Yesterday, Eric Jaffe of the Atlantic Cities tweeted to his colleague Emily Badger, "One day we'll find something that pleases the Cap'n." They both actually do write a lot that pleases me (such as the Transit Riders' Union post and retailers don't need parking to thrive), but I reserve the right to criticize. Like now, I'm going to criticize Badger's latest post, "Car Elevators: Not Just for Rich People" (from the slug, the working title was apparently something like "Why Car Elevators Should Be the Future of Parking").
My first criticism is that if you didn't know better, you might get the impression from the post that car elevators were a new thing, at least to New York City. In fact, we've had them all my life.
While looking for corroboration of this, I found a story from July about an attendant who drove someone's SUV into the elevator shaft in one of these garages, but the elevator wasn't there so he crashed down five stories and hit another attendant who was actually in the elevator. Fortunately, they both survived.
We also have the columnar car lifts that you see in so many Midtown parking lots:
Now these are not the individual car elevators promised to rich Chelsea condo owners or Mitt Romney, and they're not the automatic garages that Badger talks about. They're run by attendants: you drop your car off and give them the keys. They go park it, and when you're ready to pick it up they get it out for you. You don't have to drive your car in the elevator or wedge it into some tiny space.
This may be a bit less efficient than the Milstein automatic garages, but probably not much so. They're certainly a better use of space than the garages with lots of ramps that Badger compares to the automatic garages. But while elevator garages may not be just for the super-rich, I don't know who Badger thinks can afford to pay fifty dollars a day to store a car in the city, or even twenty-five. In my book, that's just for the rich.
The rest of Badger's argument - that "cars and people live in a constant competition for space," and that these automatic garages can help relieve that tension - doesn't hold up. First of all, cars don't live, outside of cartoon movies. The competition for space is between the small minority who want to drive and park their cars in the city, and everyone else who's just walking here. When minimum parking requirements don't apply, off-street space is allocated by supply and demand. If a developer can get more money from an apartment building than a parking lot, then you'll see that parking lot replaced by apartments. Making it easier for a few rich people to store their cars on top of each other isn't going to free up more space for walking and apartments. At best, it'll free up some more garage space so that the next income bracket can buy cars. Yay.
As Brooklyn Spoke wrote in the comments, unless the cars are entirely symbolic (in which case they're hugely inefficient symbols to keep in a city), people will need to transport them to and from these automatic garages on a regular basis. That means more cars on the streets, which means more pollution and carnage, and less space for pedestrians and transit. The main reason why dense cities are more efficient and less polluting is because people don't have to drive as much. If there are people who won't live in the city unless they can drive, then let them go bankrupt out in the suburbs. Cheering a technology that makes it easier for people to drive in dense cities is missing the point.
Car elevators are the past of parking, and the present. They may also be the future. But that's really nothing to applaud or get too excited about. With any luck, the future of parking will be that there's a whole lot less of it around, regardless of whether it's organized vertically or horizontally. And that's why any new parking should be convertible to other uses when the demand goes away. That's what the future of parking should be.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
A bus bridge to the Rockaways
As I wrote before, the best thing for the Rockaways is not to rebuild so much infrastructure-intensive development there; that means no more dense housing projects, and no more car-oriented racist gated communities. If you're going to rebuild those, the next best thing is to rebuild the old rail connection between the Long Island Rail Road and the elevated tracks in Far Rockaway and run express service to Penn Station.
Since I wrote that last post, in fact, I found out that the shopping center that was built across the old right-of-way has been failing for twenty years. The supermarket has been renovated, but much of the other space is vacant, and most of the cars in the parking lot are owned by park-and-riders from Nassau County. So it would be relatively easy for the MTA to buy out the owner, move the supermarket and rebuild the tracks.
Even if we do that, it would take a while to rebuild. The MTA is apparently hard at work rebuilding the trestle across Jamaica Bay. It's not clear how long that will take, but in the meantime, the MTA should have done more with buses. In the few days after the hurricane, the MTA, the DOT and the NYPD worked together to build an impressive rapid bus corridor connecting downtown Brooklyn with Midtown Manhattan. Why can't they do that for the Rockaways?
In fact, it's much easier for the Rockaways, because we're not talking about taking lanes from a relatively narrow, heavily trafficked avenue like Lexington. Instead you've got Cross Bay Boulevard, which becomes Woodhaven Boulevard and connects directly to Queens Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. Cross Bay Boulevard is 145 feet across, and Woodhaven is 195 feet. There's plenty of room to take two lanes for buses, like this.
This is the rendering from page 41 of this PDF from the DOT illustrating possible layouts for "BRT Phase II." Looks awfully like Woodhaven Boulevard, doesn't it? In fact, here's Google Street View of Woodhaven at 101st Avenue, looking north:
It's a slightly different angle, but the buildings are the same. That's right, four years ago, DOT bus planners were looking at Woodhaven Boulevard as a model for rapid bus service. Even before A train service was wiped out, the Q53 more than doubled its ridership, to 14,844 per weekday, in the four years after it was taken over by the MTA. Imagine how many more people would ride it if it had its own dedicated lanes.
As an idea, this is a no-brainer. With subway service to Manhattan cut, Rockaway residents deserve a rapid bus to Midtown, connecting to the A, J, Z, M and R trains. The only obstacle is political.
Since I wrote that last post, in fact, I found out that the shopping center that was built across the old right-of-way has been failing for twenty years. The supermarket has been renovated, but much of the other space is vacant, and most of the cars in the parking lot are owned by park-and-riders from Nassau County. So it would be relatively easy for the MTA to buy out the owner, move the supermarket and rebuild the tracks.
Even if we do that, it would take a while to rebuild. The MTA is apparently hard at work rebuilding the trestle across Jamaica Bay. It's not clear how long that will take, but in the meantime, the MTA should have done more with buses. In the few days after the hurricane, the MTA, the DOT and the NYPD worked together to build an impressive rapid bus corridor connecting downtown Brooklyn with Midtown Manhattan. Why can't they do that for the Rockaways?
In fact, it's much easier for the Rockaways, because we're not talking about taking lanes from a relatively narrow, heavily trafficked avenue like Lexington. Instead you've got Cross Bay Boulevard, which becomes Woodhaven Boulevard and connects directly to Queens Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. Cross Bay Boulevard is 145 feet across, and Woodhaven is 195 feet. There's plenty of room to take two lanes for buses, like this.
This is the rendering from page 41 of this PDF from the DOT illustrating possible layouts for "BRT Phase II." Looks awfully like Woodhaven Boulevard, doesn't it? In fact, here's Google Street View of Woodhaven at 101st Avenue, looking north:
It's a slightly different angle, but the buildings are the same. That's right, four years ago, DOT bus planners were looking at Woodhaven Boulevard as a model for rapid bus service. Even before A train service was wiped out, the Q53 more than doubled its ridership, to 14,844 per weekday, in the four years after it was taken over by the MTA. Imagine how many more people would ride it if it had its own dedicated lanes.
As an idea, this is a no-brainer. With subway service to Manhattan cut, Rockaway residents deserve a rapid bus to Midtown, connecting to the A, J, Z, M and R trains. The only obstacle is political.
Why the 85th Percentile Rule still matters
Earlier this month Pedro Madruga at Copenhagenize found a really bad zombie rule that continues to wreak havoc all over the world: the 85th Percentile Rule. This is the procedure used to set a speed limit:
1. Design the road to permit the highest speeds that the budget and the landowners will let you.
2. Measure the speed of drivers and find the 85th percentile - the speed where 85% of drivers are going at that speed or slower. Round to the nearest multiple of 5. That's the speed limit that you put on your signs.
As Madruga points out, this is a shitty idea, because most pedestrians and cyclists aren't going to go more than ten miles per hour, never mind stopped cars and buildings. Animals too, of course. This leads you straight into Strong Towns' famous Conversation with an Engineer.
However, Madruga doesn't acknowledge that the 85th Percentile Rule does contain two valuable insights. The first is that large differences between the speeds of drivers on a road can be dangerous. If you've taken physics, you know that relative speed is what matters in a crash. With pedestrians and cyclists we're able to ignore that, because the difference between a pedestrian's speed and zero is so much smaller than that between a driver's speed and a pedestrian's. But for drivers and car passengers, it matters.
The other insight is that some drivers follow the speed limit, while others drive as fast as feels safe. The bigger the difference between those two groups, the more destructive it will be when a member of the feeling group hits a member of the limit group. By increasing the speed limit to the 85th percentile, they encourage the limit group to travel at the same speed as the feeling group, minimizing that difference.
We don't want to throw out that insight. But we do want to be less crazy about it. The key is to change the order of the steps:
1. Decide on a speed limit based on the pedestrian, cyclist and built environment you want to see along this road. That's what you put on your signs.
2. Design the road so that 85% of drivers will feel comfortable traveling under that speed.
By reversing those two steps, we make safety and comfort for all a priority over speed, and we acknowledge the value of a safe pedestrian environment in maintaining a livable city. That's the kind of thinking that goes into Twenty is Plenty and the New York City Slow Zones that it inspired. We can get finer-grained and more flexible than that, but it's the right direction.
1. Design the road to permit the highest speeds that the budget and the landowners will let you.
2. Measure the speed of drivers and find the 85th percentile - the speed where 85% of drivers are going at that speed or slower. Round to the nearest multiple of 5. That's the speed limit that you put on your signs.
As Madruga points out, this is a shitty idea, because most pedestrians and cyclists aren't going to go more than ten miles per hour, never mind stopped cars and buildings. Animals too, of course. This leads you straight into Strong Towns' famous Conversation with an Engineer.
However, Madruga doesn't acknowledge that the 85th Percentile Rule does contain two valuable insights. The first is that large differences between the speeds of drivers on a road can be dangerous. If you've taken physics, you know that relative speed is what matters in a crash. With pedestrians and cyclists we're able to ignore that, because the difference between a pedestrian's speed and zero is so much smaller than that between a driver's speed and a pedestrian's. But for drivers and car passengers, it matters.
The other insight is that some drivers follow the speed limit, while others drive as fast as feels safe. The bigger the difference between those two groups, the more destructive it will be when a member of the feeling group hits a member of the limit group. By increasing the speed limit to the 85th percentile, they encourage the limit group to travel at the same speed as the feeling group, minimizing that difference.
We don't want to throw out that insight. But we do want to be less crazy about it. The key is to change the order of the steps:
1. Decide on a speed limit based on the pedestrian, cyclist and built environment you want to see along this road. That's what you put on your signs.
2. Design the road so that 85% of drivers will feel comfortable traveling under that speed.
By reversing those two steps, we make safety and comfort for all a priority over speed, and we acknowledge the value of a safe pedestrian environment in maintaining a livable city. That's the kind of thinking that goes into Twenty is Plenty and the New York City Slow Zones that it inspired. We can get finer-grained and more flexible than that, but it's the right direction.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Civilized walks
Last week I wrote about two self-propelled travel memoirs, and how the travelers seem to have spent almost as much time being driven around as they did on the water or the trail. As I've written before, if I'm going for a walk I want to walk. I don't want to be driven to one trailhead and picked up at the other end. This is not some misplaced authenticity fetish: I know that even before cars, walkers got rides on horses and oxcarts and boats. It's just a matter of taste. I don't like being driven around. I find it infantilizing.
Here's the kind of "civilized walk" that these books make me long for: a long walk from one interesting place to another, taking several days. Ideally, it would run through a mixture of cities, suburbs, parks, countryside and small towns, with some long quiet stretches where I could walk for an hour or two without encountering too many people. It would have a comfortable indoor place to stay every night. Since I don't have the kind of connections that David Morine had, that means a room in a reasonably priced inn, hotel or bed and breakfast.
A civilized walk would not require climbing mountains or crossing large wilderness areas, although it might be nice if there were optional side trails to do those things. It would not involve camping, lean-tos, youth hostels or couch surfing.
For me, a civilized walk would also not require being picked up or dropped off in anyone's car. It would not involve walking on the side of any busy roads or stroads. That means that the entire trip would be on car-free trails, sidepaths or sidewalks, with maybe a few short bits on small streets, country back roads and driveways. It also means that both ends of the walk would be accessible by transit.
You can also have civilized day walks that are transit-accessible at both ends, entirely on trails, sidepaths, sidewalks or pedestrian-priority streets. There are plenty of these in the greater New York area, but they've been covered, at least in part, so I won't focus on them.
I don't know how widely my preferences are shared. It's pretty clear that some people don't want to own cars, and just about everybody hates walking anywhere near a stroad. Beyond that, do other people feel as uncomfortable being driven around as I do? All those Appalachian Trail hikers don't seem to have a problem with it. Do other people mind walking down paved country roads where a drunken tourist might come around a corner at fifty miles an hour? It's not clear.
In future posts, I'm going to explore some of the possibilities for civilized walks like this. There are lots of incomplete options, and some promising leads, but I haven't found anything yet that really looks like it would work.
Here's the kind of "civilized walk" that these books make me long for: a long walk from one interesting place to another, taking several days. Ideally, it would run through a mixture of cities, suburbs, parks, countryside and small towns, with some long quiet stretches where I could walk for an hour or two without encountering too many people. It would have a comfortable indoor place to stay every night. Since I don't have the kind of connections that David Morine had, that means a room in a reasonably priced inn, hotel or bed and breakfast.
A civilized walk would not require climbing mountains or crossing large wilderness areas, although it might be nice if there were optional side trails to do those things. It would not involve camping, lean-tos, youth hostels or couch surfing.
For me, a civilized walk would also not require being picked up or dropped off in anyone's car. It would not involve walking on the side of any busy roads or stroads. That means that the entire trip would be on car-free trails, sidepaths or sidewalks, with maybe a few short bits on small streets, country back roads and driveways. It also means that both ends of the walk would be accessible by transit.
You can also have civilized day walks that are transit-accessible at both ends, entirely on trails, sidepaths, sidewalks or pedestrian-priority streets. There are plenty of these in the greater New York area, but they've been covered, at least in part, so I won't focus on them.
I don't know how widely my preferences are shared. It's pretty clear that some people don't want to own cars, and just about everybody hates walking anywhere near a stroad. Beyond that, do other people feel as uncomfortable being driven around as I do? All those Appalachian Trail hikers don't seem to have a problem with it. Do other people mind walking down paved country roads where a drunken tourist might come around a corner at fifty miles an hour? It's not clear.
In future posts, I'm going to explore some of the possibilities for civilized walks like this. There are lots of incomplete options, and some promising leads, but I haven't found anything yet that really looks like it would work.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Real Rockaway train service
As I've written before, the Rockaway Peninsula is one of the least sustainable places in the New York area. This sand bar might be okay for some cheap, replaceable summer bungalows and amusement parks, but it's no place for year-round inhabitants, much less large public housing projects. It's definitely not a place where you'd want to sink lots of money into expensive road infrastructure, but that's what the state has done, and every time it tries to charge people a reasonable fee for maintaining this massive system, they whine about it. The residents also made the mistake of depending for their power on bad sources, first on organized crime and nuclear fission, then on a legitimately underfunded but inept state agency.
For all their tough talk, it sounds like the Governor and the Mayor have passed up the opportunity to dump this money pit. We will rebuild, apparently. We'll rebuild the acres of single-family homes sprawled across the sand. We'll rebuild the parts of the housing projects that were damaged. We'll rebuild the train bridge that makes the commute slightly less polluting. We'll rebuild the telephone poles.
One of the most obnoxious elements of this whole thing was the pride that the MTA staff displayed in putting twenty R32 cars onto flatbed trucks and driving them over to the Rockaways. Don't they get it that this is really bad symbolism? Every time a train car is loaded onto a truck it sends the message that cars and trucks are the "real" transportation, and we have to do all kinds of things with them to get the trains working. On the other hand, these are probably the same MTA managers who live in East Northport and drive to their train yards and bus depots. Their entire lives are spent driving to run a transit system, so how can they ever imagine it could be any other way?
It's not clear how long it will take to restore the trestle across the bay, but the MTA could use some of the reconstruction money to restore the original tracks that went to Rockaway from Valley Stream. That connection came in handy in 1950 when the trestle was destroyed in a fire, and the Long Island Rail Road was able to run trains through Far Rockaway, as shown in this schedule:
Did they learn from that bit of resilience? Nah. In 1956 the LIRR sold the trestle and the peninsular tracks to the city, and in 1958 a quarter mile of track was removed in Far Rockaway. In 1966 the State took over the LIRR, and in 1968 it took over New York City transit, but it didn't rebuild the connection. A supermarket has been built across the old right-of-way, as you can see in this satellite picture:
If the track connection were still there, it would have been a relatively simple matter to move the trains. Better yet, the LIRR could have run trains direct from Penn Station. They wouldn't have to take an hour and a half like they did in 1951, if they went express from Far Rockaway to Valley Stream.
I don't know exactly how much it would cost to buy out the supermarket, rebuild the tracks and adjust the stations platforms for LIRR train cars, but probably only a couple million dollars. For a few million more you could build an elevated trestle over the supermarket and not even have to demolish it. Sure, it's a lot of money, but probably nothing compared to what we're spending to rebuild the trestle across the bay.
On one level, all of this is silly, because we simply can't afford to keep people living on a sand bar year round. It'd be a lot simpler if the train line just had to serve beachgoers; it could be rebuilt every spring if need be. But if we're going to have people living out there all year, they should have some real train service, and despite what Gridlock Sam may say, we shouldn't lower the tolls. That would ensure that they will drive for years more, keeping the trains empty and heavily subsidized.
For all their tough talk, it sounds like the Governor and the Mayor have passed up the opportunity to dump this money pit. We will rebuild, apparently. We'll rebuild the acres of single-family homes sprawled across the sand. We'll rebuild the parts of the housing projects that were damaged. We'll rebuild the train bridge that makes the commute slightly less polluting. We'll rebuild the telephone poles.
One of the most obnoxious elements of this whole thing was the pride that the MTA staff displayed in putting twenty R32 cars onto flatbed trucks and driving them over to the Rockaways. Don't they get it that this is really bad symbolism? Every time a train car is loaded onto a truck it sends the message that cars and trucks are the "real" transportation, and we have to do all kinds of things with them to get the trains working. On the other hand, these are probably the same MTA managers who live in East Northport and drive to their train yards and bus depots. Their entire lives are spent driving to run a transit system, so how can they ever imagine it could be any other way?
It's not clear how long it will take to restore the trestle across the bay, but the MTA could use some of the reconstruction money to restore the original tracks that went to Rockaway from Valley Stream. That connection came in handy in 1950 when the trestle was destroyed in a fire, and the Long Island Rail Road was able to run trains through Far Rockaway, as shown in this schedule:
Did they learn from that bit of resilience? Nah. In 1956 the LIRR sold the trestle and the peninsular tracks to the city, and in 1958 a quarter mile of track was removed in Far Rockaway. In 1966 the State took over the LIRR, and in 1968 it took over New York City transit, but it didn't rebuild the connection. A supermarket has been built across the old right-of-way, as you can see in this satellite picture:
If the track connection were still there, it would have been a relatively simple matter to move the trains. Better yet, the LIRR could have run trains direct from Penn Station. They wouldn't have to take an hour and a half like they did in 1951, if they went express from Far Rockaway to Valley Stream.
I don't know exactly how much it would cost to buy out the supermarket, rebuild the tracks and adjust the stations platforms for LIRR train cars, but probably only a couple million dollars. For a few million more you could build an elevated trestle over the supermarket and not even have to demolish it. Sure, it's a lot of money, but probably nothing compared to what we're spending to rebuild the trestle across the bay.
On one level, all of this is silly, because we simply can't afford to keep people living on a sand bar year round. It'd be a lot simpler if the train line just had to serve beachgoers; it could be rebuilt every spring if need be. But if we're going to have people living out there all year, they should have some real train service, and despite what Gridlock Sam may say, we shouldn't lower the tolls. That would ensure that they will drive for years more, keeping the trains empty and heavily subsidized.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Squatting and bullying on the sidewalk
There are two related, interconnected phenomena involving the use of public space: squatting and bullying. Squatting is taking over a public space for a use that wasn't intended, usually one that is relatively private. Bullying is using superior force to abuse others.
Some squats are very noble, others are generally positive: a political demonstration, a game of stickball, a tamale vendor. Some are a lot less positive: a race riot, a game of three-card monte, a drug deal. Your own opinion and morality will determine which ones you think are positive, and to what degree.
So far I've been talking about squats where the squatter has roughly equal power to the "legitimate users" of the public space. But when there's a big imbalance of power, things can get really ugly. That's when squatting and bullying combine to form a menace.
I'm thinking specifically of sidewalks. Sidewalks have all kinds of unintended uses, but their primary, intended use is to facilitate walking. They do this by being a pedestrian space where large and/or fast objects are not allowed. They are very important to our goals, because we need walking to be a viable alternative to driving for many trips. If the sidewalks in an area become unusable or absent, people on foot tend to avoid that area, or to get into cars.
Of course it's possible for intended and unintended uses to coexist on sidewalks. Jane Jacobs famously discussed the "sidewalk ballet" of unintended uses that allowed her West Village block to be so vibrant and safe. What I'm concerned about is when there is so much squatting that the sidewalk becomes useless for walking. Some uses are officially permitted - as in, the users have a permit. "Sidewalk sheds" (aka scaffolding) are a big one. Sidewalk cafes, store enclosures and news boxes also tend to take space away from walking. On some sidewalks there's plenty of room; on others, it gets to be a problem.
Some uses are not officially sanctioned, but still on relatively equal terms. Sidewalk cycling, sidewalk used clothing sales and the famous double-wide strollers of Park Slope are examples of this. When two friends walk abreast for social reasons, even though it leaves no room for anyone else to pass, that's a way of abusing the sidewalk.
And then there's bullying. I remember one night when I was eight or nine, and three big guys were walking down the sidewalk towards me. They didn't get out of the way, and just knocked me down. My dad yelled at them, but they laughed and walked away.
Then there's the kind of sidewalk bullying done with cars. It's bad enough when someone parks a car on the sidewalk, but it's worse when they block the sidewalk, and the worst is when they block the sidewalk and drive towards you, so that you have to get off the sidewalk or go backwards.
I'll talk more about this in future posts.
Some squats are very noble, others are generally positive: a political demonstration, a game of stickball, a tamale vendor. Some are a lot less positive: a race riot, a game of three-card monte, a drug deal. Your own opinion and morality will determine which ones you think are positive, and to what degree.
So far I've been talking about squats where the squatter has roughly equal power to the "legitimate users" of the public space. But when there's a big imbalance of power, things can get really ugly. That's when squatting and bullying combine to form a menace.
I'm thinking specifically of sidewalks. Sidewalks have all kinds of unintended uses, but their primary, intended use is to facilitate walking. They do this by being a pedestrian space where large and/or fast objects are not allowed. They are very important to our goals, because we need walking to be a viable alternative to driving for many trips. If the sidewalks in an area become unusable or absent, people on foot tend to avoid that area, or to get into cars.
Of course it's possible for intended and unintended uses to coexist on sidewalks. Jane Jacobs famously discussed the "sidewalk ballet" of unintended uses that allowed her West Village block to be so vibrant and safe. What I'm concerned about is when there is so much squatting that the sidewalk becomes useless for walking. Some uses are officially permitted - as in, the users have a permit. "Sidewalk sheds" (aka scaffolding) are a big one. Sidewalk cafes, store enclosures and news boxes also tend to take space away from walking. On some sidewalks there's plenty of room; on others, it gets to be a problem.
Some uses are not officially sanctioned, but still on relatively equal terms. Sidewalk cycling, sidewalk used clothing sales and the famous double-wide strollers of Park Slope are examples of this. When two friends walk abreast for social reasons, even though it leaves no room for anyone else to pass, that's a way of abusing the sidewalk.
And then there's bullying. I remember one night when I was eight or nine, and three big guys were walking down the sidewalk towards me. They didn't get out of the way, and just knocked me down. My dad yelled at them, but they laughed and walked away.
Then there's the kind of sidewalk bullying done with cars. It's bad enough when someone parks a car on the sidewalk, but it's worse when they block the sidewalk, and the worst is when they block the sidewalk and drive towards you, so that you have to get off the sidewalk or go backwards.
I'll talk more about this in future posts.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
The Cap'n's Bookshelf: Two Coots in a Canoe and Becoming Odyssa
One of my recreational pleasures is reading what I call self-propelled travel memoirs. I can't stand travelogues that are full of passages like "Our driver warned us..." and I have a hard time relating to windshield memoirs. I like Paul Theroux's books about train travel, and his books where he travels partly under his own steam, like Kingdom By the Sea where he walks a good deal of the way around the coast of England, and The Happy Isles of Oceania, where he kayaks around a number of Pacific islands (traveling between them by ship and plane). I've discovered a number of memoirs by other authors that involve long walks, bike rides or paddles.
Earlier this year I read Two Coots in a Canoe, by retired conservation advocate David Morine, describing how he and his friend Ramsay Peard canoed the length of the Connecticut River. Morine's conversational style made for easy reading, but some of the emotional content was honest and raw, with a surprising twist at the end.
One intriguing aspect of this memoir was that Morine and Peard, both around sixty years old at the time, agreed that they wouldn't camp out once during the trip. Instead they collaborated with other conservation advocates and used the connections they had built over their lifetimes to arrange for free room and board, usually with local activists involved in preserving or restoring a section of the river. In giving voice to these activists and describing their campaigns, Morine paints a picture of the current state of the river and the challenges in sustaining its flow and its wildlife.
After I finished that, I read Becoming Odyssa, an Appalachian Trail memoir by Jennifer Pharr Davis. Pharr Davis's style is a bit overwrought with metaphors, but she gives you a good feel for trail culture, and her honest discussions of her own emotional reactions to the trail are insightful and illuminating. As an atheist, I appreciated that she described her Christian religious beliefs and observances as matters of fact without any attempt to proselytize.
Sustainable transportation advocates will be most interested in the passage when Odyssa (as the author named herself, an Appalachian Trail tradition) comes upon the scene of a suicide. Realizing that the deed has been done, she numbly continues on the trail and dials 911 from her cell phone. On page 204 there is this exchange with the dispatcher:
After ten or fifteen minutes of this, someone else in the 911 call center overhears their conversation and tells the woman "Patch her through to the police now."
Pharr Davis may not have had a car at the time, but in both books I was struck by how much time all three travelers and their companions spent being driven around by friends, relatives and hosts. The amount of driving involved in the average Appalachian Trail through-hike is pretty amazing.
Earlier this year I read Two Coots in a Canoe, by retired conservation advocate David Morine, describing how he and his friend Ramsay Peard canoed the length of the Connecticut River. Morine's conversational style made for easy reading, but some of the emotional content was honest and raw, with a surprising twist at the end.
One intriguing aspect of this memoir was that Morine and Peard, both around sixty years old at the time, agreed that they wouldn't camp out once during the trip. Instead they collaborated with other conservation advocates and used the connections they had built over their lifetimes to arrange for free room and board, usually with local activists involved in preserving or restoring a section of the river. In giving voice to these activists and describing their campaigns, Morine paints a picture of the current state of the river and the challenges in sustaining its flow and its wildlife.
After I finished that, I read Becoming Odyssa, an Appalachian Trail memoir by Jennifer Pharr Davis. Pharr Davis's style is a bit overwrought with metaphors, but she gives you a good feel for trail culture, and her honest discussions of her own emotional reactions to the trail are insightful and illuminating. As an atheist, I appreciated that she described her Christian religious beliefs and observances as matters of fact without any attempt to proselytize.
Sustainable transportation advocates will be most interested in the passage when Odyssa (as the author named herself, an Appalachian Trail tradition) comes upon the scene of a suicide. Realizing that the deed has been done, she numbly continues on the trail and dials 911 from her cell phone. On page 204 there is this exchange with the dispatcher:
"I need to know where your car is," she said.
"I don't have a car. I hiked here."
"Well, where did you park your car?"
"I didn't park anywhere. I'm an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker."
"What county are you in?"
"I don't know what county I'm in. I'm at Sunrise Mountain in New Jersey."
"So where do you live in New Jersey?"
"I don't live in New Jersey."
"Then where is your car?"
After ten or fifteen minutes of this, someone else in the 911 call center overhears their conversation and tells the woman "Patch her through to the police now."
Pharr Davis may not have had a car at the time, but in both books I was struck by how much time all three travelers and their companions spent being driven around by friends, relatives and hosts. The amount of driving involved in the average Appalachian Trail through-hike is pretty amazing.
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