The latest stats I recall on Minneapolis transportation share noted that the Bike/Pedestrian share was at 3.5%.
If the numbers Mr. cutting says he found on the 2,000 Census, they are encouraging. I clicked around the 2,000 Census website, but did not locate the page for the Statisitcs Mr. Cutting cited. I also did a quick scan at Transportation for Livable communities and at MN Bike & Pedestrain Alliance, and a couple of quick googles. No luck yet. I did find that 19.7% of Minneapolitans have no vehicle available to them to drive, according to the census. Scroll down to "Vehicles Available" Category at: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/planning/Census2000/2000-Mpls-ProfileofSelectedHousingCharacteristics.asp Wow, 20% of Minneapolitans living without a car1 I take this to mean that walking, biking, transit, carshare, rideshare, and cabs are important to many Minneapolitans. My contention is that our current over-reliance on conventional automobiles constitutes a huge crime against humanity, as well as a slow-motion geopolitical, ecological, and economic crash which will mangle us all pretty badly. List-members, I submit that you will get far more from reading Stan Goff's overview of Kerry's "Energy Plan" at Counterpunch than from looking to any local media for information. Read Goff's article *not* as a critique of Kerry, but rather as a critique of how the "dismal science" of economics has utterly failed us as science, because it is rooted in pre-scientific monarchicalism and feudalism. Note also how the "energy economy" works. One read through this article will tell you more about what Linden Hills, Whittier or Phillips will be like in 5 or 10 years than anything the local press -- excluding the Pulse -- will tell you. http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html Our political leadership -- recent past, present, and foreseeable future -- has more at stake in telling you what you want to hear to get elected again, than it has in bothering to discover or talk about truth. Corporate leadership is leagally bound to extract as much wealth from Minneapolis as possible for the next financial quarter. Media is owned by those who benefit from the status quo. There are few exceptions. The truth is this: we cannot physically continue to live as we are. To obtain the energy that our "our way of life" requires, we will need to brutally massacre people around the world. Not by the tens of thousands, as we are currently doing in Iraq, but by the tens of millions. The largest nations on the planet -- China and India --want to live like we do. We've sold them the Lie, and now they are acting on it. What local politicians tell us the truth or "walk the walk" about the impact we have on the environment, the global economy, or on our chances for surviving for thirty more years? Most are busy, busy, "Chasing the SUV Vote" as this article describes. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0818-02.htm Name one MN state politician who is not giving up everything to chase "the SUV vote" come Hell or High Water. Name one Minneapolis or metro area politician who is not. Oddly, the amount of damage we do locally -- excluding the global implications for a moment -- with our current transportation paradigm makes the damage done by smoking in bars and restaurants absurdly small by comparison. We can hardly deal with a tiny mote in our collective eye, so how can we deal with that two-by-four stuck into our face? There was some discussion of 6,000 pound SUVs on Minneapolis streets of late. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune would be bankrupted if it offended those who make, sell, and buy these machines. The same goes for virtually any media company, paper, or radio station. The same goes for any political party or politician. Our only chance for peace and some measure of prosperity -- and it is a small, slim chance -- that enough people will actually care enough to do independant research, and then to radically alter their own lives to bring about true democracy -- political, economic, and ecological. We need to care enough to know, and know enough to care. Political organization and action has some effect, but remember that most political action is co-opted by powers whose self-interest is completely divorced from "we the people" or democracy. The best action may be to form small, local communities who learn to live adaptively and sustainably in what is almost certain to be a Hellish unleashing of concentrated political and military power over the next two or three decades. Questions: Energy and food are closely linked. Think: we expend far more energy to feed ourselves than any other nation on earth, and yet we spend far, far less on our food. How do you suppose we work out that little shell game? Do you think we do so by promoting democracy, justice, and ecological enlightment? Think: have you ever seen one rich white man in our local jail, or in the county Workhouse? Or how about prison? But how many poor people and people of color are incarcerated? And why is the INS keeping over 23,000 people in prison without any rights? And how many tens of thousands of mostly poor, almost all dark-skinned people have been killed for oil? (That we know of, I mean.) Who benefits from this expanding, brutal violence at home and abroad? How will the peace be kept in Minneapolis when food and energy become more scarce, local farming has been destroyed, and the rest of the world decides that it wants a share of the oil that is left? There is no way that we can make enough energy to replace what we are about to lose over the next thirty-to-fifty years. There is no way that we can perpetuate the racial, economic, energy, and environmental injustice that our current economic system imposes upon our civic process. There is no way that we will survive by encouraging bigotry against GBLT people and people of color. These issues need to be front-and-center in our local civic discussions. We need to build local, sustainable communities here and now for a sustainable future. -- pedaling for shared peace and justice -- from Kingfield -- Gary Hoover REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 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