Italy experimented with this a few years ago, mostly for traffic control reasons but also for environmental reasons. Question here re my campaign to ask the world go have Carless Sundays every Sunday from now on, or as soon as possible:

First of all, what I envision for this weekly day off from car culture is:

1. no use of cars at all
2. no taking taxis
3. no taking buses
4. no using trucks

Spend all day Sunday going around by foot or bicycle, electric bike okay, or just stay home and read/study/play/write/text/game/sleep/watch TV or movies/garden/exercise nearby/play sports/ whatever you fancy

I want to ask you for some advice or suggestions:

how to launch this campaign locally, nationally, internationally?
how to use PR to get the word out?
how to call the day? Is Carless Sundays a good, catchy term? Useful term? Other terms?
how to ask local govt and central govt and national govt and UN to particiapte?
how to enlist to help push this idea forward?


Has this concept of weekly Carless Sundays been tried before and has it met with any success?

Where and where tried out?

The reason for the Carless Sundays is to have people slowly, in a fun way, get used to not using cars or trucks or taxis or buses once a week, on a voluntary basis of course. Later, if event catches on, local govts might particiapte too. But always voluntary day. Maybe later in history, as people get used to this, it becomes "voluntarily mandatory" as Leo Buscaglia liked to say, may he rest in peace

FEEDBACK?

"Jobless weekdays" will keep more cars off the roads.

I'm carless MOST of the time on Sundays already. Except for church, which is too far for my young kids to ride on bikes at 4 miles, but not too far to impact the globe heavily. The rest of the time we adhere to this today as much as possible.

That said, you must not attend a church. You will meet with some real problems from the religious community on that one, among others. Try to have the government push it and it will be called an infringement on religious liberties by some group. Come summer, vacationers will not even entertain it as they return home from their trips. And tourism hotspots, like downtown areas, are not going to respond well to bus and taxi avoidance on a weekend.

My thought is it's a nice idea, but not realistic in the US to reach large scale - suburbia still carries too much weight today.

If you could all have a 'carless Monday', particularly between 8AM-9AM, I'd really appreciate it. I'll be unable to take part for religious reasons, you understand.

You'll have to speak to my broker about that. Then again, better not. Us idle rich need the wheels of commerce turning 24/7. Can't afford to let you sandal wearing communists upset the apple cart now, can we!

Yes.

ARE YOU KIDDING??!!!

Last Sunday I collected 3 counties ( I'm a county counter ) and checked out a nice little racetrack, was gone for about 4 hours, drove 250 miles, I mean, what ELSE would I rather being doing on a fine Sunday afternoon?

I appreciate the spirit of the idea. Here's my response for the U.S., where I live:

In this form, I don't think it's very practical. Just for one example, lots of old people like to go to church -- and those folks may well not be healthy enough to bike at all or walk very far, even if they'd LIKE to participate.

Now, a general concept I avocate that would be practical, is live EFFICIENTLY, re your personal transport. This should be relatively easy, and all kinds of ideas spring to mind:

1). Drive a small / efficient car whenever possible. I did this for 25+ years. (But, sadly, this recently has become much more dangerous with all the SUV's running around and especially coupled with all the idiots that text/use cellphones. Get hit once in a really tiny car, and you risk death or massive injuries).

2). Put multiple errands together, so to minimize the amount of driving for such things. I do this a lot.

3). Drive when there's less traffic, to minimize waiting for traffic lights, etc. I do this a lot, as I am a night owl anyway and love Walmart (which garners a lot of hate on this site, but oh well).

4). Live close to where you work, to avoid commute time/expense. Now there's an easy one. I delberately did this all my life and probably averaged being 2 miles from work -- would have been just 1, but my employer moved the office around some over the years. I HATE traffic and wasting time. (Many of the people crying about fuel prices live 50 miles or more from work. Brilliant).

5). For those young/healthy bike or walk where practical. When I was younger and healthier I did this a fair amount but painful joints really makes this tough now.

6). If you live in a big city with good mass transort - get rid of your car. When you need to travel outside of town, rent a car. (If I lived in Washington D.C. for example, I would do this just to avoid the daily traffic and the parking fees/hassle. Plus, I'd save a TON not having a car as a bonus!)

. . . .

Now, considering that MUCH stuff like this, and more, is feasible for many with just a little planning/effort -- the fact that it isn't done more means people in America aren't WILLING to do it.

SO the answer, IMO is to FORCE them to do it with HIGH FUEL TAXES. Worked well in europe, and I've avocated this since 1980, but 99% of Americans think this is insane. Just wait, the market will finally force us into this via oil prices within a decade.

For some reason I was reading this as `Careless Sundays`, and was therefore envisioning some strange new fad. Carless Sundays make much more sense. Kind of along the same lines as 1 week a night being meat free.

Here in Italy the campaign had (surprisingly) a lot of success.
These are my advices about how to implement it:

- This must be decided at a local level. Every town decides for itself, when and how. Remember that in Italy we didn't make EVERY sunday a carless one: people need to go out of the cities in weekends, you can't force them to forget their country houses or beach houses. Not more than one or two sundays per month.
- For the same reasons, the campaign was estabilished only in winter, when people don't go out of the city for weekends.
- It's not suitable for your suburbias. It's ok for cities and towns, where people can walk the streets and enjoy a nice walk. This can't happen in suburbia, everything is too far.
- Organize events. Here, shops were allowed to stay open, there were organic flea market allowed in city centers, or games and theater for children and so on. People were glad to partecipate with their bicycles or by walking, since they were not forced to stay home or walk around the city doing nothing.

Just my 2 cents