Dealing With A Transit Strike, The Dutch Way

When there's a transit strike in a US city...

All right, I'm starting off with an iffy proposition.  There aren't many US cities with real transit systems:  New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and a few others. 

OK, so now that we've got that out of the way, let's proceed:  In a US city with a transit system has a transit worker's strike, what happens?

Well, if history (at least here in NYC) is any guide, the city will try to make it easier for cars to enter and park.  A road shoulder or part of a bridge might be designated as an ad hoc bike and pedestrian lane.  And, given the way things are today, the city just might grant more Uber permits.

Now you might think I'm being cranky and cynical. (I am a New Yorker, after all!) But we all know that when it comes to bicycling or transportation, the most forward-thinking American cities might do something the Danes or Dutch did twenty years ago.

Yesterday, transit workers went on strike in the Netherlands.  Yes, in the whole country, not just in Amsterdam or Rotterdam.  That work stoppage involves, not only train and bus operators, but all other workers in those areas, as well as on trams and ferries.

That last item is important because Amsterdam isn't the only part of the country that's laced with canals. Also, the geography of the capital and other Dutch cities means that getting from one part of town or another often involves crossing a body of water.

So what did authorities in Amsterdam do?  They closed the IJ Tunnel--an artery as important to the city as, say, the Brooklyn Battery, Queens-Midtown, Lincoln or Holland (!) tunnels are to New York--to "fast moving" traffic.  They then opened the mile-long tube, which connects the center of the city with its north end--to bicycles.  Pedestrians, though, still aren't allowed.

The way commuters are howling over the prospect of congestion pricing, can you imagine how they'd react if any of those tunnels were opened to cyclists?

4-1/2 Ft.

Probably the most famous objet d'art that has anything to do with cycling is the "bull" Pablo Picasso fashioned from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.  

There are others, of course, including Marcel Duchamp's bicycle wheel.  On the other hand, we don't often hear about performance art based on bicycles or bicycling.

Now an artist and librarian based in Oakland, California plans to help fill that void.

Lisa Conrad plans to cycle across the state of Nebraska from Thursday, 30 May until 15 June.  She will be accompanied by other artists who plan to traverse the state from west to east.  After the Cornhusker State, they plan to ride across Iowa. 



Now, they are not the first cyclists to ride across either state.  What will be different is their route, which will trace abandoned railroad tracks and the gaps between them.  The purpose, she says, is to explore the role of the railroad in the making of the United States, in particular through examining the tension between the romance of the rails and the reality of making them, which was often exploitative, to put it mildly.



While she doesn't mention anything about it, the ride/performance piece--called 4 -1/2 ft, after the standard width of a railroad track--the  coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental railroad. 

This isn't the first such ride for Conrad and the other artist-cyclists.  Previously, they did a similarly-themed ride across Washington State and Northern Idaho, and another through Montana into Wyoming.

You can learn more about 4 -1/2 ft at their website.

Remembering A War’s Legacy

Today, on Memorial Day, I am remembering something I saw last July, while cycling in Cambodia.

Few countries have been more devastated by war.  The land mines that remain, after half a century, continue to bind the nation and its people to the legacy of a war that spread from Vietnam and led to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime.

Aki Ra was conscripted to fight at age 10, he estimates:  He doesn’t know the exact date of his birth. By the time he was old enough to vote in most countries, he had fought in theee different armies.  During that time, he became a specialist in explosives, specifically land mines.

As a civilian, he has devoted himself to finding and defusing land mines, not only in Cambodia, but in other former war zones.  He’s even unearthed World War I - era ordnance in Europe.



This work led to his founding the Landmine Museum and a school for children, many of whom would not otherwise have the opportunity to do so.

The Museum is a testament to a legacy of war—specifically, how it continues to terrorize people who weren’t even born when their land was laced with explosives.

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