[A trimmed down version from Bike Portland's blog:]

...
Jeff Olson, a planner with Alta Planning and Design asked:
If you were able to ask Mayors of large cities in the U.S. to go and ask Congress for anything, what should they ask for?

Niels Jensen:

“I’d ask for money”

Hans Voerknecht:

“Two things: Change the guidelines, and second would be parking. Change dramatically the way of parking. Allow no more parking in the streets 1/2 mile from homes and businesses so you remove all the short trips and people will know they don’t have the car in front of their door. You would also remove all this traffic noise and small particles in the air.

I don’t know if it’s true but I’ve heard Americans even use a car to post a letter around the corner. If you had to walk a 1/2 mile to get your car you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

City Traffic Engineer Rob Burchfield got the last question of the night (and it was a good one):

I want to ask about pricing the use of the automobile. In most of your countries and cities, it’s expensive to purchase a car, to get fuel, to park — and in addition, you’ve put restrictions on cars within your city. It’s simply not convenient to drive.

In the the U.S., that pricing is very absent. There’s very little political will to disincentivize the use of the automobile. We’re concerned that our goals for reaching higher mode split will be difficult to reach because of our inability to put price disincentives on car use. Is that a valid concern? How is it that you’ve come to have that political will?

Geert-Pieter Wagenmakers:

“While in Beaverton I saw all of these enormous rooms for all these cars… even a parking garage for cars! I asked, are you subsidizing this? If so, it’s socialism. You’re subsidizing a parking lot… and that’s out of the mouth of somebody from the business community.

In our country, every square meter is money and you have to use it as good as possible so it gains as much money as possible. And I know one thing, parking cars is not a beneficial way of industry.

Why are the tariffs for parking in the city so high [In Amsterdam, they're about $7 an hour, 24-hours a day]. First, it’s good for quality of life and second, for the people who really need to be in the city — like the people with their big Mercedes to go to the Gucci shop, or the business man who needs to go to an important meeting — now he has a place to park. In the old days, when parking was much cheaper, they had to search for a spot… so that’s good for business.”

Hans Voerknecht:

“One of the things is, if you would ask the Dutch public, ‘Would you rather pay less tax on your cars and pay less tax on your fuel,’ everybody would say ‘Oh yes!’ But the thing is we don’t ask them!

You shouldn’t ask all the time, ‘Do you want to spend money?’ Of course they say no. The thing is, if people are so narrow-minded, you need politicians… Democracy is not about doing the will of the people; it’s about choosing the best men and women out of the people who make the wisest decisions.

The costs of maintaining a road network is high and the users should pay for them… there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Fees work very well to affect the behavior of the people, but it also works well is to reward the people who do the desired behavior. In some cities, they have sort of a reverse congestion pricing: People whose cars aren’t seen in rush hour get up to 8 euros a day.”

Adelheid Byttebier chose not to directly answer the question, but instead shared some general advice for how to promote bicycling:

“Maybe we should look for best practices not only in the field of mobility or cycling but best practices that have worked in a completely separate field. What we have with our mobility problem is the means of transport itself — the car. It’s very socially accepted, it’s — certainly here in America — not so expensive, you can get everywhere with one, etc… On the other hand we know it’s not good for your health or for society in terms of sustainable living and so on.

This reminded me of the debate we’ve all had on smoking.

My father was a smoker and it was very social, not so expensive and it was about having a good time. But, at a certain moment, the decision was made to no longer have ads for smoking and to make it an issue and talk about the health aspects. it’s been a long struggle, but in Belgium we’ve just had a report on health and heart attacks and they’ve found we’ve had great results since we’ve restricted smoking.

Perhaps that experience will give us a good inspiration to try and do it a similar way concerning better modes of being mobile.”

As Portland (and the rest of America) strives to emulate places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, we’ll come face to face with some of these hard truths about our transportation culture. Are we ready to face them? Are there limits to how much we can emulate Northern Europe?

These questions are sure to play out in the coming years.

http://bikeportland.org/2009/10/20/americas-top-bike-minds-ask-for-and-receive-advice-from-europe/

From the Baltimore Sun:

The benefits of students being able to walk to school with their parents or their friends are undeniable. As Joe Burris wrote in his Oct. 15 article, "Trying to get kids to walk to school," the practice makes for healthier kids and healthier communities. Programs like International Walk to School Month, where Maryland is the top participant among Mid-Atlantic states, are helping change behaviors.

But we also need greater attention toward building communities where people can live, work and play in the same proximity. In fiscal year 2008, 40 percent of school construction was outside of existing population centers, the so-called Priority Funding Areas. Typically, few youngsters would be able to reasonably walk to those schools.

Officials and school boards need to design and build new schools as integral parts of designated community growth areas and to reinvest in existing schools in our existing neighborhoods. That's smart growth. Giving families better options to make that walk would save public dollars, the environment -- and a few pounds to boot.

Richard Eberhart Hall, Baltimore

The writer is secretary of the Maryland Department of Planning

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bal-walkingletter1019,0,4077477.story

"Look, we built the interstate system. That's done. Now we're trying other things so you don't have to get in a car every time you want to go somewhere."

The interview is at: http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/gettingaround/articles/living_in_a_post_car_world.html

I strongly urge transportation planners and engineers in our region, especially Balt City and County, to take a look at this innovative new set of tools and consider local implementation. Conventional painted bike lanes and other "weak" measures including sharrows and off-road bike paths, that do little to create complete streets, IMO, are all inadequate tools for enabling a fundamental shift towards widespread "transportational" bicycle use in the region. The dense, interconnected grid of streets in Baltimore could easily accommodate a network of bike boulevards.

- SS on EnvisionBaltimore.

What are Bicycle Boulevards?

Bicycle boulevards take the shared roadway bike facility to a new level, creating an attractive, convenient, and comfortable cycling environment that is welcoming to cyclists of all ages and skill levels.

In essence, bicycle boulevards are low-volume and low-speed streets that have been optimized for bicycle travel through treatments such as traffic calming and traffic reduction, signage and pavement markings, and intersection crossing treatments. These treatments allow through movements for cyclists while discouraging similar through trips by nonlocal motorized traffic. Motor vehicle access to properties along the route is maintained.

Download the Bicycle Boulevard Guidebook

http://www.ibpi.usp.pdx.edu/guidebook.php

Eco-friendly town bans cars and residents live carbon neutral (they actually get money back from the electric company as the produce more electricity then what they use.)

We believe that Reducing car use by INCREASING walking, biking, carpooling, public transit, telecommuting, and flex scheduling are very smart choices.

Maryland is still using outdated concepts in its futile attempts to build its way out of congestion. Prime example is the $3.2 billion 18 mile Inter County Connector. There is little doubt it will encourage car use and sprawl. We’ve come to accept single occupancy vehicles as a given with few genuine efforts to change that behavior. Instead, we keep accommodating increasing numbers of vehicles rather then reducing the need to use them in the first place. That’s like doing multiple heart bypasses over and over again, instead of addressing the underlying reasons and preventative solutions to our collective heart disease. Walkers, bicyclists, telecommuters and mass transit riders are the ‘good cholesterol’ that prevent those clogged highway arteries, while motorized traffic is the fat and cholesterol that causes congestion, clots, and eventually gridlock (a heart attack).

One Less Car is confident we’ve found a solution, and like all nonprofits, our task and burden is in getting people to change their behaviors towards that solution. We believe most of us share the same values of less traffic congestion, safer roads, and therefore more livable communities.

Our task is to find ways for more people to drive less, or at least drive more safely, so that walking, biking, carpooling and public transit can flourish. We all win – Drivers and transit users get to their destinations faster and safer; walkers and bicyclists feel safer and enjoy their trips more. We all save gas, money, aggravation, the environment, and even our own health. Let’s look at Maryland’s current situation (from the 2000 US Census rounded off and updated to 2005) and One Less Car draft

• We’ll ‘grade’ the state, the public, and ourselves based on these goals.
• We still need to translate these percentages into number of car trips and lives saved, traffic delays avoided (time and money saved), pollution reduced as measurable outcome of our work…..Our State has tons of data but no real goals much less accountability in meeting them…YET! We recognize that single occupancy trips vary greatly by region (in urban areas it’s as low as 60% in rural areas 85%)and will make allowances for that.
• We believe that by increasing the percentages of trips by alternatives to motor vehicles (Many Less Cars One Less Car At A Time), we will experience benefits that include better health, cleaner air, less noise, less congestion, money saved and fewer road deaths and injuries.

Goal 1: Less Cars – 2% reduction in Maryland SOV trips by 2010
How - Increase the percentage of trips by other modes
Objective 1 - Increase car and van pooling by 2%
Objective 2 – Increase the percentage of bicycle trips by 1.3%
Objective 3 – Increase the percentage of those who walk/run to their destination by 1.2%
Objective 4 - Increase the percentage of transit trips by 2%
Objective 5 - Increase the percentage of telecommuters/Flex timers/Part-timers 2%

Goal 2: Safer Streets (in support of Goal #1, Less Cars)
What’s the number one complaint to police departments statewide? — Speeding cars
What’s the number one killer of kids and young adults (ages 3-33)? —Speeding cars
What’s being done about it? Not much –some cameras here, some bumps there, not much at all —Howeve PACE CAR has the potential to empower individuals and communities with rolling traffic calming.

Goals: Percentage (%) who currently

Footnotes

Percentage (%) of those who drove alone (including margin of error) SOV Trips