no bus service on memorial day

From the AATA:

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority will not operate
regular fixed-route bus service, A-Ride paratransit, or Good As Gold senior
taxi services on Monday, May 28, 2007 in observance of the Memorial Day
holiday. Regular bus, paratransit and senior taxi services will resume on
Tuesday, May 29.



Passengers may take advantage of AATA's Holiday Ride shared-ride taxi
service on Monday for just $5 a person. Seniors and persons with
disabilities with an AATA identification card may ride for $2.50.



The Holiday Ride taxi service operates only within the city limits of Ann
Arbor. To schedule a Holiday Ride trip, call 734.528.5432.



AATA will close its offices at 2700 South Industrial Highway and the Blake
and Ypsilanti Transit Centers on Monday, May 28, in observance of Memorial
Day.

The three facilities will re-open for business on Tuesday, May 29.

Expect continued erratic postings while the housekeeping staff settles into their new home. We'd love to hear from anyone interested in conributing posts to cfa2 as well.

on vacation

Our apologies for the lack of posts recently. The cfa2 housekeeping staff is celebrating the arrival of a new family member, Leif Michael, and will be taking a few days off from updating the website. We should be back in a few days. In the mean time, please feel fee to add carfree announcements and tips as comments.

wanted: witty pedestrian with too much freetime

We are constantly mourning the lack of local, personal accounts of carfree life in Ann Arbor on this blog. As the sole housekeeper currently resides on the other side of the world, we don't offer as many "while biking down State St. today" stories as we'd like.

If you read this blog regularly and feel that it is either
a) a great addition to the local blogosphere that you would love to contribute to
b) severely lacking in quality content, which you could provide
drop us a line at cfa2@pedalsong.net with some ideas on what you'd like to contribute.

recent posting black-out attributed to Dengue fever

Our main content contributor came down with this exotic disease last week, resulting in a week hooked up to an IV in the local hospital. After numerous blood tests and hospital meals, he has been released and we hope to have regular postings again.

cfa2 makes the news (sort of)

Finally, after all our references to News articles, we get a link-back.

It's not headlines, but we got a little mention in the Talk About Town section of the AANews. While we prefer to think of the posts here as practical and informative, we'll take the "amusing" moniker for now.

Thanks, Bruce, for the heads-up.

the cfa2 del.icio.us tag

We plow through a lot of websites in search of posting material for carfree ann arbor. In the process we come across a lot of good information, useful resources and interesting blogs that never make the front page. A while back we set up an account on del.icio.us (if you are not familiar with the service, click the link to find out more. It's dead easy and very useful!) to help keep track of our previous web-scouring efforts.

If you are not interested in this topic, or don't even understand what we are talking about, we apologize for the intrusion on your valuable time. There is no need to read this post and we promise that it doesn't represent a general drift of focus for this blog to techno-geek internet babble.

We're making this bit of administrative trivia public in order to:
1) give you an opportunity to see a broader and deeper range of carfree resources
2) provide an easy way for you to contribute your surfing treasures to other carfree ann arborites

There are three tools now at your disposal.
1) We are using the "cfa2" tag in del.icio.us. You can search del.icio.us for this tag to find lots of carfree stuff, some of which refers to Ann Arbor. If you have a del-icio.us account, you can also use the cfa2 tag to add your own finds to the knowledge/entertainment base.
2) Our del.icio.us account is "cfa2". Vsiting our del-icio.us homepage is another way to search through the collection of internet carfree junk. This may include some links that don't have a cfa2 tag. You can also submit links to us by using the "for:cfa2" tag when posting new links.
3) The sidebar now has a short list of links recently added to the cfa2 account. It's not central to the mission here, but adds a little spontaneous fun.

We'd like to expand the tagging to include flickr and other services, assuming that there is some intersest from readers. Let us know.

While we're talking web 2.0, in our perusal of the tracking logs, we've noticed a large number of Firefox browsers. That's great! We've recently upgraded to Firefox 2.0 and would recommend it to everyone.

Ok, enough of the tech talk. Back to the regularly scheduled carfree banter.

carfree Myanmar

Sorry for the long weekend of dead air. We took a little trip to Myanmar and forgot to tell anyone to water the plants while we were gone. However, even on vacation we kept an eye out for carfree tips and treats. While they may not be totally transferable to the over-legalized first world, these pics might give you a few new ideas for living carfree.

This is one of the most elegant bike mods we've ever seen. They work great as non-motorized taxis, carry up to four people, and don't take up a lot of space on the road or when parked, like many bicycle rickshaws do.
when you think Ann Arbor, think pedicab!





It is hot in Yangon. The roads are bumpy and often dusty. Most of the folks in this picture will be on the "bus" in intimate contact with fellow passengers for the next two hours on the way to the next town.
So maybe the audio leak from the headphones in front of you isn't such a big deal after all.



This one is for all those folks who don't ride a bike because it is too difficult to carry a bottle of laundry detergent home from the store.

Again, sorry for the black-out. You can look forward again to regular posting. Feel free to write us with your own contributions.

bike registration and theft

Ann Arbor requires that all bikes are registered with the city clerk at a cost of $2.50/bike (unless that fee has increased lately?). The process is kind of a pain. On top of that, we have a sort of Big Brother paranoia and a general laziness in regards to all things bureaucratic. As a result we've never registered a bike and have had one stolen with no recourse.

Today we came across a couple DIY stolen bike recovery efforts. Portland and Seattle both seem to be having some success with online bike theft reporting lists. These lists strip all the inconvenience and paperwork out of reporting a bike theft. If your bike is stolen, you send an email with the pertinant information and it shows up an a weekly email. Recovery depends heavily on community participation. Privacy and authenticity may be concerns, but convenience and publicity would improve.

This got us wondering if something similar would be useful in Ann Arbor. Ideas on the table include:

* replicating existing programs by posting bike thefts either on this website or somewhere else. This is not a replacement of the city's official registration, but may succeed where the city doesn't by making the thefts more public and getting more people to keep an eye out for stolen bikes. The miracle of RSS means it could be easily broadcast other places.

* linking the thefts to google maps might help identify risk areas, trends, or just fun data to geek out on.

* the service could be expanded to allow unofficial registration of bikes. You get the same advantage of having your data recorded somewhere without the hassle of dealing with the city.

Does this sound like an idea worth pursuing? We're not asking anyone to sign up for a committee or volunteer coding time. The set-up should be a breeze. But the whole thing doesn't amount to much if there people aren't willling to report thefts and help others who have. Your thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

those comments are hardly "recent"

Bruce and Dave have a legitimate gripe regarding the "recent comments" section of the sidebar. It is extremely useful to know who has added new comments to which posts, especially when frequent posting forces discussions off of the front page. From an administrator's perspective, they also make your blog look more popular.

That assumes, of course, that recent comments actually show up when they are posted. Blogger has always had a bit of a delay in recognizing new comments. It seems that that delay has become permenant now. We've had a bunch of new comments that haven't showed up on the side bar.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the problem is. Hopefully I'll have more time to investigate it this week. For now, this is just a note to acknowledge the problem and let you all know that I'm working on it. In the mean time, I'm open to suggestions on fixing/improving this feature.

Thanks for caring enough to complain.

Hello World!

Carfree Ann Arbor is a resource for the growing number of people in town who are choosing a lifestyle that doesn't require driving and all the associated expenses.Here you will find tips, tricks, hints, news flashes, recommendations, updates, announcements, product reviews and anything else that supports Ann Arborites seeking a carfree lifestyle. We try to hit on a wide variety of issue including, kids & family, shopping, commuting, vacations, moving, safety, recommended routes, and anything else we can think of.

Hopefully, you will not only find some of this information useful, but you will be willing to throw out a few ideas of your own. If you've got a good idea, a question, or a suggestion, comment on one of the write-ups (this one preferably) and we'll add it to the list.

Enjoy the ride,Scott

Update: you can also send ideas, requests, etc to cfa2ATpedalsongDOTnet