“The potential exists to greatly reduce transport energy use and GHG emissions by shaping the design of cities, restraining motorization and altering the attributes of vehicles and fuels. Indeed, slowing the growth in vehicle use through land-use planning and through policies that restrain increases in vehicle use would be an important accomplishment. Planning and policy to restrain vehicles and densify land use not only lead to reduced GHG emissions, but also reduced pollution, traffic congestion, oil use, and infrastructure expenditures and are generally consistent with social equity goals.”  –Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

“Each bird while it is part of the flock seems part of something larger than itself.  Another animal.”  Barry H. Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape

There’s a Comprehensive Plan Update Meeting this evening at the Westside Community Center and I would urge you to go.  It’s a good opportunity to help shape the framework that guides our growth.  The draft Vision statement is up on line and you can submit your comments by email, too.  I’ve been participating as much as I can in this Comp Plan update process.  Good bicycling and good active transportation networks begin with a desire and vision for human powered mobility freedom.  That vision drives the planning and zoning documents, which in turn directs the design of a transportation infrastructure that is inclusive and diverse and considers walking and bicycling as primary choices and fundamental requirements for an equitable and connected community.  We can have a sustainable transportation system that promotes health and wellbeing, local economic development, and improves our quality of life.  We just have to ask for it.  We have an opportunity to create human habitat where we are free to move under our own power.  Let freedom ring through your voice, choice and vision.

“There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares to other expressions.  It is imply your business to keep the channel open.”  –Martha Graham, Making Good

The Bison are back on the Sandia lands grazing away on the east mesa near Tramway

“At the root of the failure to regulate bison hunting was the midcentury belief in economic competition.  Everyone, Indian or Euroamerican included, was engaged in a race to exploit resources for individual gain.” (Andrew C. Isenberg, Destruction of Bison, p.163)
The purpose of our economy is to support human nature.  The transportation ecosystem as a tool for economic development needs to support human movement the way we are intended to move.  We can’t afford to lose our fundamental human powers.