Compare and Contrast – Friday Edition

One of the highlights this week was the Connecting Columbia presentation that the Columbia Association held in Oakland Mills.  The Connecting Columbia website states that:

“CA is developing an Active Transportation Action Agenda to create a more interconnected and comprehensive bicycling and walking circulation system for health, recreational and transportation purposes.”

I was not able to attend, but I have talked with several people that did, and the response has been very positive.  To date, Sarah Says has the only rundown on the meeting.  It is a great read, and I encourage everyone to take it in.

All this local multi-modal love is juxtaposed with two articles that came across my feed this week.  These reports describe how the car became king (with descriptions of the origins of “jaywalking” and “America’s love affair with the automobile).  Yes, the automobile industry is implicated, but so are some unlikely participants (AAA, Groucho Marx).

As a testament to AAA’s messaging comes another report from Michigan, where high school students were punished for riding their bikes to school.

Taking all this into account, I can only hope that Connecting Columbia reaches out to Talking Heads founder David Byrne.  Mr. Byrne is a lifelong bicycle enthusiast and not too long ago wrote the book The Bicycle Diaries.  During a presentation at the Newseum, Mr. Byrne characterized Columbia in a not so positive light. hocoblogs@@@