Enjoying Life Close to Home: Fun Streets

As we consider how to re-design our car-centric landscape, one idea that may be taking hold across the country is to close streets to automobile traffic at times and return that space to the people as a public space to be enjoyed.

We took a look at Bogata's Ciclovia earlier this year. Last month in Portland, they held a first ever "Sunday Parkways". What is "Sunday Parkways"?

What is Sunday Parkways?

6 miles, 6 hours, zero traffic~!

A circular route of city streets open to walk, bike, run, jump & skip - without having to watch out for cars!

A 6 mile "temporary park", connecting North Portland neighborhoods and residents.

A relaxed, non-competitive, FREE event featuring a variety of activities in 4 parks and along the route.

What you see here is people having fun close to home. The places we drive dozens or hundreds of miles to visit - quiet places without cars and trucks - can exist in our own front yards if we only have the will to say no to cars. Next Stop is my hometown: New York City.

Here's the news conference where New York's "Summer Streets" was announced:

Here's more description from Streetsblog:

On three Saturday mornings in August, the Department of Transportation will ban cars from nearly 5 miles of city streets to make way for cyclists, joggers and walkers. Starting at the beginning of Centre St. in Lower Manhattan, then moving north onto Lafayette St., Fourth Ave. and Park Ave., people will be able to travel all the way to 72nd St. and then to Central Park by walking down the middle of a street.

The streets will be closed to cars on August 9, 16 and 23 from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. On 15 major east-west streets, like Canal, 14th St. and 42nd St., cars will be allowed to cross the car-free zone.

This is moving forward despite a slew of complaints and people feeling that this might turn out to be a huge mess for traffic moving through the city. As the Mayor says, we'll see how it goes, but we need to try new things. If we only worry about the inconveniences we'll only stay in the same rut we've been in letting automobiles have the run of the land.

Personally, I plan to participate and stay close to home and enjoy my front yard.

This is a really hopeful development in a sea of bad news. One solution to the mess we are in as a culture is to re-discover our playful nature. It's always been there, but has been overwhelmed by the ever-present destructive and acquisitive side of our personalities.

Portland City Repair http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php doesn't get any mention -- but they have been working on this sort of thing for a long time, and have been a beacon of inspiration for me for the last five desolate years.

Along these lines, here's an interesting observation. My wife and I took a couple of days away from our businesses to enjoy our anniversary by staying at an Inn at the coast in northern California. It was a Tuesday and Wednesday and having been out that way on numerous previous occasions over the years, were surprised by how many people there were, in the restaurants and on the beaches.

We couldn't figure it out, until my wife said she had seen reports on the news explaining how many more people are enjoying recreation closer to home versus long distance travel this year due to higher fuel and other associated costs. So here we were on some rugged, less traveled beaches with hundreds of other people we wouldn't normally see.

So maybe people are already adapting in a variety of ways, that will in effect create more localized socialization.

The next step is to close off some streets from cars permanently. Ottawa closed one downtown street (Sparks street) to cars about 25 years ago.

And Calgary made a section of a downtown street (8th Avenue) pedestrian-only a few years ago. The next street south (7th Avenue) is closed to cars as well - it is used by buses and the Light Rapid Transit (CTrain) electric rail line to the suburbs.

This summer, they are trying a new traffic light system for some intersections. Basically, cars can move for a couple of minutes while people cannot cross. Then, the cars are stopped in all directions and people can cross the intersection in any direction, including diagonally.

My hope is that cars will increasingly get banned from city centres. High fuel prices can only help that along.

Actually, the Barnes Dance is not new at all, merely forgotten. It was installed fairly widely in New York City decades ago by traffic commissioner Henry Barnes. He borrowed it from even earlier usage. When he stepped down, the Barnes Dance pretty much departed with him. IMO one factor was that traffic engineers loathe anything unfamiliar. Extreme conservatism is par for the course in safety-related occupations, as, if you change anything even a tiny bit, then you are to blame for all future deaths and injuries, even if they are fewer in number, and even if the ones that still happen would have happened anyway. That's all the more true in the famously, or rather infamously, litigious USA.

In addition, periodically shutting down intersections altogether to cars reduces traffic throughput. At standard intersections with standard signals, straight-through traffic is moving along one of the two available axes essentially all the time; at Barnes Dance intersections it is not. Since Manhattan is a place where crosstown traffic moves at about 1mph for much of the day, anything that even gives the appearance of impeding traffic (especially weekday traffic) may prove to be political or legal suicide.

After all, even in a place that crowded, it's not practical or equitable to force absolutely everyone to walk. They may be physically unable, they may need to be bringing luggage along, etc. I do suspect that TOD posters (and Web users in general) tend to be: disproportionately young and thus more likely to still be physically able; childless and lugging along neither kids nor all that kid stuff; and recently steeped in nihilistic academic postmodernism. Any of those and other lifestyle and ideological factors, even operating alone, may blind them to some of the reasons why others might use cars.

Interesting about the Barnes Dance.

I figured that they had copied this from someone but I didn't know from whom.

They are also called 'scramble crossings'.

They are a few in Brisbane, Australia, some on four way intersections and some on T junctions but only one outside the CBD that I know of.

I'm not sure other Australian states have them.

These are all interesting interim solutions to make marginal cuts in fuel use.

The problem is, marginal changes are not going to be enough if there are severe shortages (like from a 5% cut in fuel supplies annually).

The only thing that can deliver sharp, immediate, and cost effective cuts to transport energy use is to massively expand the use of IT.

Here are some ideas:

- Mandate the nationwide installation of broadband. If you have any utility service like electricity, you get broadband to your home --- bundled in whether you like it or not or use it.

- Move virtually every possible activity "on line", from postal service delivered bills, to banking, to ordering goods and services, and delivering as much as possible services via the web, both public and private.

Then, for schools in the US:

- sharply change / curtain the 5 day a week school routine that require massive movements of people daily.

For example, dump the politically motivated programs like bussing of students in the US.

- replace centralized schools with satellites that uses existing public or quasi-public buildings (like church basements in neighborhoods so that for a part of the 5 day school week, students can walk / bicycle / golf cart / or whatever their way to a true neighborhood school (supplemented with extremely good broadband service to teachers).

- the conventional schoolhouse will still be used, but only for part of the week (maybe 3 days a week for one week, and 2 days the next), so students can still meet / have a central school.

- ultimately, the goal is to create schools where the commute is minimized and doable by non-petroleum fuel burning vehicles.

Killing off the American school system and replace it with a post industrial model based on IT would cut residential demand for fuel by probably at least 10%.

For Work:

- work can only be redesigned slowly except for those professions and jobs that can work at home.

- to the extent possible, these jobs need to be converted to petroleum commute free (or nearly) as much and as fast as possible, while still giving the workplace advantages like being able to interact with people, and for supervisors to monitor. For example, use shared workspace very close to home.

- for the jobs that cannot be easily redesigned, like working at a factory, a federal commuter excise tax need to be applied that is based on the actual commute used daily. Rather than systems that can fudge, OnStar and other wireless service can track the actual commute.

- for people and organizations that are in the habit of traveling long distances (for conferences, business meetings, etc.) these activities need to be subject to a steep excise tax to discourage it as much as possible.

- excise tax revenues collected from these programs can be used to fund programs to improve IT infrastructure, redesign work and play, and to generally reduce the need to move material long distances.

For shopping,

- a massive consolidation of retailing (that require lots of energy / fuel / etc.) and its replacement with online ordering for goods you see displayed at a "sales" center.

- a consolidated (maybe hub and spoke style) delivery system (rather than daily door to door) for non-rush goods that is delivered to the depot on a "window" of a few days.

- a revised shipment / delivery pricing structure that gives back consumers some of these savings vis-a-vis the need to pay for retailer margins.

These are just some basic ideas --- the beauty of bringing in IT and changing the nature of work is that it can deliver benefits almost immediately.

One day less of a commute a week is 20% of the fuel for commute saved.

Two days not having kids bussed to a central school will result in a smaller savings (they still need to go to a local satellite "school", but it helps.

Now, want to get real radical? Start studying how to convert existing "burbs" towns to golf cart communities, to reduce its energy needs, and then, rather than just bleet and complain, get the consensus needed, local laws passed, and implement.

Watching this site for a while, I see lots of people with good ideas, and very few people who seem to care or want to stop talking, debating, and just roll up their sleeves and get the job done.

The post peak oil petroleum output decline crisis is upon us... lets just mitigate it !

I bicycle around 3,000 to 4,000 mile a year in the Milwaukee, WI area. Generally speaking, I find that biking on public roads is a dangerous activity that most people will not even consider for regular transportation needs. As much as I enjoyed reading the suggestions to lower speed limits (dramtically), stop busing kids to school, revamp transportation systems,etc., I wonder what it will actually take for any of these ideas to be considered seriously? From my reading, we should be starting these things ASAP. However, I think my perspective represents a less than 1% minority viewpoint. SUVs carrying one person 30 miles to work at 80 mph is still considered "normal" and $4.00+ gas has changed little. If we started right now, I guess we could have some kind of rational transition to a reasonable lifestyle that moves away from our brutish car culture. But, I don't see any evidence of this kind of forethough - at least what I think is forward thinking. I suspect that the transition will be very ugly - I wish I could predict the timeline for when this uglyness will start: 5 years, 10 years, 30 years?

Like the civil defense practice of the 1950's, training for oil shortages will improve durability. During appropriate seasons, I would love to see one day a month designated as Bike Day. Everyone would be expected to ride a bike to work that day. Gas stations could be closed.

I would like to see this everyday for schools. Busing should be limited to more than 5 miles. Where there is busing, it should be at pickup points instead of every house. Our children could feel in control of their mobility.

the idea of blocking off streets was all the rage in St. Louis in the late 1980's but fell in disfavor when the street
closures divided rich and poor and black and white.

I'm with calgarydude - this kind of activity is great but will only be of limited recreation value until more streets are closed to car traffic permanently. Unless of course cities decide to invest in other forms of bicycle/pedestrian-only thoroughfares (that don't simply end in a freeway on ramp or a dead-end). I have several coworkers who bicycle to work infrequently because heavy car and truck traffic render their routes to work simply too hazardous. I avoid the morning rush to some degree by bicycling to work at 5:00 am and heading home by 3:00 PM - but not many people are likely to enjoy that schedule;-)

Using bicycles as alternative transportation will only see limited use until two things happen concurrently:
1. Convenient electric motorization of existing bicycles.
2. More stable, thus safer, 3 and 4 wheel bikes.
I suggest that all TOD readers check out www.americanspeedster.com as well as www.atomiczombie.com which has some 3 wheelers similar to a couple I saw in the video.
Also the electric motors I'm talking about are built right into the wheels and can be dropped into a bike just like replacing a wheel.
www.crystalyte.com.
With this combination we have vehicles (potentially weatherproof) that can travel 10-100miles at 10-30mph depending on how many and what kind of batteries you put in them. At about 100lbs each they consume so few resources that they can make the difference between austerity and collapse.

That video is all very nice, but having street parties won't provide any paychecks, food or products. Why is this touted as some kind of solution? Looks like utopianism at its best. The implication there is that all streets should be closed to cars, that all cars should go away, that bicycles are the future. The way things are going they are probably right. However, I suspect that their utopian medieval society won't leave much time for parties.

Do you mean utopian medieval societies like the Netherlands or Venice? Car Free cities would not be the solution but clearly part of the solution. Part of getting there is having people realize how truly pleasant daily life can be without the damned automobile and its noise and pollution in your damn face all the time. Those who have pedestrian malls, like Boulder, Colorado, can experience this every day, 24/7, all of the year. And the Pearl Street mall in Boulder does indeed provide a plethora of paychecks, food, and products. It is a thriving commercial district and fun place for families to enjoy themselves, the outdoors, and their children. This is not utopia. This is the way large swaths of European cities are right now.

Best hopes for more street parties in the streets without cars.

I used to live in Frankfurt, Germany. The quietest and most vibrant part of the city was downtown in the grand pedestrian spaces away from the automobile.

That video is all very nice, but having street parties won't provide any paychecks, food or products. Why is this touted as some kind of solution? Looks like utopianism at its best.

My only reservations are that there is an element of cosmeticism about such ventures -- the underlying idea being that if everybody did their little bit, we would all go a long way towards making the world a better place. I'm not so sure. True, at these events people enjoy themselves and feel good about themselves, sometimes to such a degree that one feels that they feel that they deserve a medal for their moral probity. No doubt some of the pleasure also derives from the fact that they are inconviencing the tubs of lard and fat Freddies who would drive 200 yards down the road to fetch their cigarettes rather than walk. But it is all just a drop in the ocean.

My preference would be for dedicated 24/7 cycle paths with cyclist priority at all intersections. Forget the partying. Most of us want to cycle weekdays, chiefly to commute to work -- not to piddle about in some lukewarm communitarian pond, especially when we have to run the gauntlet of ghastly, untalented street artists on unemployment benefits.

All this is good fun, but I'm just a loner cyclist who can't travel to work because the traffic is lethal. I don't want no community singalongs. I want a cycle path for myself, my bike, and my iPod. Seven days a week, and not just Sunday morning.

Other countries prove that 2-wheel transport can make up the mainstream. I've ridden on main roads in bicycle "schools of fish", and that didn't require closing the road either, it was daily life!!

The number of wheels isn't the main safety issue, it's speed and the size of vehicles on the road.

Rather than reserving roads for cyclists and pedestrians, I would reduce speed limits and discourage the use of heavy vehicles.

"the number of wheels isn't the main safety issue, it's speed and the size of vehicles"
MoreBikesPlease2,I agree with you on speed and size but having the car handling abilities of a 3 or 4 wheeler is crucial. In a moment of truth when someone cuts you off at 25mph in a motorized bike, I would rather be in what is essentially a bicycle car.
My speed limit would be 25mph roads and main streets and 35 on freeways or freeway sections totally sealed off to any other traffic. Needless to say I'm picturing a post car world still using whatever pathetically designed infrastructure that's left over.
In the world of my dreams everything would be redesigned drastically and private vehicles would neither be cars-Rube Goldberg design-or mere feeble bikes. They would be ultralite,amorphous metal
rollover bodies, like dune buggies. Safe microcars.

Events like these are essential to showcase the tremendous community benefits of reclaiming public space for people, not cars. I just got back from helping out at a similar event here in Brooklyn and it was a huge success!

Everyone was hesitant and confused once the street was blocked off. Initially there was a little unease and I was confronted with quite a few questions. But after a few minutes of confusion, the light-bulbs began to go off and everyone started to relax, smile and enjoy the newfound public space!

While we're conditioned to accept auto-dominance as the status quo, fact is, a car-free lifestyle is very appealing and has many rewards - Americans just don't think about it.

I think PO-aware folks need to do a fair share of promoting life without cars, and truthfully, it's not as hard as we might think. While it's easy to get hung up on doom and gloom (and trust me, I'm pretty sure we're in for some difficult times), it's important to emphasize the freedom and fun afforded to communities that turn their backs on "Cars Only!"

As a cyclist who commutes to work (6 miles each way) on my bike most days I would like to propose that instead of closing streets the powers that be should look into dedicating a single lane of an existing street to non-motorized transport. I recall seeing a picture of such a set-up on TOD before. Where I live, Denver, there are two 3 lane streets (13th and 14th) going into and out of downtown to/from the east. I avoid riding on these streets as the lanes are narrow and traffic is heavy. But if one lane were apporpriated for non-motorized transport I personally know quite a few people who would start commuting by bike. All it would take is a new curb (which could be taken from the space of the newly dedicated non-motorized transport lane) and curb-cuts at cross streets.

Is anyone aware of such ideas being proposed in any U.S. cities?

Is anyone aware of such ideas being proposed in any U.S. cities?

No, but I sure hope there are some and would very much be interested in seeing such ideas catch on.

I've recently been trying to commute to work by bike and despite having a designated bike lane I still felt very uncomfortable sharing the road with cars and trucks who don't seem to have much respect for the bike lane. I' have a feeling that this will change in the near future, what we need is a cultural tipping point of some sort. Also there is some additional safety in numbers so the more people start to do this the easier it will be for others to do so as well.

Ride a Bike or Take a Hike!

I doubt if this post will bring joy but here goes ... I have a friend who has lived in Portland a number of years so I asked him what he thought of the idea ...

"The city of Portland and Multnomah County both would like to do away with cars. In their perfect commie world we would all ride bikes, or take public subsidized transportation. They also believe fervently in income redistribution (Take from me and give to the cool-aid drinkers.). Their latest plans are to provide health care for all school children; that’s anyone under 21 or living at home that is going to school and forcing all chain restaurants to publish content information including calories for every menu item. They currently are feeding free lunch to any child that shows up at any city park. And it goes on and on and on. I would like to feed all of them at least one .50 caliber health pill!!!!!!!!!"

I guess there are some differences of opinion about the joys of living in Portland.

It is one thing to have a difference of opinion about how we get around in cities, but your friend is a psychopath. Does your friend also have a problem with subsidized private transporation, because that is what the private automobile is. Paid any property taxes lately or paid for any traffic police lately. Your friend needs to find another city, pronto, because he may be a danger to himself and others.

The very existence of public streets to serve private interests is a form of socialism. Perhaps we should make automobile drivers pay their full costs and perhaps they should all be sold to private interests to avoid any tint of communism.

Though I of course do not know, but it is very possible that he pays more in taxes than anyone in that video at the top. Further, he probably gives more in charity than anyone in the video.

He started as a poor farm boy in Eastern Oregon and worked hard and long and is now quite wealthy from owning multiple businesses and still working at over 70.

You should hear what he thinks of illegal aliens, press one for English and a lot of other signs of our times. He is not alone in these thoughts either as a neighbor of mine is quite the same.

The taxes your friend pays are irrelevant. The point is that the so called private automobile is completely dependent upon the taxpayers for its ability to travel throughout our cities and country.

Ultimately, the taxpayers made the decision to have the auto completely dominate our cities but that can also be reversed based upon a change in preferences. The system does not suddenly become communist because of a change in priorities in the way that taxpayer funds are dispensed. How does your friend's wealth,allegedly compared to the people in the video, have any relevance to the validity of his opinions. He may be rich, but he is still a psychopath nonetheless. If he wants to blow people away because he doesn't agree with them means that he is a danger to those around him.

While the rich have a disproportionate influence on political decision making, this is not a formal plutocracy. Maybe that is what is bugging your rich friend.

Ya, Portland used to be a nice city until all the San Francisco whacko's started moving in. :-)

Resistence to us is futile. Join us (last 28 seconds matter). It's not so bad. We come in peace, with sushi in every pot and little cable cars that go halfway to the stars.

Yeah, and there are quite a few white power idiots out there as well, plus people who think we never landed on the moon. So what. Your buddy is a moron, yes a moron. That's what I would call anyone who proposes "feeding" a .50 caliber bullet to the recipient of a free school lunch. And no I'm not willing to "see his side of it." One of my favorite quotes, "Anyone who sees both sides of the issue doesn't see a goddamn thing." Your buddy should move to a place where his little Ayn Rand fantasy is closer to reality.
'steps off soap box'

Some things about the video:

- This type of event has tremendous psychological and sociological benefits such as getting out of the house, moving around, meeting people face to face (outside of work), meeting the neighbors or the folks around the block you never knew lived there that have kids the same age as you. These types of interactions will become more frequent and important to us as we progress down the peak.

- Things can change swiftly when necessary. Roads can be converted for bike use overnight, wind mills can be built pretty quick, and people can adapt just as fast.

- Local and grass roots action are going to more important to your life as we go down the peak.

- Even though I leave in the "less-liberal-than Portland" Midwest region, my city has started the green parkway bike lanes on streets and built new biking/walking sidewalks next to larger streets. Wind farms in the Midwest are popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

Rock Port, Missouri (pop. 1,395 and home of the Les Bourgeois Winery and Vineyards) just became the first town in the US to get all it's electricity from wind-generation.

In this time of economic malaise and impending energy crises, these are definite hopeful bright spots.

This all sounds great for people who LIKE cities and crowds. I'm hoping that I can get as far away from a mess like this and maybe grow food for you party types. To each their own, and my own isn't the urban setting.

They had something like a Sunday Parkways in Minneapolis last year on the Grand Rounds loop. I rode it in for awhile, but it was super dangerous, way too crowded. Good idea on paper, but the differences in rider speed made it not worth the risk. IMO.

Peak Oil And The American Automoble-Two Items Almost Unrelated
It's about the aesthetics

Quite the little discussion on the horrors of assisted transportation!
I sometimes think that I have miscoded the web address when I get to TOD and somehow landed on "Bicycle World".

It is interesting to note how many posters discuss the absolute distaste (sometimes almost hatred) they feel toward the automobile.
This is all the more interesting since we seldom see discussed the real statistics concerning how much fuel is consumed by the automobile used inside the city when compared to total national or world consumption. How much would it be exactly?

But the issue of fuel consumption is not the issue here is it? Despite being called a discussion about "oil and our future" most of the posts here on TOD are really about philosophy and aesthetics. The automobile is just plain not liked here.

Just the other day, in a Bloomberg News story on the price of oil, the statistic was given that U.S. automobiles and light trucks (leaving aside Diesel and heavy hauling) consume approximately 10% of the worlds oil consumption in the use of gasoline.

This is a percentage that is dropping with each passing day, not because people have suddenly abandoned the SUV (although many are beginning to), but simply because growth in consumption of oil around the world outside the U.S. is growing, mainly in the developing world.

In other words, the 10% of the world's oil that goes to U.S. gasoline will soon enough be down in single digits, with no technical innovation whatsoever.

But there will be technical innovation, in fact there already has been. The Toyota Prius has sold strongly right through the "collapse", proving that the U.S. car makers are not suffering from "macro economics" so much as from bad product.

Within 3 years there will be at least 8 new models of plug hybrids offered by major auto manufacturers. As these enter the marketplace, which given the pressure being exerted on all nations to reduce greenhouse gases will almost certainly occur whether the fuel price holds as high as it is or not, the die will be cast. The percentage of oil used to propel automobiles will continue to decline in all the developed nations. The trend will soon enough move to the developing nations, and fuel for automobiles as a percentage of world consumption will continue to decline. The amount of the oil consumed by U.S. automobiles will decline to a mere sliver of the total of world consumption.

I have made the above argument for a reason: I ask, does anyone here believe that the raw and deep hatred of the automobile will decline as the impact of the automobile on oil consumption and greenhouse gases decline? I would venture to say not. The automobile is hated here not for it's vices but for it's very existence. It is a hatred that goes to the very birth of the automobile and is based on many of the same philosophical and aesthetic objections. Some have called it an "elitist" hatred of the average person being in control of the mobility and status that were once reserved only for the wealthy ahd powerful, the "democrazation" of mobility.

As the automobile becomes of less impact environmentally and in it's use of fuel, it will become all the more hated, as it is seen that it will indeed survive, for at least awhile longer.

It is interesting that the other diversions of middle class (and above) humans are seldom mentioned on TOD. I have several female friends who will tell you with directness that they MUST leave the air conditioning on in their homes and apartments even when they are not there for the whole day because they have cats or dogs. Others consume vast amounts of energy and money on broad expanses of lawn. One wonders what the combined environmental and energy impact is of the nations golf courses.

Alas, of the automobile we can only say that there are those who love it and those who hate it, and many who claim to hate it while enjoying the modern way of life that it has provided and continues to provide.

We can also say that the use of the automobile or the lack thereof has virtually nothing to do with the problem of peak oil, or the mitigation of the event. If one accepts, and I must assume that most here do, the dire projections of Colin Campbell and the ASPO, Matthew Simmons, or before them, M. King Hubbert, then one must realize that if the United States parked every single one of it's automobiles tomorrow, it would change nothing about the timing of peak oil. This does not mean that the reduction of gasoline consumption is not of great value. It would conserve American capital and act as a great service to national security and prosperity in the long haul. And that, and not because of peak oil, is why the declining of America's fuel consumption to a sliver of the worlds is of such great benefit to the nation. Our humanitarian better angels would show us that it will be beneficial to the world.

It is seldom that we are allowed as a nation and as individuals to do something that is good for us and good for the world at the same time. This is the wonderful position we find ourselves in today.
Thank you.
Roger Conner Jr.
RC

I think that you are a little harsh on most posters. We (mostly) don't hate the car but hate the damage it does to both society and the enviornment. people who like to walk,jog or ride bikes are screwed in a society that refuses to provide footpaths and expects us to wait for gaps in traffic when we cross from one block to the next. How about turning it around and make cars wait at the end of each block whilst pedestrians have automatic right of way?
BTW I have seen plenty of posts here complaining about twits with A/C 24/7, land wasted on golf courses and myriad other pet peeves; we are not just fixated on cars and bicycles.

It sounds like you have a problem with other people hating some inanimate object.

Where I am from we have a word for an inanimate car: BROKE.

I don't have a problem with peopel hating an inanimate object, but it can be a concern if they hate my car when I try to animate it! :-)

RC

Ottawa Canada has been doing this on thier parkway since I can't remember.I'm 43 years old,and rode my bike every Sunday down to the center of ottawa,and bought farm produce for my mom when I was very young.I had a day out and spent it with my brothers.We would enjoy eating downtown.One of the best memories from my youth.Great times in spring,summer,fall.Can't hurt any city for getting families to spend time with each other.