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Some of our colleagues from various parts of the world have asked us why, if it is our mission to support and extend the objectives of sustainability and social justice in the broadest sense . . . why we have created a "Bad News Department".
Well because we believe that there is no news like bad news (not quite of course but you understand), by which our point is that when poorly thought out projects, programs, policies or measures are given prime time in the media and warm backdrops on the political stage, and likewise when promising projects are subjected to intemperate attacks, it is a good thing for those of us who care about these issues to be right on top of them. This is news which is well worth sharing and eventually joining forces to do something about. Hence the Bad News Department. (No downturn in the BND.)
Like every other part of this program, the Bad News Department is intended to get its content through suggestions and postings of our several thousand watchful colleagues out there on the street in more than fifty countries around the world. So when you have some bad news for us, this is the place to turn so we can share it with everyone. We can then get together take it apart and discuss it under the Comments rubric in each case, which just may prove to be an interesting and instructive exercise. We think that the most important thing about bad news is to get it early. (But of course we rather hope that we don't have a lot of it all the time.) Print this article
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Mis-information department: Vélib pre-demise
ReplyDeleteHere you have four of a very large cycle of international reports on the Paris bike sharing project that have raged widely, all drawing without a blush on a single poorly researched piece in a Paris paper that appeared here on 5 February 2009. We immediately set the record straight on that with an 11 Feb. article in World Streets: “The End of City Bikes: Vandalism, Theft and the End of the World” at http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/02/end-of-city-bikes-vandalism-theft-and.html. And the following day Ben Fried from NYC on “Reports of Vélib’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated” at http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-demise-greatly-exaggerated/.
Here is the trail of gay incompetence. Bad news travels fast.
Bicycle rental business in Paris is a tough one - http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/02/25/bicycle-rental-business-in-paris-is-a-tough-one/
WalletPop , USA
- 25 Feb 2009
The private company that operates Paris' Velib automated bike rental program, though, has lost about half of the original 15000 bikes due to vandalism or ...
The Roundup: Velib May Not Last - http://thisjustin.bicycling.com/2009/02/the-roundup-vel.html
Bicycling
17 Feb 2009
By Katie Ginda Only 18 months after its launch, the Parisian bike-share program, Velib, has been forced to replace nearly all of its original 15000 bicycles ...
SF mayor's fleet of $20000 bikes - http://www.examiner.com/x-467-SF-Bicycle-Transportation-Examiner~y2009m2d22-SF-mayors-fleet-of-20000-bikes
Examiner.com
- 23 Feb 2009
by Ben Marks, SF Bicycle Transportation Examiner A week or so ago, I blogged about how the thefts and vandalism that have plagued the Velib bike-sharing ...
Paris Bike-Sharing System Succumbing to Vandals - http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/paris-bike-sharing-system-succumbing-to-vandals/
New York Times
- 11 Feb 2009
By Nick Kurczewski The Parisian bike-share program, known as Velib, has been studied by other cities looking to reduce traffic congestion, including New ...
I really liked the format of the paper, but what I liked best was the Bad News Department!
ReplyDeleteJust as you have talked about the attempts to detract the success of the Velib in Paris, so also Mayor Boris Johnson’s scrapping of the westward extension of the London Congestion Tax is being used in Mumbai by the car lobby to state that “The Congestion Tax is a failure in London, and therefore it cannot be used in Mumbai”. That it cannot be applied in the format that has been used in London is because of various other reasons, not because the concept per se is bad and therefore doomed to failure. (This was in a lot of newspapers, and my views on the same were also published, but I unfortunately did not make copies!)
Mumbai desperately needs some form of congestion reduction techniques: whether it is fiscal or policy measures, it will have to be tailored to meet our socio- cultural issues, as well as the unique geography that Mumbai has. However, the scrapping of the extension of the congestion tax in London has set back any progress we were making in that direction.
I wonder if any other city has had a similar experience?
Bad News Department is really great idea! I can say it as a contributor to various magazines (mainly cycling and popular-scientific ones) with 25 years of experience. "Bad news is a good news" approach is popular rather between the evening papers, but who don't likes gossiping?
ReplyDeleteFrom the other hand, early alert may help to take countermeasures -- be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Recently I have had in my Department a meeting about the Public Bike project with people from Public Transport Authority. What have been their first words? "The mass loss of Velib bikes forces us to rethink the idea of..."
And -- thanks to the Bad News Department -- I could tell them: "Don't get used too much to this idea. The news is highly exaggerated. We will make our plan real". They were not very happy -- I've got a feeling thet they'll start the project just for to write a report: "Running the PBS is non possible".
We'll see...