Well for most of us in the rich North, wherever that might be as far as being car-free is concerned, the answer in this real world in which we live in is probably: no where fast! There are all kinds of reasons for this.

First of course, there is zero possibility that most of us will ever even consider giving up our cars unless there is a first class alternative available to us. If it's as good as or better than a car, taking everything into account, many of us will be willing to make the move. But if the alternative is walking in the rain to reach a bus that shows up late if at all, don't hold your breath. And in most of our cities that is the only alternative today. If I am a saint or a genius or live in Zurich - or too poor or otherwise unable to drive - I may find myself able to organize a car-free life. But for the rest of us, if we are going to be able to do it, then we are going to have to build it.

The things that have been going on for the last few years in Bogotá Colombia provide us with some interesting clues in this context (see http://ecoplan.org/votebogota2000/ for details). Let me close out this essay by sharing with you several of them:

1. The city is taking its first step by making it clear to its citizens that their city, anyway, is not one of those places that is going to be able to build a transport system which is at once mainly car-based and at the same time, efficient, clean, safe, and fair. They have come to the understanding that in their city at least they have no choice. They either have to find ways to get the cars - or most of them most of the time --- out of the traffic stream -- or the whole urban tissue is simply going to fall apart.
2. The second is to find a mechanism that will allow them to do this. And that mechanism is a basic pincers movement of which the first pincer is their referendum-approved policy that has found a way to take something on the order of 5-8% of the cars out of the traffic stream in peak hors over each of the next 15 years.
3. But you can't take the cars out unless you have some awfully attractive things to offer in their place. And here Bogotá is pulling out all the stops with major investments in hundreds of kilometers of cycle paths for daily transport purposes, provisions (for the first time) for walking at transport, a cost-effective new pubic transit system (the Transmilenio express busway system), and a radial new policy to reform and expand the quality and quantity of transport services offered by smaller carriers, including small bus systems, taxis, and a whole range of new intermediate transport arrangements.
4. Let's see now… we get the cars out, we put the alternative systems in, and is that all? No, there are the two vital ingredients without which this can never work. The first is the absolute necessity of having a very strong, solid social and political consensus behind any such ambitious retrofit program. And the second is TIME!

Both cites and people need time to adapt to new ways of doing things. And the amount of time that is actually required in these cases stretches way beyond the horizons that usually dominate the political debate and decision process. In Bogotá, the city's leaders, and eventually the citizens, have decided that it is going to take something like a decade and a half for them to make the adaptations that are needed to create the city they want. With their referendum of 26 October they have now built this into the law.

The question remains for the rest of us now is, how do you go about getting such a strong public base for such a remarkable overhaul of the city? Well, the first step is to begin thinking about it. Openly and in public.

Our Challnege

What can we eaonsbly do under such circumstances to advance the 'thought' of a CFD as a 'psychological stepping stone' in teh dirction of a converstion process, our of teh other end of which wil come a (more) sts,

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