Car -free Week Sept. 18-24

September 22nd, has become Car-Free Day in great metropolitan centers of population and business throughout the world. The intention of the car-free holiday is to inspire the use of mass transit, and forms of transportation other than those relying exclusively on the internal combustion engine.

Boston and Massachusetts has taken Car-Free-Day a step further. We are celebrating Car-Free Week from September 18 to September 24.

From Governor Deval Patrick to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and among the vast majority of the membership of the House and Senate on Beacon Hill, there is the understanding that our reliance on automobiles stops traffic from moving, pollutes the air we breath, and fills our crowded streets with parked pieces of steel whose omnipresence does nothing to create a more meaningful aesthetic.

Nowhere in this city is this more true than on Beacon Hill.

Automobiles are an impediment here of the first order.

It seems as though we can’t live with them and we can’t live without them.

For those of you hanging on the edge of that bi-polar thought, this is the week to show your independence for better or worse.

Leave your automobile wherever it is parked and get out and enjoy the freedom from slavery you enjoy by not having to find a parking space, get in an accident, run over a pedestrian and pollute the atmosphere.

Take the T or ride a bicycle, roller skate or roller blade, skate board, or simply walk to wherever it is you are going.

Enjoy the freedom and envision if you will for a moment what this city and neighborhood would be like without automobiles.

And when you tire of all that freedom and fresh air, get right back into your automobile, start it up, and take-off.

Car-Free Week is a great idea. If only we could put it into practice across the board and change our lives forever.

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