Living Car Free - Just letting the brain wonder !

1. Every notice all the lights on at night in businesses that our closed. I just wonder how many power plants it takes to keep them on.
2. If car-free living became the norm how many square miles of road in the U.S. could be turned in native growth areas .
3. How would the health of the average American change 10 years after such a paradigm shift.

2. If car-free living became the norm how many square miles of road in the U.S. could be turned in native growth areas .


I think the reduction of noise would be the first thing you'd notice. Cities would be much more livable... better air, less chance of being flattened, healthier population.

I suppose there would be fewer square miles devoted to roads. But as well the roads that did exist would last a lot longer.

We'll always need roads--even if there were no cars at all--for trucks, buses, emergency vehicles, and of course bicycles.

Parking space is where we could actually save if there were fewer cars. There are between three and eight parking spaces (http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=no-such-thing-as-a-free-parking-spo-11-01-09) for each car in the United States alone. If only 10 million households became carfree or carlight, we could do with 30 to 80 million fewer parking spaces. That's a lot of land--in the range of 70,000 acres to 500,000 acres--that could be used for green space or whatever.


(given 150 parking spaces per acre (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cars_can_you_park_on_one_acre_with_no_space) and note that this represents only about a 5 % reduction in the number of cars, in the US alone.)

That's a lot of land--in the range of 70,000 acres to 500,000 acres--that could be used for green space or whatever.


We could compress the space somewhat and have cities less spread out. This would be the immediate effect of reducing a large number of unnecessary driveways and garage space. It would also create less need for large lawn spaces (that need to be mowed...) in front of our housing.

My dream is to turn a drive way into a garden. Mmm blueberry bushes! Tastier than a car sitting there leaking oil.

My dream is to turn a drive way into a garden.
Your own drive way or somebody else's?

My dream is to turn a drive way into a garden. Mmm blueberry bushes! Tastier than a car sitting there leaking oil.

What a lovely dream! I hope it becomes a reality.

My dream is to turn a drive way into a garden. Mmm blueberry bushes! Tastier than a car sitting there leaking oil.

Dig a hole and bury your car!

http://inventerare.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/car-wreck-1.jpg

I recall living in the Hollywood Hills near two interstate highways. I could see one from my house. No matter what time of night the sounds of many cars driving down the roads was always heard. More cars passed in the wee hours there than do in peak traffic time here in Montana. Even in the afternoons on a weekend I can be by the interstate highway and a minute or so can pass without a car going by in either direction.

If a huge portion of the country went car free it would be much quieter in the cities.

The health of the population would be worse because the only way we'll become a mostly car free nation is after a nuclear war destroys the energy infrastructure.

There is one other possibility. Planet Earth regularly gets hit by solar bursts of radiation. Very big ones disrupt telecommunications satellites. A direct hit by a huge solar coronal mass ejection could wipe out the electrical grid, which isn't really protected from such an event. In that case we could all be forced into becoming car free. The people who don't starve to death or get killed from the rioting should be very fit people after a couple of months of walking everywhere.

My dream is to turn a drive way into a garden. Mmm blueberry bushes! Tastier than a car sitting there leaking oil.

Good dream. :)

Have you ever heard of PARK(ing) Day (http://parkingday.org/)? One day a year, people all over the world will find a metered parking spot, keep putting money in the meter all day, and transform that one spot into a mini-park for the public good.

For that one day, people get a glimpse of how much nicer the world could be if less land was wasted for parking cars.



http://www.inspiringcities.org/documenten/citycult/parking_day/results/park_10a_by_scott_beale_laughing_squid_www.laughingsquid.com.jpg