Mist-Cooled Bike Paths Being Built in Qatar
Correpsondent Pascal van den Noort sends news of this project that his organization, Velo Mondial is working on in Qatar. The ruler of Qatar, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani wants to get his people riding bicycles. One of the challenges in accomplishing this goal is the fact that, for much of the year, Qatar is hotter than a blast furnace.
Fortunately, when you've got a pannier full of oil money, 115 degree daytime temperatures are no big deal. The Emir hired the Rand Corporation and Rand proposed a 30 kilometer shaded, solar-powered, mist-cooled bike path. The Emir gave the green light and with no cumbersome democratic processes to get in the way the project sailed through to approval (Qatar is similar to Brooklyn like that).
It almost makes you think that if we want to start getting things done in this town, we need to replace New York City's inefficient plutocracy with a straight-up monarchy. King Weiner anyone?
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"It almost makes you think that if we want to start getting things done in this town, we need to replace New York City's inefficient plutocracy with a straight-up monarchy. King Weiner anyone?" -- Nicely said.
Comment by anon — August 10, 2006 @ 1:28 pm | Link
What we need is a big source of money, but who has any money in NYC?!
Wait, maybe if we stopped giving huge tax breaks to all the new condo buyers... oh why do I bother?
Comment by Will — August 11, 2006 @ 8:49 am | Link
This is great news for Qatar. It reminds me of my project: velo-city a proposed bicycle highway for Toronto. (Un)fortunately Toronto has an overly cumbersome democratic process and no panniers of money. So we are still waiting for some action - maybe the World's Expo bid for 2015?
Comment by Chris — August 11, 2006 @ 11:22 am | Link
I live in Qatar and while, yes, there is gobs of money here the weather is one of the best kept secrets of the Middle East. Unlike what is written above, Qatar is hotter than a blast furnace only for a part of the year not much of the year. That would be May-Sept.. The rest of the time there are absolutely beautiful temperatures hovering in the 20's by day and dropping to the teens in the evenings. As for the the misted bike path? Well, there are a lot of dreams in this part of the world!
Comment by LR — September 10, 2006 @ 7:21 am | Link