Saturday marks Car Free Day in the City of North Vancouver with Lonsdale Avenue below Fourth Street blocked off for a street festival.
After what many around here are considering the worst traffic hell we’ve seen on the North Shore in years, an event promising no cars is not a moment too soon.
We recommend everyone hop on a bus, bicycle, dog sled, horse or fly board and head down.
It’s a very liberating experience to walk up the middle of the street where normally you’d be squished like a grape. The event promises food, entertainment, vendors and a sense of community you simply can’t get from the confines of your home (or vehicle).
But Car Free Day isn’t just an opportunity to have the most fun you can legally have on Lonsdale. Its original purpose is to challenge us to think about the relationship we have with the automobile.
For much of the last hundred years, our cities and, by extension, our collective lifestyle, has been planned around the car. Petroleum-based fuel was cheap and plentiful. Climate change was unheard of and the solution to traffic was always to build more lanes for more cars. Unfortunately, we’re now living with the consequences of that thinking.
We aren’t so naïve any more.
With the TransLink plebiscite kiboshed, we’ve collectively missed the bus on helping ourselves out of this mess in the short term but it’s never too late to start thinking about the future (and have a little fun while doing it). After the transportation hell we experienced this week, that should be easy.
See you Saturday.
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