Moving Without Madness

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Transportation as if others matter

There's nothing like the joy of the open road. Pedal to the metal, sound track of your choice. The freedom to get in your car and go anywhere, anytime, is the good old North American way. And it's insane.

The 20th-century romance with the automobile has turned into a nightmare of selfishness, gridlock, road rage, road kill, overpaving, and profligate fuel use. Urban arteries are clogged with noisy, heat-emitting vehicles, most containing a single person shielded from the elements as if ready for battle. Can extinction of these dinosaurs be far off?

Is it possible for people to travel in ways that do less harm? To take to the open road afoot and lighthearted, healthy and free? For those who view so-called human transporters, personal rapid transit, and green cars skeptically, a handful of magazines help rethink how humans can sanely move from place to place, singly or en masse.

Lively CarBusters features international reports on innovative transportation projects, reclaim-the-streets initiatives, pro-bicycle activism, and resistance to road building. The magazine regularly summarizes traffic studies, reviews pertinent books such as Sonia Shah's Crude: The Story of Oil, and looks at automobiles clearly in a section titled Car Cult Review. $16/yr. (4 issues) from Kratka 26, 100 00, Praha 10, Czech Republic; www.carbusters.org.

Momentum ("the magazine for self-propelled people") recently resumed publication after a hiatus of a year and a half. Like Transportation Alternatives, this bimonthly Vancouver-based publication focuses locally but should be of interest to bikers everywhere. A legal column and tips from a bike mechanic appear regularly. $34.75 Canadian/yr. (6 issues) from 826 E. Pender St., Vancouver, BC V6A 1W1, Canada; www.momentumplanet.ca.

Quarterly Velo Vision makes pedaling seem like play, even if the bike is powering a trailer loaded with goods. Full of reader reports and reviews of the latest folding bikes, recumbents, tandems, special needs cycles, and gear, it's also likely to provoke "Wow, cool!" exclamations thanks to covering the likes of solar-assisted trikes, pedal cars, human-powered aircraft, and ice bikes with front blades instead of tires. £32/4 issues from Environmental Community Centre, St. Nicholas Fields, York, YO10 3EN, England; www.velovision.co.uk.

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