERENCE - 1/8/2007
  This is a pitch to Muscle Powered members and supporters to become more active in Muscle Powered activities. Do you ever wonder what you can do about-global warming
  public health
  your own health
  the state of the world
  the state of your community?
  One thing you can do is give your time and ideas to Muscle Powered. Global warming? We're advocating for non-carbon-emitting transportation. Public health? We're advocating for a community where it's possible to walk and bike places, hence allowing people to get their daily exercise as a part of their daily life. Your own health? Studies show that people involved in community activities are healthier and happier. The state of the world? Think globally, act locally. The state of your community? Muscle Powered is the only non-government organization that's actively working to improve Carson City's urban design and infrastructure.
  
  So what are you waiting for?
  
  
  
  
• FALSE CAFES - 7/14/2006
  Yesterday Evan and I went with Anna to her basketball game at North Valleys High School, and while she was in the gym warming up for the game we drove over to the Golden Valley shopping center to find a cup of coffee. We found a Java City Cafe inside a Raley's supermarket and I got an iced coffee.
  
  The place was set up like a little
  street cafe - iron tables and chairs and an odd and poignant mural on the wall.
  
  The mural showed a cafe - the original Java City? - in a two-story brick building on a Sacramento street corner:
  tables and chairs set up on the wide sidewalk, two bikes leaning against a big shade tree, people at the tables
  talking, laughing, leaning back and reading newspapers, a dog asleep at a man's feet, a kid on a skateboard - a
  real cafe in other words.
  
  So here we were at a corporation-developed shopping center built to serve the needs of the residents of the
  inexpensive subdivisions in the desert north of Reno, inside an air-conditioned supermarket, surrounded by a hot parking lot, the only people we see are getting into, driving, or climbing out of SUV's.
  
  What are we supposed to think or feel when we look at that mural? Envy? Nostalgia? Enjoyment? Indifference?
  
  What I felt was this: How in the world did we end up here? Air conditioned and on wheels and no one else around.
  
  
  
• CULTURE VELO - 7/14/2006 - 7/14/2006
  
  
  Pour vivre heureux, vivons velo
  
  To live happy, live on a bike
  
  - from a roadside sign in Dordogne, France, July, 2006
  
  
  
• NDOT GETS 500 PEOPLE WALKING - 2/11/2006
  I estimate that about 500 people showed up for NDOT's Carson Freeway bike/walk/run this morning. It was great seeing so many people out on their feet. My friend Kate said - "This is fun - why open the freeway at all? Keep it closed and let us walk on it!" Penny said, "I hope they notice how many people are out here walking today. Maybe they'll see we need biking and walking trails as much as we need a freeway."
  
  
  
• Biking the Freeway - 1/28/2006
  The first phase of Carson City's bypass freeway is pretty much done, so today we went to ride our bikes along it before it opens in a couple of weeks. What an eerie feeling to be riding along a freeway with no traffic. It's lned most of the way with sound walls that have designs etched on them to mimic the shapes of the Carson Range and the Pine Nuts. Having thought a lot about the end of oil since seeing 'The End of Suburbia" in Portland last weekend when we took Charlie back up to school, I couldn't help but imagine that the freeway was not new and not yet opened, but abandoned in a post-oil age. How long will it last? Thirty years until we can't afford to use it any more?
  
  
  
• Science Fiction - 11/14/2005
  “How soon will world’s oil supplies peak? The question provokes hot debate among experts, as concerns rise that America isn’t prepared for a drop-off” – Christian Science Monitor, November 9, 2005. Has oil peaked? What happens when we start to run out of oil? The end of our economy? Worldwide wars for the last oil supplies (Is Iraq the first of them?). The end of our “way of life?” Massive unemployment? Probably all of these. But….. But I was running errands on my bike yesterday. I stepped out of the store, unlocked my bike to the accompaniment of traffic roaring by on Highway 50 and thought: Wait a minute. Let’s shift our view. What else could happen when we run out of oil? Quietness. Silence. Compact towns where people walk, ride bikes, hey, even ride horses. No more big, ostentatious houses sprouting up on top of almost every hill (Well, they’ll still be there, but probably abandoned – picturesque ruins where teenagers go on weekends to party) A lot less childhood asthma and obesity. Farms close to cities. Farmer’s markets. No more snowblowers, snowmobiles, dune buggies, leaf blowers, and jet skis. I could like this place. After the oil – civilization.
  
  
  
• SIDEWALKS - 10/23/2005
  Imagine you’re driving your car down a street in Carson City. You’re on a pretty good street for about a block, then the next block the pavement is all cracked and broken, and you have to swerve to avoid some very large potholes. The next block the street ends entirely, but you can see that it continues further on, so you drive on the sidewalk until you can swerve onto the street again. The street is okay but a little narrow, and at one point there's a power pole right in the middle of it. After a couple more blocks the street ends abruptly at a high fence. You stop and pull out the map to find other streets that get you where you want to go. Then as you search for a map you remember no one has ever published a street map of Carson City . Substitute “sidewalk” for “street” in this little story, and “walking” for “driving your car” and you get some idea of what it’s like to walk in Carson City
  
  
  
• SOCIAL CLASS AND TRANSPORTATION - 10/21/2005
  Social Class - a term that doesn’t get mentioned much these days in this country – at least not until Katrina made obvious the inequities that exist. What? You mean we’re not all equal? But let’s not mince words. In Carson City, bicycling, walking and buses are poor people’s transportation. They’re what you do if your car’s been repossessed, if you’ve totalled your car in a wreck and can’t afford to replace it or even repair it, or if you’ve lost your license for drunk driving. Think that’s why our pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is so bad, and why we didn’t even have a bus system until this month? What do you think our sidewalks and bike lanes would look like if the mayor, city engineers, and business owners walked or rode to work?
  
  
  
• CONVIVIALITY - 10/21/2005
  Here’s the nasty secret of our auto-dominated transportation system: it’s turning us until a culture of surly egoists who don’t know how to talk to each other and share space with our own friends and family, let alone with strangers of of different social classes. How’s that for a provocative statement? Let me temper it with the positive. In my car free month, I have allowed myself car-pooling as a transportation option. So my friends Ed and Melody have taken to dropping by on Wednesday evenings to pick me up and take me to Spanish class, and my mom and I drive together once a week down to Raley’s for our grocery shopping. I’ve had more opportunity to talk to them this month than in a long time. People used to do things together all the time – walk out to the fields, walk into town for the weekly market, ride the streetcar - rather than climb into isolated steel-and-plastic boxes by ourselves to go anywhere. Now that I’ve gotten back to it, even if only a little while, I discover how pleasant it is. And there’s kindness. A blind man rides the PRIDE bus to Reno a couple times a week. Last week, while he was talking to the bus driver, he remarked that another bus had neglected to stop for him, because he had been sitting a small distance away from the bench. The driver didin’t see him and didn’t stop, and he, of course, couldn’t see the bus to flag it down. Another man in the PRIDE bus said, “I saw you; I was on that bus - next time I’ll make sure the driver stops.” It’s hard to have the opportunity to take care of people like that when other people are nothing but faces behind a windshield. The link below is to an essay by Edgar Newton, “A Convival Life” in a cool and quirky website with some great writing (check out the bike haiku) called Bike Reader. In the essay Newton quotes Ivan Illych: “More energy fed into the transportation system means that more people move faster over a greater range in the course of every day. Everybody’s daily radius expands at the expense of being able to drop in on an acquaintance or walk through the park on the way to work. Extremes of privilege are created at the cost of universal enslavement. An elite packs unlimited distance into a lifetime of pampered travel, while the majority spends a bigger slice of their existnce on unwanted trips.”
  http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/newton/convivial.html
  
  
• BROOKINGS SAYS “WHY BOTHER?” - 10/20/2005
  Believe it or not, we actually had President Bush tell us, a couple weeks ago, that we should all be driving less in order to conserve gas ( at least until Gulf Coast refineries get back on line and Congress approves weakening environmental regulations to facilitate that, at well as drilling in ANWAR – but that’s another story). A couple of Brookings Institution fellows, Robert Puentes and Bruce Katz, have called that call for conservation futile, though. They say that when we live in cities and towns so planned around the automobile, almost all car trips have become “essential” – things are just too far apart, and public transportation can’t serve such sprawling communities. Here’s what they conclude: “A sure-fire way of reducing the impact of higher gasoline prices is to lower consumer demand. And the best way to lower demand is to build more sensible communities that give families greater transportation choices.” Strategies to do this include focusing new development in areas that need it rather than on the urban fringes, getting rid of “single-use” zoning that spreads uses out and makes it impossible to get from residences to commercial and business areas without a car, and accommodating all kinds of housing close to town centers so people don’t have to go to urban fringes to find housing they can afford. Check out the link for the full article.
  http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/20051010_puentes.htm
  
  
• BIKE RACKS AND THE EXPLORER BARRUCUDAS - 10/20/2005
  So Muscle Powered installed our first of we hope many bike racks in Carson City. There’s a picture of it in the News section of our webpage. The same day the rack was installed I got an email from my son Charlie, who’s going to school in Portland, Oregon, telling me about his bike gang, the Explorer Barracudas. Seven or eight of them ride all over Portland. In an voice hoarse from a cold, he described a trip all the way across town in the rain to a “great” pizza place. He said the pizza was good but the ride made his cold worse. Ever the mom, I advised a rain jacket next time.
  
  On to bike racks. The Explorer Barracudas attended a folk-punk concert the other night at a venue in suburban Portland. Charlie said the place had two thick horizontal pipes in the front for bike racks: they were both full, plus a house next door had bikes two-deep locked to its chain-link fence. Charlie said there were probably a hundred or more bikes there. I couldn’t help comparing it to our little rack in Carson City that can hold three bikes max, which is all it probably ever will get. The funny thing is, I think Carson’s a better town for bicycling than Portland is – the weather’s better, and it’s more compact. No one realizes it though. Are we all too lazy, too busy, too scared, or what?
  
  
  
  
• BLOG #6 - 10/14/2005
  PRIDE
  
  So the PRIDE bus is good. The stop is a five-minute bike ride from my house on one end, ten minutes from my office on the other. A bike rack on the front that, once I learned the protocol of folding it back up when I take my bike off, works well. Polite drivers who drive really fast through Washoe Valley. Best of all, I don’t have to deal with other drivers and their road rage, tailgating and what-have-you – let the bus driver do it. One thing about driving less is that I notice the bad drivers more – and there are so many of them. How many of us these days seem to be driving down the road angry - what an awful way to live.
  
  The buses are comfortable too because they’re hardly ever full, so there’s lots of room to stretch out
  
  
  
  
• Blog #5 - 10/6/2005
  It’s scary sharing the street with cars, and especially with SUV’s – such big, heavy machines. I think that when the automobile age is over our descendents (if there are any) will look back on our auto-dominated transportation system with disbelief. Heavy, dangerous machines always going too fast. A whole system built on a fuel source that’s going to run out. Cities covered with miles and miles of concrete and asphalt so the machines can go places and be left places. Human beings – fragile flesh and blood – forced to share streets with heavy steel. Thousands killed and maimed each year. An obesity epidemic because people don’t walk anywhere. Not to mention the air pollution, water pollution, groundwater pollution…If you deliberately designed an inhumane and unsustainable way to get around, you couldn’t do better than what we have right now.
  
  
  
• Blog #4 - 10/6/2005
  I was almost hit by a car again a couple of nights ago. This is getting old! This time a lady went to make a left turn into a parking lot off Washington Street by driving down the middle of the street for a while then angling into the turn at a very obtuse (in more ways than one) angle that had her driving directly towards me on the wrong side of the road. She slammed on the brakes then rolled down her window to tell me how sorry she was that she didn’t see me. (Lights front and back, bright yellow cycling jacket, reflectors anywhere on my bike I can find a place to put them)
  
  Someone did a study a couple of years ago – I think it was in Sacramento – that came to the at-first-counterintuitive conclusion that the more bicycles there are on a city’s streets, the fewer bicycle-car crashes there are. Sounds crazy, but it makes sense. All four times (in the last week) that I’ve almost been hit I believe it’s because drivers weren’t expecting to see me. If there were more bikes, drivers would be used to looking for them.
  
  
  
  
• BLOG 3 - LOST WALLET - 10/4/2005
  MONDAY
  
  Three days in to the car-free month and already I’ve had to drive! What happened? Our Brazilian exchange student, Ramay, left his wallet in the Jack in the Box restaurant on Damonte Parkway in Reno returning from a soccer game on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon he got an email from a friend, who’d been telephoned by the Jack in the Box manager, who found the friend’s business card in the wallet.– Ramay hadn’t even noticed it was missing.
  
  So I had to drive to work so I could pick up the wallet on the way. What would I have done if I owned no car? I suppose I could have taken the bus to Meadowood and ridden my bike back to the restaurant – arriving an hour or so late for work.
  
  But in an ideal world, I would have belonged to a CAR-SHARE. Then I could have called up the car share organization, biked to the car-share lot in the morning, and borrowed a car for the day – for a small fee.
  
  This, I think, is a cool idea. Apparently there are CAR SHARES in lots of North American and European cities now. If you’re interested in knowing more about how CAR SHARING works, here’s a link to a website: http://www.carsharing.net/
  
  Think there’s be enough demand for a business like that in Carson City?
  
  BY THE WAY, Ramay had a lot of cash in his wallet, and a credit card. Nothing was missing. So if you can tolerate fast food, stop by the Jack in the Box on Damonte Parkway sometime and support a business with very honest employees!
  
  
  
  
• Blog #2 - 10/2/2005
  October 2, 2005
  
  So why do I think Carson City’s a good place to walk? Take today for example. I left the house in the morning, walked to my parents house, from there walked up the hill behind WNCC and the V&T grade, from there walked to Albertson’s to do some grocery shopping, from there walked home. I don’t think there are many towns in this country where you can walk straight out of town into the hills, then walk back again to do your grocery shopping, all in about two hours.
  
  Within a twenty minute walk from my house I have two grocery stores, three pharmacies, a college, several restaurants, a video store, a coffee place, a post office. A real urban neighborhood. But then I can walk in another direction for only a little longer, and I’m up in the hills. So why not walk?
  
  I wish I saw more people walking, though. It gets lonely. I miss urban streets where there’s a lot going on. Sometimes I feel like the character in Ray Bradbury’s classic short story “The Pedestrian” – the only person out on the sidewalk in a dark town– eerie blue tv-light coming from all the windows, until a robot police car stops – then there’s no one on the sidewalk at all… (If you want to read "The Pedestrian" go to the link)
  
  http://sunsite.wits.ac.za/holistic/bradbury.htm
  
  
• October 1 - 10/1/2005
  Well I did get almost run over by not one but two crazy drivers on my way home from my yoga class on Thursday on Robinson Street - one was a mail carrier even. Why is it when drivers come close to running you over on your bike they glare at you like it's your fault they almost killed you?
  
  It almost made me rethink the whole idea but it was such a nice day I felt better immediately and, not dead or even injured, pedaled home.