BY MARY O’BRIEN
Wheel People
We already know how to get more people
walking
T
hat many humans have quit walking in
order to move almost exclusively via
motorized chairs such as cars and off-
road vehicles (ORVs) is a fascinating transforma-
tion. It’s equally fascinating to ponder whether
humans will ever return to walking.
Those who subscribe to the one-way-ness of
the transformation confidently announce, “You’re
not going to get people out of their cars (or off their
ORVs).” This claim is most often heard while people are
discussing conflicts between motorized transportation and the
environment, whether urbanized (e.g., west Eugene roads impacting wetlands)
or rural (e.g., national forests with their legal and illegal truck, RV, car and
ORV routes impacting wetlands, creeks, meadows, wildlife and eroding
slopes). In most towns and cities, “transportation” has largely become syn-
onymous with motorized, single-passenger transportation. In the national
forests, “access” and “recreation” are generally code for car and ORV access.
“You’re not going to get people out of their cars” implies that roads, cars,
trucks and ORVs will inevitably proliferate, whether or not this kills us and all
our relations, which it increasingly is doing, through crashes, pollution, obesi-
ty and/or global warming. It implies we’re the urban-legend frog that sits in
water as it warms from cold to boiling, ultimately cooking without trying to
leave.
Now we’re learning that Alaska will likely lose all its polar bears by mid-
century because of melting ice. A third of Americans are obese (with all its
connected diseases), while one in about seven were obese in the mid-1970s.
Every day, 113 people in the U.S. die in motorized vehicle crashes. And we
can’t get people out of their cars?
The reality is that if water is gradually heated, frogs do leave. An artist
friend, returning to Rome this summer, remarked on an astounding change:
“Thirty years ago it was not fun to walk around old Rome,” she says. “Now,
occasionally a car passes, and it’s a delight to walk.”
One thing Rome did was limit passenger vehicle entry into the central
zone to residents and some authorized nonresidents (e.g., physicians and dis-
abled people). Now, authorized nonresidents (other than disabled people) and
freight delivery drivers must pay the equivalent of a year’s passes on public
transit to get a pass to enter the central zone via private vehicle. And then
parking is hard to find.
When bicycle use in Amsterdam plummeted in the 1960s and 1970s in
favor of cars, Amsterdam’s 1978 city council opted for a policy of curbing car
use by favoring bicycles and public transit. One key has been reduction of
parking availability and increases in parking fees. Public transit and “Park and
Bike” facilities increase the advantages of biking, public transit and walking.
Currently approximately 35 percent of traffic in Amsterdam (population
750,000) is by bike; 25 percent by public transport.
T
he story is different in our national forests, where ORV use is skyrock-
eting. More than 400,000 miles of roads are “legal,” and illegal
(“user-created”) routes are routinely created by ORV drivers who cut
across meadows, through fish streams, up slopes and around muddy, incised
routes. Fences that are in the way are frequently cut. Enforcement staffing is
miniscule, and rural courts often levy meaningless fines for destructive viola-
tions.
This becomes a vicious cycle: People avoid walking or hiking on routes
used by ORVs. Go to any national forest, and you can obtain an extraordinari-
ly detailed map of forest roads, ORV routes and motorized cross-country sac-
rifice areas. Ask for a map focused on walking routes, and there will be none.
You can perhaps detect some faint dashed lines on the road map but no map
guidance as to which are motorized, or descriptions of the length, difficulty or
maintenance level of the nonmotorized trails. You’re on your own.
National parks, such as Grand Canyon and Zion, on the other hand, seem
to be able to entice people into public trams. At each entrance, you are
offered family-friendly maps of walking trails, with descriptions of the length,
difficulty and special features of each trail. Walking made easy.
When we say, “You can’t get people out of their cars,” it seems we’re really
saying that we love motorized chairs so much that we don’t want to imple-
ment tried-and-true policies that make walking, bicycling and public transit
attractive alternatives.
Mary O’Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at
mob@efn.org
4 SEPTEMBER 13, 2007
TO THE EDITOR
PLAN IS FLAWED
THAT PARK THING
The mayor’s (West Broadway) Advisory
Committee, from the beginning, has forced a
preconceived and ill-conceived plan for West
Broadway development onto an unsuspect-
ing public. And despite Mayor Piercy’s pub-
lic statements that the review of the project is
intended to be a “transparent” process, it has
been anything but. Public input has been ig-
nored, stifled, resisted, exluded and pre-
empted.
While publicly the committee has been
very self-congratulatory, indicating in the
press that they are concerned about public
benefits, privately they have moved to
squelch, muzzle and ignore valid proposals
that actually have the public in mind as op-
posed to those with a vested interest in the
West Broadway area. For instance, a pro-
posed interactive public fountain was conve-
niently “forgotten” to be included on the
agenda at public workshops and never made
it onto the committee’s draft proposals. They
simply refused to discuss it.
Similarly, the committee’s position on
“open space” is limited to wide sidewalks
and private courtyards, ignoring urban park
alternatives while advocating unnecessary,
costly parking garages. Wednesday (9/5)
night was the last straw: The Committee re-
fused to either discuss or allow into their final
proposal open space alternatives by commit-
tee member and CPA representative Rob
Handy. There is no reason why Eugene
shouldn’t have the kinds of green space pub-
lic amenities now enjoyed by towns such as
Olympia, Vancouver (Wash.), Colorado
Springs, Portland and even Hillsboro.
It’s time to end the kind of provincial, lim-
ited thinking that has caused every urban re-
newal project to date to fail. The design of
cities should be trusted to architects, city
planners and designers, not bean counters.
Thomas Lincoln
Springfield
I probably shouldn’t be spending my time
and energy writing about Mark Gillem’s pos-
itively spot-on idea for revitalizing
Downtown Eugene (8/30 and 9/6
Viewpoints). But it is a start, and Plan B isn’t
going anywhere. (Plan B: Wear tight-fitting
camisoles that read, “DO THE PARK
THING ACROSS FROM THE LIBRARY!”
around town in hopes of being asked,
“What’s the park thing?”)
My theory is that there is not as much time
as we’d like to believe there is to decide what
shall be done regarding this “downtown revi-
talization thing.” Here’s the truth. We,
Eugene, have $105 million in the bank, wait-
ing, impatiently, like a 3-year-old, “to GO!”
If we don’t start paying attention, the impa-
tient $105 million that wants to go may just
go away from, instead of to, Eugene. Why
give the impatient millions to those whose
goal it is to “take the money and run” when
we could give the money to Eugeneans
whose goal it is to stay here and spend it in
Eugene?
City Hall has nearly pleaded with us to
speak up and tell them what we want them to
do with the redevelopment funds. They are as
willing as we are to err on the side of caution,
being as change-shy as the next Eugenean to
do anything in light of past failed attempts to
revitalize downtown. They are patient. We
are patient. But the money and the money
grabbers are not. We can have this lovely
thing. We can get rid of that old Sears pit. All
we have to do is inform City Hall what we
want.
If you haven’t already, go down to the li-
brary, walk out, and imagine a city park actu-
ally being there. Then inform the only person
whose opinion matters to you (you) what you
think. I bet you, too, start thinking about get-
ting T-shirts that read: DO THE PARK
THING. But first, please write City Hall re-
questing Mark Gillem’s Library Park, then
get the T-shirts made. That way, the shirts can
just read “Thank you!” and we can all wear