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On September 23, Mindful Metropolis will be hosting a reception and screening for Carbon Nation, a new film from Peter Byck about climate change solutions. And thanks to the generosity of my publisher, Lake Claremont Press, the first 100 people to buy tickets online will receive a FREE copy of Carless in Chicago! I’ll be on hand to sign copies and answer questions during the reception.
(There’s a small catch: to get your free copy, you’ll need to bring a used book to donate to Open Books, a local non-profit that runs literacy programs.)
Tickets are $15 (less than the cover price of the book) and can be purchased in advance online.
I’m not the best poster child for the calorie burning benefits of giving up car ownership since I tend to use my more active lifestyle as justification for eating more ice cream. But in my real job working in public health, a lot of my projects concern the relationship between active transportation choices and obesity prevention. I’ve recently run into a couple of items illustrating the connections between transit and health:
An excellent graphic (sadly non-embeddable) illustrating the typical transit mix in states matched against obesity rates in those states.
A Freakonomics post referencing some of that same data, and connecting it to a recent study from North Carolina showing lower obesity rates among streetcar users (blogged about previously).
A new study from the American Public Transportation Association (PDF) exploring the links between transit and longer, healthier lifespans. (Via the always excellent Bobulate.)
In the book, I briefly mention Donald Schoup’s excellent book, The High Price of Free Parking, but I don’t go into great detail about how changing the way we price parking might improve our quality of life. As it happens, a couple weeks ago, economist Tyler Cowen wrote a great Op-Ed about this very topic, which also led to some interesting follow-up debate. One advantage of being a slightly lazy blogger is that I can list all of these discussions together in a comprehensive post.
Free Parking Comes at a Price by Tyler Cowen.
Arnold Kling responds, and Cowen responds back.
Robin Hanson responds to both, and Kling replies.
On a roll, Cowen also provides a little more ‘color commentary’ here and here.
Of course, here in Chicago we’re living through the great parking meter privatization experiment. Aaron Renn (the Urbanophile) provides some excellent commentary, focusing largely on how Chicago’s parking meter deal locks the city into a pretty inflexible model for parking policy.
For the moment, I’ll spare readers my own entirely correct but quite unpopular opinions about what Chicago should be doing differently parking-wise.
Last weekend I was in Minneapolis for a wedding, and was blown away by the new Nice Ride bike sharing program. I was particularly impressed with the ubiquity of the program: I saw bikes downtown, in Uptown, in Longfellow, and in several other neighborhoods. I was all set to write a post about it when I got home, but then heard about the imminent launch of Chicago B-Cycle, Chicago’s first bike sharing program. I decided to wait until the details came out and see how the approaches differed. → Continue reading Chicago B-Cycle Launches (Note: potentially unfair and premature judgement enclosed)
As most readers of the book and this blog know, I work in public health, and while the intersection of public health and going carless isn’t a big theme in the book, it’s a big interest of mine. On his blog (which I don’t visit often enough), Ken Archer rightly chides the CDC for only emphasizing traffic safety as a way to reduce road fatalities, and not encouraging reductions in traffic itself. This omission seems particularly odd given that embracing active transportation lies at the heart of many of CDC’s obesity prevention initiatives.
In case you didn’t know, auto accidents are the number 1 cause of death among 1-34 year olds. Here in Illinois, about three people die on the roads every day, with approximately eleven traffic-related injuries occurring every hour. I’m all in favor of seat belts and airbags, and all the traffic calming we can muster. But choosing to go places on foot, by bike, or on mass transit is often the safest decision you can make.
(Via Yglesias.)
Broadcast delayed will not be broadcast denied. The interview I pretaped with Chicago Tonight back in June will finally air this evening! The show starts at 7PM on WTTW, Channel 11, and the segment should begin around 7:25 (that last bit is subject to change). I’ll update this post with the video once it’s available.
Update: Here it is:
I feel negligent in not mentioning sooner that for those interested in transit funding (and that should be just about anyone interested in Carless in Chicago), Greg Hinz over at Crain’s has been doing a great job covering the latest developments down in Springfield. In his latest blog post, he mentions a topic that seems to be dear to his heart (and to mine): the quick funding or road projects versus the glacial funding of mass transit projects.
This month, Governing magazine (which I used to read a lot more often when I knew their art director) runs an interesting profile of Richard Rodriguez, who currently serves as head of the CTA. I don’t know that much about Rodriguez, but I’m certainly familiar with his reputation as an agency fixer (which he tries to downplay in this profile). It’s a nice piece, although not terribly deep when it comes to how the CTA can get out of its perpetual crisis state.
I talk quite a bit in the book about the relationship between transportation choices and our personal health, although as someone who often takes the train to beloved Chicago food destinations, I’m not always the best person to make the case. But this week, the New York Times reports on a study of the light rail system in Charlotte, NC demonstrating a pretty clear link between weight loss and choosing public transit over cars. (Not that this is a new finding in general, but this is the most recent example.)
Tomorrow night, Wednesday July 21, I’ll be giving a short talk and selling copies of the book at Break the Gridlock’s happy hour event, held at Quencher’s Saloon at Fullerton & Western. The event runs from 7-9, and my portion will be towards the beginning of the evening. I hope to see you there!
I’m proud to announce that the good folks at the Active Transportation Alliance have begun offering copies of Carless in Chicago as membership premiums for anyone joining at the ‘Ascender’ level or above. ActiveTrans does really important work for Chicagoland, so I urge you to join. (Harking back to their origins as the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, all members also get copies of their recently updated and indispensable Chicagoland Bike Map, now in its fifth edition.
This coming Monday, I’ll be on Chicago Tonight to talk about the book. The show starts at 7PM CT and is broadcast on WTTW, Chicago’s public television station (traditionally Channel 11, but possibly different depending on the cable/satellite provider). I’ll post an update if I get any information about the precise interview time, and will post a link to the archived video when it’s available.
UPDATE: Apologies to anyone who tuned in tonight! I taped today, but Chicago Tonight changed their schedule around and will air the segment later this week. I’ll put up a new post as soon as I know when.
CiC received a nice little write-up from Julie Hunt at Publish Chicago today. For those of you who don’t know, Publish Chicago is a really nice blog dedicated — as the name implies — to Chicago authors and Chicago publishing. It’s a great place to find reviews and information about book-related events around town.
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More thoughts on B-Cycle
Apparently, I’m not the only one who has these concerns about B-Cycle’s model.