What would a car personal ad look like?

Go here to find out.

While you're there, check out the rest of the automotive web site that Robert and I put together. And then join our facebook page! : )


So I've been spending my off-day looking at aerial photography of various places. Washington D.C., New York City, Dubai, Mt. Everest, Paris. It may surprise you that a sane person would spend his day off doing such things, but call it a hobby of mine. Anyhow, after looking at the aerials of Paris in particular, I'm now really wanting to go check out "The City of Love". This is not because its romantic or because I want to see landmarks like the Louvre or Notre Dame; no, I want to see Paris' freeway network. By scrolling through the aerials on googlemaps, I have been following the Boulevard Peripherique (roughly translated: "The loop road"?) through the city, and I've noticed that its path often takes its motorists through tunnels. These tunnels go under various things such as a rail yard, a soccer field, office buildings, several parks, a lake, various large roundabouts and Single-Point Urban Interchanges ("SPUI"s) and an entire sports complex, (the road also goes over what looks like a huge convention center). Now, its pretty easy to find freeways in America that tunnel under things - in fact there's a famous road in New York City that goes underneath four residential high-rises - but I can pretty much guarantee that there is no stretch of road in America that goes underneath all of that stuff, especially not one that runs roughly 4-6 miles outside the center of a city as Boulevard Peripherique does. From an urban planner's perspective, that's some pretty ingenious use of space. By having all that stuff go over the freeway, you don't have to bisect what might otherwise be a useful plot of ground or disturb the fabric of existing neighborhoods, but you can still move hundreds of thousands of vehicles a day along useful routes between trip generators (the transportation planner's term for "places people like to go"). So there, I can admit it: There's something America can learn from the French. Your food still stinks, though... except for croissants.

Hmm, I think that was my first ever "urban planning nerd" post. In terms of posting about things most of my readers couldn't care less about, I suppose it was a nice break from talk about the Spurs, right? : )

Luv,
Davy