Skip to main content

Drive Nice


After the last post about the culture of fear crap we have to put up with here in Copenhagen it was a pleasure to recieve a link to these posters from Tacoma, Washington and thanks to Nicholas for the heads up.

This campaign is an instant collectors item simply because it's so rare. Seriously. The number of safety/awareness/behavourial campaigns out there that speak to motorists like this is extremely low. And we're talking on a global scale. So it is refreshing and hopeful to see something like this.

With that said, I must admit that I favour a more direct messaging that spells it out in no uncertain terms that cars are dangerous and the cause of most of our urban problems. This Tacoma campaign is positive and its use of humour is commendable but it isn't really geared at getting people to change transport modes. By grabbing the bull by the cajones and yanking hard we will be able to affect behaviour more effectively and, in the process, speed the transformation to more liveable cities by branding car traffic in cities more negatively.

For the record, my favourite rational campaign is the No Ridiculous Car Trips one out of Malmö, Sweden. Let's not forget the always brilliant Hungarians. So far. I'm aching for new favourites.

The posters were designed by the Rusty George Creative agency for The City of Tacoma, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and Washington State Department of Health. Rusty George Creative also created the branding and logo for a bicycle-friendly pub called The Hub, in Tacoma, using a famous French bicycle poster as inspiration:


The Drive Nice, Tacoma posters were spotted on the Tacoma Downtown website, run by the BIA.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

7550 New Bike Parking Spots at Copenhagen Central Station

For all of Copenhagen's badassness as a bicycle city, there remains one thing that the City still completely sucks at. Bicycle parking at train stations. At Copenhagen Central Station there are only about 1000 bike parking spots. Danish State Railways can't even tell us how many spots they have. They're not sure. Even in Basel they have 800+. In Antwerp they have this . Don't even get me started on the Dutch. 12,500 bike parking spots are on the way in some place called Utrecht . Amsterdam has a multi-story bike parking facility, floating bicycle barges round the back and are planning 7000 more spots underwater . Even at the nation's busiest train station, Nørreport, the recent and fancy redesign failed miserably in providing parking that is adequate for the demand . Architects once again failing to respond to actual urban needs. It is time to remedy that. Here is my design for 7550 bike parking spots behind Copenhagen Central Station. Steve C. Montebello i...
Read more

The New Question for 21st Century Cities

It's all so simple if we want it to be. For almost a century we have been asking the same question in our cities. "How many cars can we move down a street?" It's time to change the question. If you ask "How many PEOPLE can we move down a street?", the answer becomes much more modern and visionary. And simple. Oh, and cheaper. Let alone the fact that the model at the top can move 10 times more people down a street than the model at the bottom. When I travel with my Bicycle Urbanism by Design keynote , I often step on the toes of traffic engineers all around the world. Not all of them, however. I am always approached by engineers who are grateful that someone is questioning the unchanged nature of traffic engineering and the unmerited emphasis placed on it. I find it brilliant that individual traffic engineers in six different nations have all said the same thing to me: "We're problem solvers. But we're only ever asked to solve the sam...
Read more

City Plan Vest and Søringen - 1958-1974 - Copenhagen

A couple of twists of fate and this location in Copenhagen would have been a 12 lane motorway. When looking back over the last century of cities infatuated with Car Culture, it's not hard to see how stupid we were - or almost were. In the 1940s the so-called Finger Plan was developed for Copenhagen . By and large an interesting concept and the foundation for the expansion of Copenhagen. The Finger Plan has, however, some dark secrets. Among them are two connected projects. City Plan Vest (City Plan West) and Søringen (The Lake Ring). The City Plan Vest, in 1958, proposed that Copenhagen be equipped with a Lake Ring. The #19 motorway from the north would continue over Hans Knudsens Plads - in a tunnel to Vibenshus Runddel - and then emerging again to continue along Nørre Allé in a 12 lane motorway down Tagensvej and Fredensgade. It would turn right along The Lakes to Vesterbro, where a comprehensive interchange would be built to lead traffic to the south towards Germany and ...
Read more