World Streets is closing down the editorial department . . . . . . for the next week as we reach out for funding support.

As founder and editor of World Streets, I have three jobs. The first is to organize the production side of the journal and to find and work with collaborators around the world to produce challenging thinkpieces and articles which hew to the rigorous strategic lines we have set out to guide all our work (See Strategy ). The second is to contribute as editorialist and author. And the third -- this is the one I really do not like and am demonstrably not very good at-- is that of securing the funding needed to keep this boat afloat. So for reasons of force majeur, I have decided to close down the editorial side of this enterprise for the coming week-plus, and concentrate on fund-raising. And here is maybe where you can help.

Let's start here: Why this is a worthwhile goal

Here is the evidence:

After the last two years or base-laying and daily publication 5/7, during which time we have developed no less than four publication platforms for the journal (World Streets, Nuova Mobilità, World Streets/Facebook, World Streets/Open Edition) on which have been posted more than one thousand carefully crafted articles and contributions, twice that number of images, and which have been visited (and hopefully read and pondered) more than two hundred thousand times by people signing in from more than seventy countries on all continents, we are ready to be judged not by promises or plans, but by performance and results.

The best proof of this is what you can find on the four platform sites, but as quick reminders (a) here is this morning's reader map and (b) you may also wish to have a look at the reader reaction which you can find here at World Streets contributions: 2009/2010: We asked 100 experts for their views - - and 101 responded .



What we need from you? Five things.

We are looking for volunteers among our readers who think that World Streets is making an important contribution and who are ready to take the time to discuss with us how it might be better supported and funded. There are a number of possibilities we would like you to reflect on:

1. Your help in contacting foundations, groups and individuals of means who may be interested to discuss supporting World Streets. (We are very weak on this side and need help to initiate these contacts. Your counsel and perhaps also your moral and other support might help in this.)

2. National sponsors/subscribers:
These are basically joint projects in which a national or international agency joins with us to create an easy to maintain mechanism for putting all or selections of the journal into the hands of people working within their own organization, and often more broadly. The following diagram is intended to provide some first clues as to how these projects are intended to work (this diagram being for discussions and negotiations for a collaborative project with the US Department of Transportation).



3. New language editions:
It is well known at the level of those working in the field that the only way to get through on a daily basis to the hundreds, often more people and groups working in any given country or language area is by addressing them in their own language. We have demonstrated clearly how this approach can be very powerful with out collaboration in the creation of Nuova Mobilità in Italy -- reference http://nuovamobilita.org -- and are prepared to work with local partners in a time- and cost-efficient manner to build on this experience, including the tools and routines that are needed to make it work.

4. Independent program review: Our long experience in this many-sided field, including not only that of the editor but also the large number of collaborators working in various parts of the world on these important matters, constitute a valuable reservoir of experience which can be tapped by those who are organizing new projects or programs, or assessing the performance or eventual needs of existing projects, can be put to work for cost- and time-effective reviews.

5. New Mobility event organization:
We work with local partners and sponsors to organize a variety of events which support the New Mobility Agenda and their own related programs. Get in touch and we can provide you with examples and references.

In conclusion:
So for the coming week or so until we have made our breakthrough, the only articles that will appear here or in our other World Streets platforms which be notices and information which support the funding search. This is not to say that we are not continuing to receive and work on reports and articles from our collaborators that will in time appear in these pages. But today there is a real shortage of time and means which we now need to deal with as our first priority. You understand of course.

Do you think that you may be ready to help?

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The Hundred Faces behind World Streets

We firmly believe that the move to 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. These are not autonomous or institutional pieces; everything that appears here has a name and face behind it. Today we have assembled for your viewing pleasure small photos of 160 of our authors and collaborators. There are more and of course we really do need to have each identified by name and country. In time.

The people whose faces you see here come from France, Italy, South Africa, Britain, China, Sweden, Finland, England, Singapore, and Uganda -- just to identify the top two rows.

* * * Click images for enlargements. * * *
Do you notice a fair proportion of women among our authors? That is no accident. Indeed it is one of the primary challenges of our entire program under both World Streets and just behind it the New Mobility Agenda: to, in a purposely contentious word, feminize the sector. From the top down. Up to now we are managing about 30% female participation here; that is good but not good enough. So give us some time to work on it. (And in the meantime have a look at Http://tinyurl.com/ws-women for more on this.)


Age profile of our collaborators? Broad! On the one hand we have contributions from some of the most important original senior thinkers, innovators and doers in the field. That's very good. But we don't stop there. We work very hard to ensure that we are also continually bringing in a large number of talented young people, and in the process helping to prepare the future leaders.



What do all these people do in life (when they are not writing for Streets?)? As you can imagine their activities cover a very wide span indeed. They are university professors, policymakers, international civil servants, transport system operators, scientists, inventors, doctors and public health workers, a couple of mayors, graduate students, journalists, filmmakers, community workers, activists, and the long list goes on.



Here is one thing they all have in common: in everything they do for and with World Streets, and indeed in many other parts of their work and lives, they act as volunteers and responsible citizens. That it turns out is necessary in this case since from the beginning our decision was to run World Streets "off the economy". It was our guess that this was going to be the best way to set this off from the rest and to get the job done. A different paradigm encouraging different thinking. So we decided not charge for anything, not to take advertising, and, symmetry obliges, we do not pay for anything. You can bet that none of our collaborators are going to get rich through this association -- but you can also bet that there is great satisfaction on their part.




And since this is about sustainable transportation and sustainable cities, it would seem fair for us to know at least something about how these people actually get around themselves and their day-to-day lives. They are, I can tell you from personal acquaintance with many of them, quite fit lot and this is no accident. A number of these people cycle and walk for transport every day. (That reminds me, we should carry out some kind of small survey of our authors and collaborators in order to see if we can learn something about their transportation habits.)


What sets them off from the rest? As editor and oft-times collaborator in projects in many parts of the world, I have been able to get to know many of them quite well indeed, often over some years. What can I say about them that might not be immediately apparent from the pictures? The phrase comes to mind from the wonderful film that we shared with you all earlier this week on courage and leadership when the former mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, who when confronted by the press concerning his lack of political allies and links with the power structure, he countered by saying " Soy un hombre independiente", I am an independent man. Yes that's it - they are independent men and women. (See film here - http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/05/lessons-in-leadership-profiles-in.html.)



How can we end this? Here is who we are: Chinese and Americans, Swedes and Indians, French and Germans, English and Irish, Japanese and Koreans, Dutch and Australians, Serbs and Croats, Finns and Turks, Filipinos and Malaysians, Austrians and Czechs, Danes and Canadians, Brazilians and Mexicans, Argentines and Slovenes, Russians and Poles, Swiss and Chileans, Portuguese and Taiwanese, Indonesians and Kazakhstanies, Greeks and Icelanders, and more.



We are this. We are an ad hoc, unplanned, independent, uncontrollable, United Nations of concerned citizens. We are assuming our responsibilities. And we are going to win!

One day on World Streets: 9 May 2010


Eric Britton,
Editor, World Streets

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A first look at carsharing in Croatia: World Streets Annual New Mobility Country Reviews

Carsharing, a different way of owning and using a car -- wherever you find it certainly got started one day with a stray thought, a dream even, often as not in the head of one person. Someone stuck in a car or sitting in a sidewalk café, looking at the traffic and letting their mind wander, and who then starts to talk about the idea. Then all you have to do is come back a year or two later and, if we are all very lucky, you may see that this idle thought has taken a few steps toward reality. Let us have a look at how the concept is just starting to unfold in Croatia, a country under attack from rapid, aggressive and utterly unthought-out automobilization. Carsharing. . . ?

Editor's note:
In this series we are reporting on the 2010 status of carshare programs in something like twenty countries around the world where the carshare agenda is already well advanced. But you will find here as well first coverage of several examples of projects and programs that are just starting to get under way (including thus far Iceland, Greece and some Portugal). This report on Croatia is part of this "starting-up" series.

We are grateful to have this fine contribution since it is our firm view that it is extremely important for the concept of carsharing to find its rightful place in Eastern Europe, as well and quickly as possible. After the long nap of the largely "car-free" Communist era, the cities of Eastern Europe have over the last two decades come under increasing attack from virulent and largely unthinking knee-jerk automobilization. The built environment and cultural heritage of centuries is quite literally being sacked. This is putting enormous pressure on towns and cities, people administration's across the region, and unfortunately until now the dominant thrust of public policy has been in repeating the old sins of their neighbors to the west. Forecast, build, and auto-expand to the next higher around of congestion, environmental degradation, and pressure on the taxpayer.

We need more and better carsharing in Eastern Europe not only because of the real benefits it can bring to cities and people across the region, but also bearing in mind that as it takes hold and begins to be understood and appreciated, this puts pressure on all of the concerned public agencies and politicians, along with the media and the voting public themselves, to improve their understanding of what sustainable transportation is all about. Carsharing turns out to be a great way to open up the necessary public conversations about sustainable transportation. It has been called "the last nail in the coffin of old mobility", which seems like a pretty good image to us.

Now let us have a look at how this process is getting underway in Croatia in its first and still very modest steps.

Car Sharing In Croatia

- Marijan Skroza, Auto Divisio Croatia, Prvic Sepurine, Croatia

Croatia is more or less known in Europe as a beautiful country. For those who haven't discovered yet beauty of our country, let me invite you to visits www.croatia.hr

Don't you think that this beautiful country with such a splendid, privileged natural environment deserves to be ecologically clean? This is one of the reasons why we placed the head office of our company on Prvic island where we don't have any problem with finding a parking place, since there are no cars at all.

Here you see a view of Prvic island, where we have established the headquarters of Auto
Divisio Croatia. This is the way we send our message to all the cities throughout Croatia, so that they try to give the city centers back to the man himself, so that we entrepreneurs together in cooperation with urbanists, traffic experts create the city oasis, without disturbing one's mobility.

How did we come up to the idea?

Just like all the other ideas this one also comes as a result of previous work, experience and knowledge investment. Ten years ago I started noticing that Sibenik city becomes more and more taken by the vehicles. Instead of growing more green surfaces, former children's playgrounds were being turned into asphalted areas. Therefore I made a promise to my childhood friend I would solve this problem, but life drew me to the other side of the world, more exactly to Australia, where I learned that one could lead a life in harmony, regardless of nationality, since majority respects the rules. I went to some other countries and compared it, yet always returned home. I was thinking about the solution and three years ago said to my wife: I'm sick of getting up in the middle of the lunch or worse in the middle of the night to move our car! Let's share our vehicle with someone else!



Discovering the Car Sharing world

I was fully aware that I was not about to "discover hot water“ so I went online and searched for mobility and carsharing, where I found Mobility Car Sharing in Switzerland. Shorlyt after I sent them my first e-mail, and soon enough received an answer from Mr. Peter Muheim, Mobility International Ag, manager at that time of the consulting company focused on transferring their knowledge and implementing Car Sharing to all the interested persons and companies all over the world.

Searching on the internet we discovered more and more information on Car Sharing and crucial persons who work on promoting that kind of individual transport. We contacted almost all of them but the best relations remained the ones made with Mobility.

Given the examples from all over the world where Car Sharing companies are mostly set up as cooperatives or associations, and lately appeared some global players and investment funds more like join stock companies , we decided on setting up the cooperative in our first phase. The name Auto Divisio Croatia is a Latin name for Car Sharing Croatia

We were also guided by the idea of gathering all the persons who would share our point of view in sharing and who also had shown some real results on their fields. For the moment we are a team of 12 working on this project (Marijan, Marijana, Kristijan, Anita, Petar, Mirko, Anita, Dubravko, Ivica, Borivoj, Margarita i Dario) most of us with advanced university degrees.

We gave ourselves the tasks and everyone's working on his job. This volunteer approach and everyone's share in time, knowledge, things or money and with only one person employed within ADC saved us a lot of money and built us the strong base for the fast and safe company growth.

Which Car Sharing concept to choose?
Given more Car Sharing models, more or less successful, existing worldwide, we examined all the advantages and disadvantages and then decided not to copy anyone, but to build our own unique concept. Normally, due to the lack of educated personnel in providing the Car Sharing services, we will not realize immediately our concept, but take one step at the time. We could easily call it the Car Sharing third generation.

Political support
It is understood that this kind of project seeks a strong and determined political support.
As a matter of fact, we put a most of our time in lobbing and presenting carsharing service as the best form. We have a support from:

* Ministry of Economy, Labor and Entrepreneurship, Zagreb - http://www.mingorp.hr/
* Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency, Zagreb - http://www.fzoeu.hr/

Cooperation
Switzerland is the best example that if you want to have a successful Car Sharing service, you don't need just a good carsharing company but also have developed public transport system (bus, tram, train) Here in Croatia, things are not so great on that field, so we are little careful. In spite of some objective factors, we realized the following cooperation:

Parking companies
ADC is a member of Croatian Parking Association (HPU), we chose HPU as our strategic partner, given that parking place is very valuable resource, and very important link in giving carsharing service. In Croatia as in other countries there are some laws on which basis City Administration decides on how many space is possible to give on lease to individuals or to companies. Our chance is that by HPU we convince the city council to consider Car Sharing as mobile garage places.

Rent-a-car companies
There are 4000 rent-a-car vehicles in Croatia, including local agencies and almost all global franchises such as Avis, Hertz, Budget, Sixt... We already introduced ourselves to them but they are not so supportive, given their doubt in implementing Car Sharing in Croatia

Taxi
Taxi service is the most developed in the capital, Zagreb, and the total number of taxi vehicles is 2000. Unevenness in prices and services, as well as lack of management stand in the way of realization a good cooperation. Anyway they are familiar with our projects and hope we both will do in our best interest.

Public transportation
Public transportation are heading some major tasks in quality developing and better intercity relations. Boat transport company Jadrolinija and Railway transporter still belong to the state, the government often talks about reforms and privatization but still nothing happens. Private companies partially manage the city and 100 % intercity transportation,

And only several amongst them are on the level that could implement our Car Sharing service, referring to the fact that carsharing users could use both services by using only one „smart card“.

Vehicle producers and importers:
For the moment, Croatia has only one vehicle producer, company named Dok-ing who will present their first electric vehicle on the next car industry fair in Genève. We made the contacts with them given that Car Sharing also includes carsharing electric vehicles, similar to what Paris is planning for 2011. This strongly depends on somehow stronger political support and having some bigger investors.

Meanwhile we achieve in cooperation with some vehicle importers in Croatia who expressed their interest in investing vehicles in pilot project realization, and depending on the results they would continue the investments in the next commercial phase.

Realization
There is a long way from one idea until it's realization. After some time spent in researching, thinking of the concept design we came up to decide how, when and whom with realize the Car Sharing in Croatia.

Carsharing technology
There are about 10 producers of Car Sharing technology in the world. After a big study we made some contacts with Mobility, Switzerland and Eileo, France. We will wait some time to decide , since we still negotiate with both of these companies, but given the situation more likely we will start on creating our own Car Sharing technology.

Pilot project
Last year we were intending on starting our pilot project in our city Sibenik (without Car Sharing technology). We provided seven Opel vehicle , but then some political obstacles made out. Since we lost lot of time, and meanwhile more changes happened in Car Sharing world, we no longer think that pilot project is reasonable to start without the Car Sharing technology. We believe that this year we will start with our pilot project with local or imported Car Sharing technology.

Commercial phase
2011. should be the year when we would start in providing Car Sharing services in Croatia.

We will developed our brand ODDO Carsharing. We invented this name ODDO as two words OD and DO meaning in Croatian FROM – TO, which describes the best our activity FROM place TO place, FROM state TO state, ...
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About the author:

Marijan Skroza is chairman of Auto Divisio Croatia. He can be reached via uprava@carsharing.hr

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