At the last StreetTalk we watched the very interesting and highly recommended documentary “Taken for a Ride“. It’s the story about GM’s lobbying and initiatives, together with oil and tire companies, to destroy public transport in American cities, use public money for highway construction instead of railways, promote suburbs and urban sprawl, make people car-dependent and eventually push car (tires and gas) sales of course.
GM’s strategy, in a nutshell, was to pull public transport into a vicious circle. GM’s funding apparently helped to buy up local transportation companies, mainly with the goal to reduce their service. Cutting down quality led to loosing riders. Bad service and decreasing ridership caused troubles justifying public money and investments in public transportation. The downward spiral was completed and public transportation stagnated or was even shut down entirely in some places.
The really sad aspect of that story is, that America’s public transport was just about the same level as in European countries in the 1950′s. It could have made the same development as it did in the rest of the industrialized world during the past 50 years. It could have reached a status, were people are still free to choose their preferred transportation vehicle. Most Americans nowadays are left with only one choice for their daily commute: the car.
It’s hard and expensive for America to catch up and repair what GM’s lobbying has caused. Even though the highway lobbying might be less in the year 2009, car companies found new, mostly ridiculous, ways to use public tax money for their own interest and to eventually sell more cars: IntelliDrive is definitely among them.
I can probably list more than a hundred studies, reports or articles dealing with the negative impact of cars on modern city structures. But none of them illustrates the benefit of car-free cities so well as the image below does:
City of Münster showing the amount of space occupied if the same group of people would go by car, bus or bike.
Which street would you prefer for living: the one packed with cars or the one where kids could play on?
I never owned a car and don’t plan to do so. My mobility is based on bike, public transport and car sharing and I can’t complain about a low standard of living. [via Helge]
The German news magazine Focus reports (in the meantime TechCrunch too) that Apple is working on an in-car navigation/entertainment device. According to Focus it’ll be released in 2009, whereas the first 6 months Mercedes Benz apparently has exclusive rights on the device.
Once Apple is working with navigation technology, can we expect some LBS features on the iPhone too?
Surely, there’s no accounting for taste, but is this really necessary?
I mean, seriously, who would paint a car that way?
Let’s take a guess:
- male – woman don’t put rear spoilers on their cars
- probably in his early 20ies – not very expensive car and affordable extras
- urge to call attention – well, just look at the color
- loved to play with Barbie in his childhood, there is possibly still an extra Barbie room in his apartment (man, some people really scare me!)
- to hide his Barbie-fetish he decided to decorate the interior car parts with Playboy bunnies, a masculine symbol, but still on pink background
- proud car owner anyway
Next time I’m around I’ll wait a while, maybe I can catch a glimpse of the driver. Would be interesting to see the person behind the Barbie car.