Vive la France! The "Vélibs" riders

The newly elected President of France, Nichola Sarkozy, nicknamed "Sarko, l'Americain," ("Sarko, the American") is in love with all things American, so it's now safe again to say, "Vive la France!"

And "Vive la France!" indeed! For this is a wonderful idea!

Check it out!

Journeys | Paris
"Finding Liberté on Two Wheels"
By ERIC RAYMAN
Published: October 14, 2007 in The New York Times
Paris’s self-service bicycle docking stations make it easy even for fresh-off-the-plane Americans to explore the city in a way that you can’t by foot, by Métro or by taxi.

Magnifique!

These "Vélibs", as the bikes are called, and "Vélibiens", as their riders are called, are a great idea! (...kind of like those push-carts one rents at airports to haul one's luggage to the car rental. Same concept, basically.)

This French idea might even play in Peoria: ooh-lah-lah!

But will it ever play in car-city L.A.?!?

How about tapping one or two of those Silicon Valley zillionaires who don't know what to do with all that money to finance it?

Here's an idea for you.

If they set up shuttle services between the major and most touristic cities (Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Venice), and they set up these "self-service bicycle docking stations" in each city, tourists and locals could ride the shuttles and once they got there and off the shuttle buses, they could simply grab one of these bikes and off they'd go!

The actual impact on traffic might be insignificant. But the improvement on quality of life, especially for tourists, might be enormous...

Yes, I know what you're going to say: "This ain't Europe. They will rip off the bikes or their parts out there." All I gotta say to that is an old cliche: "where there's a will, there's a way..."

It's worth trying...

OPEN DISCUSSION #11: "why not just accept it and think about bettering the time you spend in traffic."

[Swiss846] wrote:

"You spend much time thinking about the traffic situation in LA. why not just accept it and think about bettering the time you spend in traffic. You talk about telecomuting, but you can do that in your car. With mobile internet you can blog while on the 405! Let's be honest, driving at 5 miles an hour in a row of cars hardly takes much skill, I've seen people reading books, watching movies, eating dinner, Smoking bongs. Pretty much anything you can do in your living room can be done on a los angeles freeway."

Thanks for the comment and for reading the blog! Your contributions to this whole discussion are much appreciated.

This is a very interesting comment, and this is the kind of insight into the problem I am looking for. This, of course, reflects the traditional Southern California laid-back culture of sunshine, beach, and surfing. That's cool. Nothing against that.

Everything is a matter of perspective: do we want to look at this glass as "half empty" and rant and rave about it or do we want to look at it as "half full" and make the best of it as Swiss846 suggests? Or do we want to "fill the glass up" to overflowing (fix the problem) or "drink it up" (move elsewhere) and not even have to think about it anymore?

I noticed this before, too, that L.A. drivers seem to be resigned to the traffic congestion problem. They seem resigned to "driving at 5 miles an hour." Since their time at home (or wherever) has been drastically cut by traffic congestion and their commuting time has increased dramatically, they have redefined their mobility, they have redefined their leisure time, and they have transfered their living room to the car! In Swiss846's words, "Pretty much anything you can do in your living room can be done on a los angeles freeway."

This is really a question of how you want to define mobility, how you want to define lifestyle, how you want to define QUALITY OF LIFE. This is a QUALITY OF LIFE question: has your mobility decreased and your commuting time increased to such a point that you spend such an unbelievable amount of time in your car in L.A. that you practically LIVE in it?!? "People [are] reading books, watching movies, eating dinner, smoking bongs" in their cars! They might as well live in them!

And if so, are you okay with that? Are you happy with that? Do you want to live like that? Or are you just resigned to living in a situation you feel you can do nothing about so you might as well adapt to it?

This is really a question for every single individual driver to answer and decide for themselves. There is a psychological and a social dimension to this whole problem, and different individuals cope in different ways.

It's interesting that the one thing L.A. drivers do the most in their cars, and which I talked about in my posting Rush Hour: the modern hell, is the one thing you forgot to mention! Talking on their cell phones! I am convinced that the cell phone is the one "drug" that keeps drivers in traffic, "driving at 5 miles an hour in a row of cars," like you said, from going berserk with frustration. It's not simply the "reading books, watching movies, eating dinner, smoking bongs" or doing pretty much "anything you can do in your living room" in the car what keeps them sane. It's the fact that they can talk to somebody! It's human contact what keeps us sane! Trapped and isolated in that little tin box of plastic, steel and rubber on wheels for hours, we would go crazy without human contact like the Michael Douglas character does in "Falling Down." I believe it is the cell phone what makes traffic congestion bearable.

For me, personally, a car is a tool, the tool of choice for most Americans to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. It is a means to an end. I cannot conceive of the car as an end in itself. The purpose of driving is NOT driving. The purpose of driving is at my destination, NOT on the way there. Sure, "getting there is half the fun" and all that. Life is a journey. Enjoy the ride. And every other cliche you can think of. But if we shift the purpose of driving to the car itself, to being in the car, we might as well live in cars!

Every individual (and/or family) must decide for himself or herself what QUALITY OF LIFE they find acceptable or are willing to live with. If 20 million people have decided that this is how they want to live -- "reading books, watching movies, eating dinner, smoking bongs" in their cars because they are resigned to "driving at 5 miles an hour" on the freeways -- then the discussion is over. This blog has NO purpose. I'm "wasting my breath" (so to speak) here.

Listen, I'm not even in L.A. right now, and I don't drive. But when I lived in L.A., I found this traffic congestion problem very frustrating and thought that if I ever had a chance to do something about it or write (e.i., blog) about it, I would. That's all. The problem doesn't even concern me personally. Still, I find it very challenging.

I am also kind of mystified by, or rather puzzled about, two questions:

1. Americans are pragmatic people, they love solving problems. Why haven't they solved this one?
2. Americans tend to be reactive, not proactive. How big or serious will this problem have to get before they react "en masse" to it?

I don't know the answers to those two questions. Do you? Does anyone?

I am also convinced that blogging is perhaps not the best medium to approach this problem. I am interesting in film making. If I could, I would shoot a documentary about the issue and generate more buzz and bring a million times more attention to the problem than any blog ever could. A documentary on just about ANY issue is worth 100,000 blogs. No question about it. It's not even a contest. The power of the visual medium is unquestionable in this culture brought up on TV, movies and video games.

Personally, I happen to be interested in blogging and its potential, and this is as good a topic to blog on as any other. In the process I have learned and I am learning a lot about blogging. If I haven't accomplished anything else and I have just "wasted my breath" here, at least I have learned a lot.

This is not necessarily the best issue to blog on because a lot people tend to take some of the things I say personally. They take it as criticism of their country, as criticism of their culture, as criticism of their city or as a criticism of them personally. They are sensitive about the issue. Instead of taking this blog as a contribution to helping THEM to solve a problem or as a contribution to helping THEM to improve their quality of life, they take offense by it. Perhaps (what do I know? I'm just guessing here) they also take it as an insult to their intelligence. They are aware of the problem and they are pretty much like you: they are coping with it the way you do and they are happy to live with it that way and they don't want anybody telling them what to do or how to live their lives or how to change their lifestyle or how to change their city. So I will probably lose interest in it sooner or later. For now, I just happen to find it interesting.

Just to give you an idea of how much more interested I am in writing itself than in this particular issue, I can tell you for a fact that I have edited and re-written this posting about six or seven times since posting it! The writing itself and the images that come with it are something I can do something about. The writing and the images are something I can control. This issue of traffic is something completely beyond my control, something that affects and concerns millions of people, something my "tiny voice out here in the wilderness" may have little or no impact on at all. I am not so much looking for success in this particular issue as I am looking for success in a writing career.

Like they say in the South of France, "c'est tout!" (that's all!)

Again, thanks for your comment!
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