Cities Brace for Global Warming – Part 2

  • Cities can expand mass transit, getting more cars off the road and giving people more options to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:

Transcript

Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:


“We’re at Bronson and Fifth. It’s a four lane roadway into Ottawa.”


Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He’s standing about half a block from where he lives:


“This kind of street is a community killer, it’s a planet killer. It’s the fruit of 5,560 years of building cities for cars and not human beings.”


Doucet loves cities, which is why it pains him to see a once-beautiful neighborhood street become, as he calls it, a traffic sewer. It’s loud, it’s polluted, and it’s not safe. Three pedestrians have been killed near this corner in the past five years, and there’ve been many accidents.


Doucet was an activist for a long time, but after running for city council he realized the city has the power to change the climate. It builds the roads and it controls the public transportation:


“Public transit has, every environmentalist knows is one of the main keys to solving the environmental crisis. I mean, 45 to 50 percent of greenhouse gases come out of our use of land and the tailpipes of cars and trucks. We can get rid of most of that and we can not change our lifestyle one bit; in fact, we can make it better.”


Doucet hops on his bike to show what he means. He winds through the traffic and then stops along Ottawa’s five-mile-long light rail track:


“This runs parallel to the road we were just on. It’s a test line. It carries a hundred and 50 passengers every 15 minutes and when we get the two lines up and running, it will carry three times the traffic or more as Bronson and it’s quiet. We’re standing at the station now. You’re like in a church. See the train’s coming. Do you hear any noise? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”


Doucet’s vision for his city is a comprehensive light rail system. He says it will reduce air and noise pollution, and make the city friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists, but Doucet is thinking about the bigger picture, too. And there, he’s not optimistic. He’s noticed that the winters in Ottawa are warmer now, and that’s disturbing for people because they really embrace winter.


Almost every park has an outdoor hockey rink, and people ice skate, not just for pleasure, but to get around. Doucet says he’s afraid that climate change will destroy what makes his city special:


“It’s incredibly sad. I mean, I’ve skated to work all my life and I live about a block from the canal I take my skates down and I’d skate to work and skate home. And I’ve seen countless marvelous sunrises on the canal. It is difficult to imagine my life without that. Those experiences have given my life poetry.”


Doucet says he’s pretty much given up hope on the federal government. He says they’re too beholden to big industry to really curb the emissions that cause climate change.
But at the local level? He says a lot can be done.


He recently wrote a book, Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual. In it, he says it’s time for city residents to get tough:


“Go after your municipal politicians and say, you know something, we want to have a city that’s pedestrian-based, that’s public transit-based and we want you to stop building roads. You can do stuff about your local government and the way you live locally.”


Doucet wouldn’t say it’s easy. Last year, Ottawa signed a contract to expand its light rail system. Then, a new mayor came in and the plan was scrapped. Doucet thinks it will happen eventually, but in the meantime, he’s still fighting the rush hour traffic on his bicycle.


For the Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Nature Profile: Nature & the City

  • Audra Brecher, who lives in Manhattan, says the city lights are her stars. (Photo by John Tebeau)

Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:

Transcript

Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:


Audra Brecher wears her chestnut hair in a Louise
Brooks bob. Actually, she’s a dead ringer for Louise Brooks,
that silent film movie star. She’s stylish
and snazzy.


Audra lives in Manhattan. Her apartment is above a
pizza parlor on a bustling avenue. She says in the
evenings, she hears blaring taxi horns and the thumping
techno music from the clubs on her block. But she
loves everything about the city: its sounds,
its architecture, and its people.


I once asked her if she ever missed nature. She said,
“The city lights are my stars.”


“Yeah, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. I don’t
feel maybe such a romantic feeling about stars, the
night sky. I feel maybe the same excitement when I
see the city lights and when I walk across Lexington
and I look north and I see the Chrysler Building lit
up and those beautiful, starry chevrons of the
Chrysler Building. I think maybe the feeling I have
looking at that, is what other people feel when they
look at the night sky.”


So here’s the deal. When I think of someone connected
to nature I picture a state park ranger. I picture a crunchy-
granola type. I do not think of someone who wears
fashionable clothes and wines and dines in the city. I
do not think of Audra. But Audra says she has a
better connection to the natural world than people in the
suburbs:


“I go to the Union Square market on Saturday and I
buy varieties of apple that have come from the
Hudson River Valley and I know my parents, who
live in the suburbs in Florida, they go to the grocery store
where they buy everything pre-packaged and already
cut up fruit. I feel like my experience is actually closer to
nature even though I’m in heart of Manhattan.”


Audra works in an architecture firm. She’s a historic
preservationist, and she’s studied architecture all over the
world. But she grew up in the Florida suburbs. And
what she saw there – the sprawl and development –
seemed wrong to her:


“What led me to do what I do is noticing how
unhappy I was with a suburban existence. Having to
get in car to drive somewhere, or looking at
expanses of parking lot in strip centers and
subdivisions with gated communities that are named after
the natural feature they replace. Like ‘Eagle’s Nest.'”


Those new developments seem wasteful to her. She
likes the idea of re-using materials. And this
connects her to nature. At her job, she’s always in
close contact with old buildings and old materials:


“Yeah, I love the materiality of them. I mean, I love
an old brick from 120 years ago. I love the building
materials and the craftsmanship from that time. I
love the idea of taking something that has been cast
aside and might not be used and giving it a new
purpose, giving it a new vitality. Taking a building that
somebody has abandoned and giving it a new life.
To me, that’s the ultimate recycling.”


Audra says although she’s not walking through the
forest and communing with nature, she feels
ecologically responsible in different ways. She either walks or takes public transportation to get someplace. She never drives a car.


“I’m not asking so much of the world in terms of
water and energy and resources and I feel like when
live in dense environment you are allowing for those
things to remain protected and safe. And pristine. So
I feel like a responsible citizen living in Manhattan
in many ways.”


This stylish city-slicker may not be the person
who pops in your head when you think of someone who’s connected to nature. But Audra’s
deeply connected to the world around her in her own way. She’s also aware of how we can use natural
resources in better ways.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Empty Busses Need Snappy Ad Campaign

Go into any store these days and chances are you’ll find a bargain: buy two shirts and get one free… or buy a burger and get another one half-price. Retailers market their products with attractive deals because they know it works. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King thinks it’s time to use that marketing magic to get more of us to “buy into” public transportation:

Transcript

Go into any store these days and chances are you’ll find a bargain: buy two shirts and get
one free… or buy a burger and get another one half-price. Retailers market their products
with attractive deals because they know it works. Great Lakes Radio Consortium
commentator, Julia King, thinks it’s time to use that marketing magic to get more of us to
“buy into” public transportation:


A couple years back, my smallish Northern Indiana town got an honest-to-goodness
PUBLIC BUS. Progressive types started walkin’ a little taller, a little prouder – because,
well, when you have a BUS it means you live in a place where somebody cares.


Our bus is such a good thing, in fact, that people hate to talk about the one little problem:
(whisper) nobody ever rides it. Okay, that’s not exactly true. Last Tuesday, my
neighbor’s friend thought she saw someone in the very last row on the right hand side.


I’m just BARELY exaggerating. There are really only two kinds of people who ever get
on our bus: hardcore greenie tree-huggers… and those who have no other form of
transportation.


So, now, with tight government budgets and higher gas prices, some cost-conscious
citizens are rightly taking a closer look at our not-so-public public transportation.


In a letter to a local paper, one man put it this way: “I would prefer not having taxpayers’
dollars go literally up in fumes.” He suggested we have two choices: put the bus out of
its misery, or get more people to RIDE it.


According to the American Public Transportation Association, we could reduce our oil
dependence by about 40% – almost the amount we import from Saudi Arabia in a year –
if Americans would use public transportation for just 10% of our daily travel.


You know, radio stations hand out cash and concert tickets to attract listeners; television
stations lure viewers with home makeovers; cola companies entice customers with
everything from free soda to a chance at a BILLION dollars.


What do bus riders get for their trouble? Hmmm? Oh yeah – more trouble. If it’s hot, or
cold, or raining, and there’s a comfortable car ten feet away in the garage, taking a bus is
work.


In large cities, where drivers compete for rare and costly parking spaces, public
transportation offers tangible rewards in the way of convenience and affordability. But in
communities with plenty of space and manageable traffic – if you have a car – the only
reasons to ride a bus are long-term, big picture, goody-goody reasons like ozone
reduction, energy conservation and curbing global warming.


Here’s where the public sector can use a little private-sector know-how. Catchy jingles,
cash prizes, gift certificates at shops along the bus routes, maybe chocolate
riders need something in the here and now. Like anything else Americans buy, public
transportation is a product. It’s time to start selling it.


Host Tag: Julia King can be found riding the bus… alone… in Goshen, Indiana. She
comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Related Links

A Legal Victory for ‘Rails to Trails’

  • Bicyclists enjoy Minnesota's Cannon Valley Trail. (Photo by Patricia Schmid, courtesy of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy)

Private landowners say their rights are being trampled on by hikers when the state implements “Rails to Trails” programs. The landowners claim the property should be theirs now that the railroad is finished with the right-of-way. One state recently won the court’s approval to keep its trail intact, including pieces that cross through private property. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover reports:

Transcript

Private landowners say their rights are being trampled on by hikers when the state
implements “Rails to Trails” programs. The landowners claim the property should be
theirs now that the railroad is finished with the right-of-way. One state recently won the
court’s approval to keep its trail intact, including pieces that cross through private
property. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover reports:


Mike Sandberg doesn’t want a public trail going through his backyard.


“Every time anybody goes down it the dogs are barking and I didn’t move out in the
country to hear all the stuff going on with everybody’s, you know, it’s kind of a pain.”


Sandberg bought the land he lives on from his brother a couple years ago. One thing he
liked about the property was that it had a dirt trail running through it, and he thought he
could pave it and use it as a driveway.


The trail used to be a railroad bed. The railroad company laid the tracks in the 1890’s,
after getting the rights to go through hundreds of different properties. Usually they only
had an easement to use the property, but every deed was a little different. There was no
standardized legal form, and most of the deeds were written by hand.


Of course, over the next hundred years, people stopped using the train so much. In
Minnesota, the railroad company sold a lot of its land rights to the Department of Natural
Resources in 1991. Similar deals were passed all across the country, and many states, like
Minnesota, used this land to build public trails.


The path that passes through Sandberg’s property is one of these trails, the Paul Bunyan
Trail. It’s popular with bikers, dog-walkers, in-line skaters, and in the winter,
snowmobilers.


Terry McGawhee is Executive Director of the Paul Bunyan Trail
Association, and he’s constantly lobbying the state legislature to expand the trail or pave
parts of it that are still dirt.


“Not every community embraces the trail, but those that have, have seen significant
economic influence on their communities. And the majority of the people along the 100
miles of the trail are eager to see the trail development.”


The state had held off on further work on the trail because of a lawsuit filed by Sandberg’s
brother and several other landowners. Sandberg said the railroad company didn’t own the
trail on his property, so they couldn’t have sold it to the state.


“The abstract states clearly in layman’s terms it was an easement that the railroad had and
when they quit using it for railroad purposes it should go back to the landowner.”


That’s the reasoning Sandberg’s brother and other landowners used when they blockaded
parts of the trail back in 1998. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources sued
them, and was initially successful. The landowners appealed, however, and the Appeals
Court overturned the decision. The state agency then appealed to the Minnesota Supreme
Court. On July 29th, the Court ruled in favor of the state trail.


Trail advocates across the country watched the case closely. Lawyers in trail land
disputes in every state could bring up this case as an example. For more than twenty
years, lawyers fighting for public trails have relied heavily on another case, also in
Minnesota. Dorian Grilley is the executive director of the Parks and Trails Council of
Minnesota. He says the Minnesota Supreme Court made the decision in 1983.


“In that case, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that it was legal for that easement to
be transferred to a public agency for use as a trail because in the early 1900’s or late
1800’s, ‘railway purposes’ really meant public transportation, and that a trail qualified as
public transportation.”


In its recent decision, the court upheld the idea that a public trail serves the same kind of
purpose as a railway, moving people from place to place.


Now that the court has ruled in favor of the state, Mike Sandberg will be forced to
abandon plans to build a driveway along the old railroad bed. His brother is not sure
whether he’ll build his retirement home there as he’d planned, since bicyclists and hikers
will have access to the trail cutting across his property. But trail users can look forward to
seeing another section of the trail completed and paved.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.

Related Links

Commuting Times on the Rise

If it feels as if your commute to work is taking longer, it probably is. The Census Bureau reports the average drive time continues to increase. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

If it feels as if your commute to work is taking longer, it probably is. The Census Bureau reports
the average drive time continues to increase. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


According to the Census Bureau, most of the longest commutes are on the east and west coasts.
But the second longest average travel time to work – clocking in at nearly 33 minutes – is
Chicago. And travel times are getting longer, mostly because of urban sprawl. Workers are
moving farther away, and in some cases corporations are moving from downtowns into the
suburbs. Phillip Salopek is with the U.S. Census Bureau.


“Average travel time has been increasing. There was an increase in average travel time between
1980 and 1990. There was a more significant increase in travel times between 1990 and 2000.”


The Census Bureau also found some of the cities with the longest commute times tend to have a
higher rate of workers who have turned to public transportation, with New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia topping the list.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Climate Change Programs Hit the Streets

The Canadian government is taking its battle against climate change to the streets. It’s committing more than $3 million to programs intended to get Canadian drivers off the road. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

The Canadian government is taking its battle against climate change to the streets. It’s
committing more than 3 million dollars to programs intended to get Canadian drivers off the road.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


The ‘Walk to Work Challenge’ in Calgary is one of 21 new programs sponsored by the federal
government. Many will educate Canadians about the link between driving and greenhouse gas
emissions. Other programs plan to reduce vehicle idling and increase car pooling.


In Calgary, city officials are offering prizes and discounts for people who start walking to work.


Transportation specialist Ron Shaver says that if you provide incentives, people will change their
behavior.


“If people find an activity that’s not a challenge for them to participate in, if they’re pursuing it
over an extended period of time, it will become the new norm.”


Shaver says Calgary tried a similar program four years ago, when a major bridge was closed
down. He says many people who adopted commuting alternatives then are still using them.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Keeping Amtrak on Track

Lawmakers in Michigan are working with Amtrak officials to keep passenger service on two major rail lines from being discontinued. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:

Transcript

Lawmakers in Michigan are working with Amtrak officials to keep passenger
service on two major rail lines from being discontinued. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:


(sound in – train)


Amtrak officials say they will have to end service on its Chicago to Grand
Rapids and Chicago to Toronto routes unless Michigan provides additional
funding.


The train system says it needs just over seven million dollars per year to
operate the two routes, but the state currently caps aid to Amtrak at
five point-seven million dollars.


State Representative Lauren Hagen has introduced a bill to increase
available funding. He says the routes are vital for residents throughout
the region.


“It’s a need for many people: for handicapped people, for senior
citizens, and people who want an alternative way to travel.”


Amtrak says about 150-thousand passengers traveled the routes last
year, but that’s still not enough riders to pay for the service through
fares alone.


Rail service in Missouri is also threatened because of reduced funding.


The Michigan legislature has found enough money to keep the service running
until mid-May, but additional funding may be hard to find with the state
facing a one-point-nine billion dollar budget deficit.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jerome Vaughn in Detroit.

‘Greener’ Cars Won’t Save Us From Sprawl

Many feel that cars powered by fuel cells will save us from a future of pollution and rising oil prices. But Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says there’s more to think about… he says it’s time to reconsider not just WHAT we drive but HOW we live:

Transcript

Many feel that cars powered by fuel cells will save us from a future of pollution and rising oil
prices. But Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says there’s
more to think about and that it’s time to reconsider not just what we drive but how we live:


For quite a while now it’s been fashionable among the environmentally-minded to decry the
ownership of SUVs. This says a lot about what’s wrong with the conventional thinking of the
progressive / green crowd.


Would the everyday environment in America be any better if it were full of compact cars instead
of giant gas-guzzling Chevy Denalis and Ford Expeditions? I don’t think it would make a bit of
difference, really. We’d still be a car-dependent society stuck in a national automobile slum. The
problem with America is not big cars, it’s the fact that cars of all sizes have such an
overwhelming presence in our lives, and that driving is virtually mandatory for the ordinary
business of daily life.


Many in the anti-SUV crowd assume that we will solve our car problem with new technology,
like hydrogen fuel cells. Or that low-emission, environmentally-friendly hybrid cars will help to
usher in a sustainable way of life in America.


In fact, cleaner-running, higher mileage cars would do nothing to mitigate the degraded public
realm of a nation that has become a strip mall from sea to shining sea. They would not lessen
commuting distances or times. They would not reduce the number of car trips per day per
household. If anything, they would only promote the idea that we should continue living this way
– that suburban sprawl is normal and desirable, instead of what it is: the most destructive
development pattern the world has ever seen, and a living arrangement with poor prospects for
the future.


Why do we believe that better-running cars will save us? Because environmentalists are stuck in
a culture of quantification, just like their corporate bean-counter adversaries. It’s easy to count up
the number of carbon dioxide molecules in a cubic foot of air, and reduce the whole car issue to
good air or bad air. But air pollution or miles-per-gallon are hardly the only problems with car
dependency. The degradation of the everyday environment in general and of public space in
particular is at least as important, and is not subject to statistical analysis. It’s a question of
quality, not numbers.


In the age of austerity and global strife that is coming down the pike at us, we are going to need
walkable neighborhoods, towns and villages and public transit systems that are a pleasure to use.
Many of us pay premium prices to vacation in European cities precisely because they offer this
way of living, with great railroad and streetcar systems. Europeans still have cars, but they’re not
sentenced to own one per family member or spend two or three hours every day in them. It
would be nice to have these options here in the USA.


In the meantime, I really don’t care whether Americans drive Humvees or Toyota Priuses. Both
big and small cars are cluttering up our everyday world and wasting our lives.


James Howard Kunstler is the author of ‘The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition’ and
other books. He comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Higher Speed Train Gains Momentum

Another link in higher-speed rail in the Great Lakes region is in place. Railroad officials have begun testing passenger trains at speeds never before attempted. It’s part of an effort to establish Chicago as a hub for cities from Cleveland to Minneapolis. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Willis Kern reports:

Transcript

Another link in higher-speed rail in the Great Lakes region is in place. Railroad officials
have begun testing passenger trains at speeds never before attempted. It’s part of an effort
to establish Chicago as a hub for cities from Cleveland to Minneapolis. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Willis Kern reports:


(nat sound train going through station)


A four-car Amtrak passenger train is rolling through the depot in downtown Normal,
Illinois.


(sound of train continues)


Usually, passenger trains stop to pick up passengers. But this one is chugging through,
picking up nothing but speed as it heads north toward Chicago, and eventually, a new land
speed record for passenger trains in Illinois. Never before has a train eclipsed the 110-
mile per hour mark, but that’s what this one is about to do during a five-mile stretch, as
another step toward implementing high speed rail in the Midwest.


(fade sound)


Before the train backs up from the Amtrak station in Normal and races forward, it sits
idling while engineers from the state bureau of railroads, Amtrak and Lockheed Martin test
new technology the train will use called Positive Train Control, which is a key component
of making the trains go faster. As it sits at the train station, Steve Gossard, the station’s
lead ticket agent, notes that the twin engines on this train look different than the ones
Amtrak usually push up and down the Chicago to St. Louis corridor.


“Well I guess its a little more streamlined, a more angular kind of thing, and its really
very plain. I guess the aerodynamics has something to do with the style.”


The ‘Bureau of Railroads’ is using two Amtrak engines that have been configured to
operate on what’s known as Class 6 tracks, or those that have been upgraded to support
speeds of 110 miles an hour.


“It’s a very sophisticated piece of equipment.”


Bureau chief John Schwalbach says the testing helps determine the difference between
traditional Class 4 tracks that have been upgraded and the new rails to be used for higher
speeds.


“Particularly the track guage. That is to say the distance between each of the rails.
That’s a key component and at Class 6, there are certain standards that are tighter
than a class four track. And you’re talking about measuring in the millimeter range
here, or even smaller than that.”


Which makes for a smooth ride for the faster trains. Schwalbach says the engines being
tested today are quite different than the one the state has been testing at the more
conventional speed of 79 miles per hour over the past few months, but it will be a couple
of years, at least, before new high speed diesel train sets are ordered. They will efficiently
get passengers up to speeds of 110 miles an hour. A year ago, state rail officials were
pointing to a December ’02 launch of high speed passenger service. Now, Schwalbach
says that’s not likely to happen until sometime in 2004, mainly because of federal red tape.


“From a regulatory perspective, after Lockheed Martin delivers their finished
product, it of course has to meet or exceed regulatory requirements put upon them by
the Federal Railroad Administration. We expect that process will take us through the
year 2003.”


“That may be accurate but it sounds like an awfully slow pace. I guess it assumes
little or no federal support.”


Ross Capon is the Executive Director of the National Association of Rail Passengers. He
talked to us on a cell phone as he rode an Amtrak passenger train from California to
Maryland. Capon says he’s disappointed in the Bush Administration’s attitude toward high-
speed rail. But, he’s confident things on the federal level will improve and states starving
for funding not only for high speed rail, but basic Amtrak service, will get much needed
help.


“The general public is way ahead of the politicians on this issue. That 9-11 has only
reinforced that, and that sooner or later, the administration is going to figure that out
and respond to it.”


(sound of trains)


Meanwhile, the Great Lakes states wait for the federal government to sort out Amtrak and
high speed rail service and it’s commitment to each. Michigan has been testing a stretch of
track between Detroit and Chicago for sometime. Now it’s Illinois’ turn to showcase the
baby steps they’re making in an attempt to get some kind of service up and running as soon
as possible.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Willis Kern.

GROUPS RALLY FOR ‘CAR FREE DAYS’

Cities around the world are taking part in a special celebration this month…promoting the idea of life without automobiles. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has more on what’s known as “World Car Free Days”:

Transcript

Cities around the world are taking part in a special celebration this
Month, promoting the idea of life without automobiles. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has more on what’s known as World
Car-Free Days:


Alternative transportation advocates environmentalists and bicycle
enthusiasts are pulling together over the next couple of weeks to get
more people thinking about the benefits of life without cars.


Events celebrating the idea will be held throughout North America this
week. Some cities, like Chicago, are expected to have critical mass
bike rides where hundreds of bicyclists will purposely slow car traffic
on major streets by riding in unison. About a thousand riders took
part in Chicago’s last such event in late August. Other events in the
Great Lakes region are scheduled to take place in Madison, Wisconsin
and Hamilton, Ontario.


This week also marks the 10th anniversary of the first ever critical
mass ride…held in San Francisco in 1992.


Street parties, public gift exchanges and theatre performances are also
planned for locations around the United States and the rest of the
world.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jerome Vaughn.