Þeir sem vilja með fullri alvöru bæta sitt nánasta umhverfi halda upp á bíllausu dagana frá föstudegi 13. september að föstudegi 27. september.

 Vegna hagsmunagæslu við bílaframleiðendur og olíufélög þorir Evrópubandalagið hinsvegar ekki að standa lengur að þessu en í viku frá 16. september til 22. september.

23. sept. Umhverfisráðherra svívirðir Bíllausa daginn með aðgerðarleysi sínu. Ekkert varð úr Bíllausa deginum í gær nema ef vera skyldi að Hverabakarí í Hveragerði bauð gangandi ig hjólandi upp á glaðning fram til kl. 14:00  Meira

27 ágúst. Umhverfisráðherra skrifaði undir yfirlýsingu um formlega þáttöku Íslands í átakinu. Meira, og enn meira og frétt MBL

16. september er dagur almenningssamgangna.

18. september er hjólreiðadagurinn. Sjá lika ECF

20. september er dagur gangandi vegfarenda

22. september er bíllausi dagurinn

Upplýsingar og plaggöt má finna á vefsíðu Carbusters.org

Lesa má um bíllausar borgir í Carfree times

Vegna bíla er meðalhraði í London orðin minni en 5km. Meira um það á Sky.com

Nokkrir góðir linkar hjá Mobilityweek og Carbusters

EINUM BÍL FÆRRA. Ein mikilvægustu skilaboð til heimsins nú fáanleg á íslensku Þú getur fengið T bol með þessari áletrun og mynd af reiðhjóli eftir Sigurð Inga Jensson á aðeins 1000 kr. Bolurinn er fáanlegur í svöru með ljósgulri áletrun.   Sendu póst á nature@islandia.is  Tilgreindu nafn og síma kaupanda, stærð bols og magn og þú færð allt sent heim að dyrum á hlaupum eða með reiðhjóli*. Ef þú hefur áhuga á því að láta prenta þessi þörfu skilaboð á aðrar flíkur svo sem úlpu eða fleece peisur sendu þá póst hér. Magnús Bergsson

THE DATES:

September 13 was when Henry H. Bliss, a 68-year-old Wall Street real estate broker, was killed by a taxi cab on Sept. 13, 1899, after he and his companion descended from a New York City street car. Bliss died the following day. See www.rememberbliss.org. (The world's first automobile fatality was apparently three years earlier, on Aug. 17, 1896, but we will overlook that inconvenient fact. That was when Bridget Driscoll was killed at Crystal Palace, South London, during a car show, on her way to a Catholic event, by a car going 4 miles per hour. There was a speech at the time saying how terrible an accident it was and how such a thing should never happen again!) Since these deaths, over 17 million people have been killed in a world war that nobody has bothered to declare. That's 250,000 people a year, one death every two minutes. In America it's 40,000 deaths - approaching the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War - every year. In Europe it's 50,000 deaths a year, and 150,000 permanently disabled. Even in Northern Ireland, in the past 25 years of conflict more people have died on the roads than were killed by the bomb or bullet.

September 22 is the annual European car-free day, called "In Town Without My Car." This is part of European Mobility Week, which also includes days focussed on Public Tranportation (Sept. 16), Cycling (Sept. 18) and Living Streets/Greenways (Sept. 20). In reality it is mostly a public relations exercise for the European Union, and a means to attracting attention away from its primary objective: to meld the diverse countries and cultures of Europe into a homogenised, single, neoliberal economy, in which Europe's largest corporations sit comfortably in the driver's seat. Nonetheless, among a host of tokenistic initiatives, some good things do happen on September 22, most of them thanks to the hard work of a handful of progressive cities. The event's already happening, so we might as well hold hands with the Eurocrats and join in - or steal the show with a big, bold splash on the same day. For those activists in Europe, might this day be the perfect opportunity to call attention to the E.U.'s nightmarish transport policies?

September 23 marks Hitler's ground-breaking of the first Autobahn (the Frankfurt-Basel Hanseatic Highway) in 1933 - the day when the car, braked for so long, finally gained right of way. Without right of way, the automobile was worth only half as much. The old rural roads were narrow, twisting, dusty and few. Planned according to small scales, laid out for slow speeds, twisting along creeks and over hills, and emptying directly onto market squares, these streets were ideal for bicyclists and horse carts but not fit for the space-mastering power of the automobile. A totally new type of road was required to make space penetrable, designed for high speeds and reserved solely for motor traffic - a type of road whose spread would ensure the automobile's success. It was Hitler's way of melding the German people into unity, encouraging a homogenous society in which the pulse of life beats to a uniform rhythm, unopposed by local consciousness or cultural particularity. Industrialism can only become effective when it coincides with the creation of a homogenous society [as seen today in the European Union's gushing love for the word "mobility" - CB]. (text paraphrased from Wolfgang Sachs' "For Love of the Automobile," aside from the final comment)

September 25 marks the ten-year anniversary of the first Critical Mass bicycle ride, organised by San Francisco urban cyclists in 1992. Forty-eight people attended, but the rides quickly grew, expanding to 230 cities around the world and sometimes attended by several thousand people, generally on the last Friday of each month around 5 p.m. There are no real organisers; people just show up each month and organically decide where the ride will go. The cyclists make the point "We're not blocking traffic; we are traffic," since on every other day of the month they don't get their fair share of public roads. The largest rides occur in London, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco. For their birthday edition, riders will exchange gifts and carry banners marking the 150+ cities worldwide in which Critical Mass has occurred in the last ten years. (See www.talkfastrideslow.org or www.criticalmasshub.com.)

September 27: Critical Mass! This global urban bike ride is generally on the last Friday of the month, 5:30 p.m., in a city near you.

Extra bonus day (optional, for those who want to end on a negative note):

October 1 marks the coming of the auto age in 1908 with the release of Henry Ford's first Model T car. By 1913 they were rolling off the assembly line every three minutes, a miracle of mass production leading to mass motorisation. Ford introduced a new strategy for corporations to accumulate wealth; "Fordism" was based on the mass assembly-line production of standardised consumer goods, made possible by the replacement of skilled workers by semi-skilled assembly-line workers, which in turn allowed management detailed control over the labour process. This opened up a huge potential for "scientific management" and automation, which together opened the way for an enormous growth in labour productivity - while turning work into an endless repetition of tedious tasks. The raised productivity meant wages and profits could both rise at the same time. With rising wages and the relatively secure employment offered by Fordist production, Fordism was able to provide the basis for mass consumption, which was a necessary condition for its own reproduction. By 1920 there were 9 million cars on U.S. roads alone. Soon most of the industralised world would be made captives of car culture, as well as the individualistic, domestic consumer culture which has bred many of today's social and environmental problems.

And October 2 is International Walk to School Day