Car Fasting is the New Fast Car

We've often wondered where the religious types were on intelligent transport. You'd think there would be enough inspiration in their books - Bible/Torah/Koran to support healthy, modern living. Yet it's not often you see churches and religious organistations coming out in support of liveable cities.

So then our friend Paul in Vienna sent us a link to an intiative by the Catholic and Protestant churches of Austria.

Car Fasting - or Autofasten, in German. A brilliant intiative to encourage people to go on a car fast and seek alternatives.

Here's what I lamely translated from their website:

Car Fasting is ...

- An initiative to encourage a change of independent mobility between Ash Wednesday (13 Feb) to Holy Saturday (30 March).
- Suggesting choosing available alternatives like rail, bus, bicycle, foot, car-pooling) in order to discover something new and to experiment.
- Contributing to new experiences and to public health.
- An opportunity to shape a better future - together.
- An initiative of the environmental officers of the Catholic and Protestant churches in Austria.

You can support car fasting by:

- Not driving or driving significantly less
- Walk your children to school
- Walk to church and encourage others to do so
- Attaching a Car Fasting sign to your bicycle
- Supporting the bicycle advocacy group ARGUS
- Encouraging car-free alternatives in your company
- Forming a car pool
- Planning a car-free holiday
- Transforming parking spots into green spaces
- Taking public transport frequently
- Switching your motorist club memberships and instead support soft mobility, like www.vcoe.at
- Supporting alternatives: www.fairkehr.net
- Distributing Car Fasting material: newsletters, stickers, flyers - spreading the word by talking about it
- Demanding that politicians improve public transport
- Using private car sharing or trying car sharing systems like www.carsharing.at

Great stuff. Let's hope that relgions get their game face on about modernising our cities and encouraging more sustainable transport solutions.

Autofasten - in German.

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