Hello, all!
My name is Gary Hoover. I live in Kingfield and in Ward 10.
I am known to many clients and friends as "Earth Friend". I started my micro-eco-entrepreneurial business just over one year ago. I use no fossil fuels to get around, and I work as sustainably as possible as I clean, do yardwork, and odd jobs for folks who live in Minneapolis. I mostly work within a 2 mile radius from my home.
I ride an Organic Engines Cargo Trike, and can haul about 500 pounds easily, over hills and all. so, I have over a years' experience doing sustainable transportation for myself and my family here in town. It is a wonderful, relationship-enhancing, liberating, and healthy experience! I hope to develop a sustainable transportation co-op to help folks have access to a variety of HPVs (Human Powered Vehicles) and also NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles). Also, I hope to encourage the City of Minneapolis to cut costs and pollution, while improving the health of employees, by buying HPVs for use by staff in City Parks and for trips around town of less than two miles.
I encourage folks on this list to visit the federal Center for Disease Control's website, and check out the CDC's studies on urban infrastructure and human health. It is powerful stuff.
The CDC states that urban infrastructure is a very significant cause of obesity, one of our nation's most widespread (kind of a pun, there) and problematic epidemics. Also, urban transportation infrastructure contributes greatly to asthma and other upper respiratory diseases, to cardiovascular diseases, and to other health problems as well.
The CDC also has the ACE (Active Community Environments) site, which includes the "Safe Walk to School" program. It is well worth browsing the site for information and inspiration.
If my memory is correct, the CDC stats are that over 60% of our trips in urban areas are under 2 miles. We have grown accustomed to making nearly all of these trips in cars or trucks, whether we are hauling anything, going alone, or in a group. The toxic fumes our cars spew are well-known for including "greenhouse gases" but they also spew a variety of other very toxic pollutants, including benzene, which is a known cause of leukemia. Childhood leukemia may very well be linked to auto exhaust exposures - I have not worked through all of the research yet, but that is my understanding. Deisel doesn't do much better than gas pollution-wise - and may be worse in some ways.
I wonder how many folks driving these short errands are aware of the damage they are doing to our environment and to our bodies. I wonder, of course, how many people really care, as well. I wonder how many people know that there are workable, non-polluting alternatives available now, for those who do care and are willing to getr outside of the oarticular "comfort bubble" we have been conditioned to accept almost as a God-given second body - the car. I would like the City of Minneapolis to create a program of very assertive education about sustainable transportation, and to help make HPVs and NEVs available in the city. They are so great for the many short trips people make during every day urban life!
I suggest that if people knew more about the damage cars do, and the benefits of HPVs and NEVs, they would very readily embrace them to make those many short trips in town, and also for many longer trips as well.
Embracing and aggressively marketing these vehicles may be one of the cheapest, simplest, and most direct and integrative ways to: cut city operating costs; reduce pollution in the city; reduce road congestion; reduce excessive speeds in neighborhoods; reduce health care costs in the city; increase safety; enhance health; enhance the beauty of our city. Importantly, HPVs and NEVs also enhance relationships as become part of the neighborhoods they travel through rather than isolated, high-speed projectiles cutting violently through the urban landscape, leaving toxic trails behind them.
I was riding home from working at a clients' home on Monday afternoon. Riding North along Portland from about 63rd, I noticed again the bitter taste of the clouds of road salt ground into fine powder by cars which were (I am quite sure) exceeding the speed limit. I counted so-called "Sport-Utility Vehicles" in a half block rush of trafic speeding by, the way cars so often do. There were five in one such cluster of vehicles passing, all of which had one occupant, with no visible sign of cargo or passengers. All drivers looked hell-bent on being first in line to the light that was just turning red up ahead. I passed most of them on my way to stop at the same light. When the light turned green, the cars roared off in a safety-be-damned race ahead to the next red light.
I myself looked at, felt, and breathed the salt mixed with exhaust fumes and with the road-residue chemicals mixed into the salt: benzene, motor oil spilled onto the roadway, transmission fluid, radiator fluid, frozen exhaust. All of this for us to breathe and to run off into the lakes and streams of our city. I watched this little toxic cloud drift over the yards near the road. these yards will shelter children playing in the smow and tin the puddles. They will burst forth in lawns and flowers, elderly people, middle aged people, and children and pets will play there again on sunny days, windy days, and wet days. They will be unaware of the way we are paying to poison them and ourselves, every day.
I am also aware of run-off from the oceans of paving that make up our streets and parking lots. All of these built to subsidize these cars we drive, and all of these causing polluted water to run off into lakes, streams, and the Mississippi. If we rode HPVs for most of our under-two-mile trips, and for some of our longer trips, we could have parking lots that look more like gardens. Gravel or other permeale surfaces could replace at least some of the asphalt, with perrenials - or even vegetables - and trees sprouting in place of concrete barriers and (toxic?) paint stripes over asphalt.
If we used HPVs and NEVs for even a third of our short trips, our city would be utterly andf completely transformed, rapidly and quite cheaply. We would all be healthier and safer. I thought about this as I rode home, using mostly quiet resiential streets which seemed to reach out and embrace me on my cargo trike with joy, as do children when they see me carefully riding by. And this is the greatest beauty and joy of such human-scale transportation. It is the utter joy and wonder in asmall child's face as they exclaim "Look, mommy, look! Look at that man on that funny trike!" I am in heaven, then, knowing that this child ahs seen a glimpse of another world, another possibility, another city that we can make. "This is public education!" I think. And I always wave and smile and say hello. If I can, and parent and child seem comfortable, I stop to say hello, and encourage the child to ride a trike for their whole life if they want to.
Another great response is from teen-agers. "Tight bike, man!!!" is my favorite comment, followed by "A-w-r-r-r-ighT!!! and a double thumbs up. "These kids can still see," I think. They can still see. Still imagine. Yes, another world is possible. Another city is possible. It is just around the corner.
Can you see? Can our mayor? Can our council members? Dear God, I hope so!
Gary S. Hoover - aka - Earth Friend
Kingfield - Ward 10
In a message dated 2/26/02 1:35:16 AM Central Standard Time, GarySimmbo writes:
