Annapolis Capital Punishment

I refer you to a chapter in a new book published by the Earth Policy Institute by Lester Brown in which he passionately argues for innovative transportation systems in cities and points to many successful examples. Many of us know that we have to do something differently here at home. CP has repeatedly stressed the need to decrease cars, promote transit, walking and bicycling and overhaul our own transportation department, something called for explicitly by then incoming Mayor Dean Johnson over ten years, yet much, in fact, something, anything, remains to be done.

Just the other day, CP was reading about the attractive and successful Lincoln Road promenade in Miami Beach, Florida where the visionary developer said, "Cars never bought anything. People buy things" or something to that effect. We should consider the same idea here in Annapolis. Rather than make more and more spaces for cars, let's make more options for people to move around. CP has visited Lincoln Road and many other pedestrian ways (I prefer to call them no-car zones, or people only zones) in domestic and foreign cities and it is time we started thinking along those lines here.

I refer you to: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch10_ss3.htm
(Note: Brown states that bicycle production and use has climbed dramatically in China since 1978, but I have always though that the opposite occurred and that China is maddeningly rushing into an automobile-centric future...)

Thanks to Will Small of Eastport for recommending this article.

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