[sustran] Slowth

[eric.britton]

From: Carlosfelipe Pardo [mailto:carlosfpardo at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 1 January 2008 23:41
Thanks for your support! This, I hope, will be my "pillar of life work". But
I really like the term "slow transport" more than "slowth"... don't you?

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Depends Carlos. Different words can or at least may do different jobs.
Coolth is of course a complete barbarism, as well as unknown (outside of my
head until recently I believe) and hence ambiguous and confusing. Slow
transport is proper simple English, in itself a very strong argument.

 

One possible advantage of letting the barbarism live for at least a bit is
that it seems to create a certain flurry of interest as folks try to find
out what it might mean. Which brings them to slow transport (ST).

 

And beyond this, one possible downside of slow transport is that it will
often be seen as a negative concept, where as our barbarism got right may
just get people to thinking about a brave new world, in a positive sense. 

 

IN another note of this date you mention at one point that "speed limits of
30 km/h are difficult (or impossible) to enforce", which is in my view not
the "problem" but rather the "problematique" Thus the challenge becomes that
of solving the problematique, i.e., to use what we can find to get those top
speeds down.  Street architecture is a great start, both in terms of the
lengths of speed-appealing straight-aways and those nice smooth surfaces
that beg for the accelerator. Our traffic management friends, going all the
way back to the original Woonerfs (Woonerven) in 1968, have certainly led
the way on that. Then too, as many of our friends here know better than you
or I, are all the great things that can be done in terms of visual
narrowing, roundabouts, et al. A very long and inviting list indeed.

 

BTW, I continue to try to factor some of this feedback into
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowth but perhaps some of you may chose to
join me in this? 

 

Eric Britton