This is What I Call a Parking Garage

Here is a bicycles-only parking garage.
(And why should it not be wider than a hotel?)

The sign says, "Amsterdam Loves Bikes". From the looks of it, bikes love Amsterdam, too. This is the parking garage at the central railway station with its connections to trains, buses and water transport. Bicycle parking fee: € 1.20 ($1.50) per day. Pretty steep, but hey, this is Amsterdam.

There are a few handicap-access car parking spots close to the Ibis hotel. And the general parking garage for cars is on the other side of the water from the station; rates are €55 ($70) per day. The word "punitive" comes to mind.

 

 

You may also like:
1. How the Dutch got their Bicycle Paths
2. I Made a Town Meeting Gasp

 

We Need a Change in Climate News

The past two weeks has seen climate change in the news, or rather, a tiny bit more than the usually pathetic coverage it gets from mainstream news outlets, considering we're talking about the future of our species.

The first noteworthy piece of climate news is that the world has reached a new and ominous milestone: the concentration of carbon dioxide has reached 400 ppm. Lisa Welp and Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institute write about this in the way scientists write: with an even, almost detached tone.

Review: is smart a smart choice?

Small is beautiful, but pehaps small is not always smart: Smart is certainly small, but is Smart actually also smart?

In case all this makes your brain itch: we're talking about the Smart citycar, or, as their website would have it, the "smart uncar" (note the uncapitalised name). At 106.1 inches (2695mm) length it's shorter by a third than the diminuitive Ford Ka. The Smart ForTwo is basically a sedan cut in half - giving a whole different slant on the word "coupé". (The Smart ForFour was longer, but is no longer in production).

It's hard to get a handle on the Smart: it's half a car, but with all four wheels. But it's still significantly larger than half a car: its 8ft 10in length would fit sideways (just) in an oversized parking spot at a mega-mall, but in most cities you still need a full parking space for it. The only places where it would have an advantage are very cramped cities like ancient Asian and European towns that were built for pedestrians.

CelloMom Voted one of Top 25 Eco-Friendly Mom Blogs

I'm excited to share that CelloMom on Cars has been voted one of the Top 25 Eco-Friendly Mom blogs! Thank you so much for your support and your vote(s): CelloMom came in tied at 25th place, so your every vote made it possible!

The list, compiled by Circle of Moms, has many great blogs by moms who write about their journeys to a more healthy and sustainable life. These blogs have lots of tips and advice, and lots of humour; some bloggers host giveaways. In short, it's well worth browsing through the list.

Speed Limit on the Autobahn? - Nein!

Germany, that generally level-headed country, the one that produces some of the world's best engineers and engineered products, some of the most penetrating philosophers, some of the most forward-thinking policies on protecting the planet, went into a tail-spin at the weekend over the mere idea of imposing a speed limit on its Autobahn.

Photo by Q-ß

The hapless politician who had dared to air the idea is Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of the opposition Social Democratic party (SPD).

Remember, this is the country that is phasing out all nuclear energy by 2022. Part of their "Energiewende" (energy transition) plan is to source 35% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, ramping to 100% by 2050. Heady stuff: these people are serious about clean energy.

The German Green Party has long been a proponent of a national speed limit, for reasons of energy conservation. And the similarly environmentally friendly Traffic Club of Germany (VCD) quotes a statistic that those German highways without speed limits are the location of 70% of fatal road accidents. But inside his own party, Mr. Gabriel finds no such support: Within hours of his statement other SPD members were careful to distance themselves from him.

My World: UN's Global Survey

The UN is gathering worldwide opinions on what matters to us, the planet's citizens. The survey, called MY World, "aims to capture people's voices, priorities and views, so that global leaders can be informed as they begin the process of defining the new development agenda for the world."

The survey, which takes a few minutes to complete, allows you to choose six out of sixteen major priorities; once you're completed the survey you can see the current results displayed in a very nice interactive graphic that breaks down the responses according to gender, age, and HDI. A country's Human Development Index or HDI is a"summary index" that indicates the levels of health, education and income in that country.

My Mother's Day Wish

Actually, I've got everything I need - and more.

Let's put that way up front. I am, on the whole, pretty pampered - and very happy with what I have. So if the gift-giving portion of Mother's Day were to pass by our house, I would be completely content. If I could still wish for anything, it would not be a thing.

But if pressed, I can name a few items I'm short of, such as patience (I can be very short of that). Or courage: To face difficult things, like the way my dad and his contemporaries are aging; how fast my children are growing up; the kind of world that awaits them. Oh, and a leash for my brain: I keep misplacing it. If you have a surfeit of any of these, I would appreciate receiving some of it. It doesn't have to be for Mother's Day: any time will do.

Hm. I could always wish for World Peace.

Calligraphy by Ibrahim Abu Touq

My one practical request is one that will benefit the grocery budgets of moms everywhere, including mine: Please, please let us all reduce our energy use. We could do that by flying less, driving less, eating less meat, buying less stuff, heating or cooling our homes less - you know the drill.

Top 25 Eco-Friendly Moms

This month, Circle of Moms is compiling its list of Top 25 Eco-Friendly Moms.

Check out the list of great blogs! There are lots of moms who write about sustainability, a green and healthy life, simplicity and a natural lifestyle, free of toxic chemicals.

If you like CelloMom on Cars, please take a minute to vote for me, either at the list or at my profile page. Thanks in advance!

You can vote for more than one blog, and you can vote once every day (voting ends on May 16). You don't have to be a member or register at Circle of Moms in order to vote.

Review: 2013 Hyundai Elantra GT, Hyundai i30

The popular Hyundai i30 hatchback, introduced in the US as the Elantra GT, has won several Car of the Year awards. These include such citations as "Best Family Hatch (2009, New Zealand) and "Best Family Car" (2012, Scotland).

That people everywhere look for slightly different things in a family car is apparent from a small survey of TV commercials. It also shows the various ways people try to wrap their tongues around the brand name. I don't have TV (much less Korean TV), but all of these ads can be found on demand at YouTube.

In-Car Entertainment Screens

Let's face it, screens are part of 21st century life. In our homes we have several screens per occupant. There are screens at the airport gates, at the post office, at banks. Most of us have one in our pocket. And of course, they are in our cars.

It used to be that you needed a first class ticket on a long-haul flight to get the on-demand entertainment displayed on the screen built into the seat in front of you. But now all you have to do is step in the family car and grab a back seat, where the screens are bigger than the one on the dashboard.

Photo Jørgen Larsen

It's a fantastic thing, especially on long trips. You can keep the kids quiet in the back seat for hours. No need to sing with them, or talk to them, or "bond", or any of that touchy-feely stuff. And you don't get distracted by hearing them talking and laughing together. In addition, you save them the great trouble of exercising their imaginations in the quest for a game that you can play using what you can see on the road.

Bubble

I live in a bubble.

You don't know until you go out of your comfort zone and are confronted with the day-to-day reality outside your bubble.

The past two weeks I've been away from home. The first week was spent at a wilderness experience camp with CelloPlayer's class: mostly, they learned to build fires, which was a necessary thing as it was mighty cold all week and those fires were all we had to warm ourselves on. There was no heat in the cabins. It was a beautiful place, hilly, with no cell phone reception. It makes for a close connection to the land, that yielded kindling and wood for those fires, and pine tree tea (loaded with vitamin C). The people who run that camp have a palpable and deep connection to that place; they are warm, capable people, unafraid of anything. Not that they are extreme survivalists; but if civilisation disappeared tomorrow, they would be just fine.

That week on the land was closely followed by an experience which was as far removed as you can possibly get: a road trip I took last week with CelloPlayer and with my dad, who is visiting us for a few weeks. My dad used to build roads through jungles, working under primitive conditions: he has probably slept under bulldozers to stay dry. But now he's 86 and past that sort of thing. So for this trip we stayed mostly at roadside hotels. And we searched for fossils mostly at road cuts: no hiking for miles to get to the treasure.

Review: 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe

I guess there are good marketing reasons for a car to be named after any city, or this city in particular. What I would like to know is why a car should be designated "Sport" if you can only get it with automatic transmission: what's the sport in that?

Hyundai's "Team" commercial for the Santa Fe shows a mom grimly determined to help her son beat the neighbourhood baseball bullies by rounding up his own superhero buddies. I guess if you have vengeance on your mind you can't be bothered with the "sport" of manual transmission, or other expressions of sportsmanship.