Honk! Cycling your mind

One of the main strategic underpinnings of New Mobility Agenda, and certainly of everything that appears here in World Streets, is that if we are ever to reinvent transportation in our cities, as we so badly need to do, we must in the process free ourselves from our old ways of seeing, thinking and doing things. For example, when you think "bicycle" . . .

For example, you and I think we know exactly what a bicycle is: and while that may apply 99 times out of 100, if we look more closely we are going to see quite a few variations which also need to be taken into consideration. And ditto by the way for what constitutes "safe cycling".

The Conference Bike takes all this from a different angle, so what about a quick visit to their video which you can access directly by clicking here.


You will also find a contribution with some background information on how it works here in World Streets by the inventor of the conference bike, Eric Staller. If you click here you will see his full text.

We like Conference Bikes because once you are on one of them and talking to others about cycling in cites as you all peddle away together on the city streets, you per force have a different view of the whole thing. A useful step to what we need to get going with better policies.

Enjoy the ride.

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Carsharing competition heats up (and you better watch out)

Paris, France. 19 Mar 2001 8:00 AM

Spring came fast that year at the New Mobility shop in Paris; we were working under pressure to muster world-wide support for the first-ever "Earth Car Free Day" due for 19 April, which we were organizing  with a team from the Earth Day Network. As part of this effort, we wrote a series of articles that appeared in the lively Grist e-mag exploring some less known new mobility concepts and strategies , which you can see here. And of these the most widely read had to do with carsharing and a gentleman from the Mafia. [Please be sure you read Paul Minett's take-no-prisoners comment at the end of this piece.]

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Honk! Cars, People and the Planet. It's a Wonderful World (Have a stupid weekend)

Have you ever given any thought to trying to imagine just how dumb some people think we are? My guess is that the good people of Hyundai have laid out serious money for this little film, without giving much thought to IQ's.  So we can only assume that they have done this for our weekend viewing pleasure. What can we say?  Well, thank you.

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Honk: Why Leftists Want to Pull You All on Mass Transit

Fresh from America's Fox News ("fair and balanced" is their motto), this article will provide our readers with a clue as to how the present electorial shenanigans are generating wisdom and expert comments on "best practices" when it comes to transport in cities.  And if you should wish to check the public reaction to the author's stated position, you can fill up your tank by reading the Comments here.

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Honk! "Straddling" Bus? (Have a stupid weekend)

The happy life is one where every day something happens that makes us smile. Today we were blessed with this article that appeared in China Hush under the title  “Straddling” bus–a cheaper, greener and faster alternative to commute. Your editor was fascinated and hopes that you will be too.  Thank you Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd.

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Do monorail projects deserve fair treatment? Part II Dragging them into the cold light of day.

It is our position here at World Streets that the challenges of sustainable transportation are so many and so important that we need to ensure we maintain focus on concepts and policies that are going to be up to the task and the priorities at stake. The following just in from Brazil summarizes the author's views on this particular mode. We have left it in his colorful language, making this a lively as well as informative read. Again, our objective here is to make sure that no one, particularly no one in the developing world, wastes any more time with approaches that are very clearly inappropriate. We need to keep focus.

Dragging monorail projects and propositions into the cold light of day

Dear World Streets reader,

Let me share my point of view coming from a developing city (Sao Paulo/Brazil) which saw some projects like the Mumbai Monorail trying to break ground here, and now is much happier to see that they won't happen that easily...

For the carbon footprint discussion: if we add the total construction cost, which, by the way, should be at least 3 times what the Malaysian company Scomi is saying it would cost, plus operational subsidies, life cost analyze of the concrete, trains and energy consumption, which in India should be pretty bad (energy comes majority from coal, isn't it?), after all of that, their CO2 reductions would probably not look that good at all. Even if they could construct it very cheap (which they can't), private car use will only increase! We are in the developing world with huge population increase, economic growth and incomes going up (for some). Come on?

But the most important thing in my opinion is that the Mumbai project will most likely never happen at all! If you have patience to read on, I'll try to show you how their numbers for the Mumbai monorail are unreal, and, as I explain briefly Scomi background (as well as JICA s monorail proposal) in Brazil, I'll try to show my point of view that this monorail will never be completed, as soon as the costs become clear and couple of kilometers and win whatever election India might have this year, but after that, no way they will finish it Why?

Well. First of all, Scomi and JICA both use pretty rough numbers to make politicians believe that their monorail are good for them. But when the final costs turn out to be more than double, triple, and, even worst, when the City finally realizes the amount of operational subsidies it would have to pay, they will just give up on the project. (And I can only hope for us taxpayers that this will happen sooner and not later.)

It happened in almost all their projects here in Brazil. Scomi made many presentations in different cities in Brazil to foster monorails for the World Cup, using the magical number (17 or 37 mi/km which was the cost of the Kuala Lumpur monorail in 1997) sometimes in REAIS, sometimes in US Dollars. But the reality is that after one year of studies, most of their projects were abandoned as the prices have just skyrocketed.

Lula (Brazilian President) has just announced that BRTs are going to be built in 9 of the 12 World Cup cities, so most of Scomi's investment to send people to Japan, Malaysia and India, to pay for campaigns and projects, will be lost The only two projects still alive at this point are: one in Manaus/Amazon Jungle (by Scomi) which should be soon abandoned, believe me. And one extra monorail for Sao Paulo (by Jica), which I'll talk about later, as I'm positive that it won't happen either, although there are many other issues involved, which are not technical at all.

Monorails to connect airport or leisure parks are different in my opinion. For these you don't need high capacity and you can charge them 5, 10 dollars per way... But for urban transportation... come on?

Background Information: These Malaysian companies have a very controversial background in fostering and working with monorails around the World, if we look at real numbers and deliverables.

Well, let's start with the Kuala Lumpur project, after JICA decide they wouldn't finance the monorail project with Hitachi, so some Malaysian companies were born there to do that project. Kuala Lumpur (one of only three monorails that actually got built in the last decades) went bankrupt and the State had to pay for their debt. If you want to learn more on that, please take a look http://www.itdp.org/index.php/news_events/news_detail/special_report_monorails_back_to_the_future/

After that, they got some contracts with cities for the World Cup in South Africa, but these projects never went through, after the real costs and operational difficulties became clearer. Instead South Africa opted for BRTs and Rea Vaya is there to prove how BRT can deliver a much better economical solution for our developing world cities.

Now we come Brazil, oh yeah my beautiful and lovely Brazil We had JICA here! The Japanese cooperation agency came to Sao Paulo to help Hitachi exports some monorails. Sao Paulo is the paradise for large construction projects: we have BRTs, highways, bridges, subways, everything under construction. It's an election year in Brazil, therefore, many projects are only launched and paid for the engineering stage, although we all known they won't ever get built (because there is no budget available for the construction). Anyway, because SP has been achieving 15% increase in its budget per year these last years, they thought money wouldn't be a problem.

Therefore, the Japanese found a good opportunity to foster their beautiful monorail here. Nobody wanted it here, they were all talking about BRTs and light rail to replace the subway projects, as their construction costs went really high this last decade for underground subways, but the Japanese gave us monorail project for "free", sent everybody travelling to Japan, Scomi came in too, help them consider the monorail again... you known well, therefore, the Japanese guys start studying it and it would cost "only" US$ 37mi/km.

But then it became US$ 70mi/km, and now they are saying US$ 100 mi/km or US$ 120 mi/km, which would be very close to our subway cost, which vary around US$ 170 US$ 250mi/km. But besides the billions for the construction costs, they still need more 3 billion of private money to pay for the monorail! Come on... Just impossible They estimate 100% transfer mode from the buses to the monorail, and, in 2012, it would increase 50% the ridership!!! Come on?

AFD (France Cooperation Agency) also gave a free project to foster Light rail in Brasilia, but as the Mayor was caught in corruption receiving money (he was filmed and it was all over television) the project is now tied up in the courts and it will likely not happen. It's illegal to have the same company doing (fostering) the basic project, and also doing the construction -- so Alston (French) couldn't have won the tender as they did. Now the federal justice has stopped their project and the same thing will happened in SP. There was no basic project to do a monorail in the extension of a BRT under construction.

I don't think they are ever going to construct it in Sao Paulo anyway, believe me It was going to cost 1.5 billion for everything, now, it would cost 2 billion for the construction plus 3 billion in private financing to buy the monorail and how would the Japanese banks find someone to take that loan? There are no crazy guys enough to invest in this monorail... Oh no!! The only large scale PPP ever done in Brazil was less than 500 million... Now 3 billion? Impossible...

The reality is that they will only open the tender, pay 50 million for the company to do the basic engineering studies at an elections year, then after the costs have been elevated they would just forget about it You known, campaign, projects financing campaign, forget the projects! Normal politics for Brazil, and after that, they will continue to construct BRT, as they have normally done. SP has already 130 kms of open BRTs , with a lot of challenges to be done, but, since the basic network creation and integration done in 2004, it went from 5 million trips (2004) to 10 million trips/per day (2009) and many more BRTs still on planning... It s just a political/ election games... It looks good for the mayor to say they will do monorails all over the City... (Ah, and the Mayo' s brother is the Director of the Metro, so the metro would construct the monorail and help the City finance it )

What about the other monorails touted or done around the World? Did they work?

The most recent elevated monorail done was the JICA/Hitachi proposal in Dubai. As Dubai didn't have any financial problems, JICA was doing well to deliver. ArabeBussiness.com, said the elevated metro would cost US$ 3.38 billion (AED 13 bi) and then it became US$ 7.6 billion (AED 28 bi). The monorail inside the Palm Jumeirah, 5.4 kms, was tender by US$ 381 million, became US$ 550 mi, but really cost US$ 1,1 billion.

Source (1): Arabebussiness.com - Our city, our Metro - 19 September 2009 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/568075-our-city-our-metro
Source (2): Arabebussiness.com - Quiet please for region s first monorail - 07 April 2007 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/property/article/10716-quiet-please-for-regions-first-monorail
Source (3): Klalleej Times online - Nice and Easy, but Fares Not So Fair - 7 May 2009.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2009/May/theuae_May169.xml§ion=theuae&col=

Now, Dubai is having a hard time to pay the operational subsides and pay back the loan to the Japanese banks, therefore it won t be easy to find financing for a large scale monorail for Mumbai Google: Mitsubishi Construction, Mitzuo Bank, Hitachi and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Dubai World, monorail and you will see what I m talking about A good part of the Dubai default is related to the monorail/ elevated metro projects...

Seattle had the same monorail proposal. Their Green Line monorail went from 1.3 billion to 2 billion, plus more 7 billion in financing, therefore, US$ 9 billion of total cost, therefore, of course, it was cancelled by a public referendum with 65%... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002612604_monorail09m.html

I visited Seattle in January to see their small monorail done in 1962 for the World fair earlier in January 2010 because Scomi and Jica said it was a very successful example, so I went there and it was broken due to mechanical repairs, looking like a poor joke, but, it's not funny.

Seattle has a tunnel downtown used exclusively to public transportation Their most important road downtown, the 3rd, is closed for cars on peak hours, and ALL buses are free downtown in the peak hours This was the result of the monorail project there

Bus improvements!!! Awesome! And BRTS are all over the West coast Las Vegas monorail was the same (more than US$ 100 mi/km then they abandoned the rest of the project). None of the other projects which JICA, HITACHI or SCOMI tried around ever really happened. Not even in Tokyo and Osaka they did finish the first projects as they had planned. So, if in Japan with the technology, capital and elevated roads everywhere, they didn't do I . . . why would the Mumbai project ever actually happen?

It's very easy to open a tender, sign a contract, ask the private initiative to come and deliver a huge mobility project, turnkey, but it normally doesn't happen that easily someone has to pay, there is no free lunch! And in India, if I recall well, the bus fares are so low.... How would they pay for those huge subsidies?

My friends, I really want to continue these discussions, but you are all already tired (and bored) with such a long posting. But I would like to finish my thoughts on that topic and discuss it even further one day If you are interested in this issue, please take a look at a small report I did for the Secretary of Transport and the Mayor of Sao Paulo about the reality of the monorail. Now, I m sending it to the mayor (and the press) in Manaus. Let s see how far the project will go there...

If you can t read Portuguese or Spanish, just take a look at the pictures and data, and you will get the message. I also did some estimates of the amount of subsidies that Manaus and Sao Paulo would have to pay if the monorail was done, and the results are incredible!!! I did a small comparison with what they could do with the R$ 4.5 billion for the monorail in Sao Paulo, if it was a combination of BRT, sidewalks, cycle paths, and the numbers are good.

Conclusion:
Could Mumbai pay for the real price of construction and operation? Brazilian cities couldn't...

Adalberto, Sao Paulo, Brazil


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About the author: (to follow)

3-6 line bio note + pic to follow

Editor's note: Equal time
For readers looking for a more upbeat vision of Monorails, we can suggest the site of The Monorail Society at http://www.monorails.org/. And Innovative Transportation Technologies at http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/

We welcome comments, above all from those who do not agree with the points of view set out in this series and who are convinced that monorails really do have a legitimate place in our cites, and especially thus in the developing world.

And you if have not yet had the pleasure, let us point you to the short monorail clip which you will find at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw. Tells the story quite nicely.

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The Walkmobile approach to understanding transport

One of the major challenges we face when it comes to sustainable transportation is not so much to identify useful policies, projects and approaches but rather, once we have done this, to find a way to sell them to the public. Images and stories are part of this process. And if we are to win the war of sustainable transportation it will be because we are not only technically strong but also that we have these critical didactic and communications skills. Here is a sweet example with Hermann Knoflacher's memorable "Gehzeug" or "walkmobile"

"We are increasingly retreating into enclosed environments, more or less
out of our own choice, while isolating ourselves from an outside
world subjected to noise, pollution and dust created by cars"
- Knoflacher in Die Zeit-Interview of 13 September 2007

The “walkmobile” approach to understanding transport

The “walkmobile” is a high technology reflection project was invented by Hermann Knoflacher, Professor at the Institute of Transportation at Vienna University of Technology. It is a simple frame made of wood and has the size of a car. A belt makes it easy to walk around with this frame.

The idea of the “walkmobile” is to show how much space a car needs and how much city space we are willing to cut from public space and give it away to the group of car drivers. This results in streets where the whole width is reserved for cars and motorbikes, leaving almost no space to pedestrians - as seen on many streets in Pune. If all the pedestrians would walk around with a “walkmobile” occupying the same space as a car, our footpaths will be very fast as congested as streets are today.



This clearly demonstrates that a car oriented traffic policy will lead to nothing but a collapse of mobility in the city. There have been many visualization projects on space consumption of different traffic participants, like pedestrians, cyclists, bus users and car drivers. The result was everywhere the same: non-motorized traffic and public traffic manages with much less space than individual motorized traffic.

If traffic policy continues to concentrate mainly on car drivers, we would essentially lose the space for living and the city would only consist of streets and parking places to satisfy the needs of car drivers. To create a city with good living quality traffic policy has to focus on human beings and not vehicles.

Compared to European countries, the car ownership per thousand people in India is quite low. But the number is expected to grow very fast. Cheap cars are being introduced to get the drivers of two-wheelers to shift to cars (e.g., the Tata Nano). So, it is clear that this can only lead to congestion. But how many flyovers will have to be built over flyovers until it becomes obvious to our city planners that this only worsens the problem?

Instead of making the same mistakes as the West in the last century - a century of the automobile - decision makers in India should learn from their mistakes and look for a sustainable answer. Today’s traffic policy has to find solutions how to avoid the growth of traffic. Before people rethink their use of motorbikes and cars, they need a true alternative. A good working, affordable, clean, safe, reliable and well and maintained broad network of public transport as well as pedestrian zones, parking fares, bicycle lanes and pavements have helped many other cities to solve their traffic problems.



It is as Prof. Knoflacher points out with his “walkmobile”: the cities we are living in should be made for humans not for cars. The space in cities is precious, that is a fact of urbanization. We must not give away this precious space to vehicles but convert it to places with a high amenity value.

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About the Walkmobile's inventor:
Hermann Knoflacher has completed degrees in civil engineering, geodesy, and mathematics. Since 1975 he has held the post of professor at the Vienna University of Technology. In 1985 he became head of the Institute for Transport Planning. His research focuses on spatial planning, urban planning, and transport planning. He is one of the key contributors to the sustainable transport movement (know as Sanfte Mobilität in German). Since 2004 he is the president of the Club of Vienna. He is also a member of the Club of Budapest and the global pedestrian representative of the United Nations. He has recntly have published a book in German "Virus Auto", whihc he is in the process of tranlsating into English.

About the author:
Robert Obenaus studied Geography in Germany at Humboldt University Berlin and is now working for the civil society organization Parisar in Pune, India. Parisar undertakes various activities of different kinds to promote and advocate sustainable transport. For more information please visit the website http://www.parisar.org.

About Parisar:
This article first appeared in Parisar and is published here with their permission.Parisar is a Pune, India based civil society organization which focuses on sustainable development. Over the last decade or so, its main focus has been the snowballing issue of urban transport in Pune and other Indian cities, working closely with World Streets and other leading groups in the field.

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Do monorail projects deserve fair treatment? Part I Editorial: Building knowledge and consensus via the internet

Let me be very clear as to my motives here just so there is no ambiguity on my position. I would like no less than to drive a sharp stake through the dark heart of this egregiously unsustainable transport concept once and for all, so that we can concentrate our limited resources on approaches that are capable of doing the job and meeting the sustainability challenge head on. Which is exactly not the case with monorails. Let's have a look. - Eric Britton, Editor

In the world of transport, sustainable and otherwise, there are some bad ideas that die hard, no matter how absurd. One of the more resistant of these is monorails. Once again we are starting to hear the drum beat of monorails being touted as a "genuine, bona fide, electrified" solution to the problems of transport in our cites. For example just the other day it was announced in the press that Mumbai was about to receive the first prototype vehicle for a new monorail project in fairly advanced planning and testing stages. Oops. Let's see if we can put this one to rest.

Note: It's not only monorails. There are also PRT – Personal Rapid Transit and other edgy unproven technology concepts to be dispensed with. But for today let's stick with our topic here, one thing at a time.

Background
In our excellent Global South collaborative forum on sustainable transport in the developing countries -- which you can visit and scrutinize at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss/ -- a discussion popped up the other day in which some of our more technical colleagues were comparing CO2 figures of monorails vs. various possible alternatives, BRT at the top of the list among them. This discussion was set off by an article that just appeared in the website of The Cleantech Group under the title "Mumbai monorail project looks to reduce CO2 emissions" (reference: http://cleantech.com/news/5567/mumbai-monorail-project-looks-reduc). The discussions were calm and erudite.

But your editor has had some experience with this particular transport form, and some strong views as a result, which led him to sharing with the group the following short note:

30 January communication to the group

Monorails? What? Again? Still? There is something almost touching about avarice, hopefulness and stupidity when they get together and blatantly hang out there for all to see.

I first looked at (and rode on quite a few) monorails of all kinds of types and stripes back in 1970 in a well-funded multi-client report entitled "New Technology and Transportation, 1970-1990". It was terrific to have this direct experience; however despite my initial enthusiasm for the bells and whistles (I was young) it did not take a genius to conclude that on a number of grounds they looked just awful then -- and they still do today. I have my own long list on this, but if you wish we might have some fun starting a collaborative list under the title of something very elegant such as "Why monorails suck".

I am amazed that these discussions are still taking place in 2010, and that there are cities and eventual sponsors that even to this day take them seriously. However there is a familiar pattern that shows up and repeats with surprising frequency. There is a monorail cabal that shows up wherever at the drop of a hat to trot out their stuff, often offering generous credits and other forms of compensation to see that their job gets done. I haven't made any particular effort to keep up (not worth it), but I do recall some recent salvoes in parts of India, also Bogota, São Paulo, Curitiba, the Emirates, and a certain number of US cities that just don't know when to let a bad idea go. (Check out the historical summary on this in the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorails,. Not a bad starting point.)

What I don't understand is why they are not simply laughed at and set aside for more serious things. But then again, perhaps there is something that I fail to understand.

Educate me.

Eric Britton

PS. Here's a nice exercise for you if you wish to dig a bit. Go to the New Mobility Partnerships at www.newmobility.org and on the top menu click www.Knoogle.net and once there pop in "monorail". This will then take you on a lightning survey of more than eight hundred leading international sources, projects and pogroms looking at sustainable and at times unsustainable transport in countries around the world. Interesting.
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And when that did not set off much of an exchange, your editor went back to his last and offered the following by way of further challenge to the idea that monorails could be a serious option for consideration anywhere, and above all in the developing countries.

30 January communication to the group

Dear Sustainable friends,

Someone tell me that I am wrong -- but among the many flagrant disadvantages/absurdities of the monorail concept for cities that come to mind immediately, include:

1. They cost far too much money given the level of service they provide

2. They don't (really) go anywhere (i.e., where they are needed in a many-to-many world)

3. Good transportation is supposed to be as close to seamless as we can make it – and they are anything but, cut off from the rest as they are by definition

4. Limited capacity (per buck spent)

5. They are a visual intrusion (scar) on the city scape

6. The ignore, they actually degrade the street in many ways – the street which is the very heart of the city

7. They are -- to a pylon, to a track, to a car, to a station, to a switch, to a shadow -- ugly as sin (my old grandmother's expression).

8. If they need switches, the space requirement becomes complicated.

9. Emergencies are very messy.

10. They saddle the city with debt.

11. To be "cost effective" (ho ho), they cannot provide affordable service for the majority

12. They are often the project of industrial-financial-political interest alliances and even, if one digs deep, corruption. (As so often is the case with big ticket transport and other public investments.)

13. They are not sustainable by any measure.

But that is not the end of this list, rather just the beginning. I now invite my colleagues to pitch in here to complete this inventory of short-comings so that we can put this concept behind us once and for all and concentrate on the challenges of creating sustainable and fair transport in and around our cities.

By the way, did anyone notice that almost to the day as Mumbai joyously welcomed their first test car the Las Vegas Monorail Co has filed for bankruptcy? Just thought I would mention it.

In summary: Monorails are so awful, so inappropriate, so thoroughly dysfunctional that I even have difficulty in anyone trying to justify them (or not) in terms of anything like "relative CO2 efficiency". This I see as a splendid task for a MA of PhD student sharpening their tools, but when it comes to the politics of transportation they defy common sense.

So out they go.

Eric Britton

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Now probably what was most important about the process that these two notes have set off is not so much their quality or great originality, but rather the discussions and postings that immediately followed. These we shall give another week to develop, and then get Part II of this short series to you next week. In the meantime, should you wish to add your two cents, you can do that either as Comments here or directly to sustran-discuss@list.jca.apc.org and/or NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com.

Coda: "The Floating Railway of Wuppertal"

A monorail system you really want to visit: The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn – literally the "Floating Railway of Wuppertal" -- was built in the city of Wuppertal in 1901. A lovely treatment in English can be found at http://atlasobscura.com/places/schwebebahn-wuppertal. When I first visited and rode this system in the seventies I was told by the general manager that they had never had a fatal accident but one, "and that was the passengers' fault". Think the Eiffel Tower laid out on its side and spanning industrial cityscape and the gorgeous valleys of North Rhine-Westphalia. Well worth a visit and a thought about the place of monorails in our very different 21st century cities. (PS. The elephant boarding the monorail that you see in the opening paragraph is part of a true story. You can find the details on the cited source just above.)

And finally, I would be remiss in my responsibilities to our readers if I did not "Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car Monorail!”. remind those of you who do not know it of an episode of the Simpsons, that took place under this title. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw. A real moral tale. From the mouths of babes and sucklings.

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Eric Britton
Editor, World Streets

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World Streets goes to the moviesWhat's playing in February 2010

A new series inaugurated on 1 February, presenting a selection of outstanding videos, to be renewed over the year on a monthly basis. The idea is to invite our readers to check in from time to time to view some very different kinds of presentations and topics, with the objective of stimulating even greater variety in their thinking and problem-solving approaches. And to propose clips and ideas of their own.

You can find the small gadget that makes this work a bit down on the left column to the site. We have tried hard to make it transparent and easy to use. Each month you will find there a set of five selected short videos or extracts from films of TV programs, each running from less than a minute to a bit more than five for the longest. You can use view them either in the small box which appears on the home page, or alternatively click the rightmost control on the bottom control panel which will bring up the video full screen.

The selection for February includes:

1. "Homage to Hans Monderman", a video lasting barely 80 seconds, made by our old friend and colleague Robert Stussi on the occasion of a visit to the city of Groningen in the Netherlands during the course of a two-day workshop organized by and in honor of our late and much admired colleague Hans Monderman. The person whom you see surging into the foreground was someone who simply showed up to say his piece when he saw the film being made. It turned out that he is an architect and local resident, as you can tell from his remarks, a fervent admirer of what the city is doing.

2. "Contested Streets" is a documentary produced by the New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, exploring the rich diversity of New York City street life before the introduction of automobiles and shows how New York can follow the example of other modern cities that have reclaimed their streets as vibrant public spaces. Central to the story is a comparison of New York to what is experienced in London, Paris and Copenhagen. Interviews and footage shot in these cities showcase how limiting automobile use in recent years has improved air quality, minimized noise pollution and enriched commercial, recreational and community interaction. London's congestion pricing scheme, Paris' BRT (bus rapid transit) and Copenhagen's bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure are all examined in depth. The 57 minute film was premiered in New York City on 27 June 2006 and is presently available for purchase at cost from Transportation Alternatives.

3. Happy Birthday Vélib. A film by the excellent NYC Streetfilms program, this recent classic provides a good background statement showing how the world biggest public bicycle project works. It just may make you want to come to Paris to try it out for yourself. Streetfilms produces videos that show how cities around the world are reclaiming their streets for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders.

4. “Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car Monorail!” A number of us are thinking deeply about the place of monorails in the sustainable transport mix, as you can see in the pages of World Streets and several of our related discussion groups. Here you have in less than two minute a sales pitch that is worth bearing in mind. Reality is not so far behind.

5. "Thirty seconds on sharing" has the advantage of being the shortest clip at 30 seconds, with a few brief worlds the editor of World Streets as he tried to avoid falling off his bike while still telling you a bit about why sharing is a concept that is going to do more for sustainable transport in the years immediately ahead than any other (For more on that check out the new project at www.ShareTransport.org.)

Coming attractions:
Check in to see and hear some of the most effective people and projects that are leading the sustainability movement.

In the meantime you can find more media on the work of the New Mobility Agenda cooperative media program at www.media.newmobility.org as well as a potpourri of related films and clips at http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?pi=0&ps=20&sf=&sa=0&dm=0&p=97C28087196CD1D0. (This presently ragtag collection to be spruced up and expanded in the month ahead.)

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The Not-Sustainable Transport Library (A final resting place for those really bad "green" ideas)

We have just today created a new forum under the New Mobility Agenda. It is called The Not Sustainable Transport Library, and the idea is to create a nice warm place in which we can stack articles and sources on what we think are very poor transportation/environment proposals - often technology rich and rarely cheap - that present themselves as "the next great green idea" for our cities and the planet. Watch out for the doctor!

If you can't figure out what a bad idea is, how can you ever expect to find a good. one? Or as Henry Ford so famously said so long ago in "My Years in Industry" (1928), "of all the kinds of work I know thinking is certainly the hardest. And I guess that's why most people do so little of it." Amen.

The Not-Sustainable Transport Library:

From the introductory text of the library site:

In this shared space we shall attempt to provide a comfortable resting place for a certain number of what we hope will serve as telling examples of things not to be fooled by: information on and leads to transport related projects, proposals and technologies that are very often presented (hyped may be a better word) by those who stand to gain from their implementations as advancing the sustainability agenda -- but which in our view are at best extremely low in the priories for public sector support in any form, and certainly not candidates for finance with hard-earned taxpayer money.

There can be no doubt that there is a very definite set of values and priorities behind these selections. (Some may call them prejudices). They are, I might add, strong and they are, moreover, consistent. The basics behind these selections you will finally amply spelled out here in the pages of World Streets and behind that over at the New Mobility Agenda. For a quick resume a visit to our four page/four minute summary should help fill out the basic background on all this.

Are these really such awful ideas? That's not our point. To the contrary, almost all of them are interesting in many respects, a fair number of them are highly ingenious, and just about all of them have been the object of hard work, brains and dreams. Please do check them out if you have the time, and there may be circumstances in which they could work very well indeed. It is just that we do not see them as leading the way to more sustainable transport and a less hyper-charged planet given our extreme timetable. For that quite another approach is called for.

If you wish to have a look at the full collection, the library address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheNotSustainableTransportLibrary. It is open 24/7 and very quiet.

We are interested to have your news on candidate projects and proposals that you think shoudl be laid to rest in this calm place. For this, an email to TheNotSustainableTransportLibrary@yahoogroups.com should do it quite nicely. And to comment on any of these projects, you can always post your message to that same address.

Otherwise, to subscribe:
TheNotSustainableTransportLibrary-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

And to unsubscribe: TheNotSustainableTransportLibrary-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Finally when you check into World Streets you will see that we have a left menu item entitled "Latest World Streets News Leads", and in addition to the ten serious sources, you will find our bad idea graveyard there, with a quick line on the latest to enter those fiery gates.

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Honk! Ms. Veronica Moss loves cars more than people too. (And she is not afraid to say so.)

In the interest of fairness, now that you have heard from a high source about how best to deal with all those common people getting in your way in India's crowded streets, you now have a chance to spend a few minutes with Ms. Veronica Moss, who has some points to make about the dangers of ceding valuable public space to ordinary people in the middle of New York City.

Just in today from our friends at StreetFilms in New York. In their words:

Veronica Moss Visits Times Square

by Clarence Eckerson, Jr. on November 16, 2009 |

She's back! The woman you love to hate (and hate not to love) Veronica Moss, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist for the Automobile User Trade Organization (A.U.T.O.) In this "chapter", she's getting her first gander ever at the new pedestrian-friendly Times Square and she invited Streetfilms along to record her virgin journey.

Naturally since she advocates for cars for a living with her every breath, her viewpoints are bound to rankle some of those in the livable streets camp. Here are a few splendiferous musings as she reminisced about the "old" Times Square - where visitors "had to fight" for every last inch of space:

• "Pedestrians are cystic acne on the teenage forehead of this city."

• "I used to feel this wonderful sense of being totally overwhelmed and being displaced when I walked through Times Square. And that's how it should feel."

Of course, that's nothing new for Ms. Moss, who first appeared on StreetFilms a few months ago in an "exclusive" interview -- http://www.streetfilms.org/meet-veronica-moss-auto-lobbyist -- to let us know how she feels about cyclists and pedestrians.

# # #

Veronica will do well as a member of the hurried moneyed class in India as well as in NYC. Somebody send her a ticket.

The editor

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Honk! Quite incredible they would fall for this. (More on anti-social advertising in old mobility)

It is a rare day when anyone gets the matters which concern us all here quite as wrong as our friends from Bosch have it here. (One of a series of particularly egregious advertising abuses on the part of certain old mobility purveyors who just do not seem to be able to resist the temptation.)

From: Rutul Joshi, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
Sent: Sunday, 15 November, 2009 10:09
Subject: Bosch Horn commercial

A few days ago some enthusiasts in Ahmedabad initiated the 'no honking day' in the city. While some people are trying hard to make such initiatives a success, the TV commercials preach something else all together.



This TV commercial 'promotes' honking as a powerful way to ease 'congestion'! From start to the end - this commercial has all the possible wrong elements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzJFp6tfKU

A majority of the roads in metro cities in India have noise pollution levels above 80 decibels. Shouldn't such commercials be banned?

Rutul Joshi,
Lecturer, Faculty of Planning and Public Policy,
CEPT University, Ahmedabad - 380 009.
Contact: +91-79-26302470-134(ext.) Mob: +91-99240 76451
www.spcept.ac.in

# # #

In truth we take little pleasure to point the finger at someone like Bosch who are, who should definitely be, part of the solution to sustainable transport with their world level technology skills and industrial base.

But there are times when only your best friends will tell you. So, ahem! Dear Bosch. Don't you really think . . . ?

The editor

PS. And I am pretty sure that there is someone back at Bosch headquarters in Stuttgart who is not at all happy about this.

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Honk! Will technology save us from ourselves?

When is "an important safety advance" perhaps not that safe after all? Is the answer to accidents between large, powerful and fast-moving motor vehicles and anyone else, pedestrians, cyclists and straying children and small animals included, to load on the technology to save us from ourselves? Or might it be something else, perhaps like slowing the cars on all our streets, is a better way to tackle this particular problem?

We of course vote for the latter, because we know from long experience that there are always drivers who are going to go as fast as the conditions permit. That's a fact and since this is the case, we have to slow them down through appropriate street architecture. Now let's read what our World Streets Sentinel, April Streeter, has recently written on this subject.

* Thanks to Ms. Streeter for her permission to reproduce. For the original piece, click to http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/volvo-makes-car-that-brakes-for-kids.php

Volvo Makes A Car That Stops For Pedestrians (and Next, For Bikes)

by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 10.26.09

We talk a lot about cycling at TreeHugger, and cyclist safety. But the truth of the matter is we're all vulnerable pedestrians at one point or another, and speed still kills. But as Copenhagenize reports, Volvo, those Swedish safety experts, have been working on a system that recognizes pedestrians as they walk in front of a car's front end, and if the car's speed is under 25 kilometers per hour, automatically puts on full brakes.

Volvo may not be the best at snappy marketing monikers - the safety system is called Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake and Pedestrian Detection, and will be included in the next S60 sedan as an optional add-on in the $3,500 "premium package." The system is far from perfect -- it doesn't work at night, and it doesn't recognize bicycles -- but Volvo says it will continue to improve upon the design.

* Click here to view the Volvo video -

The system is a radar hidden behind the car grill and a video camera mounted by the rear-view mirror. While the radar spots objects at a distance, the camera hones in to identify where the object is say, a lamppost or a little kid. If the system identifies a person and a potential danger, an audible warning is accompanied by a flashing red light, similar to a brake light, designed to prompt a driver to brake. If the driver doesn't brake, the car brakes automatically.

Because pedestrians are definitely the most vulnerable members of the traffic fabric, Volvo engineers have focused on creating a system (10 years in the making) that could reduce accident rates -- 16% of all traffic-related deaths in Sweden are pedestrians, according to the Copenhagenize post, and 11% of all serious injuries in accidents are pedestrians. In fact, those safety-focused Swedes have a national goal that "nobody should be killed or seriously injured on the road transport system."

"Our aim is that this new technology should help the driver avoid collisions with pedestrians at speeds below 25 km/h. If the car is travelling faster, the aim is to reduce the impact speed as much as possible. In most cases, we can reduce the collision force by about 75 percent. Considering the large number of pedestrian fatalities that occur, if we manage to lower the fatality risk by 20 percent this new function will make a big difference." Volvo's Thomas Broberg said at motorward.com.

An even more interesting statistic is this -- Swedish research into collisions finds that 93% of accidents that occur happen because the "driver was occupied with something else other than driving."

Of course, there is the argument that smarter cars will equal dumber drivers. We vote for simply slowing down city traffic - when you are driving more slowly you have time to react to the unexpected, such as the child darting out in front of you. But would slower cars and trucks equal more road rage and more hatred for the human elements on our "complete" streets?

# # #

In this slot at the end of contributed articles, we generally try to place a few sober words that will permit our readers to know a bit about the author. But this time the temptation is too great, so now you have a short bio note in April's own words.

"April is a former bilingual cocktail waitress who left the warm beaches of Hawaii to pursue an upstanding career as reporter on the new and exciting digital world for MacWEEK magazine in San Francisco. When she finally couldn't stand the thought of writing about one more wireless local area network router, she recast herself as an environmental and sustainability journalist for Tomorrow magazine in Stockholm, Sweden. A few years later, she escaped the Scandinavian chill to become editor of Sustainable Industries magazine in Portland, Oregon. But eventually, the lure of endless months of darkness and sleety rain beckoned her back to Gothenburg, Sweden where she today is a freelance writer and Hatha yoga teacher forever on the lookout for a good/local/organic/sustainable/fair trade Swedish burrito."

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Honk! We are not here to make you feel comfortable

You have to push hard for sustainable transportation, sustainable cities, and sustainable lives.


Read World Streets. You will see why.

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Honk: Find-a-parking-spot contest

The city of Tel Aviv has all the natural attributes of a place where carsharing is part of the new mobility solution: tight urban form, plenty of mixed use, high incomes, plenty of people ready to try new ideas (the "Mediterranean’s New Capital of Cool"), and some, it is said, attention to costs. Here is how their carshare operator is calling attention to the Achilles heel of carsharing, parking.

Tel Aviv: 'Find-a-Parking-Spot Contest' Highlights Car-Sharing

by Hillel Fendel - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133065

How to deliver 24 newly-arrived cars from the port to dealers in Tel Aviv? Have drivers take them there, competing along the way to be the first to find a parking spot!

The contest will be held this Friday and will be used to call attention to both the lack of parking spots in Tel Aviv and the advantages of car-sharing systems gaining in popularity around the world.

Israel’s car-sharing company is Car2Go, which was founded last year in the city of Ulm, Germany. The system's advantages are that the cars can be rented by the hour or day, picked up and dropped off almost anywhere, and can be reserved with almost no advance

In addition, from municipal and national standpoints, the car-sharing systems offer considerable savings in traffic congestion, pollution, and parking availability. Car2Go reports that each one of its cars replaces 15 cars on the roads and frees up 14 parking spots.

Naom Margalit, who heads the Car2Go company in Israel, would like the Tel Aviv municipality to follow the example set by other cities around the world and designate – for a monthly fee - parking spots for his company. He explains: “The idea for the contest was born when we looked for an original and creative way to get 24 new cars from the importer to the dealers. The competition illustrates the parking problem in Tel Aviv and the daily race for a spot in which Tel Aviv drivers take part, and raises public awareness of the advantages of designating parking spots for us.”

The Tel Aviv municipality is reportedly interested in the idea, but no decision has been made of yet.

The system works roughly as follows: A fleet of vehicles is made available for Car2Go members, parked in specially-designated spots and available for use at any time. A car can be "hired" by flashing one’s driver’s license – equipped with special chips for the purpose – at the windshield, thus checking to see if the car is “taken” or “available.” If the former, the user will be informed of the nearest available car. The customer then gets in, types in his personal PIN number as well as other information, such as the condition of the car, and drives off. When he finishes – an hour, day or even a month later – he parks the car in another designated spot, logs out, and is billed monthly.

Car2Go reports that over 400,000 people currently take part in car-sharing systems in 600 cities in 18 countries around the world. The “Mobility” company is the largest of its kind in Switzerland, which has a population similar to that of Israel, and serves 70,000 drivers with an array of 2,000 cars.

Friday’s contest will be held in three stages. It will begin at the Reading Power Plant parking lot, where 24 pairs of contestants will get into freshly-arrived new cars. At the signal, they will dash off to find parking spaces, in accordance with special instructions they will receive via SMS and envelopes at various points along their trip. Points will be taken off for traffic violations. A vacation for two will be granted to the winner, and other prizes will be awarded to the other contestants.

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Ik ben een Amsterdammer - New Amsterdam Bike Slam – II

World Streets strongly supports this creative, high-profile, positive public event which offers an open collaborative mechanism for helping New York and anybody else who is ready to learn from their experience to move together from old to new mobility.

The Slam approach offers a number of interesting and useful characteristics which those of us who care deeply about the transition to sustainable transportation have not always given sufficient play in the past -- so let's take a moment to note of some of these.

(A "slam", let's recall, has its origins in the poetry slams that got started back in the eighties: free-wheeling poetry recitations, with character, which tuned into lively competitions (think ice-skating or diving) in which the performance of the competitor/poets is marked by a panel of "experts" chosen from the audience. But all in the good spirit of poetry . . . or in our case in 2009, a safe cycling.)

1. The whole venture captures our attention by crossing a line in a surprising way, introducing up front an approach – the idea of a Slam -- which at once jolts and invites.

2. The whole approach is playful, creative and inviting. It based on what we can see thus far looks to us as if it is not going to bore (as is, sadly, all too often the case with standard plain vanilla conferences when you get right down to it.)

3. It is the sort of approach and event which, by dint of its originality and high energy level, is likely to achieve a high profile and excite considerable media and public interest.

4. It has many different parts. The melding of a symposium with leading international personalities and speakers, with a slam, and then in turn with a dance party, poetry, concept and design competition, award ceremony and a two-borough bike ride looks like a great way to maintain the momentum and interest over the four day event.

5. It is a positive event. This is an important point which should be get lost here, since it is in stark contrast to what we often hear and see when it comes to bicycles in US cities in which complaints and one-sided confrontational statements often rule the day.

6. The very idea of the event being organized as a transatlantic crossing originating in "Oud Amsterdam" is a sharp attention-getting idea.

7. The fact that it suggests a gentle partnership and not a situation of one-way lesson-giving makes it all more agreeable to all involved.

8. One hoped-for outcome will be that New Yorkers and other present will be exposed to a more mature picture of positive and negative aspects of cycle policy and practice in Amsterdam and in other Dutch cities. There is a great deal of wishful thinking on the part of anyone who has not had day-to-day experience on the streets there, and if you want a genuinely critical assessment of cycling in the Netherlands the best person to ask is a Dutch cyclist.

And let's not forget this: When we smile, our IQ goes up.

How it came about:

As best I understand, this all started as a conversation between a small group of committed cyclists in Old Amsterdam who have been following with real interest the recent attempts in New York on the part of a growing coalition of individuals and groups, public and non-profit, to create a more vigorous and safer cycling environment for day-to-day transportation in the city.

Under the leadership of Pascal van den Noort and his colleagues at Velo Mondial, the connection was made with the Transportation Alternatives group who have been leading the public interest push to support cycling in the city over many years. Then, as I understand it, when they approached the city, the team there under the NYC Department of Transportation's Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan recognized a good thing when they saw it and climbed aboard.

Once the basic principle and key team elements were secured, all it took was true grit and a lot of hard work, which brings us up to where we are today.

It remains to be seen of course what the actual results are. And you can be sure that we shall be reporting on them here both directly and through contributions including those of organizers and participants.

PS. And after this event we can all repeat those immortal words as we sail down the street: "Ik ben een Amsterdammer".
# # #

Again for all the latest: New Amsterdam Bike Slam .

For further information, contact:

* Shin-pei Tsay, Deputy Director, Transportation Alternatives, - http://www.transalt.org/about/contact
* Pascal van den Noort, Velo Mondial, - operations@velomondial.net

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Honk! A New Paris? And a New Mobility Dream?

I thought this might be a rotten way for you to start your day. Just to let you know that all the dinosaurs are not dead. This chilling Brave New World illustration from an article that appeared in Monday's New York Times. Click here to check it out.

The news is not quite as bad as that, this being one of the more outrageous images resulting from an architectural completion commissioned by the government last summer, looking for ideas for Le Grand Paris (the greater Paris region which as yet has no legal entity), but which is marked by very large economic and life quality differences depending on where you live. They selected ten mainly well known architectural firms to have a go. There are, as you might well suspect plenty of worthy ideas in the contributions. For more you can Google "Le Grand Paris" or, in French "Grand pari de l’agglomération parisienne"

Perhaps someone might tell me how much do architects actually know and or think about the complex ins and outs of sustainable transportation. A lot?

Eric Britton

Source and fair use:

This article originally appeared in the New York Times of 16 March 2009, by their reporter Nicolai Ouroussoff. You can view their original article here.

And click here to view World Street's policy on Fair Use. Comments welcome.

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