Many politicians who subscribe to nanny-state philosophies believe that the freedom of mobility which automobiles grant the citizenry is wrong. Yesterday, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Denver City Council member Carla Madison proposed banning cars from downtown for a Sunday to make Denver walkable.
Denver City Councilwoman Carla Madison is driving an effort to ban cars from downtown for several hours one Sunday this year, emulating car-free days in places such as New York City, Portland and Bogota, Colombia.
"One of the things we're trying to promote in Denver is that it's a walkable city, and this would probably be the ultimate in proving that it's walkable," said [ Carla ] Madison.
Banning cars to improve walkability is nonsense on stilts. Perhaps Carla Madison does not know anything about the current walkability of Downtown Denver. There is a mile-long 16th Street pedestrian mall which has no vehicles on it (except for the occasional police car or mall shuttle bus). Traffic lights in LoDo have a red in every direction phase to provide a protected walk cycle exclusively for pedestrians. Just because New York (a city of over 8 million people, densely populated, and in a state of perpetual traffic gridlock, even on Sundays) banned cars for a day, Denver should as well?
Unfortunately, Mayor John Hickenlooper, who never met a publicity stunt he didn't like, seems supportive of the plan.
A spokeswoman for Mayor John Hickenlooper said the mayor is "absolutely supportive of the idea." [ Mayor John Hickenlooper ] said he was committed to working with the downtown business community to make sure that restaurants and shops would benefit from the idea.
The only government official with an appearance of sanity is Councilman Charlie Brown.
Councilman Charlie Brown said it's "completely contrary" to the city's efforts to attract more retail downtown. "To close down the heart of the city on a Sunday, that's looney toon," [ Charlie Brown ] said.
Rocky Mountain News columnist Vince Carroll also is skeptical about the rationale behind the car-free proposal.
But the car-free movement, while great for many participants, is also an exercise in consciousness-raising and creeping lifestyle management - just look at the literature. And it's this added agenda that ought to get on sober people's nerves.
When Portland closed six miles of roads earlier this summer, for example, a "transportation options program manager" for the city's Office of Transportation told The Oregonian that the idea was to "get people off their couches and onto their bicycles and feet."
Get people off their couches? We don't need government officials prodding us onto our feet or bicycles as if an aversion to exercise were the reason most of us drive. Metro Denver has great bike and hiking paths, which I'm on almost every weekend. I don't need access to the middle lanes on 17th Street, too.(snip)
If Denver does pursue a car-free Sunday, though, it should follow Portland's lead in defraying costs. "Grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Kaiser Permanente, Metro and other sponsors have completely covered the city's $150,000 tab for the event," The Oregonian reported.
While it is true that the government should consider the cost of its regulations, the idea of using taxpayer money to subsidize lost business due to this publicity stunt is outrageous. The taxpayers and businesses already paid for the construction of the streets; now taxpayers have to pay the businesses for the government denying consumer access to those businesses during the publicity stunt.
As Downtown Denver is already walkable, the only people walking during "car-free day" will be the downtown Denver residents (who already walk quite a bit to shopping, restaurants, and entertainment). For people living outside Denver, it would be best to stay away from downtown and walk or drive to one's local establishments and steer as far away from anti-car LoDo as possible.
by Civil Sense
Carla says "Having one car free Sunday afternoon to help boost the walkablility of Downtown is what has been discussed between myself, a few downtown advocates and some city planners."
What a load of crap. It does nothing to improve an already very walkable downtown. It's an annoying stunt.
Posted by: Allen | September 13, 2008 at 01:06 PM