Here we set out some ideas and suggestions to any and all considering organization of or particaption in a CFD in their city or community anytime after 19:30, Thursday, 24 February 2000, the day that Bogota showed us the way.

Not everybody necessarily appreciates a Car Free Day. And even among those who have a taste for them, there is quite naturally a fair range of opinions as to how they are best organized and even of what they are supposed to be doing in the first place. With this complexity in view, the intention of this section is to see what can be done to harness the collective good will, experience and brain power of the group to build up a coherent strategic framework and a number of useful supporting tasks and ideas. Time and circumstances may not permit the organizers to take full advantage of all these ideas this first time around, but if we begin to assemble them here they will then be available for other cities and other Days.

• Why we need Car Free Days
• Who needs Car Free Days most?
• Make that a Thursday
• How big a planning effort?
• The Minimalist Car Free Day
• The Traffic Cam gambit
• Polling Strategies
• Getting all of Bogotá behind us - A Sociological Aside
• The Morning Count-down
• Groups to participate in Morning Ceremony
• The Children's Program
• Other tools to get the job done
• Further concepts to be developed

Why we need Car Free Days

"The processes that occur in our [societies] are not arcane, capable
of being understood only by experts. They can be understood by almost
anybody. Many ordinary people already understand this; they simply
have not considered that by understanding these ordinary arrangements
of cause and effect, we can also direct them, if we want to."

         - Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961

The basic underlying objective of the Car Free Day Initiative is to take the host city on a normal day of the week with one difference - a substantial absence of cars on that one day - and place it under a microscope and thousands of eyes in order to see what lessons might be learned and eventually applied to deal with some of the worst of the problems caused by the car/city misfit. Since we make much of this point here, it may be a useful idea to try to be more precise in this respect.

Accidents, air pollution, congestion, economics, public health and social justice considerations aside (that's irony), the first and most fundamental and unarguable of the car/city problems is the result of a simple geometric contradiction. Most cities which are agreeable places in which to be simply cannot accommodate very many cars. There is a critical mass, and while a relatively small number of cars can be handled without any great problems, once the first thresholds are passed, it becomes necessary to start to mess with the city itself in order to be able to handle the special real estate requirements of all those cars. And when you do this the city begins to lose its shape, and at the same time its functionality starts to change.

We saw these contradictions in a massive way first in North America starting already in the late fifties, as the numbers of cars on the street began to force a growing number of ever larger accommodations on the part of the traffic engineers and city planners. The end result in almost all of these cases where the surgery was applied (increase capacity by extending the street system, use electronics and one way streets to get higher speeds and throughput, build more and more parking spaces) was of course that the center suffered and as a result either changed in terms of its basic functionality (and never for the better) or simply disappeared as a viable social and economic space. Of this it is sometimes aid: operation a success, but unfortunately the patient died.

These problems are of course well known now and have for a number of years been the subject of a literally unending barrage of books, conferences and public statements of dismay and regret. Fortunately in recent years, and especially over the last decade, there has been a rising wave of innovations which have begun to deal with many parts of the problem: a systematic refusal to give in to the car (Zurich comes to mind), traffic calming in more an more places, bus lanes and improved throughput on surface transit systems (Curitiba and its SurfaceMetro come to mind), and a growing array of other devices and techniques.

With all this progress, however, at least one major problem remains - and that has to do with how do you go about convincing people to give these ideas a fair - and early - chance. There are at least two excellent reasons why EARLY help is needed. The first is that if the result is a safer, cleaner, more convivial and more efficient system and city, there is all that gained in terms of public and economic health and well being. That is important, but it may be that the second justification for finding ways to bring in these reforms early is even more important. This has to do with the simple fact that if the old approaches and surgical methods are applied, the shape of the city will be so altered that no amount of traffic calming, public transport enhancement or whatever can bring back the old city that somehow got lost in the whole process.

The great advantage of a Car Free Day, got right, is that it can provide the entire population with a view of different city and open up visions and possibly which are otherwise hopelessly obscured in the rush of daily life and business as usual. I can think of no other way of opening up a city to these different perspectives, and that is thus why I strongly support this approach.

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Who needs Car Free Days most?

In order to understand this properly, the first step is for us to be sure that we have a proper grasp of the decision dynamics of the system we presently have on our hands in most places.

Transport and traffic policy and the related investments and policy decisions are by and large in most places dominated by people who themselves happen car owners and users. They are overwhelmingly male, healthy, young, university educated, employed, with a relatively secure life style, and, likely as not, entirely absorbed by a car-based life style which is so pervasive s to be quite invisible to them. The result is not exactly a conspiracy in the usual sense of the term - though in specific cases if you scratch you are likely to encounter a certain number of examples of special intersts being consistently favored in the sector - it is rather a conspiracy of banality. We do it like that simply because we cannot really imagine anything else.

The point is, however, that no matter what the advantages of a car based society may be to those who can do it, there are many others for whom it functions as a form of entrapment and isolation. Thus, women on the average tend to be less well served by the 100% car based system than men, poorer people less well than those better off, people with handicaps less well than those without, the unemployed or marginally employed less well than those with good steady jobs, anyone with asthma or other forms of respiratory fragility more than non-sufferers, and of course anyone whose place of home or work has been altered and made harder to get to as a result of the urban dissipation and sprawl the have followed in the wake of automobility.

What does this boils down to in point of fact in most places is no more or less than that the present car-based system in fact serves well ONLY A MINORITY of the general population. The problem of course is that this minority is the part of society with its hand on the wheel. But this is changing in at least two ways, one of which should have been anticipated but the other rather more subtle and surprising.

The first dynamic that is going to shift the balance is the result of the rapid aging of most of our populations even in many of the Third World cities. Most older people should not be driving. They lack the physical flexibility, eye sight, hearing and reaction speeds that are needed to operate safely the hurtling ton on of steel and glass that they are supposed to have under control. For now, we have now found any way to take their hands off the wheel, but as their numbers multiply this is going to have to happen. These are people who should not be driving, but who at the same time have every right to live full and happy lives. And that means levels of mobility and access that permit them to do so.

We have today the means at our disposal for creating a first class alternative transportation system, based almost entirely on the infrastructure and technologies and economics which we already have well in hand. This system consist of a dynamic combination of new surface transit concepts, new kinds of taxis, new access and vehicle sharing arrangements in good part mediated by new information technologies, together with the possibility of easy and affordable access to an "own car" on those rare occasions when the well-working multilevel alterative system needs that additional push (see the @World CarShare Consortium at http://www.ecoplan.org/carshare for more on this last). With the whole evolving lot of new services concepts mediated by the new electronics. If you look at a certain number of cities today, most of them in Europe, with Zurich as good an example as any but certainly far from the only one, you can already spot the strong trend in this direction.

And this brings up our last class of person who will find your Car Free Day an interesting source of insight and eventual reflection - and that is what we call the Post-Modern Man, namely all those people, men and women, who no longer have much interest in cars as a "nice thing" but rather see the main choice as one of basic economics, convenience, and a life style that favors things other than that glowering hunk of steel out on the street. This is an interesting pattern shift, and while it is as yet invisible to anyone who prefers not to look for it, we can tell you that it is there, and that it is going to begin to make its weight felt.

Here's what the Germans call a thinking exercise for you. Suppose you are mayor of some place, and you make a proposal that appeals strongly in a clear and unequivocal manner to the best interests of 80% of all females in your electorate, 100% of all handicapped people, 70% of all people suffering some from form of respitory deficiency, 100% of the population of 18 years or less, 80% of those of more than 65 years of age, 70% of all people in low income groups.... do you think you would stand a chance of getting elected to office?

It will be interesting to test the reality of this situation in the case of Bogotá, and the 24 February Day will provide an excellent opportunity to do just that. And this is where the all-important polling strategy component comes in.

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Make that a Thursday!

The choice of day makes a difference!

The Bogotá organizers have chosen Thursday as their target, because they agree that it is important that such a demonstration take place on a 'normal week day'. The reason for this is that the goal is to create a situation in which people will be able see their own city work under 'normal' daily circumstances, but with altogether different eyes.

If you try, for example, to organize a Thursday on, say, a holiday, you will probably end up learning almost nothing at all about your city. Likewise it is important that the project be organized (a) not on a day immediately adjacent to the week-end, (b) avoids school holidays or mid-week breaks if there happens to be one in that place, and (c) rather in the second half of the week than at the beginning (so that people will have enough time to get priority tasks out of the way first). Hence the choice of Thursday.

For more on this see Thursday: Implementation strategy for a Car Free Day.

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How big a planning effort?

It is clear that major pioneering projects such as this require a MAJOR mobilization of energy, resources and intelligence over the months and weeks immediately preceding the Day. But how much effort, what is the scale of manpower and resources that will be appropriate for planning, executing and following-up on such an effort?

Let's consider this in the context of Bogotá , for instance. In that city on 24 February 2000, some 7 million people are going to have to live their lives in a somewhat different manner as a result fo this project. For some people most of the impact will be concentrated on the time of their travel during the day, say an hour or so on average in a city as big as this. That's 7 million person hours or so that we are going to have a direct impact on. Let's see, 7 million hours is roughly equal to something on the order of 3,000 to 4,000 work years.

The impact for many people may however be even more marked, and might even influence the full 13 hours that the Day is to extend over. In that case, we would be talking about something closer to 100 million person hours, and proportionately as many years.

The planning and organizational efforts behind the Day must take this scale factor into account somehow. Against this background our question is this: How many person hours and resources should your local team and its various associates and extensions be prepared to put in to ensure that this is a successful and creative day in your city?

We have in the last few years seen a few places that have attempted to organize and run their Car Free Day as if it were just one more quick local public relations and media bash. While not totally devoid of merit -- at least it may awaken people's thoughts to the possibility that there is a problem and that solutions are called for -- it may also have wasted a valuable opportunity to do something really useful. In cases where the Day was nothing more than one quick, poorly prepared, largely unthought out and unsupported day with a few less cars on this or that street or part of town, the result was proportional to the investment. To resume: they did nothing, and they learned nothing. On the other hand, in other places where the city and the population have taken the trouble to get involved in the entire process -- consultation, planning, consensus building, execution and follow-up -- interesting results have been achieved. Which, in our view, clearly sets the model.

Hmm.

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The Minimalist Car Free Day

Some cities and their leaders have of late preferred to take what we might think of as a "minimalist" approach to organizing their "Car Free Day". They always have good reasons for their choices and in such instances the main ingredients and procedures generally run along the following lines:

• Mayor or other city official holds a press conference to announce that a "Car Free Day" is to be held on so and so date
• After some discussions in city hall and some local media actions, the decision is made to rope off a certain part of the city, usually a few downtown streets or squares, and often including existing pedestrian areas, post police at the main entry points for the duration of the project, and then proceed to prohibit entry by all or most cars.
• The population of the place is encouraged to leave their cars at home if they plan to come into the center and take a bike, public transport or walk instead.
• Often the mayor, a minister and some public personalities will be photographed as they come to the city by one of those other means than single day.
• At the end of the day, the organizers declare the event a success, congratulate themselves publicly on their civic spirit, there is some discussion on the media in the evening news, and two days later everything is pretty much forgotten and things have got back to good old normal.

In a further variation of this approach, which is sometimes labeled "Mini-Minimalist", the entire drill is prepared generally along these lines -- with the addition that it is run on a holiday, which has the great advantage of not inconveniencing anyone.

In a third and most subtle variant yet, which we have not yet seen but which we certainly anticipate, is the "hyper-minimalist" Car Free Day. This approach, which borrows extensively on the planning and organizational mechanisms outlined above, further keys on scheduling the whole thing for the middle of the night during the summer holidays, or alternatively at night during a snow storm.

It will be handy to keep the full range of these alternative organizational approaches in view as you make the choice for your city. The advantages of this last approach are so striking that we do not need to stress them any further here.

More seriously though, this brings us back to one of the main points which we feel need to be emphasized, and that is that these Days, like many other things one does, give very evidence of giving back to you proportionately to what you are prepared to put into it. A city like Bogotá, which has dared to take the plunge in the full glare of public view and by making a real effort and committing real resources, has every chance to gain a great deal from their efforts. For those who may doubt it, we can only suggest that they stay tuned.

Likewise, the Italian commitment to encouraging cities across the country to organize Car Free Days, and even if it's only on Sundays at first, consistently, month after month in the first half of 2000, can be considered a major step in the right direction. Once again, those who doubt are invited to keep their eyes open and follow the accomplishments, which we can be sure will be two things (a) highly uneven and (b) in at least a few cases astonishing and encouraging. A new pattern is going to be set: Una Rinascita della cittŕ dell'uomo.

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The Traffic Cam Gambit

1. One of the key goals of a Car Free Day is to create a situation in which people can see their city under substantially different transportation circumstances.
2. In many of the projects in the past few years however, this part of the message did not get through for various reasons, or at least not to the extent that might have been the case.
3. Part of this has to be that a sort of "exception mentality" seems to set in, with the result that most people, while they can see that it is different, do not succeed in taking the necessary mental step to turn this (muted) perception into a useful measuring rod for change.
4. There are several ways of using traffic cameras as one of the ways of getting this message across.
5. A traffic camera is a great way of seeing what is going on in the street in any place, with or without car free conditions. For example, have a look at this one which will give you an idea of traffic in Bogotá at one street corner today.
6. The cost of setting up a traffic camera is slight, as is the cost of integrating them into a Web page. Moreover there is no reason why the cameras and Web links cannot be set up and financed by cooperating groups and businesses all over town.
7. Suppose the organizers in Bogotá could in a cooperative effort put a number of these cams out on the street, and at the same time use a video hookup to capture the images for later examination, analysis and media uses.
8. An additional useful wrinkle would be to tape the cams on both the day before and the day after, with some system for marking the time for each set of images (and these of courses exist, see the text on the above cam).
9. In a final variant, on the Thursday, and on at least some of the site, what could be communicated over the net would be not one but TWO images from each camera: the traffic scene on Wednesday at the same time, and that on the Car Free Day.

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Polling Strategies

• Polls to be carried out daily and given high visibility
• Link to the mayor's daily briefing ("The Countdown"), with the mayor and guest to present and comment results
• Each day 2 separate populations to be polled: "The man in the street" and a sample of representatives of the particular partner group to whom that day is given over to work out the operational strategy that will bets serve that group and its members
• Ideally carried out by newspaper or other media partner (who are equipped to do this and find it in their interest both to do it, and report on it to the general public)
• No more than a handful of questions to be asked in each case. Here's a first set of candidates to get us going:
  1. The CFD is a good idea for Bogotá and I want it to succeed - Yes/No
  2. If it does not succeed it will be because of __________________ (in few words)
  3. And if it does succeed it will be because of _________________ (in few words)
  4. Does the Bogotá Car Free Day give people here a more active say in what their city should look like? - Yes/No
  5. Is Bogotá a city for cars, or for people? (Cars/People/other ________)
• Great benefits will accrue to maintaining the same basic format and questions throughout.
• The presentation format should be brief (permitting presentation of the results in a clear and concise manner in less than two minutes by the mayor and his guests)
• Should be supported by vivid (and honest and intelligent.. see Edward Tufte) graphics
• No effort should be made to hide or minimize the variety of opinions and satisfaction/dissatisfaction with all or any aspects of the project, the idea being to uncover problems and differences early and to solve them in collaboration with the full range of interests involved

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Getting all of Bogotá behind us - A Sociological Aside

Our basic challenge is that we have before us a group of seven million people whom we would like to get on our side for the Car Free Day. Moreover, we are dead sure that unless we have a great majority of them with us on the 24th, things are going to work out a lot less well than we would like. In parallel with this, we also know that we are proposing to them a concept that is not only unfamiliar, but is very quite different from the wave of media, advertising and the like all of which more or less are pre-conditioning them to have very different attitudes toward the thing we have in mind.

So, before we get into the fine detail of our media and organizational recommendations, let me comment first here on the basic underlying issue that we face. I ask your patience if it seems to you a bit abstract and windy, but it looks at what I believe to be an important truth which we would do well to understand and then possibly find ways to put to work. Then later today, I can get you my more detailed and concrete recommendations to you.

The Car Culture-A Sociological Aside:

The "car culture", as you might want to call it, which many if not all of us still hold in our minds either consciously or unconsciously and which thus does happen to influence our perceptions and decisions, even if we are not always explicitly aware of it, has led to a situation of what two thoughtful analysts, Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, call "automobile dependency". It's an interesting concept I think, and they have had their latest look at it in their 1999 book "Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence", where they define it as "a situation in which a city develops on the assumption that automobile use will predominate so that it is given priority in infrastructure and in the form of urban development." Sound familiar? This in a phrase is the mental environment in which our Car Free Day has to operate and find a way out. In other words, if almost everybody involved is tracking along certain lines, what is it that you can do to get them to question their basic assumptions which appear to them to be "logical, realistic and even desirable". Not an easy task!

So, the first step in our communications program has to be accepting that this is the situation we face.

Fortunately not all the news is bad. And whether most people have noticed it or not, there is a new show in town, and that is what I call the emergence of the "post-modern" man (and woman). There is a whole new generation of people out there who are starting to have an entirely different attitude toward cars. This boils down to something like: cars are all right I guess if you need them, but if I had a choice I would prefer to take a bike, run or in-line skate. In fact if public transit were worth a damn (then you have to check the city in question) I guess I would prefer to take (a terrific) bus than my own car, because if I take my own car I can't read, can't look around (and hey! this IS a beautiful city), and I can't meet any new and maybe interesting people.

This is basically the mind set of our post-modern person. And is it total madness? Many of my long time transportation colleagues tell me they think it is. They claim that people just can't imagine a world that is different from the one they grew up with and which still is sold to them by the media very day. But if we check out the increasing number of people, including many younger ones who are doing well in Europe's cities, in university communities, we can see that the post-modern man (i.e., post-automotive) is a growing if still nascent trend.

Our work with the concept of carsharing has been an eye-opener in this regard. As you will see if your check out the @World CarShare Consortium, there are already some 490 identified places in the world where you can get a car quickly when you need it without having to go out and buy one. More than 100,000 people use these systems, and they are all, to coin a phrase, post-modern. Their concern is access and transport, not personal identification with a crepitating ton of steel and glass.

What does this mean in the context of a city like Bogotá where today only about one person in six has access to a car (but with the number growing very fast of course)? Well, it suggest to me that it might be interesting to see what might be done to create not a car culture in the city, but an access culture. We know that a city, by its basic geometrical limitations, just can't accommodate the geometry of the car as its major mover of people and goods. If you try to make the city do that, namely the imposable, the result is, as we have seen in thousands of cases, that the city just collapses, morphs and somehow goes away or is less standing as a shattered hulk. A sad, dangerous and abandoned space that once was filled with people living their daily lives.

So, many words later, this is the challenge of the Car Free Day and the people and groups that want to make it work. How can we use our ability to communicate and reach into people's minds and get them to thinking in new and more creative ways about how they can adapt not their city to the requirements of the car, but rather the use of the car - and indeed of the whole movement system of which the car is but one part - to the requirements of a city which is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable?

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The Morning Countdown - Part II

More on the core media/public information program -

People like stories. And a good story commands our attention in part because it has a good rhythm behind it. Moreover people like series of stories even better, like the child who wants a bedtime story before going to sleep EVERY night. Or anyone who has happened to get hooked on a telenovella and just has to see the next episode.

So let's spend a bit of time each day over the next several weeks in telling some of the stories behind the Car Free Day, and indeed behind daily life in the city of Bogotá (and maybe a few other places as well). And getting the rhythm right.

What you really need at this point is a storyboard to set out step by step the organization of a typical program, but let's see if we can agree on some of the basic principles first: the storyboard can then follow.

The means of our story, the instrument, will be the Morning "Countdown" Program. And like any other good story it should be something that people can anticipate and get to in a convenient, regular way. In this case, the guess is that the best time will be just in time to make the morning news each and every day between now and D Day.

The assumption here is that you are going to get TV coverage, but that while important does not have to be the whole story. With or without TV, it will be important to have each event attended by a bunch of the people who are working in and around City Hall, and perhaps others as well. Also a bunch of school children each day, grinning and waving at the camera. There also has to be provision for the print media as well of course.

Ideally every program will be available on the Web site in RealMedia form (so if you don't know how to handle this, now is the time to get the routine and software down pat. Santiago should be able to help. It really is not huge deal.)

In this case, the moderator, the constant smiling presence of our mini-series is the mayor, who each day shows up exactly at the same time to begin his day but, more important, to move the countdown one more day notch to D Day - and to do it in company with some special visitors, who themselves are part of the bigger story.

Let's assume for sake of argument, that each episode is to take somewhere from 10-15 minutes, and be organized and presented so that it commands a high degree of general viewer interest and involvement over the whole time. (This means of course that all kinds of the usual "government statements" or "expert statements" have no place in what is basically a family event aimed at all the citizens of Bogotá.)

Opening shot: The mayor is shown arriving for work at the Palacio de Llevano (in different and real ways? No faking it!) and walks up to the main entry of city hall to the large "Calendar" or "Thermometer or whatever the big graphic display device is that you have put together to show to the city how may days are left before D day.

Next: The mayor turns around and a couple of steps behind him appears today's visiting group (a different one each day, see below. Also note that these people have spent the whole of the previous day (and quite possibly more) working closely with the main project task force discussing the plans both in general and as it affects their particular group, intersts and lives. One major goal of these close discussions is to make a real effort to come to grips with their hesitations, fears and special requirements. And it may be that this particular group has a few specific ideas that they want to talk about briefly concerning their participation in the Day. For example, some of the school children may be interested in getting involved directly in the process of measuring the impact of the day, by making simple instruments for measurements, carrying out traffic counts, drawing before and after situations, conducting their own interviews, etc. Or perhaps some transport project or business group may decide to offer a special Car Free Day price or something of the sort (see later working notes for more on this). Etc. etc.

The point is that each of these groups has something to say and should be treated as full partners in the Car Free Day and not as grateful awed and passive citizens or potatoes or what have you. So as they arrive the mayor welcomes them warmly and invites them to step over to our big 'Ther-mometer' and do whatever it is to adjust it to show that there are now only xx days left before the big one.

Then, before giving them the stage to say their piece the mayor (or maybe one of them) may first present the results of the previous day's poll (see earlier note on polls - and maybe once again a good big graphic representation of the polls results will help make the point both faster and better). Each day two groups are polled: (a) the man in the street and (b) the guest group. It asks no more than 2 or 3 questions, always the same. One of them is: do you support this idea, or not?

They can then talk about that for, say, two minutes or so. T

he mayor can then read a short dispatch of some sort, covering either some new development, some sort of international message of encouragement, a plan for the future, whatever. And once again invite his guest to make a brief comment on that.

That's it. That's all there is to it for that day. Our little story has been told and it's now over. All you have to do is wait for tomorrow and you can hear a new one.

Mascot: I think we need a mascot for our Day. Is there for example any particular animal in the zoo that the children like especially. A gorilla. A huge tortoise. A donkey. The ideal animal would be one that you could have with you each morning, that could be used in the marketing and other materials for the campaign, that would make people smile, would be symbolic, would be culturally coherent. The idea is that the thing would be there and sleeping, gazing or whatever, and a quite but very present part of the scene. Obviously important for the scenes with children, but also a part of your story, a part of your critical continuity, a part of your contact with something more than technology and cars and whatever.

Flower: We also need a symbolic flower, and best of course if it is one that is in season, abundant and somehow that we can link to the rest. The flower, like the mascot, can be integrated in to the marketing etc. materials, and can be an "instrument of exchange" within the various programs itself. (There also is an idea that the police will be marked by and use these flowers too, but more on that later.)

The Last Day: Like all the others but this time the air time is 6:30 in the morning, which of course is the opening minute of the first hour of our Car Free Day. On this day, when the last adjustment is made to the thermometer, it is the mayor who has to do it himself. Because he is the man who is making all this happen. On that one day there is no division of responsibility. Back to top

Groups to invite to participate in the Morning Ceremony

• Feb. 7. The planning team (on Day 1) to give a bit of the background. All in everyday clothes, maybe with their kids and spouses. Maps,. Pictures.
• Feb. 8. The Web cam team (show people who it works and why we're doing it. I'd like to provide a few inputs here. Also to bring children and families) Also explain the Web page and how it works, including links to media
• Feb. 9. First school children's group (how are we going to get to school on that day and what do we think of it), Teachers and families behind them.
• Feb. 10. Bus operators (with a quick section on Transmilenio)
• Feb. 11. Police (with flowers, patience and grins... making it clear that it's not so easy and that everyone will have to pitch in and do their part)
• Feb. 12. Media Day - put the media covering it into the spotlight
• Feb. 13. Doctors/hospital/public health groups (including how they are going to help provide statistic and other evidence of the impact of the day on the public health.
• Feb. 14. Handicapped and elderly groups
• Feb. 15. Collectivos and Taxi drivers (?separately? or with buses?)
• Feb. 16. Local commerce, restaurants and cafes (what are they gong to do different on that day)
• Feb. 17. Doctors/hospital/public health groups (including how they are going to help provide statistic and other evidence of the impact of the day on the public health.
• Feb. 18. Emergency services (With What to do in case of.... Hints)
• Feb. 19. Athletes and entertainers day
• Feb. 20. Road maintenance and cleaning crews
• Feb. 21. Car groups (including magazines and car programs on media. Careful!)
• Feb. 22. Bike groups (with pictures and some counsel and words of caution?)
• Feb. 23. Measurement and pollution control (when, where, how, by whom). Also Children's group II: Their measurement and monitoring program
• Feb. 24. The mayor and his family (D day)
• Feb. 25. The Bogotá Challenge (international)

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The Children's Program (Some notes)

Children travel, and those who travel by motorized transport, travel passively. This is not very good for the child's development. A Car Free Day may get parents and children to thinking about this, and to some more creative choices for and by their children

Organization:

1. So, let's see what can be done in the next week to ask the school's to give the children come time to consider and develop their thoughts on several points about the Car Free Day. Here are a few that might be considered:
2. On February 24th, will I be able to come to school as I do every day, or will my parents and I have to make a different arrangement?
3. If I had a choice what would be the best way for me to come to school EVERY day?
4. Why can't I do it?
5. What does the street in front of school look like at the beginning or end of the school day when it's time to go home? Is there anything that looks dangerous about it?
6. Why is Bogotá organizing a Car Free Day?
7. Is it a good idea?
8. Then each class can get together to decide how everyone is going to get to school that day. First question: What happens to children whose parents normally drive them to school?
9. Do you think the school and the city could help us figure out some new ways to get to school safely on that day? What if we wanted to come by bicycle? Or walk? Other?
10. Or what about a Walking Bus? (A Walking Bus is a group of children, walking to school with a couple of parent volunteers - a 'driver', who leads the way, and a 'conductor' at the rear. The walking bus follows a set route, stopping at agreed pick up points in the neighborhood. Volunteers and children are kitted out with reflective clothing and a trolley can be used to carry bags. A number of safety checks are used in setting up schemes.)
11. If the Mayor of Bogotá invites us to come to City Hall to talk about the Day, what do you think we should say to him about it? Do you think he might like to see some pictures of what we think it might look like when we go to school that day? Or suppose we write a little poem or story?

Implementation:

• The children can work with their science teachers to make some simple instruments to take readings of various pollutants and other indicators of air quality - and then use these to take "before and after" (and after once again) readings in and around the school, and possibly at key safe points on side walks near to major traffic arteries. (The goal being not necessarily to "prove" that a Car Free Day will lead to less air pollution, but to get the kids to thinking about it.)
• Also they can carry out traffic counts in small groups (again before, after, and after again).
• They can go into the streets, observe and record the day in drawings, photos, and in words.
• They can do surveys and conduct polls of people who are traveling by different modes: some questioning people at bus stops, others as they wait for a taxi or collectivo, people on bikes. Skaters, runners, walkers and yet others.
• As they do these polls they can look for key communalities and differences.
• In short they can pull together all the raw materials they need in order to make up their own minds - and they can further look within their own groups for differences in appreciation and attitudes and report on them as well.

Follow-up:

• Subsequently the classes can get together and carry out their own evaluation of the achievement of the Car Free Day - positive and negative.
• This may be in the form of a Fair or Show, to which parents and maybe local political personalities are invited. And perhaps even the media.
• Once this is done, one of the classes can prepare an illustrated report that can be sent to the mayors office with the school's opinions, views and suggestions for next year.
• And for tomorrow.

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Other Tools to Get the Job Done

Studies, reports, debriefings, conferences and "more research" have been the main recommendations and tools of trade of university educated policy advisors over the last decades. All are of course highly respectable and have their uses -- but also their limits and abuses. Given these limits and the fact that the issues that concern us in making a Car Free Day work as it should are complex and systemic, and further that they often involve reconciling the positions of groups and interests which are usually far from identical and often highly conflicted, we must be prepared to try other less "academic" approaches to knowledge-building, communications, conflict resolution and, finally, to the mobilization of opinion and resources that is now required.

So instead of always accepting automatically that the right next move is to have a technocratic 'elite' take over control and in the process generate yet more paper (and that in a society that increasingly won't read, never mind act on what they read!) -- and bearing in mind the powerful educational levels, tools available to and competence of civil society in this new century, we should, therefore, be giving far more importance in all stages of each project to such things as ...

1. Standing around and watching carefully what is really going on.
2. Being willing and able to talk to and listen to everyone.
3. Insisting always on the use of simple language.
4. Looking for ways to heighten the impact of words (written or spoken, and which does not always necessarily mean even more words).
5. Using images, photographs, photo essays, film, architectural renderings, video scenarios, cartoons, posters, drawings, virtual reality simulations, computer visualization techniques and other forms of lively graphic expression and characterization ("before and after" illustrations)-- to impart greater depth and impact to the issues and realities being faced.
6. Using these techniques to illustrate alternative futures and policy options, in ways which render them striking, understandable and credible.
7. Making use of polls, surveys, feedback monitoring schemes which improve awareness of the diversity of needs and views - not as instruments to indicate easily satisfied uniform conditions and values..
8. Creative use of small samples (cheaper, faster and sometimes even more accurate).
9. Imaginative linking of quantitative analysis with more vivid information illustrating the real, human impacts on individuals, families, firms & communities.
10. Socioeconomic analysis, studies and portrayals of actual daily life experience.
11. "Day in the life of ... " profiles, scenarios, stories, rapportages & other "literary" treatments.
12. Not excluding humor, wit, jokes, irony (& even the possibility of bad taste, if that's what it takes to increase the level of critical thinking and creativity) from policy discussions.
13. Books and articles on these challenging issues aimed at informing and involving the general public (as opposed to only the usual specialist or academic readers).
14. Editorials, columns and op-ed pieces (carefully written) to hammer the key points home.
15. Games, educational and others, using a wide variety of media.
16. Contests, competitions to elicit broader, more vigorous and more imaginative participation in all stages.
17. More brilliant use of "commercials", spots, etc., To achieve educational and social objectives.
18. Events, books, images, programs aimed at informing and socializing children.
19. Finding ways to involve children actively both in the collective learning experience and in the solution process.
20. Use of the school system as a resource, to carry out surveys, mini-studies, demonstrations, parent education and activism on these issues, etc..
21. Using town halls, libraries, museums and other public places including the streets themselves as centers of exposition and public debate.
22. New techniques of knowledge building (including opening up of the policy process to public participants in new and more far-reaching ways).
23. Active networking at all levels of society -- using an increasing variety of media.
24. Electronic bulletin boards, networking, conferencing, new group work/groupware techniques.
25. Use of simulations, artificial intelligence, etc. To encourage depiction, emergence, and collective consideration of broader solution sets.
26. Innovative techniques of conflict resolution (including iterative adversary programs using video, audio and other feedback techniques).
27. Town meetings & other fora of debate, consensus building & group decision.
28. Process-oriented projects involving the semi-structured use of things like brainstorming sessions, roundtables, confrontations of opposing points of view-all oriented to attain specific objectives.
29. Cross-project and cross-country support by policy gurus, networks & public interest consortia.
30. Demonstrations of new ways of doing things (properly prepared, carefully monitored & flexibly fine-tuned for results).
31. New partnerships with radio, television and the media, which increase public awareness of both issues and trade-offs, as well as direct public involvement in the solution process.
32. Active investigation & learning from post mortems of project experience, both successful & other.

Now these are of course all things that are easy enough to say in a list such as this, but in order to do them right -- and they are indeed virtually all valuable tools in cases such s those that we are confronting here - you face a challenge of some proportions. But do not forget that if you are able to mobilize the community as a whole in support of this one day -- which indeed you must -- there are out there many talents and energies which can be drawn on to these important ends. Once done, they will impart a great sense of competence and satisfaction to the community as a whole, thereby transferring the "ownership" and success of the venture to where it should be -- to the community as a whole.

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Some Further Concepts to be Addressed Developed

Here are a few of the first that come to mind, though it will be through the experience and efforts of the group that the real content will develop.

• Working with the Key Street Partners: Police, taxi and bus drivers, delivery, and other street people (who may not at first be so easy to work with)
• Media Strategies
• Paying for your CFD (public/private partnerships in innovation)
• The School Children Gambit
• "Eyes on the City" (photographs, drawings, computer images, architectural renderings of alternative traffic and transport scenarios)
• New roles for transport modelers
• Car sharing demo
• High capacity bus lane demo (SurfaceMetro)
• TDM demos
• Bike and pedestrian pathing demos
• Courses for safe use of bicycles in a city environment
• CFD's and All-Mode Traveler Information Systems (see TransBilbao Express by way of example)
• Support from and working with university and technical training institutions
• The public eye
• The "Experiment Committee"
• International media polls and feedback
• Public health, emergency provisions )
• How to make this better known internationally and to gain valuable support
• The International Mayors program
• Support from European Parliament
• The Bogotá Challenge (to Europe, OECD region and the Third World)

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