Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Bike to Work Week 2008!

Grab your bike out of the garage because May is national Bike Month and Bike to Work Day 2008 is on May 15 in the Bay area! If you sign up to pledge that you’ll ride your bike to work on this day, you’ll be entered to win a new bike! There will also be “energizer stations” in every county which will be giving out tote bags + treats to riders.

For Bike Month events in other cities/states check out the League of American Bicyclists site.

The Car-free Life in Paris

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the trend toward building entire subdivisions as car-free communities here in Germany; though these neighborhoods eschew cars and roads for bikes and courtyards, they also offer a bit of storage space to house the bikes (either as covered garages or, in the single-family homes, on porches).

In larger, more compact cities, though, there often isn’t enough room for residents to keep their bikes inside and the threat of theft is too great to store bikes outside (nearly every person I’ve spoken to in Cologne has had a bike stolen – hence the preference for buying cheap, unexciting, used bikes instead of mountain or racing bikes). To keep people riding, then, cities like Copenhagen offer cycles free of charge to riders (the cost of the bike is supported by advertisements). All you need is a Euro coin as a deposit to unlock the bike; you get the coin back when the bike’s returned to a station in the city and locked anew.

photo (c) aisipos, via flickr creative commons

Lyon has a similar program, though you pay a small amount for each ride; it’s a popular way home for students after late-night dinners with too much wine. Now Paris is trying it out, too. From The New York Times:

The program, Vélib (for “vélo,” bicycle, and “liberté,” freedom), is the latest in a string of European efforts to reduce the number of cars in city centers and give people incentives to choose more eco-friendly modes of transport.

“This is about revolutionizing urban culture,” said Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris’s trendy third district, which opened 15 docking stations on Sunday. “For a long time cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility. What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill this role much more today.”

Users can rent a bike online or at any of the stations, using a credit or debit card and leave them at any other station.

A one-day pass costs 1 euro ($1.38), a weekly pass 5 euros ($6.90) and a yearly subscription 29 euros ($40), with no additional charges as long as each bike ride does not exceed 30 minutes. (Beyond that, there is an incremental surcharge, to make sure that as many bikes as possible stay in the rotation.)

I’m really excited that this idea is catching on; wherever my husband and I travel, we rent bikes to get around the city and these ad-sponsored cycles take some of the worry out of having the bike stolen. And as tourists, we see more of the people, the architecture, and everyday life by bike than by subway, so it’s a treat I wouldn’t want to give up. I just hope someone brings this idea to the US soon … because while it’s easy enough to make the car-free lifestyle choice in your hometown, getting around as a tourist is a bit more difficult to do and a program like this takes some of the worries away. So you can spend more time indulging in the arts and wine and not worry about hitting the wrong Metro home or trying to navigate a hatchback down one-way streets cobbled together with tiny stones.

Car-free living

Car-free living is unbelievably easy here in Germany; the country has one of the most extensive train networks in the world. Every major city has a subway or tram line to get you in and out of the city quickly. And bike paths are laid through cities and farm fields, paving the way for a cycling commute that often beats traffic during rush hours.

Building a car-free community, however, hasn’t been the easiest thing. Theoretically, it seems simple: instead of paving roads between apartment buildings and town homes, the housing community maintains a green courtyard between homes, where the kids can play and residents can garden or picnic, as they like. Cars, if residents want them, need to be parked in a garage on the outskirts of the neighborhood. In some cities, like Berlin, however, disagreements with the municipality have made it nearly impossible to get projects started.

In my hometown of Cologne, the first car-free community is being constructed on old industrial land and the results are really interesting. The homes are selling quickly, and the residents who’ve already moved in are praising their oasis in the city. The Christian Science Monitor also recently posted an article about a suburb of Freiburg, Germany that was built on the principles of a car-free lifestyle (among other eco-friendly amenities, like renewable power):

There are numerous incentives for Vauban’s 4,700 residents to live car-free: Carpoolers get free yearly tramway passes, while parking spots – available only in a garage at the neighborhood’s edge – go for €17,500 (US$23,000). Forty percent of residents have bought spaces, many just for the benefit of their visiting guests.

As a result, the car-ownership rate in Vauban is only 150 per 1,000 inhabitants, compared with 430 per 1,000 inhabitants in Freiburg proper. In contrast, the US average is 640 household vehicles per 1,000 residents.

And though there are only one-quarter of the cars in this town as in the average American one, people still get their shopping done, pick up the kids from soccer, and take vacations on an annual basis. Imagine: having it all. Without the car. Your life could look a little like this:

Now doesn’t that look like more fun than rush hour?

Eco Travelling

There has been plenty of discussion surrounding travelling and it’s impact on the environment- mainly about how bad air travel is for global warming. Some people are suggesting that to be a real environmentalists, we should all cut down on our travelling, working closer to home (sensible), getting our food locally (tastes better anyway), and even forgoing vacations to far-away locales (no, say it ain’t so!!!).

As an avid globe-hopper, I was excited to find Claire McDonough’s site, Eco-Travelling, where she and her team of writers cover all aspects of travel, from boating and bikes to getting into the nitty-gritty of which planes might have a lower environmental impact (something I can’t say I really thought about before, but will now!) and if the critique of long-haul flights is fair.

A great resource for Earth-loving travellers (and isn’t that why many of us want to hop on planes in the first place?) with great writing and serious consideration given to alternative and traditional modes of travel.