GUEST OPINION by Evan Ravitz and Elisa Facio
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera 1/27/96

The arrest, 14-hour interrogation, and eviction from Mexico of Denver documentary-maker Kerry Appel (Camera, Jan 12) is the resurfacing of the 2-year `Mexican standoff’ in Chiapas from media obscurity.

Kerry is likely in trouble for his excellent video “Politics, Profits and Zapatistas”, aired by KBDI Channel 12 on December 13th, about the Mayan rebellion whose goals were affirmed by 97.5% of the 1.3 million Mexicans who voted in the Zapatista’s nationwide ‘consulta’ last September. Denver’s NBC News Producer Rick Salinger refused to use it, saying: “We have a business relationship with the Mexican government-controlled TV channel and we wouldn’t want to offend them.”

We have a copy of the video and am planning to show it soon. Please call 440-6838. Evan lived in Chiapas and next-door Guatemala for several years, and witnessed the first round of peace talks in February 1994. We can also tell you how to subscribe to the Chiapas internet email list, which the N.Y. Times has credited with saving lives. Please write: evan@welcomehome.org.

The video shows how U.S. policy, including the unpopular NAFTA, helped cause the “world’s first postmodern revolution”, as Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s most celebrated author and former Ambassador to France calls it. It shows Chiapas as a dirt-poor colony of Mexico which in turn is exploited like it was a U.S. colony. That’s how bananas from thousands of miles away can sell here for less than local apples: laborers are paid minuscule or no wages in Chiapas. The Zapatistas call NAFTA “a death sentence for the poor” for several reasons.

First, NAFTA gutted Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution which guaranteed that traditional community-owned lands would remain so. Now they can be bought or stolen in shady deals like those suffered by U.S. Indians last century. Article 27 was won by the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution in which Indian hero Emiliano Zapata and 20% of all Mexicans were killed.

Second, `free trade’ is no level playing-field. Mayans growing corn with digging sticks right up to the tops of the volcanoes (because the good land was stolen centuries or years ago) now compete with American agribusiness with giant tractors and center-pivot irrigation subsidized by us taxpayers.

The Zapatistas captured, briefly, the international media spotlight on their revolt 1/1/94, the inception of NAFTA, brightly enough to stop their massacre by the Mexican Army. Amnesty International and others have since documented widespread torture, rape and pillage, taught to Mexican officers by the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. American exports of cattle-prods and other torture devices are documented in Kerry’s video. As the Secretary of the ruling PRI party in one Chiapas town says in the video: “The application of justice in Mexico is based on torture.” More of our tax dollars at work.

The Zapatistas say they “lead by obeying”, having “made all the strategic decisions by referendum”, which led to the `women’s laws’ and the national “consulta” in September. Most polls showed a majority of U.S. citizens opposed NAFTA, which demonstrates the failure of Congress to represent us. The availabe alternative is to streamline the use of referendum and initiative laws -which exist in 24 states including Colorado.

This legislation by citizens -as the Swiss enjoy four times a year- is also the goal of our foundation. You can see our extensive web site on participatory and electronic democracy, with links to the Zapatistas, the Swiss, the Dalai Lama and others who champion real democracy, at http://www.evanravitz.com/vote/v. People Rule! Viva Zapata!

The National Commission for Democracy in Mexico is calling on us to protest “the Mexican government’s intensified campaign against foreign tourists” in letters to the Mexican Embassy in Denver. Contact us for further information.

Letter published in Nov/Dec. 1995 NEXUS

Editor,

Regarding “Question Authority” (July/August): Many religious leaders have exploited their flock for money (selling indulgences in past centuries, tickets to eternity, etc.) or sex (why Mia Farrow and the Beatles fled the “Maharishi”), spreading confusion and even death (Naropa’s late leader Osel Tendzin giving HIV to young students, thinking his power would prevent its transmission). Yet true teachers exist you can trust your soul to. It is said: “There’s fake gold because there’s real gold.”

In the political realm the same holds. Here most leaders are fleecing the flock. But there’s now “the world’s first post-modern revolution” (says author Carlos Fuentes) in Mexico, whose leaders the Mayan Indian “Zapatistas” say they “lead by obeying”, and have instituted true democracy, with all the Indians and supporters voting in “consultas” (referenda), by which means the “Women’s Laws”, etc. were instituted. The Swiss people have made their own laws since 1848, now voting four times a year for the future they all want.

Connecting the two realms was the inventor of the word “synergy”, Buckminster Fuller, whose book _No More Secondhand God_ proposed citizens “voting by telephone on all prominent questions before Congress” in 1940. He wrote: “If direct democracy is not tried now, future generations will again champion it and there will be world civil wars until it receives adequate trial.”

The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are among those proposing referenda on their countries’ futures. This is also the goal of Boulder’s Voting by Phone Foundation, which uses the name of the tool (successfully tested by the National Science Foundation) that makes it easy, environmental, and inexpensive, as well as more secure than current voting systems.

For information on the history, status and future of real democracy, please see our world wide web pages, linking to Mexico, Tibet, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, California and even Alabama, at: http://www.evanravitz.com/vote or contact us at 440-6838 or evan@welcomehome.org. The great liberation is near.

Evan Ravitz, Director, Voting by Phone Foundation

University Hill, Boulder

(Nexus ran a story on us, in 1992, as I recall)

Letter published in the Boulder Daily Camera 10/95

Editor,

I agree that our problem’s traffic more than growth per se. This City Council’s proved it can’t stop subsidizing the car problem -by not charging the full costs of parking, for example- let alone find practical solutions. They merely “address concerns” with hot air and expensive outside concern-addressers.

So why exacerbate the problem -about 50%- with predominantly ugly strip-mall growth while a new council tries to solve the car problem? Give Boulder’s boom a brake for the 5 years Slow Growth! Initiative 2A lasts. Let some of the jobs go to Boulder’s bedroom communities to the East, so there’s less total commuting.

The Slow Growth candidates have already started “gathering the best sentiments” of the citizens (as did the US Constitution’s framers) to solve traffic and other problems. They successfully opposed last year’s slickly-promoted but ill-conceived Transit Tax -which was backed by the same developers now fighting Slow Growth! Developers loved it because citizens, not developers would have paid for most of the costs of growth Council can’t say no to.

Kevin Rooney in particular walks (and bikes) his talk and has worked with Bolder Bicycle Commuters and tried to work with the City to promote better transportation. He understands what the majority of his fellow drivers do: any transportation system must be fast and easy to use. That means straight bus routes on a simple grid. The current bus system is designed to weave bus routes within 1/4 mile of every house. Radio-dispatched -perhaps privatized- cabs and vans would take people to the main routes, or their destinations, as could bikes, which could be parked at bus stops or taken aboard. This is balanced, integrated transportation, which puts enough riders on each vehicle to dramatically reduce pollution, congestion and RTD’s tax subsidy, one of the highest in the world.

Don’t let your Council be ruthless! Vote for Ruth Blackmore, Ben Lipman, Lisa Morzel, Steve Pomerance and Kevin Rooney!

Evan Ravitz

University Hill

440-6838

AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz
(still 5 years ahead of its time)
published by the Colorado Daily 4/21/95

I didn’t really understand why my friend Octavio Juarez had not one but three mounted photos of Emiliano Zapata on his wall in Mexico City. I only knew Zapata was the Indian hero of Mexico’s 1910-1920 revolution. Octavio died 4 years ago, but Zapata and now Zapatista leader Marcos live in the dreams and prayers of most Mexicans. Not just the 89% of Mexicans who are poor, but the 10% who are middle class, like the Juarez family.

(Octavio died in a freak rockfall while guiding some Americans near the top of Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest at 18,850′, where I met him in 1987. He had previously guided ascents of Denali and Huascaran.)

His mother has me saying the Lord’s Prayer for Octavio, but we honor him best in the here-and-now by supporting the revolution named for his hero. We must. In a strange way we are responsible for the revolt’s causes, and our taxes support its continuing repression:

Ever wonder why bananas from Southern Mexico and further South are cheaper than apples from Colorado’s Western Slope? It’s because field workers down there slave for $0-2 per day. That’s also why Mexicans will repeatedly risk arrest crossing the border to come up here to pick apples…for $3 an hour. Your coffee and sugar have similar origins.

US residents live near the top of the global food chain, rather splendiferously, at the expense of our neo-colonial suppliers. To keep this status quo, our government spends billions keeping down democracy: from sending the CIA’s mercenaries to Guatemala in 1954 to remove the democratically elected President Arbenz to bailing out the corrupt Mexican government and its bankers this February. As regards corruption, Adan Cristobal Largo observes, “The government of Mexico really has no alternative but to adhere to the custom of its big brother government to the north.”

20% of Chiapas workers are not paid at all, receiving pitiful room and board for their long days. Some who escape from labor camps are hunted down and beaten or killed. These are mostly Mayan Indians whose prime land was stolen centuries or years ago. Some places, there’s not much land left for native agriculture. In next-door Guatemala, Mayans grow their corn right up to the tops of the volcanoes, on 45-degree slopes, hours hard walk from home.

So “free trade” is no level playing field when NAFTA throws these folks into direct competition with American agribusiness growing corn and beans with giant tractors and center-pivot irrigation subsidized by US taxpayers. NAFTA means the world’s cheapest slaves compete against the world’s best machines. Only those who own the slaves and machines win. This is why the Zapatistas call NAFTA a “death sentence” for the poor.

Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s leading author and former Ambassador to France, says that current events in Mexico are enough to make one give up fiction. He calls the rebellion “the world’s first post-Communist revolution”. Here is some non-fiction poetry from Zapatista spokesperson Subcommandante Marcos:

“We bet the present to have a future; and to live…we died.” Several hundred died in the bloody first eleven days of 1994, until international pressure forced the government to negotiate.

“We repeated that we wanted democracy, liberty and justice, and they made a face like they didn’t understand, and they reviewed their macroeconomic plans and all their neo-liberal points, and they could not find these words anywhere, and ‘we don’t understand’ they said to us.”

The Zapatistas held hundreds of square miles of the mountainous jungle of Chiapas for 13 months. Marcos said the women fighters “‘convinced’ us to accept their laws”, including no alcohol, hunting, logging, prostitution or drug dealing. After carrying out health campaigns, he says, “the infant death rate went way down, and became very small, just like the children are.”

“And we made all of the major decisions, or the ‘strategic’ ones, of our struggle, by means of a method that they call the ‘referendum’ and the ‘plebiscite’.” This form of decision-making ‘by the people’ was the long-range goal of our 1993 “Voting by Phone” ballot issue for the City of Boulder. If it were all Americans deciding things, not just our 535 federal “representatives”, NAFTA wouldn’t have passed, according to all the polls.

This February 8th the Mexican army attacked the liberated area, apparently under pressure from the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York and others. Chase’s leaked internal memo reads “The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control…” Chase was afraid their investors would bail out otherwise. The memo says “Financial markets might not respond positively to increased democracy because it leads to increased uncertainty.”! Clearing out natives to get at their oil may well be the real motive, however.

Marcos: “And behind the war tanks of the government came again prostitution, drinking, theft, drugs, destruction, death, corruption, sickness, poverty.”

The School of the Americas in Georgia is training Mexican officers in “insurgency tactics and low-intensity repression”, according to Mexico’s La Jornada (8/17/94). This is the infamous “School of Assassins” which trained the CIA’s Julio Roberto Alpirez, finally now under Federal investigation for the 1990 murder of a U.S. citizen and the 1992 torture/murder of the Guatemalan husband of a U.S. citizen. (Over one hundred thousand other Guatemalan victims of our 41-year “low-intensity repression” are never mentioned.)

The Mexican flag is unusual: it features an eagle devouring a snake. This is said to represent one’s higher nature conquering one’s base ego. Marcos says they are the eagle. The snakes are legion.

We whose national symbol is the eagle should aid these inspired but tired revolutionaries. You can send contributions to: Mexican Exiles for Democracy, PO Box 13665, La Jolla, CA 92039-3665. Please make out checks to “MEPD” for “Chiapas”. I can tell you how to confirm their legitimacy. You can also send checks made out to “IFCO/Pastors for Peace” to local activists Tom Moore and Nancy Sullo, 2830 5th St., Boulder CO 80302.

My friend Octavio is dead. But his brother Leonardo and his girlfriend Anabeli are married and have a new baby…named Octavio. Octavio’s mother Cristina is sending me one of the Zapata photos from his wall. For the future of all the Octavios and Cristinas and Leonardos and Anabelis in Mexico, and to enable real democracy to devour the snake of ego-bound politics, please help. Beg your representatives for what mercy they’ve got. Copy this and send it to your friends.

The revolution is not being televised. But it is being Interneted. If you’d like to be on the “chiapas-l” e-mail list, message me at the address below, and I’ll tell you how.

As Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, set to mediate the upcoming peace talks, and now the foremost exponent of “liberation theology”, says: “To be neutral in Chiapas is a sin.”

Read on KGNU’s Morning Magazine, 3/21/95.

Happy Spring! This is Evan Ravitz with Citywatch, a look behind the hot air curtain of the Imperial City of Boulder

4 weeks ago I quoted a City document titled Modal Shift in the Boulder Valley, 1990-1994, which shows cycling, while still Boulder’s favorite alternative transportation, in the last 2 years has decreased almost as fast as it rose in the previous 2 years. I discussed 2 weeks previous how the city’s policies and practices are hurting cycling. The hundreds of 1000s of dollars spent for bike week hoopla don’t compensate for police statistics showing each cyclist 3 times as likely to be hurt or killed as the national average for cities our size.

I repeated my statements at the Council meeting that night -there is one tonite also- and Council members Appelbaum and Kline took issue with what I said. Writing in the Colorado Daily the next friday, so did Council member Havlick. They said these numbers don’t mean much.

If 4 cycling statistics being down, and 1 level don’t mean much, why do they spend our money on these statistics? Why doesn’t this dramatic reversal of a good trend make it into the Executive summary?

Interesting how, according to the City, we shouldn’t believe these statistics based on detailed travel diaries of 1200 people, but we should believe the projections of city planning staff that the 1000 new homes in North Boulder will have no impact on traffic on Broadway. As Marion Selbin wrote to the Camera, “Are they going to helicopter everywhere they go?” The Camera dutifully parrots whatever trash the City talks.

But the Camera, when it can, censors the efforts of citizens to correct the record. I’ve tried for months now to get the Camera to stop misrepresenting the population of Boulder, which they have twice printed as 90,000, when the official City population is now over 96,000. This is important, because growth is the biggest issue on the Front Range now, and the Camera might make a few gullible souls think our population is decreasing, rather than growing, and in a cancerous way, I should add.

I could joke that the Camera always lies. I think it’s more that the City and the Camera trade off misrepresenting the facts to bamboozle us into either re-electing the same dysfunctional City Council incumbents or not voting at all, which leads to the same thing.

Information is power, and with the truth hurting the prospect of Council being reelected to power this November, expect the worst. Recently, Boulder transportation has been covered much better by the Denver Post. Towards the election, expect the Camera to repeat the attacks it made on the Boulder Neighborhood Alliance. Newspapers used to boast that they comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. The Camera does the opposite. And rather than stand up for truth and freedom of speech, they cover up City lies and attack those who seek truth and justice.

I urge citizens to come watch the Council meeting tonite, or to watch on cable channel 8. I further urge you to express yourselves during Citizen Participation, which runs from 6PM almost to 7. You get 3 minutes to speak on any subject. And tune in to Citywatch, penetrating the fog the morning of most council meetings, which are the first and third Tuesdays of each month, at City Hall, the SW corner of Broadway and Canyon, West of the Library auditorium.

This is Evan Ravitz. Please call me with ideas for Citywatch at 440-6838 or e-mail me: evan@welcomehome.org

AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz
(Still 5 years ahead of its time)
Published in the Colorado Daily, March 10, 1995

Boulder’s City government is making an all-out assault on our physical and social environment, before they lose control at this November’s election. My top 10 examples:

*Dumping “biosolids” (sewage sludge, including heavy metals) in the Gunbarrel area, just outside City limits, so neighbors can’t vote against or recall the perpetrators. Instead, residents will almost certainly file suit, which will cost all of us. This is just the most literal sludge being shoved down people’s throats.

*Pushing for putting the new Lakewood Pipeline in the most environmentally damaging location possible, right in the canyon of North Boulder Creek. This means ripping out 5 miles of streambed and huge trees, and the building of roads into this remote area to bring in heavy equipment. Generations will be deprived of one of the most beautiful areas in the County, including Dream Canyon, which will be a nightmare. They claim this will be less expensive than building it along Sugarloaf Road, or on the rolling land between. Sure, and their Denver counterparts said DIA would only cost $1.3 billion (it’s up to almost $5 billion).

*Forcing a mega-Safeway (three times larger than the presently-zoned size limit) down the throat of North Boulder, after wasting a year of the residents’ time going thru the pseudo-democratic North Boulder Subcommunity Planning Process. The development also violates the desires of the community as expressed in the City’s vaunted $50,000 Integrated Planning Project, and will bring heavy traffic and pollution to a formerly relaxed part of town.

*”Fast-tracking” (what used to be called railroading) the Women of the West Museum (and 78 luxury homes) for the Flatirons Paving Company property in extreme South Boulder, instead of even pretending to go through another Subcommunity Process. This development would also preclude connecting Foothills Parkway to State Highway 93 (to Golden), which might be necessary in order to alleviate increasing regional traffic on Table Mesa Drive. [Citizens let by Slow Growth! candidate Ruth Blackmore have put the brakes on this train.]

*A slew of anti-bicyclist policies and practices ranging from targeting cyclists (and pedestrians) for traffic enforcement- 97% of the tickets in one crackdown according to the 4/27/93 Camera- to the building of medians, neckdowns, roundabouts and other concrete chicanery which violate professional standards for street widths on cycling routes, and force cyclists into the path of cars. The net result is that cycling, which increased rapidly from 9.8% of trips to 12.7% from ’90 to ’92, by last September decreased to 12.0%. This decrease accounts for more than half the increase in busing, from 2.1% in ’92 to 3.3% by September. Transportation Division favors busing because it is far more administration-intensive than cycling. [And especially, money-intensive.]

*On upper University Hill, the City gave the go-ahead to CU for the Academy development, with triple the density allowed to anyone else under existing zoning. The neighbors have filed suit. [The suit is now on appeal to the CO Supreme Court]

*The students of both CU and Boulder High at public forums clearly expressed their overwhelming desire to get cars off just the 2 main blocks of the University Hill shopping district. Instead the City seems to be siding with a few merchants, working on a prettification design which would keep cars everywhere. Until the students protested, the City planned to hold the City Council public hearing in summer, after most students leave! [They’ve spent over $40,000 on a 99-page “Sketch Plan” that gives cars better access where they’re not wanted, and offers only prettification for the $3 million price tag, which students specifically said wouldn’t be worth the trouble.]

*Again serving a few merchants the City this summer adopted a “zero tolerance” policy against young and homeless people, resulting in police violently arresting kids for giving away food and seizing the belongings of the homeless. Street closures and protests resulted, along with the promise of a ballot initiative drive to force a civilian Police Review Board. Council also banned all amplified music from the Mall- no more classical guitar or sitar; lots more drummers and bagpipers, whose volume can’t be turned down. [After taking a problem cop off the Mall, confrontations on th Mall are down, but problems remain on University Hill.]

*In spite of attendees at a 2/28/94 Open House voting 54.3% for affordable housing and `mixed use’ for the 9th and Canyon site (7.7% for a hotel), and IPP and Municipal Finance Strategy Committee surveys showing a hotel and conference center are citizens’ lowest priorities, Council has held out for a hotel, which will draw in more outside traffic. The Mapleton Hill neighborhood is thinking of forcing a citizen initiative to put it to a vote. [The initiative never materialized, but voters should note that incumbent (and longest-playing) councilman Spenser Havlick is the prime mover, the the Council’s representative on the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority -BURA.]

*Ignoring Whittier residents’ pleas, the City approved the tripling of the size of the Rio Grande restaurant and bar, without any new parking, which has overwhelmed the area. 11 neighbors have filed suit.

When City Manager Tim Honey arrived in ’91, at his first public meeting I displayed the signatures of 4000 people whose desire for freedom for Pearl St. Mall entertainers had been thwarted, as were the wishes of 3000 who wanted the mall extended onto 13th St. I asked why we didn’t let the people vote on what they wanted the city to do. He said he’d institute a citizens’ affairs office instead. The results are clear. Mr. Honey has imported lots of new planners and transportation “experts” to thwart the citizens.

The City Council lacks the guts to fire Honey and his bunch, in spite of his repeated lying to them (and us), most notably about a non-existent scientific justification for the proposed NOAA building being 900 feet long and blocking the view of Enchanted Mesa from Broadway. This November 7th five of the nine Council members are up for re-election. Register now to vote for a better Council. It takes only 5 minutes at the County Courthouse on the Pearl Street Mall. No ID is necessary. Save Boulder or Pave Boulder? It’s your call. [YOU CAN REGISTER TO VOTE BY OCTOBER 10 BY MAIL! CALL 441-3516 TO HAVE A REGISTRATION FORM SENT TO YOU.]

AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz
(still 5 years ahead of its time)
Published by the Colorado Daily 3/?/95

Too bad Evan Cantor decided to lash out at me and the “bicycle-only community” straw-man he invents in this space Feb. 23. I began my column last November 8 -election day- thusly: “We need transit. But not city ballot issue 2A. And not the politics that produced it.” 2A was defeated 2 to 1. Calling my writing a “continuing diatribe against public transportation” is bullshit.

Actually, I like public transportation and ride it whenever I’m going too far or haven’t time to ride my bike- to Denver and Gunbarrel, chiefly. What I object to is that over $12 million a year goes to local Boulder transit but less than $400,000 goes to cycling. The $400,000 is mostly wasted on Bike Week, complete with bike polo, and other hoopla and paper. Cycling is still, with a cyclist death a year and all the hassle and danger, some four times as popular as the bus (City Modal Shift Study).

I objected strenuously to Council’s and Transportation Division’s attempt to double the local buses, which now carry an average of only 5.5 people on a 43-passenger bus (RTD “Riding Checks”), while giving only lip service (no money) to cycling. It’s a question of balance, Cantor. Come down to the Mall this summer and I’ll give you a tight-rope-walking lesson.

There is a place for big buses- regional routes, and main city trunk routes- where there are enough riders to actually save fuel and pollution, instead of exacerbate it as now. Evan says the buses he rides to work (at CU) “are generally full”. This mean that he rides the Broadway bus at rush hours. I have averaged all trips for all routes from an inch of RTD “Riding Checks” paper, but use your eyes. The average for the Broadway route 202, RTD’s best, is 8.7 passengers on a 43-passenger bus. This was the inch of paper that GO Boulder had “accidentally recycled”, it was so embarrassing. It took about 10 phone calls to get it. There’s a place for some mid-size buses and the rest of town should be served by on-call shared cabs, which the private sector is ready to provide, when government gets out of the way. Call it appropriate-size technology.

Cantor admitted on the phone that he’s never looked at any official studies on transportation. He misunderstands those I’ve quoted:

I did not assert that “the Eco Pass program is serving 40,000 people”, as he writes. There are 40,000-plus “free” tax-subsidized bus passes including 24,000 CU, 2,150 High School and 14,000 Eco-passes, but they are sparsely used, so his attempt to question my math fails. CU’s Bus Pass Survey shows that only half the random sample had used their pass even once in the 4 weeks previous!

There are now 3 studies- 2 City, 1 University- that show that all the bribery (with our taxes) to ride the bus is decreasing cycling and walking more than decreasing driving. The 2/13/95 Denver Post states that “nearly two-thirds of HOP patrons interviewed in a recent survey said they would have walked or biked if the city shuttle weren’t operating.” Only 14% would have driven alone! The CU Bus Pass Survey showed (before the HOP started), that of those who used the pass at all, 58% said they would have otherwise walked, biked or ‘other’. Only 25% would have driven alone. And the brand-new Modal Shift Study shows that cycling, which increased rapidly from 1990’s 9.8% of all trips to ’92’s 12.7%, is now down to 12.0%, while the bus is up to 3.3%. Cantor calls this “the wildly successful Eco Pass and student bus pass programs”!

but they are sparsely used (25% bike to work there, over triple our 8%.) He says it’s the warm climate of Davis. But our 8% in is September, our best cycling weather! We can triple our cycling when the sun shines, which is some 300 days a year here. Transportation Director Weisbach admits he has no similar bus success to point to! But Weisbach in a letter to Council and I, and at several meeting deliberately misrepresents the potential of cycling. He writes: “[Bicycling’s] role will be restricted (for most people) to trips of 2 miles in length or less“. Yet the 1993 Boulder Valley Employee Survey on Pg 7 shows that the average bicycle commute here is 3.6 miles one way. Weisbach and his Florida consultant Charlier have told me several times they will continue to assert their “opinion” in spite of the facts! No wonder: they can’t build an empire on cycling as they can on busing. We buy our own bikes and ride them ourselves.

Cantor ridicules the idea that “Boulder’s population is comprised entirely of 29-year-old cross-country skiers”, which nobody asserts. However the US Census shows that our median age is about 30, another reason this town has unique potential to solve far more of its traffic problems by bike. I’ve written extensively on how City practices impede us, from targeting cyclists and pedestrians for enforcement “crackdowns” while 85% of motorists speed, to building expensive road narrowings which violate AASHTO professional standards for road widths and endanger cyclists who are forced into the path of cars. Ad Nauseum.

Cantor ridicules the “ultra-light, full-size 100- to 300-mpg ‘hypercars'” I wrote of as “Star Trek” technology. He didn’t read my 1/11/95 column where I quoted extensively from the January Atlantic Monthly magazine article by none other than Rocky Mountain Institute founders Amory and Hunter Lovins. They are credited with convincing many electric companies to fund conservation measures rather than building new powerplants, and have won numerous awards. They say this is 1991 technology that just needs to be commercialized.

Do your homework before attacking we who do, Cantor. You can get lots of City studies from the Citizen Assistance office at 443-CITY. You paid for them. Don’t parrot the self-serving PR of Transportation Division. And don’t poison the public debate.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau said over 220 years ago: “Keeping citizens apart has become the first maxim of modern politics.” Is Cantor a naive and uninformed (and fairly nasty) citizen or an aspiring politician?

Read on KGNU’s Morning Magazine, 2/20/95

Hello, this is Evan Ravitz with City Watch, a look behind the hot air curtain of the Imperial City of Boulder.

This morning we look at transportation, our biggest problem. The City Transportation Director told City Council a month ago that buses can’t prevent traffic from worsening drastically in the next 15 years. That’s true. He also said there is nothing we can do about it. That’s false. Here is evidence that his department is deliberately ignoring and even harming the most successful and promising transportation alternative in Boulder, bicycling. First the ignoring:

In writing, and at several public meetings, the Transportation Director and his Florida consultant deliberately misrepresent the potential of cycling, in the face of the City’s own statistics. They’ve told me several times they will continue to assert their opinion, in spite of the facts. Their letter to council says: “[Bicycling’s] role will be restricted (for most people) to trips of 2 miles in length or less… As a result the commute trip market,… and the carbon monoxice problem cannot be adressed through the bike mode.” But the 1993 Boulder Valley Employee Survey shows that the average bicycle commute here is 3.6 miles one way!

While they have no example of a successful bus program to follow, they ignore the bicycle’s success in much larger cities in Europe, and in Davis, California, where 25% of employees bike to work, three times our 8%. Yet we have more bikes per capita and we are the most famous bike racing city in America.

Here’s some of the evidence they are harming cycling:

The City’s latest Modal Shift Study, for which some 1000 Boulderites keep detailed travel diaries, shows that cycling, which inceased rapidly in the early ’90s, is now level, or even decreasing, while busing is up, but still 4 times less common than biking. Similarly, work and school bicycle commuting is down, as is bike ownership. The City study of the HOP shuttle bus shows that 2/3 of its riders would have otherwise walked or biked.

Here are a few ways the City has succeeded in getting people off bikes and on the bus:

1. The City selectively enforces traffic laws, such as the crackdown reported on the Camera’s front page, April 27, 1993 in which 97% of tickets were given to cyclists and pedestrians, protecting poor cars from nasty bloodstains.

2. The City builds useless medians, and neckdowns which violate professional standards for street widths and force cyclists into the path of cars. Former Councilman Harris testified that he was afraid to ride his bike in this concrete chicanery. Current Councilman Myre says they don’t actually slow traffic as advertised.

3. The City funds a Bicycle Program that actually fights the interests of cyclists! In the battle for the 13th Street Bike Path, the bike coordinator actually backed the merchants’ 14th Street Detour solution, when most cyclists, including unanimously the Boulder Velo Club, backed making 13th a pedestrian mall with a bike path. The program then switched to backing the compromise that was finally built. This bike coordinator actually advocated medians and neckdowns as good for cyclists!

4. The City rarely enforces traffic laws to protect people. City studies show over 85% of cars speeding, and only 1 in 6 million speeders being ticketed. The City is now in the second year of not really studying Photo Radar, which in Europe effectively warns and then tickets speeders. The City refuses to look at the European success.

Now why would the Transportation Division want you busing not bicycling? The motive is greed:

1. The Transit Tax, wisely defeated 2 to 1 at the November election, would have put $400,000 a year to busing administration alone. Not even the City bike program can justify anything like that much work for administrators. Obviously we buy our own bikes and drive them ourselves, unlike buses.

2. Road engineers know that road damage increases as the fourth power of vehicle wheel load. That is, a bus weighing 10 times what a car does, damages the road not 10 times, but 10,000 times more
than a car. And a car does 10,000 times more than a bike. So a bus causes 100 million times the damage of a bike. With a Boulder average of only 5 or 6 passengers on a local bus, each does almost 20 million times the damage they would if they biked. And guess what? Transportation Division is in the paving business. This is a huge hidden cost of buses, which unlike heavy trucks, pay no road use taxes.

We should turn our transportation program around 180 degrees. The best solutions are the cheapest, and are being ignored: cycling and telecommuting. Our City dinosaurs see only fossil fuel solutions. And dollar signs.

You can call me, Evan Ravitz, at 440-6838

AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz
(still 5 years ahead of its time)
published by the Colorado Daily 2/15/95

In my last two columns I explored two promising transportation alternatives- 1. Ultralight, full-size 100-300 MPG “hypercars”, and 2. Getting Boulder to use its plethora of bicycles for transportation, not just recreation- like Davis, California, where 25% of residents bike to work. Only 8% of us do, mostly because police statistics show a cyclist is three times as likely to be injured or killed here as the nationwide average for cities our size. Telecommuting would also help. Here’s why City policies instead favor big buses:

“Follow the money!” Deep Throat told reporter Woodward to help unravel the Watergate cover-up. The money is key to understanding the City’s disastrous transportation policies resulting in the recent 2 to 1 vote of no confidence we gave the Transit Tax at the polls last November.

Transportation is the largest slice of the city budget pie, and most of that has been for building streets for the last 70 years or so. But Boulder is almost built-out and there is no room to widen our streets without tearing down historic Boulder, as Deputy Mayor Appelbaum points out. Transportation Division, like the Pentagon, seeks ways to keep spending, now that its main gig is up.

This helps explain the Transit Tax, which would have been the biggest tax increase since 1967’s Open Space Tax. Buses already get the biggest subsidy- some $10 million a year for RTD service in Boulder, and more to subsidize 40,000 “free” Ecopasses, student passes, etc.- yet busing is our least favorite “alternative” transport: The City’s ’92 Modal Shift study shows 18.5% of Boulder Valley trips are on foot (walking two or more blocks to your car is counted, however), 12.7% by bike, and only 2.1% by bus. To build so heavily on failure seems a strange philosophy.

But follow your money into the bigwigs’ pockets! $400,000 of the Transit Tax each year would have gone to administration alone. That’s about what the entire bicycle program gets, though cycling is six times more popular than buses! (Unfortunately, instead of the one person who used to ride, maintain and improve bikeways, we now have a bunch who sit behind computers or at meetings. Citizen groups like Bolder Bicycle Commuters are asked to report maintenance problems, conduct surveys, or lobby RTD for bike racks on buses, to free staff to concentrate on their paper virtual realities.)

Buses damage roads heavily, which means much more money for Transportation Division: Highway engineer John Allen and pavement engineer Steve Mueller explain that road damage increases as the fourth power of wheel loads. That is, a bus weighing 10 times more than a car causes not ten, but 10,000 times as much damage. With a car wheel carrying some 10 times what a bike wheel does, a bus does about 100 million (10,000 times 10,000) times the damage as a bike. With the 400 or so buses per day on Broadway by campus doing the damage of 4 million cars, the 26,000 cars per day there do less than 1% of the total damage. Buses and heavy trucks each do about half. In residential areas with few trucks, the buses do virtually all the destruction of our roads. No wonder Transportation Division will do almost anything to get people off bikes and onto buses! An example:

A stylish hole where your money does go: Council this summer approved $900,000 per year for “neighborhood traffic mitigation”, to slow down traffic. It used to be a neighborhood could get a stop sign or a speed bump, at little cost to taxpayers. Not anymore. After 8 years of asking, North 9th Street this summer instead got over $100,000 worth of traffic roundabouts, medians and “neckdowns”. These narrowings tend to force cyclists into traffic, often dangerously (as on West Pearl St.) They violate the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standard for minimum lane widths (14 feet) on designated bike routes, like 9th. Even former Councilman Harris said he was afraid to ride his bike in them. May the first victim sue!

And there is no evidence this concrete chicanery slows cars; City Councilman Gary Myre says he sees drivers playing race car around them. Meanwhile City staff are now in their second year of not really studying photo radar, which in Europe actually slows cars, and pays for itself. (They refuse to evaluate the European experience.)

News flash: The just-released (preliminary) 1994 Modal Shift study shows that cycling’s rapid growth in the early ’90s has stopped or even reversed, with some people scared or coerced onto buses. Congratulations (?) to the City Transportation Division!

I urge everyone to register to vote so that November 7th we elect a better Council. Voting here helps CU students qualify for in-state tuition, and could preserve our quality of life so you’ll want to stay after you graduate. It’s your right. Just go to the County Courthouse on the Pearl Street Mall 8 to 4:30 weekdays. No ID is required. If they hassle you, I want to hear about it… or whatever’s on your mind: 440-6838 or E-mail, evan@welcomehome.org.

AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz
(still 5 years ahead of its time)
Published by the Colorado Daily 1/late/95

25% of Davis, California employees ride bikes to work. (Pearl Izumi’s One Less Car action kit, pg. 4). Why do only 8% of Boulder County employees ride bikes to work? (1993 Boulder Valley Employee Survey, pg. 28)

Why doesn’t the most famous town in America for bike racing and athletics in general use its bicycles for transportation more?

Boulderites have more bicycles per capita than Davis dwellers. We have well over 100,000 bikes for 95,000 people, Davis has only 40,000 for 50,000 residents. (Izumi kit, pg. 4)

Is it the weather? No. The survey that shows only 8% of us bike to work was taken in the summer. We have 300 sunny days a year here, and to bike in the winter requires only the ski or other cold weather gear most of us own.

Are we too weak? No. The employee survey shows that the average work commute here by bike is 3.5 miles one-way (pg 31). Most all of Boulder is closer than 3.5 miles from downtown. Most of our young (median age 30) and fit populace could do most in-city trips by bicycle most of the time.

It’s mostly the danger. Engineer John Allen compared police reports and found Boulder has about three times as many bike accidents per person compared to the national average for cities of our size. That might account for the three times less of us commuting as Davis though we have more bikes per person.

What can we do about the danger? How can we fulfill the world-class potential of Boulder for cycling and reduce traffic by 15 or 20%?

1. We need more bike lanes, complete ones, and better connections between them. Lets fix the pedestrian system at the same time. Engineer Fred Porter has compiled a 500-item list of what needs to be done to get everything connected and working. A world-class system would cost about as much as just one year of just the increase in ‘big empty’ bus service proposed by City Council as the Transit Tax, wisely buried two to one at the polls November 8. And the City’s Modal Shift Survey shows six times as many trips are by bike as by bus, already.

2. The City must stop using bike lanes and sidewalks as dumps for snow and sand. Our separated bike paths are fairly well maintained. Do the same on the lanes.

3. The City must stop building obstructions to cyclists- the medians and ‘neckdowns’ like the old ones on West Pearl and the new ones on North 9th Street that violate the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standards for combined car-bike route widths, by substancial ammounts, forcing cyclists into the path of cars.

4. The City must start enforcing traffic laws to protect cyclists and pedestrians. City statistics show that for every ticket written, millions of violations of speeding laws occur. The modern tool, used successfully in Europe, is called photo radar. This device photographs the license plates of all vehicles exceeding a selected speed, up to one every half-second. A computer then writes tickets to the registered owners, which are sent by mail. Compare this to a cop who needs 10 or 15 minutes to write out a ticket, obstructs traffic dangerously, and makes you late. The City is supposed to be studying this now, but they were last year too. I think they’re suppressing it.

5. Most recreational cyclists need racks and baskets or panniers to carry things, and fenders for wet conditions, to use their bikes for transportation regularly. The City could help promote and help us get these things wholesale.

6. White-collar cyclists need showers and locker facilities for clothes and bikes. The City should build one downtown and subsidize large employers to do the same on the periphery.

7. Then, there are ways for Council to stop subsidizing driving, like not charging for the full costs of parking lots.

Now, in the wake of the overwhelming defeat of the Big Empty Bus Transit Tax Travesty is a good time to make the case for supporting cycling as transportation in letters to the editors and speeches to City Council. Come to City Hall at 6PM every first and third Tuesday and give your three minutes’ worth.