Car Free Days

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A Car Free Day is an event organized in different places in different ways, but with the common goal of taking a fair number of cars off the streets of a city or some target area or neighborhood for all or part of a day, in order to give the people who live and work there a chance to consider how their city might look and work with a lot fewer cars. While projects along these lines had taken place from time to time on an ad hoc basis starting with the 1973/74 “oil crisis”, it was only in October 1994 that a structured call for such projects was issued in a keynote speech by Eric Britton at the International Ciudades Accesibles (Accessible Cities) Conference held in Toledo (Spain). Thursday: A Breakthrough Strategy for Reducing Car Dependence in Cities)

Within two years the first Days were organized in Reykjavik (Iceland), Bath (UK) and La Rochelle (France), and the informal World Car Free Days Consortium was organized in 1995 to supported Car Free Days world wide. The first national program, In Town without my Car, was started in France in 1998 and was established as a Europe-wide initiative by the European Commission in 2000. In the same year the Commission enlarged the program to a full European Mobility Week which now is the major focus of the Commission, with the Car Free Day part of a greater new mobility whole.

While considerable momentum has been achieved in terms of media coverage, these events turn out to be difficult to organize to achieve real success (i.e., significant reorganization of the host city's transportation arrangement0 and even a decade later there is considerable uncertainly about the usefulness of this approach. The sine quo non of success is the achievement of broad public support and commitment to change. By some counts by advocates (disputed), more than a thousand cities world-wide organized “Days” during 2005. The results have been extremely uneven.

1 How it works
- 1.1 Commentary on phrase “car-free”
2 First Ten Years
3 Timeline: Some major Carfree Day-related events
4 See also
5 External links
6 Print References

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How it works

The original Car Free Day proposal set out a challenge for a city, neighborhood or group:

• To spend one carefully prepared day without cars.

• To study and observe closely what exactly goes on during that day.

• Then, to reflect publicly and collectively on the lessons of this experience and on what might be prudently and creatively done next to build on these.

The point of departure for this exercise was the determination that you cannot usefully engage in meaningful dialogue with addicts, that what you have to do is start treating them in some way. As often as not this meant thrusting the poor souls into a no-choice situation, at least for a time. In this particular instance the proposed "treatment" was to find an answer to the following question in three main parts:

• Is there a way to get drivers out of their cars in one or more cities...

• In ways which will be tolerable in a pluralistic democracy...

• For at least be long enough to allow those concerned to learn a great deal more about the whole complex of things that need to be adjusted and introduced to make a car-less (or, more accurately, less-car) urban transport paradigm actually work?

One of the main tasks of planners and policy makers is to ask creative questions. Another is to create a process whereby these discussions are brought into the political and technical planning processes.

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Commentary on phrase “car-free”

There are several schools of thought as to what is meant by “car free”. The first of these is more absolute: and to those who push for it refers to “cities without cars”. The examples most often cited include the very few cities of the world such as Venice, Zermatt, or Fez that for one reason or another are “car free”, and then to a certain number of cities such as Bogotá and Quito where in Sundays cars are not permitted into major portions of the city.

A good statement of this will be found under the entry Car free movement:

Car-free environments - Places that do not accommodate (permit the entry of) automobiles. Some car-free environments allow motorised vehicles for deliveries and emergency services; other such places use non-motorised alternatives for some or all of these purposes, which is preferable if feasible. Some car-free environments have peripheral parking, and are thus still somewhat car-dependent. Large areas of the world are simply inaccessible by car, and have always been so. Some people take things a step further and work to encourage local use of local products, thus reducing the dependence of their car-free environment on long-distance goods transport and allegedly supporting the local economy over the transnational economy.

This contrasts with a less radical “car free” approach, which the same entry defines as:

Car-light - Either a person or place that is not completely car-free, but uses or allows for a variety of alternative transport modes in addition to the car. On a small scale, this is exemplified by the Living street or Woonerf, now widespread in Northern Europe. In the United States and Canada the term Transit-oriented development is applied to car-light districts. The New Urbanists are a group of Canadian and US architects, developers and planners who promote and build environments that are somewhat car-light, expressly stating that the automobile must be accommodated.

From the outset in 1994 the “Car Free Days” movement has aimed in fact toward a step by step move to: “Not quite zero cars (in most places) but, let us say, a lot less cars, a more tranquil environment, and a lot more safe and happy people.”

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First Ten Years

Since 2000 an annual Car Free Day program has been held on September 22, originally as a pan-European day organised under the auspices of the European Commission and latterly with international extensions international -- during which a large number of cities around the world are invited to close their centers to cars. Pedestrians, bicycles, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation are encouraged on these days. People can reflect on what their city would look like with a lot fewer cars, and what might be needed to make this happen. Advocates claim that over 100 million people in 1500 cities celebrate International Car Free Day, though on days and in ways of their choice. This claim however is not confirmed.

Over the first decade of the car-free day movement (1994-2005), the world has seen hundreds of cities giving the CFD (Car Free Day) approach a try in very different circumstances, some good, some undeniably bad, some of them on several occasions.

Activists in this field wondered what were the actual accomplishments. They suggested that it was agreeable to have a pleasant day with fewer cars and probably fewer accidents at least in some parts of the city, but considered that this was not the bottom line. For them the goal of a Car Free Day had from the beginning been to serve as a small step, as a catalyst in a much larger and more ambitious process of city-wide systemic transformation toward a more truly sustainable mobility system. They suggested that with rare exceptions they were not seeing anything like that.

The persons involved in the movement thought that after ten years it was time to stand back and look hard to see what if any difference this approach has made. They asked themselves if CFDs made here or there had produced any significant permanent impacts on cities and the ways human beings get around in them. They wondered if they could be content with what the great bulk of these projects and programs have achieved thus far, and so just keep going on as is, or if it was not time to stand back and look again. They decided to fight complacency with a new international collaborative program starting in 2004.

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Timeline: Some major Carfree Day-related events

The following chronology assembles some of the main events of the last decades, which together have gradually built on each other's accomplishments to leave us today with a movement that is, to say the least, only now beginning to get under way. There are a very large number of cities and events that are not covered here.

1958, New York City. Demonstrations of neighbors of the Washington Square Park area of New York City eventually block a proposed extension of Fifth Avenue, which would have eliminated this popular public park and social oasis.
1961, New York City. One of the ringleaders of the 1958 demonstration, Jane Jacobs, publishes The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage Books, opening up the discussions of car restraint in cities.
Autumn, 1968, Groningen, The Netherlands. First neighborhood Woonerf. The goal of this at first entirely illegal project led by local residents is to claim back the street from cars and create safe space for people.
1972, Delft, The Netherlands. First official Woonerf opens.
1973, Abbaye de Royaumont, France. The OECD Development Center and EcoPlan (The Commons) organize a 4 day international brainstorm on combining car restraint and non-conventional or "in-between" transit (paratransit) in Third World cities.
January-February, 1974, Switzerland. Four car free Sundays were organized and greatly enjoyed by all during "Oil Crisis".
1981, East Germany (DDR). First German Carfree Day took place.
October 1988, Paris. "Cities without Cars?" program begins. International, unstructured, non-bureaucratic, topic-driven, long term cooperative program is launched by EcoPlan and the Commons. It later morphed into today's New Mobility Agenda.
September 1991, New York City. First International Conference on Auto-Free Cities. Organized by Transportation Alternatives.
September 1992, San Francisco. Critical Mass. More or less anarchist, at least self-organizing, group cranked up to take back the streets from cars. Still at it.
Fall 1992, Paris, France. First @ccess Forum opened in cooperation with ECTF on Internet. Carfree Day concept discussed and expanded on this international list.
Fall 1992, Ottawa, Canada. Auto-Free Ottawa Newsletter started.
March 1994, Amsterdam. Car Free Cities Network launched by DG XI and Eurocities.
14 October 1994, Toledo, Spain. Thursday: Carfree Day Proposal, work plan and public call for international collaboration is presented at Spanish "Ciudades Accesibles" Congress. (Representatives of Car Free Cities and later Reykjavík, Bath and La Rochelle CFD projects all present.)
8 May 1996, Copenhagen. Copenhagen Declaration is issued by international meeting of European government groups.
June 1996, Reykjavik, Iceland. Carfree Day is organized by local government and held in Iceland's capital city.
11th June 1996, Bath, U.K. Bath Carfree Day. First British Carfree Day.
1997, U.K. National Car-Free Days. The ETA co-ordinated the first of three annual CFDs in Britain.
9 September 1997, La Rochelle, France. Journée sans voiture. Led by Mayor Michel Crépeau and Jacques Tallut, La Rochelle organize France's first real CFD.
21 October, 1997, Paris. Thursday: Carfree Day proposal made to French Ministry of the Environment. Proposal from this Consortium made as part of the Common's "Smogbuster" package for fighting car-related pollution and other problems in French cities. (The Ministry used this foundation to launch its own "En ville, sans ma voiture?" program one year later.)
26 October - 1 November 1997, Lyons, France Towards Car-Free Cities Conference. Organized by International Youth for Action and other. CarBusters program launched.
Winter 1997, Amsterdam. Carfree Times. Carfree Times published Volume 1, Number 1 (with no public support and made freely available).
Winter, 1997, Paris. @World Carfree Day Consortium. This open NGO site is established by The Commons as part of their long term New Mobility program on the WWW to support Carfree Day organization and expert follow-up in cities all over the world.
21 June 1998. Mobil Ohne Auto, Germany-wide Car Free Mobility Day.
22 September, 1998, "En ville, sans ma voiture?", France. French Ministry of the Environment and 34 French cities organized "En ville, sans ma voiture?" ("A day in the city without my car?).
1 December, 1999, Britain. First National ETA Carfree Planning support (UK) sharing information on planning for European Carfree Day in Britain
19 September, 1999, The Netherlands. First National Carfree Sunday in the Netherlands.
22 September 1999, First European "Pilot Day". On Wednesday, 22 September 1999, 66 French towns participate in "En ville, sans ma voiture ?" (2nd edition), while in parallel 92 Italian towns organize the first Italian National Carfree Day, "In cittá senza la mia auto". The Canton of Geneva also participates in what later was later called the first European "Pilot Day", wherein all the participating cities designated car free areas in their centers.
Sunday, 26 September 1999. First Belgian CFD announced.
1 December 1999, UK. Consortium of interested individuals and groups set up the first independent national support group on Web to promote CFDs in Britain (see menu to left for direct link)
Sunday, 6 February, 2000, Italy. Environment Minister Edo Ronchi opens first of 4 successive Car Free Sundays in Italy, to take place on first Sunday of month for next four months.
24 February 2000, Bogotá, Colombia. The Bogotá Challenge. The City of Bogotá organizes Sin mi carro en Bogotá in cooperation with the World Carfree Day Consortium, the world's first large scale "Thursday" CFD project, and launches its Bogotá Challenge to the rest of the world.
10-18 June 2000, U.K. Green Transport Week.
24-27 June 2000, Bremen, Germany. Car Free Cities conference in Bremen.
21 September 2000. First Car Busters World Carfree Day invites independent projects to organize on that day, and later announced as a planned annual Open event.
22 September 2000. First European Carfree Day. The government sponsors report that 760 European towns jointly organized the first pan-European "In town, without my car!" day. Perhaps indicating growing confidence, the question mark has now become an exclamation point.
14 October 2000. Chengdu City of Sichuan Province, People's Republic of China, starts the first ever "Car-Free Day" in that nation.
29 October 2000. Bogotá holds the world's first Car Free Referendum (which passes with flying colors).
1 November 2000. Earth Carfree Day program launched by the Commons and WC/FD Consortium in cooperation with Earth Day Network.
1 February 2001. Bogotá launches the first ECFD 2001 project with its second Dia sin Carro.
Spring 2001. "Domeniche ecologiche 2001" - The Italian Ministry of the Environment organises the first Ecological Sundays car-free program, running on five weekends.
19 April 2001. First Earth Carfree Day. More than 300 hundred groups and cities around the world participate in this first ECFD organised by The Commons WC/FD program and Earth Day Network.
September 2001. Second European CFD and second CarBusters World Carfree Day organized.
19 September 2001 Shed Your Car Day - Fremantle. First Australian CFD.
September 22nd, 2001. Toronto becomes the first North American city to officially host a Carfree Day.
November 2001. United Nations contacts The Commons and proposed a joint world level project: the United Nations Carfree Days Programme, to be organized as a run-up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, demonstrating that this approach is one that can make a difference.
6-8 February 2002. First United National Regional Carfree Days Practicum organized for Latin America, in cooperation with and support of the third Carfree Day in Bogotá, Colombia. Practicum brings together a delegation of mayors from across the region to observe and exchange information on the CFD approach for their cities.
8-10 May 2002. Second UN Carfree Day Demonstration and Practicum for Regional Mayors took place in Fremantle, West Australia.
19 April 2002. First European Mobility Week launched by EC in Brussels. Planned as annual event in September around their "In town without my car!" program.
2002. Canadian Carfree Day Network etablished, and is active in a growing number of cities, including Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Montreal.
September 2003. Montreal becomes the first Canadian city to hold a major downtown, weekday street closure.
September 2003, Camden, UK. Camden celebrates the first Travelwise Week building on Carfree Days celebrated every year since 2000.
July 2004. Towards Car-Free Cities III, Humboldt University organised by World Carfree Network.
19 to 24 September 2004. Toronto's first New Mobility Week launched a public enquiry into new less-car packages of policies and measures.
16 September 2004. European Mobility Week.
22 September 2004 "In town, without my car!", organized by the European Commission and national partners.