Pictorial Demonstration Idea

[Dalton, George W.]

Dear BSCers; Paul displays a poster when he does his transit outreach thing
at Market
Square.  You might remember it from Alexandria Bike to Work day, it says
something like:
"Don't like Traffic?  Don't drive! There are alternatives."  If we could get
a few more
people together we could create a companion poster which effectively shows
the congestion
relieving benefits of not driving.  I've seen several examples that other
cities have
done, I think Portland did one.  Here is a web page showing the idea:
http://www.tampabayonline.net/bguard/home.htm  I got to it through the site:
http://www.transact.org/ToolMonth/1999/august.htm.

Maybe DASH would help. We could use a street in Alexandria that everyone
recognizes,
congest it with 30-50 cars, take a photo.  Then put say 20 people in a DASH
bus, 15 on
bikes and 15 walking on the same street  and take another photo to show how
much more
pleasant the street scene is.  If you check out the Tampa web site you can
see what I 
mean.  These photos communicate what I have a very hard time explaining with
words to 
committed car drivers.  I imagine something like this as a companion poster
on the same
table with Paul's "Don't like Traffic" poster.  If Alexandria did a series
of photos, we
might get through to parents by choosing a street in front of a school,
maybe Lyles Crouch.

There are many snappy labels we could put on the poster "Which street would
you rather live on?" "It's your choice" etc.
George