Alternative Transportation Resources:

Life After, Before, Without, and Despite Cars

"What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles?... In that case, we Americans will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles."

-- Jane Jacobs, author, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

-- Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another -- particularly when the place you arrived at has probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke, and very short of fish.

-- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The U.S. spends $60 billion per year on foreign oil.... Eight million barrels of oil per day is combusted in U.S. cars... That's 450 gallons per person per year.

-- Michael Zezima, in Fifty Reasons Why Cars Suck

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

-- Gandhi

-- Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Economics Professor,
Vanderbilt University