Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
When I lived in Chicago it was something of a major issue that some pedestrians were complaining that bicyclists had no respect for people walking. The assumption was that automobiles had a right to use whatever amount of space they had been assigned and those using “lesser” forms of transportation should adjust. Now it appears that Segway Human Transporters are just being added to the bicyclist/pedestrian/in-line skater/skateboard mix as San Francisco has banned Segways on the sidewalks where you can find Tony Bennett's heart. So long as the government is in the business of encouraging and discouraging certain types of behavior –and let’s face it, the amount of space allotted in a tight urban area for bicycling, driving cars, riding public transportation, riding Segways and walking does encourage or discourage people from engaging in each activity-, it seems to me that discouraging automobile use and encouraging other forms of transportation would make the most sense. I doubt there is a single town in the U.S. that would benefit in terms of the flow of people if there were more automobiles on the road and plenty that would benefit if more people used other forms of getting where they are going.
Speaking of San Francisco and non-automobile forms of transportation, Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust : A History of Walking is well-worth reading. It is a philosophical and poltical history of walking combined with some of Solnit's own personal experiences of walking in many places, including San Francisco. posted by micah holmquist at 1/21/2003 10:21:00 AM
