Penang Focus Group 1. Media Partners for a Sustainable Penang

 

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Meet Streetmix, Where You Can Design Your Own Street (in Penang)

Do you have the feeling that your street could be a lot better if it were designed for people and safe mobility instead of primarily for moving and parked cars? Suppose the entire width of the street, sidewalks, gutters and provision for parked and moving vehicles is, say, xx meters. And if you wanted to see what it could  look like if there were more provision for safe walking, cycling, street furniture, trees and greenery, transit shelters, priority public transport, lane dividers,  turn lanes, and yes, parked and moving vehicles, then have a look at Streetmix (the Website Where You Can Design Your Own Street in Penang).

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Letters: Citizen participation in cycling provision in the UK

- Ian Perry, Independent consultant and consultant. Cardiff, Wales

The importance of citizen participation in decision-making was highlighted yesterday evening at a public meeting in Penarth, South Wales, attended by 147 frustrated citizens who showed their willingness to participate in their communities decision-making.  An attempt to force the Vale of Glamorgan (county) council (Vale council) to hold a referendum on proposals for the National Cycle Network (NCN) failed by just 17 votes.  133 votes against 5 were for a referendum on the matter, with 150 votes needed under current legislation.

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Achieving the goals of the EC White Paper on Transport: How civil society can help with delivery

The European Economic and Social Committee is organizing a conference on "Achieving the goals of the White Paper on Transport: how civil society can help with delivery". This one day conference will take place at the Committee's premises on 7 December. The principal document under discussion is entitled "Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area - Towards a competitive and resource-efficient transport system". It is available here . We are inviting comments on this document since it is at the core of the meeting. But first some background:

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Transportation Innovation and Reform: Finding the Way to Social Sustainability

As wise and balanced a summary as you will find of the fine art of dialogue and engagement when it comes to the hard job of developing and integrating new transport arrangements into a space as varied and in many ways contradictory and conflicted as a  21st century city, in any part of the world.  Bravo! With kind thanks to Christopher Zegras of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, one of the conveners of this event, for sharing this with our readers. (You may also wish to check out the short note of conclusion of the editor.)

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Op-Ed: What/who keeps holding back New Mobility reform?

If you get it, New Mobility is a no-brainer. However, while the New Mobility Agenda is a great starting place, it is not going to get the job somehow miraculously done just because it is the only game in town when it comes to sustainable transport. There is plenty of competition for all that space on the street and  between the ears. We have a few potential sticking points here that need to be overcome first. Let's have a quick look to get this exchange off the ground. After some years of talking with cities, and working and observing in many different circumstances, here is my personal shortlist of the barriers are most frequently encountered in trying to get innovative transportation reform programs off the ground, including even in cities that really do need a major mobility overhaul.

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The New Mobility Agenda gets a hearing in Barcelona with a "Come argue with me" session

This is to invite you to "attend" at least part of a session of a conference that is to take place next week in Barcelona on the topic of "Smart Cities". You can find full information on the conference here, along with links to all working papers and videos that will be presented over the four days  The particular bit I would like to point you to is my keynote talk and challenge which opens the plenary on "Urban mobility: Achieving social efficiency". A full set of working notes and background materials for my presentation is available here. As you will note I have serious reservations about pushing the concept of a "smart city", which to my mind is a pretty loaded phrase, complete with tandem mindset. I invite your comments and critical remarks on any of the points that appear here, and I shall try to deal with them as possible. Thanks in advance. The final talk will be available on video, as will the presentations for all the speakers in this interesting session.

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Public audit and transport budget transparency: Pune India

Parisar is a civil society organization in Pune India working on lobbying and advocacy for sustainable development. Its work focuses mainly on sustainable urban transport, since it recognizes that unsustainable transport policies and systems are the foremost threat to urban environment and quality of life. This article, kindly shared with us by their blog team at http://www.parisar.org/, reports on an activity the likes of which we would like to see in every city in the world -- a continuing citizen audit of the city's budget, and in particular those aspects that relate to transportation investments and expenditures.

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On expertise and public participation

It appears that the folks at the Lucknow Municipal Corporation have a curious notion of the meaning and purpose of public participation. When their funding proposals under the centrally sponsored scheme for urban development (JNNURM) were rejected due to the lack of public participation, they came up with the brilliant idea of a “city volunteer technical corps” that would participate in the planning process. Members will be chosen by the city corporation based on “expertise” in planning and related areas. The newspaper also reports that a prior attempt to constitute such a consultative body was aborted when “undesirable” persons who were not “experts” entered the consultative group. The corporation promises only to include “desirable” persons this time round. Read More

via India lives in her cities too!

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We have no money gentlemen, so we shall have to think.

This is a personal call to those of you who have over the years participated in the rather numerous programs and working groups we have since 1988 carefully crafted and maintained in support of worldwide peer collaboration and exchange in our tough but important field: under the New Mobility Agenda, World Streets or one of its sister publications (see below), or who have of late plugged in to our pages on Facebook or Twitter. I feel pretty quite comfortable in doing this since you know what we are trying to do, and who better for me to turn to at a time of need. (And oh yes, for those who may not recall, that citation above was  by Nobel Prize winner Professor Ernest Rutherford, on taking over the quite broke Cavendish Laboratory in 1919, in the wake of the First World War.)

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From Australia: Community Consultation – A failed experiment

A consistent central theme of World Streets is that without the full-throated participation of an active citizenry, sustainable transport and sustainable cities will remain a distant and unattainable dream. In this article David Engwicht gives us his view on why the usual bottled consultation techniques that often do little to achieve better and safer streets do not make the grade. Then he goes on to share his thoughts as to how we can do better.

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Car Free Days 2010: Part 2. Thursday: A breakthrough strategy for reducing car dependence in cities

This is the full unedited text of the original presentation to the Ciudades Accesibles Congress in Toledo Spain organized by the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, Transport and the Environment, with the participation of Car Free Cities Initiative of the EuroCities program and the Direction General XI of the Commission of European Communities.

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This week's Social Space image - De Portugal, com amor

The power of images. We need a lot more than walls of words, reports and books to turn the world toward sustainability.  So to help our case we invite our readers to jump in and share with us striking "social space" graphics which illustrate the world's streets and all that takes place thereon in many places and in many ways. And lo and behold, from time to time some very nice stuff pops up on the screen in our challenging 990 × 180 pixels pixels format . This morning for instance we had the luck to receive and to be able to share with you the splendid street scene you see above, showing an intersection of bus services right in the middle of the beautiful city of Lisbon. And all this thanks to our colleague Miguel Barroso from Lisbon.

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World Carfree Day: Interview with Eric Britton

September 22 is an important date to remember – it’s World Carfree Day (WCD). Celebrated in towns and cities all over the world, it’s a day when streets are closed to cars and open for pedestrians, pedalers, parties and pleasure. Eric Britton, a sustainability activist, international adviser and consultant on sustainable transportation, is recognised for his work promoting and propelling WCD to<international attention. Much of his work involves co-ordinating the collaborative New Mobility Agenda and World Streets online journal, which encompass a number of possible transport solutions, including public transport, bike sharing and shared space projects. In an interview with Carbusters, Eric shared his thoughts about the problems, popularity and prospects for WCD, and points out the importance of bringing it into the policy agenda of governments in order to improve urban transport sustainability.


Interview by Jane Harding. - Carbusters magazine: Journal of the carfree movement
- http://carbusters.org/2010/07/07/world-carfree-day-interview-with-eric-britton/

New and existing WCD events continue to spread and strengthen in cities and towns across the world. What do you think about the popularity of WCD?
There are many ways to look at the popularity of WCD. If you look at any city where WCDs are held, you will find that the public reaction can fall into three different groups: first, the largest group, are people who simply don’t know a WCD exists or takes place in that city; a second group knows that a WCD is going on, but either dislikes it or chooses not to support it (although their criticism can be very useful); and the third group are the organisers or participants of the WCD. And of course, they like it a lot.

The fact that we have thousands of cities celebrating WCD is something of value and a huge accomplishment. However, we must be realistic – thus far it has had very little impact and it is not considered high priority in the transportation policies of many cities. Currently WCD is just a device to insight public discussion. WCD needs to be worked into the mainstream transportation policies of many cities in order to bring further change and my work will focus on this over the next few years.

Convincing policy makers and authorities to support WCD is a common problem. Why do you think these problems persist and how can they be overcome?
One problem is that there is either none or very little difference between the ways in which WCDs are organised and carried out. Another problem is the current lack of a consistent or specific message with which to bring forward to public policy makers. However, WCD does carry a very important general message: there are too many cars in cities which we need to control and many parts of our cities would do better with fewer cars, but that message by itself is not enough.

WCD has the potential to be a useful tool in influencing a city’s overall policy, particularly regarding transportation. Through my work I try to keep track of WCDs around the world and find how we can make better use of this tool. Having worked and talked with mayors and public policymakers all over the world, it is clear they are very busy and transportation forms just one part of their responsibility. With the current lack of a consistent message and credible proposal, it will always be a struggle to push WCDs further to what we think they should be doing. Therefore, WCD needs to be shown in very concrete terms in order to be taken into the policy agenda.  This could be a small number of well defined recommendations given to public policymakers – ideally, this message should include three points of what people think should and can be done.

Where have you seen WCD work best?
It’s really best to ask the organisers. People involved in the organisation have the best knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. They often work closely with authorities to make one day where many streets are taken over, so it becomes safe for families, cyclists and pedestrians.

A famous example is Bogotá, Colombia, which holds the world’s largest carfree weekday event covering the entire city. The first WCD was held in 2000, and it has since become an institutionalised event, following the 2006 Towards Carfree Cities conference and former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa’s influence which helped a pattern of carfree activities spread in Bogotá, as well as to other cities in Latin America.

There are many small local events, which are sometimes hard to follow; they fall into three main categories: the first ones have good ideas; second ones are ok; and the third are the clear losers. However, there is another group, probably the most important, which act as instruments of change on public policy and people’s practices in the city. Currently WCD is too abstract, so we need to focus it. The important point is how well these events are done, not how many carfree days are held in a city. But despite not having a very strong concept, it has still spread widely, and by strengthening it, it has the potential to grow much more.

In a world still so gripped with cars, do you see carfree day evolving into a permanent reality?
The ideal outcome of WCDs is that at one point they will disappear, because they are no longer needed. We would have accomplished the objective of softening the impact that cars have on a city. WCD has grown, simply because it is an idea that many people like, not just because of the number of organisations, groups, individuals, or authorities supporting it. Now is the time to come up with more and better ideas that people like and that are powerful enough to become a permanent reality.

There are two carfree “gadgets” which I believe are really useful in helping us achieve this: “Carfree Sundays” and a “New Mobility Week”. These are regular events where networks of city streets are closed to traffic for one day a week, or for one week of the year. With these ideas, I intend to create something similar to the European Mobility Week and to link it to the annual WCD. But a New Mobility Week would have more of a consistent structure and contain “doable” actions for specific cities. I don’t think carfree events should have a uniform approach – each with a different concept and mission – the only part which would be the same in every place could be Carfree Sundays. Eventually these activities would take place every day of the week, making carfree cities a permanent reality.

What is your advice for groups or individuals starting a new carfree day?
My first recommendation is to take time to study what works and what hasn’t worked – to become aware of this sector and not just dive straight in with no background. Anybody in any city can do a WCD, but doing it well involves some research.

I would encourage anyone interested in organising an event to create an attractive website, where everyone can pitch in with their ideas – making it fun and interactive. Using media is a great way of reaching out to people. There is a lot of information on sustainable transportation out there which is too dense for most people to feel inspired. It is important to make it simple, selecting what is interesting and accessible to most people, as well as making it available in other languages.

It is important to talk to people who don’t support the WCD approach (e.g. local merchants and car user groups) and with police who are on the street all the time so know more about transportation than most in the city. Listening to what they have to say will help us understand what can be done to make it more of a success.  Make sure you test your ideas, not simply just to think it is a great idea and do it.

What projects are you currently working on and have lined up for the future?
What I would love to do, in a few years, is to put an end to all my mobility-type activities and pass it onto other capable people to carry on this work. I’d like to spend more time on projects outside of mobility: pursuing my interests on how society works and its problems, ranging from economic issues to ethnic tensions.

For now, I still have a lot of work to do in new mobility. Over the next few years, I shall continue to maintain and strengthen the New Mobility Agenda and all of its subsets, of which WCD is one, as well as the World Streets blog, and to work with colleagues around the world to create local editions in local languages in order to make it accessible to more people.

Another project I’ve already began working on is a series of what I call “New Mobility Master Classes”. This involves bringing together people in different countries with broad experience and who can eventually lead their own projects, in order to create a template model for sustainable mobility. The Master Class might be a week long or last a whole month and we try to involve students and academics working in this field.  The overall idea is to take new mobility apart in the context of a single city, over the course of one month, talking about many different topics related to mobility, with one of the days devoted to WCD. Once the model has begun to work well, then other people in the field will be able to run their own Master Classes. So I’ll be busy!

How do you think sustainable mobility and broader issues like climate change can be connected?
We’ve got a planet that is really suffering from our behaviour. People often talk about car sharing, bicycle sharing and street sharing, but it is important to share information online and to bring people together to discuss these topics. The first gathering of this kind is the World Share/Transport Conference taking place in Taiwan from 16-19 September 2010. It will look deeper into the topic of sharing which has not been talked about much before, as well as studying other aspects such as the behavioural psychology behind it. The important message to spread is that sharing is a great way to meet new people, it’s cool, and it helps save the planet.

For more information on World Carfree Day and sustainable mobility:

• New Mobility Agenda


• World Streets


• World Share/Transport Conference


• World Carfree Day

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Velo-City Global 2010 Conference opens in Copenhagen

From Morten Lange, Reykjavík on his way to VeloCity 2010.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 22 June, the 2010 Velo-City Global Conference opens in Copenhagen, and will last for 4 days. I can warmly recommend taking a look at the program and abstracts available at the web-site, www.velo-city2010.com I trust that also for people not attending the conference, the programme and abstracts can supply useful pointers to people working in interesting fields, regarding cycling and the South.

There are several workshops focusing on the Global South's experience in cycle-promotion, as this is supposed to be the first Global Velo-City conference. ( But there have been some "predecessors", arranged by "another tribe" : VeloMondial.net )

Vandana Shiva, from India will deliver a plenary talk. Shiva holds a PhD in Physics, is an activist and receiver of the Right Livelihood Award ( the "Alternative Nobel price" ) for work for Indian farmers and biodiversity, amongst other things. In the programme presentation we are told : "Dr Shiva sees the bicycle as an instrument of democracy and as an essential element of green mobility."

Other plenary speakers include former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, that helped transform transportation in that city.

In a workshop titled "Developing countries collaborating for the future", there will be presentations from ITDP Mexico and UNDP Kenya.

The conference has 940 registered participants, in spite of the fact that only one year has passed since the Velo-City 2009 conference in Brussels. The participant come from about 50 countries, the largest numbers coming from northern Europe and then the rest of the OECD, but also including from South-East Asia, India, China, Africa and Latin America.

The strongest presence of the international press at the conference is French. Journalists from Le Monde and Radio France International are on the list of participants.

Regards / Kvedja
Morten Lange, Reykjavík

P.S. One serious threat to effective and really successful bicycle promotion and uptake in the South is scaremongering, victim blaming, and false helmet promotion ( the dangerisation of cycling ).

And of course when you get helmet compulsion the situation gets even more difficult. All this on the background that no helmet compulsion or promotion regime to date can show any benefit for cyclists, even where helmet usage rose sharply and detailed data are available. ( See e.g. articles by Dorothy L. Robinson and links from the helmet policy area of the ECF web, linked below )

The ECF helmet group will distribute flyers and buttons at Velo-City Global 2010 titled "Ask me why I cycle without a helmet?". See : http://ecf.com/3675_1

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About the author:
Morten Lange describes himself as "as advocate for cycling and other health transport (in my spare time and then some)". He lives, works and pedals in Reykjavik Iceland

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World Streets 100% Answer to Oil Spills, Geopolitical Dysfunctionality, and the Running out of Oil Syndrome

Courage. Not all that terribly hard actually, and certainly not impossible. The leading international edge of policy and practice in our field have over the last two decades developed the tools, experience and technical competence needed to cut fossil fuel dependence by 50% in one year. And if we can do that – if we can come even within shouting distance of this great and obtainable goal – that is going to change everything. But to get the job done we are going to have to challenge our brainpower and collective ability to influence leadership, policy decisions and investments in our chosen field. Lazy folks, bought souls and fatalists kindly abstain.

Now what?

- By Eric Britton, Editor, World Streets

We shall be richly exploring these important themes in our worldwide collaborative environment in the weeks ahead. On the grounds that these are approaches and possibilities which are far from getting their fair share of attention at a time when governments and gurus are talking about investments and programs that will do nothing to make a difference within the time frame that counts.

Shifting to such seductive concepts as electric cars, bio or new fuels, hybrids, alternative fueling networks, and any of the "clean technology" technical fixes that do so well to capture media attention will do NOTHING to deal with these challenges, which need to be faced here and now. (And this: Look we have understood: your approach is to pacify the passive (i.e., us) and take the responsibility off our shohlders while we wait for your next round of products to save us from ourselves. It can't and we won't!)

The short answer, indeed the only answer, not to be explored here today, is for us to get togetgher to target and achieve massive reduction and consolidation of transport demand – and all that within a framework of healthy economics, healthy cities and healthy lives. But this is to follow.

As always here on the World's Streets, this will be a collaborative discussion. So if you are ready to step up with your ideas and comments, you have willing ears in our vast editorial offices in Paris and Bergamo. It will be our job to pass the message on.


Nobody said this was going to be easy:

We hope that none of you will accuse W/S of being one more narrow technical journal or subject to financial interests and pressures. Our job: "The Politics of Transportation: New thinking & world-wide collaborative problem-solving". You can find it in bold print right under the main title line of The New Mobility Partnerships: 2010 - 2012 at www.newmobility.org

To be part of the solution contact:

editor@worldstreets.org | Skype: newmobility
Tel. | Europe: +331 7550 3788 | USA: +1 (213) 984 1277

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Songs without Words. (Or trying very hard to get a commentary on reversing sprawl)

We invite our readers to write the words to the following "song": 150 words max please, signed with your name, email, affiliation if any, city, country, and URL if you wish. You may either place your contribution just below clicking the COMMENTS link, or by email to editor@newmobility.org. At one point a selection of these comments will be sorted and integrated into a collaborative piece on this theme. Sorry, no other clues.

Population footprints: Barcelona vs. Atlanta




Now what?

Editor's note: 22 May 2010 I have been scolded by several of our number who make the point that the above "song without words" title/proposal is far from clear. So with apologies, let me try to put it right.

The idea is that the graphic strikingly demonstrates one of the most important, and close to intractable, challenges of the move from Old to New Mobility, the huge dispersion of populations and activity that has been caused by the totally unthought-out shift from city living to a car-based hyper-spread life style. I was hoping to elicit comments on that, which is, it must be admitted, something like the proverbial challenge of getting the toothpaste back into the tube. There are responses, of that I am entirely sure, but it is going to be a tough job. So now, hopefully, your comments and clues?


Kind thanks to Lois Sturm, New York City for the heads-up on the graphics. (And to Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy for the inspiration.)

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Supplemental figure and food for thought:

Urban density vs. transport energy consumption

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New Mobility Partnerships - What's going on this summer?

Two or three times a year your editor sits down and does his best to compile a readable synopsis of some of the more important things going on in World Streets, then to be communicated in one magical shot to the close to four thousand friends and colleagues around the world who have been involved in some way in these dialogues and projects over the last several decades. Here you have today's best seasonal effort, to which as always, comments, criticism and suggestions are warmly welcome.

Judged from a planetary or Kyoto perspective, or from an individual or public health perspective, or an economic perspective, or ... or ... our present arrangements for transport in cities are seriously damaged. As things stand today in city after city around the world, they threaten health in the city and on the planet. They are dangerous. They are costly. They are disruptive. They are thoroughly dysfunctional. And they are howlingly unfair. It does not have to be like that. We can do something about it, and we should. But we need to join forces to get the job done.

New Mobility Partnerships in Brief

Unconstrained by bureaucracy, economic interests or schedules, New Mobility Partnerships was launched in 1988 as a wide open international platform for critical discussion and diverse forms of cross-border collaboration on the challenging, necessarily conflicted topic of "sustainable transportation and social justice". There are no easy answers - but there are answers . . . if, that is, you are willing to take off the blinkers and get to work.

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World Streets in Brief
Insights and contributions from leading thinkers & practitioners around the world
World Streets is an independent, internet-based collaborative knowledge system specifically aimed at informing policy and practice in the field of sustainable transport, and, as part of that, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. Edited by Eric Britton, founder and Managing Director of the New Mobility Agenda.

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This Month on World Streets
Most of our busy readers do not have the time to check into World Streets on a daily basis. For that reason we offer our subscribers and sponsors, in addition to the daily edition, monthly summaries which bring together in one place all postings in a manner in which the reader can review each in a few lines and make a decision as to whether or not to call up the full article with a single click. Time-efficient communication in an overload world.

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New project: World Streets on Facebook
We are not Facebook experts, but nonetheless, and with reservations, we have concluded that this is a legitimate communications tool that can be put to work to increase the worldwide reach of the sustainable transport agenda. So with the help of our colleague Anzir Boodoo, we have set up a first stage site/interface which you can now access via www.facebook.WorldStreets.org. We invite you to have a look, use as your interest and skill level permit, and, better yet, lend a hand and help us to do better.

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Latest reader map
And here you can see where our last eighty visitors came from. Generally representative of overall pattern, but from day to day with considerable variations. Our goal for 2010: bring in all those great white swaths.

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Frugal Transport
Our sector has been notably profligate in terms of its use of public money, while at the same time also offering a generally poor deal in terms of quality of service per dollar spent by the citizens who use the system. This past profligacy is further compounded by the fact that for reasons of the complicated international economy, many countries are going to have to be far more careful about how they spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars in the years immediately ahead. We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% (your figure here) of the transport related budgets and use it to address projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years. This is where the action is going to be in the years immediately ahead and where Frugal Transport kicks in. (This section just getting underway.)

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Slow Down
As most of our regular readers are well aware, World Streets is no friend of speed in cities. To the contrary, it is our firm position that a considerable number of the basic objectives associated with sustainable mobility and sustainable cities can be achieved if we do no more than to reduce top speeds in and around our cities in a strategic and carefully thought-out way. The great technological virtuosity of traffic engineers and technical planners permit us to do this, while at the same time retaining a well working transportation system, a healthier city, and a viable local economy. This is a major target of World Streets and many of our associates worldwide

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Share/Transport: The Third Way of Getting Around In Cities
Share/transport - the largely uncharted middle ground between the familiar mobility poles of "private transport" (albeit on public roads) and "public transport" (scheduled, fixed-route, large vehicle services) at the two extremes. Comprising a very large gamut of services of which among the best known are shared taxis, carsharing, ride sharing, and small private bus systems, it offers a form of mobility service that works when everything else fails or is simply not there. However it is one that until now has been poorly understood by policymakers and is badly in need of informed perspectives and policies. A first international conference is being planned for Kaohsiung Taiwan from 16 to 19 September 2010, with full information available in early June.

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Women as the Metric for Sustainable Lives: Leadership Role
World Streets, and the New Mobility Agenda directly behind it, have long held the position that our sector suffers badly from the lack of female perspective and female leadership. Rectifying this should be one of the major targets of policymakers and citizens at all levels of society and in all countries. We have pursued this recommendation vigorously since the founding of this program in 1988, and firmly believe that a reasonable target for female participation in leadership groups at all levels is in the area of 40%. In our publications and conferences, we go into detail as to how this can be done and why the strong leadership role is critical.

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The Hundred Faces behind World Streets
We firmly believe that the move to sustainable transport and sustainable lives is a very personal matter. For that reason every article that appears in World Streets is accompanied by a short bio note and photo identifying the author. We want you to know who they are and what they look like. To this end we have assembled for your viewing pleasure small photos of 160 of our authors and collaborators. Have a look.

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National Partnership Programs/Language Editions
True, English is a widely spoken and read language. But true too that most of the activity carried out at the working level in countries whose language is other than English is in the language of the place. So if our goal is to have a worldwide impact, we must find ways to reach the people who count, in ways which efficiently and fully engage them. To that end we have initiated a series of collaborative projects which are already reaching out to key actors in several language areas, starting with a highly successful Italian edition and a different approach to reach the key actors in Swedish. Others presently under discussion. Would YOU like to talk about it?

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Now . . . what about you?
Because this is an important set of issues and you can make a difference. So consider this an open invitation to lend a hand in making World Streets a more useful and successful tool and source. We need your help both (a) to improve the technical product, but above all to identify and (b) to take direct contact with eventual collaborators, subscribers, sponsors, and organizations at the national or international level whom you may know and who can help support this unique public interest enterprise and help it make an even more effective contribution. You will be surprised at how much you can do to make it happen, if you choose to.

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Eric Britton is Managing Director of the New Mobility Partnerships and founding editor of World Streets. Contrary to what you may surmise, he is not alone. You can reach him at editor@worldstreets.org , Tel. +331 7500 3788 in France or +1 (213) 984 1277 in the US. Or via Skype at newmobility.

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Chengdu China looking at caps on cars

"You can't not notice the horrid traffic in Chengdu. But it seemed authorities had turned a blind eye to the situation, hoping that the construction of pedestrian overpasses and the opening of the subway later this year would resolve the problem. In the meantime, traffic is only getting more backed up. Late last month, it was announced that the Chengdu government is drawing up plans to address the situation by placing limits on the number of new license plates it issues."
- Jane Voodikon reports from Chengdu.

Not only that, but the public will be involved. A policy hearing is scheduled for April 28. The hearing is meant to take into account input from city residents, representatives of impacted industries, and representatives from people of "all walks of life." Once the announcement was made, major media outlets encouraged citizens to give their input on the issue. On March 26, the China Daily published this article (in Chinese; we have translated the majority of the text below):

Chengdu considering caps on vehicles; seeks public's input

Source (in Chinese): http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/dfpd/2010-03/26/content_9647176.htm

Even after this year's implementation of staggered work times and the construction of the pedestrian overpasses, the situation on the city's overcrowded roads saw barely noticeable improvement: Traffic moved only 5.7 percent faster than before, and day after day, the ever-increasing number of cars on the road quickly ate away at this small improvement. In January of this year, Chengdu added 1389 new cars to its roads and forecasted that within four months the modest improvements in traffic flow would be entirely canceled out by the influx of additional cars.

A survey company forecasts that by 2015, the traffic network within the Second Ring will be gridlocked at rush hour and that throughout the entire day at least 30 percent of the network will be seriously congested.

It is predicted that this year, the number of parking spots required within the city center will be 1.5 million; currently there are 270,000. This is already a pressing problem.

In February of this year, Chengdu made an unprecedented move by removing 66 parking lots in order to improve traffic flow in the city center and take advantage of the full capacity of small and medium-sized roads. But of course this created even more of a parking crunch.

According to the bureau, there are two means of imposing restrictings on car licenses: one way is to assign them without charge; the other is to auction them. Another issue is whether cars already on the road should be subject to the restrictions or only those applying for new license plates.

City officials are now turning to the experience of cities such as Shanghai and Beijing in order to devise a rational plan suitable for Chengdu's particular needs.

In 1986, Shanghai started auctioning off license numbers. "This auctioning system brought about a supply-and-demand problem, and with the neverending clamor for license plates, the prices just continued to rise." In February of this year, successful bidders paid an average of RMB38,620 for their Shanghai-issued license plates--enough to buy a low-end car. Owing to the ever-present supply-and-demand issue, the prices of Shanghai plates just keep going up.

"The no-charge method of issuing license plates prevents the problem of ever-rising prices, but it also makes it easy for scalpers to stockpile plates." When asked whether they prefer the auction-style or no-charge method of licensing, most city residents said the no-charge method. "This kind of system is more fair and won't create an ever-growing burden on car buyers," said city resident Mr. Ding.

In addition, the City of Chengdu can also implement a measure to distinguish between city license plates and suburban plates. This measure would mean that the number of vehicles permitted to enter the city would certainly be restricted. But as to which measures are implemented, we will know only after the hearing.

At the hearing there will be 19 people, among them eight city representatives, four car-owners and four non-car-owners. Eligible persons* who wish to volunteer as city representatives were invited to apply from April 7 to 9 at the Chengdu City People's Government Service Center. The representatives will be selected by random drawing.

*Eligibility included being at least 18 years of age; possessing all legal citizen rights, including a Chengdu residence card or a minimum of three months temporary residence permit, literacy, etc.

Chengdu now ranks third among Chinese cities in terms of car ownership. According to estimates from the transportation authority, the number of motor vehicles in the city currently exceeds 2.4 million, with 850,000 in the central city area. On average, 1,200 new licenses are issued daily; the record is 1,480 licenses in one day.

While the number of vehicles is growing, the speed at which those vehicles can travel in the city is clearly declining. In 2005, average speeds on city roads were 22 kmph; over five years they have decreased by 18 percent to the current average of 18 kmph. Every year speeds become approximately 1 kmph slower. Morning and evening rush hours are particularly impacted with speeds averaging at 14 kmph. It's predicted that if no measures are implemented, by 2013 average road speeds during rush hour will be 8.5 kmph and the city center will face total gridlock.

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Comments from the Net:


And with that, the netizens were off, buzzing about it on online forums and off. A March 27 article in the Chengdu Commercial Daily summarized major reactions and opinions (again, our translation):

"Hurry up and buy a car, they're going to start restricting license plates soon!" These days, you can hear this sentiment expressed everywhere on the streets of Chengdu.

Why? Because the news is Chengdu is drafting a plan to limit the number of cars. Over on the Longmen Township online discussion forum, tons of netizens are voicing their opinions.

Those in Favor

Opinion 1: Raise Licensing Fees
"In some cities in other countries, you have to prove you have a parking space before you can get your license plates. And in some places they deliberately raise the licensing fees so that they cost more than the price of the actual car to prevent people from casually buying cars. Shanghai's method of auctioning off vehicle license numbers should be an example for the whole country," said net user "Latin," who favors limiting the growth of numbers of vehicles on the road and suggests looking to Shanghai and Shenzhen as models. In this way, he says any notion of buying a car in the minds of those who can't actually afford it will be erased.

Opinion 2: Rotating Plate Numbers
This type of restriction should come from the city car management department. Every day only the cars with a certain license plate number should be allowed on the road, and every household should be allowed only one vehicle.

Opinion 3: Improve the Pedestrian Experience
"The streets are full of an unceasing stream of car exhaust, they make the streets dirty and noisy, and seriously impact the health of those who do not have cars. At the same time, the large number of cars makes the roads more dangerous for us, who's going to take care of this mess? The license plates should definitely be restricted and at the same time efforts stepped up to cancel the plates of high-polluting, older vehicles. City resident Zhang Yang said that the growth rate of the number of vehicles needs to be controlled, standards for vehicle emissions need to be raised, vehicles that aren't in compliance with regulations need to be restricted, and vehicles within the First Ring Road, other than public transportation, should be limited during peak traffic times.

Those Against

Opinion 1: Enable the "poor people's" to buy cars
"Restricting license plates to only new vehicles is unfair to the 'common people' who haven't yet been able to afford a car. For those who don't have a car already because they're unable or for some other reason, when their lifestyle level increases, they'll also have the car fees to pay. Don't they also have the right to enjoy life?" said a senior citizen who was sipping tea at People's Park. Currently members of his household have to transfer buses three times in order to go back to their hometown of Anyue. They've been saving up these years in order to buy a new car and do not endorse the license-plate restriction plans.

"Look, there are a ton of cars in Chengdu, but most of them are inexpensive. The license-plate limits won't have any effect on the wealthy."

Opinion 2: The restriction treats the symptoms but not the cause
"I think that limiting the sales of vehicles although in theory is reasonable, it doesn't solve the underlying problem and cannot be effective over a long period of time. Plus it's not easy to implement. Also, there are a lot of problems: If you impose limits in the city of Chengdu, can't people just go to another place to get their license? At the end of the day you still haven't solved the problem." Some netizens believe that the role of the governmental departments should be more focused on the suburbs, and the many work units that oversee planning and projects should set their sights on development outside the Third Ring. The space within the Second Ring should be reserved for entertainment, leisure, shopping, and other commercial activity.

Opinion 3: Rapid development of public transportation is the way
"There's no doubt that there are too many private cars, but what can we do in face of the problem? Let the government auction off license plates? That's just giving the government even more money." Many netizens seemed to feel that the way to address the fundamental problem was by rapidly expanding the public-transportation system.

Opinion 4: Impact the growth of the car and travel industries
"If the government restricts cars, the auto industry and travel industry will also be impacted (after all, it's much more convenient to drive to the nearby tourist sites than to take a bus). They should implement a one car per household policy. Even if those who have enough money shouldn't be allowed to buy a second car!"

Many netizens offered their thoughts and input, bringing up many plans of action. "Establishing exclusive roads for public transportation vehicles and taxis, ensuring the efficiency, convenience, and speed of the public-transportation system, breaking up the monopoly of the taxi companies and opening the market for taxis, resolving the extreme difficulties faced by city residents wishing to hail a cab," suggested one netizen on the thread.

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Full text of this article is available at http://www.gochengdoo.com/en/blog/item/1462/chengdu_considering_caps_on_vehicles_seeks_publics_input

Thank you Jane.

About the author:
Jane lives in the southwestern China capital of Chengdu, where she rides her Phoenix bicycle to work as a magazine (http://www.chengdoo-magazine.com) and website editor (http://www.gochengdoo.com) and blogger (http://www.cnreviews.com). Born and raised in the commuter's nightmare that is Los Angeles, she spent a regretful two years in the driver's seat before she realized there were better ways, even in L.A.

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International Women's Day . . . and World Streets

Today is the ninety-ninth anniversary of the first International Women's Day, a day well worth celebrating. And while we are at it a perfect occasion to remind ourselves of what we need to be thinking about and trying to do over the next twelve months to make sure that when 2011 and that important 100th anniversary roll around, we have made our own best effort for a better and brighter future for all. Because. . . women hold the key to the future of not only sustainable transportation but also to a sustainable and just world. It's that smple.

Women have been absolutely critical to the focus of World Streets, and behind it the work of the New Mobility Agenda since the latter's founding in 1988 -- and, it is fair to say, that this has been the case to a far greater extent than with most of the groups and programs working in our area. Why is that?

From the beginning we have had two very specific policy targets as far as the involvement of women in this sector, both of which eminently ethical and no less practical and political. If you click through the articles which are grouped under the heading http://tinyurl.com/ws-women you will find that on average each month we publish one or two on the subject of women in transport as part of our continuing, long-term, and, we can say, passionate commitment to this great cause.

The first of our arguments in support of a greatly increased role of women in the sector is "Women as our metric for sustainable lives". The second sets out our best arguments for "The leadership role of women in transport".

1. Women as our metric for sustainable transport and sustainable lives:

One does not have to be an especial genius to figure out after spending a few years working with and looking at transportation projects, programs, processes, accomplishments, shortcomings, and hypocrisies in many parts of the world, that the limitations of the policies behind all this jumble have been a direct function of (1) the kinds of people who are making the decisions that shape them, and (b) the kinds of people and interests for whom those decisions are targeted. One and the same, it turns out -- and by way of executive summary let us say that it boils down to: (a) policy decisions and investments made primarily by males and (b) for people (mainly males) who either have or desire to have access to their own cars. No great mystery to that, eh?

The result, as we all know so well, has been a transportation system which pays more attention to vehicles and their requirements then to the full range of people and their very different kinds of requirements.

So once we figured that one out, we began to call out in publications, international fora and our direct advisory work for radical revisions in the entire planning and policy process/paradigm, making the point that it is now time to take it back to the drawing board and put at the core a very different metric than the old one (that is all those men and all their cars), namely women of all ages and stations in our society.

Look, it could not be more simple. Women make an excellent metric. If we design our systems to offer quality service to women in all their varieties and situations, we are going to get an entirely different kind of transportation system. And a better one. If we take into account the full range of their life cycle economic situations, travel constraints, the daily obligations at different periods of their lives, and even their, temperament and values characters, we are going to come up with a set of planning criteria and transportation arrangements that will not only serve them better, but will serve society as a whole a lot better.

With this in mind, from the first day on World Streets, under the posting entitled "Sustainable Transportation Anyone?: It is high time for Plan A", we put the basic design criteria for women right at the top of our list of fundamental building blocks for the new strategy.(You can see all that at http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/03/its-high-time-for-plan-the-new-mobility.html) Here is how it reads:

Strategy 5. Design for women:
Our old mobility system was designed by, and ultimately for, a certain type of person (think about it!). And so too should the new mobility system: but this time around it should be designed to accommodate specifically women, of all ages and conditions. Do that and we will serve everybody far better. And for that to happen we need to have a major leadership shift toward women and, as part of that, to move toward full gender parity in all bodies involved in the decision process. It's that simple.

So, if we can now start to put women as the fundamental metric for sustainable transportation, we are going to get a different and better system.

But that is only the first half of our commitment and campaign.

2. The leadership role of women: (Hold onto your hats. Think Norway)

Our transportation arrangements do not only have to be planned with women in mind ("thank you very much"), but by them -- and, while they are at it, for us all. (And I hope this sounds very simple.)

What about just a bit of parity?

Surface parity, while a start, is unlikely to be sufficient.

We can observe that all too often women who do get into key roles very rapidly begin behaving like or reflecting the behavior and values of men. Examples would be very dangerous ... but try to think of women in such powerful positions who HAVE acted differently to the males in previous or similar positions of influence and power.

It’s just that the worldviews and values of our sector at the top are in general, very male! And this is precisely what we need to change to realize our very different future.

Broaden the skills base of the deciders

The forced, high-priority network expansion that full gender parity requires can open up another priority need that also requires significant rectification. Specifically it can help us to increase greatly the range of backgrounds and skills we bring into the various decision fora. This therefore gives us a golden opportunity to rectify some of the debilitating historical inadequacies in the sector that have led to its underperformance in so many areas.

Of course, as we look to bring in more women we need of course to bring in more expertise in the entrenched professional skills such as transport planning, traffic management, engineering, financial planning, technical modeling and the usual array of “hard skills” which have the front stage in the sector. But that is not enough.

But to get the job done right we also need greatly enhanced competence in such areas as environment, climate, land use, public health, cities, rural areas, community relations, demographics, local government, social services , behavioral psychology, education, childcare, job creation, poverty reduction, communications and all those other key areas of our daily lives which thus far have not received the necessary attention in the transport discussions and decision-making process. And in these, we need both women and men to enhance our understanding of these mission-critical issues and to inform policy and practice in the sector.

Sexism?

Now, is it that I really believe that women are for some reason better, smarter or more noble than we Y chromosome-encumbered males? That’s not the point. Rather it is my experience that women often have a different view of the world in many respects. It is this differentness that we need to bring in and profit from.

However to give this full scope we need to go beyond the usual token representation. We need their strength. And we need their numbers. A scattered handful of females does not appear to suffice to force the change. Put enough women into a forum and they will keep us on our toes. I promise. (The key being the ”enough”.)

There is an analogy with our recent experience with the expanding role of cyclists in some of our cities. If there are none out there on the streets, few people even think about it. If there are a few, this makes no great difference. But once there is a strong quorum, strong presence, this starts to change everything. And not just for the cyclists. There is ample proof in this in city after city where this transformation has started to take place.

One important wrinkle on this is provided by a singing phrase of the Gender and Built Environment collaborative program at http://www.gendersite.org/ who advise us: “Don't treat women equally”. Hmm. Something I think that is important for each of us to think through for ourselves.

Now what?

However it works out, I would hope we do not need yet another law to make this happen. But we will need a high profile public commitment by leaders and a growing culture which accepts that there is simply no other way of going about this. (And if that doesn't work, well there is always the law. No reason to be excessively timid about this.)

On August 26th 1920, almost 89 years to the day, the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution formally passed into the law, guaranteeing the right of women's' suffrage. A long journey that get its symbolic start when Abigail Adams in 1776 asked her husband, one of the framers of the Constitution and one of our first president to "remember the ladies". To which he responded that men will fight the "despotism of the petticoat".

It then took something like 134 years for this oversight to be rectified. We don't have, and we don't need, that much time to do what we should be doing in our bit of daily life. We can start to get our end of the job done in 2010. If we do it together.

Eric Britton, Editor

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