[sustran] Re: [carfree_network] Re: Re: Re: RE: Pollution in Paris... from Bicycles

[Lloyd Wright]

Well, there is another way.  It is called public financing.

It is ironic that Paris has principally used taxpayer revenues for  
some of the largest municipal roadway investments in the world,  
including massive spending on tunnels.  Why does car-based  
infrastructure receive the benefit of general taxpayers while  
NMT-based infrastructure has to done through private means?

By my calculation, the bicycles provided to date by the advertising  
firm represents an investment of approximately 1 million euros.  This  
is equal to about 1 km of roadway construction for cars.  It is equal  
to about 5% of the cost of 1 km of a roadway tunnel in Paris.

Undoubtedly, Velib is a wonderful project, even with the associated  
visual pollution.  However, I am sure we would agree that it probably  
would have been a better project if constructed through public funding  
without all the advertising.

I recently saw an interesting quote: "In the future, the only  
difference between the wealthy and the poor will be the amount of  
advertising one is subjected to."

Perhaps the future has arrived.

Best,

Lloyd

Quoting "Carlos F. Pardo" <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>:

>       Hi,
>
> I would love to hear anyone's ideas on how this situation can be
> solved. That is, how could you develop a massive project such as
> Velib without funding from big organizations? If we found
> alternatives to this, I would definitely go with Todd's argument.
> Otherwise, we may just keep waiting for a holy and fully green funder
> that can provide the funds to develop a project like Velib. I would
> think that, if we put forward a criticism, it would also be useful to
> hear a counterproposal to solve that problem being criticized.
> However, I thank Todd for his eternal vigilance!
>
> Best regards,
>
>   Carlos F. Pardo Coordinador de Proyecto- Project Coordinator GTZ -
> Proyecto de Transporte Sostenible (SUTP, SUTP-LAC) Cl 93A # 14-17 of
> 708 Bogotá D.C., Colombia Tel/fax:  +57 (1) 236 2309  Mobile: +57 (3)
> 15 296 0662 carlos.pardo at sutp.org   www.sutp.org
>