The Transportation Majority. (And why can't our politicians count?)

 Policy makers have given ample proof that they just don't get it. They plan and spend hard-earned taxpayer money for a distinct minority of all citizens and voters. It is amazing that they still manage to get elected. What's going on in their heads?

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Upcoming: South Korea to host 2011 Sustainable Transportation Conference

Changwon, Korea is the next destination for the World Congress on Mobility for the Future of Sustainable Cities on October 22-24. EcoMobility Changwon 2011 is an event that will provide enriching perspectives on sustainable urban mobility. Through the expertise of renowned transportation professionals from around the globe, participants will be exposed to fruitful debates on mobility and the future of sustainable cities.

* * * Click here for story from TheCityFix

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Autolib' to the starting line

This weekend saw the first public testing of the much bruited Autolib' carshare project currently getting underway here in Paris. And as you wait for our in-depth coverage, on-the-spot  interviews and film  we thought you might find it handy to refresh your understanding of the basic objectives and challenges, with this reprint of our 10 December 2010 article in which we try to take a balanced view of this ambitious transportation project.  You will be hearing a lot more about Autolib' in the coming months. If it works, it will be a major transformative project and will make a lot of people start to think in quite different terms about how they are going to get around in the city in the future. (For a quick print update try here and here.  And for a short video, here)

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British High Speed Rail? - Or a better railway for Britain

Editor's note: I personally and professionally am quite happy to continue to bash the feckless and  ill-gotten British High Speed Rail (“HS2”) proposal and its variants that we and others have discussed in these pages previously at http://wp.me/psKUY-1lg.  It is such a juicy target of avarice, gross incompetence and intellectual laziness. One has to ask oneself what do the cheering advocates have in mind -- not only those in the industry and other interests that will benefit largely from this railroading (!?!) of hard earned taxpayer money, but also in the three main political parties who have lined up most irresponsibly to support the proposal. If only they could turn back the clock and it were 1965 -- and Britain were France, or 1990 and they were Taiwan, or anytime they chose and Chinese, then they might have a decent shot at it.

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Towards Carfree Cities X: What happened in Guadalajara from 3 to 10 September 2011?

From the Editor's Desk:
This year's World Carfree Network Conference was organized by the dynamic and fast growing city of Guadalajara, under the title Towards Carfree Cities (Hacia ciudades libres de autos), and with the support and management of two local activist groups, Ciudad Para Todos and GDL en Bici. I was invited to provide the opening keynote address on the topic of "Better Cities with a Lot Fewer Cars", to kick off a weeklong festival of events, discussions, and presentations in the context of their program.  My chosen themes were (a) deep democracy and (b) the need for immediate action.  I was wonderfully received and learned a lot during my busy week with them.

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Op-Ed, Cornie Huizenga: The transport sector as leader in the sustainability debate?

There are a lot of reasons which need to be investigated if we are to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the sustainable transportation wars. The first step in this necessary process is to accept that by any reasonable measure, we are losing the war and losing it badly -- in such a way that each day our sector in cities around the world is one that is in a state of increasing disruption and destruction, aggressing our most fundamental human and social values. It is that bad, and anyone who refuses to accept this is very definitely part of the problem. But then, once we have accepted the bad news, it is time to stop the weeping and figure out how can start to reverse this mounting tide of poor policies, unwise investments, and other abject indifference to all of those who are left worse off in the process. Let me stand aside here and give the word to Cornie Huizenga who has some thoughtful positive suggestions s to where we might go from here.

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Peer reviews on momo memorandum on carsharing -- directed to the European Commission

Why this memorandum on carsharing and the European Commission?

- Eric Britton, Editor, World Streets
-  Read full report and peer commentaries here.

Extracts:
The sustainability agenda is not only important. It is critical.  Moreover it is critical for Europe and it is critical for the world.

Carsharing works and does an important job
In point of fact when it comes to sustainable transport in cities Europe is leading the way world-wide, as our cities one by one are starting to get control of motor cars  and in parallel begin to offer a broader array of better transport alternatives. There are more than two hundred cities across Europe today that are working on advancing the sustainable transport agenda though this two-pronged approach of car-control and new mobility options that work. And all of this against a background of near term actions that kick in within months and a few years at most. This is the proven European formula for sustainable mobility.

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New York's New Bike-Sharing Plan is a Model for the Country

A city known for its sea of yellow taxis and crowded streets, New York is becoming a place no one thought was possible: bikeable.

New York City is at the tipping point of becoming one of the world's great bicycling cities. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and the New York City Department of Transportation (DoT) have done a tremendous job creating a more bicycle-friendly New York. According to the DoT, commuter cycling increased by 13% between 2009 and 2010. In the last five years, bicycle ridership has doubled.

A city known for its sea of yellow taxis and crowded streets, New York City is becoming a town no one thought was possible. With this bike share plan, New York City will transform itself into the nation's top bicycling city. All eyes will be on us to see if the program succeeds or fails. Bike sharing is such an important change, and change is always challenging. But this will be a game-changer for NYC; get ready for it.

* * * Click here for article.

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Learning from each other: Four Cities, Four Ways

Every time I go into a city that is struggling with its transportation/environment situation, I have the feeling that it would be a great thing for them to develop for themselves a "sharing and learning film" along these lines. Perhaps one day . . .

In the beginning was New York City and its historic transportation mess:
Streetfilms, the sharp media end of the innovative www.streetsblog.org program out of New York City, has recently put on line for free download a full feature version of a documentary originally produced in 2006 as part of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign. The film, "Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock", explores the history and culture of New York City streets from pre-automobile times to present. Even now, five years later, it gets its important points across.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/26396887 w=400&h=265]

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Towards Car Free Cities. Guadalajara, Mexico, 5-9 Sept. 2011

The time to move towards carfree cities has come. We must come from the cities that we don´t know to the ones we belong to. Step by step moving onto the right way. To make a call up, to share this view and to open our own mind in order to have a better future for all of us, to find better ways to transport ourselves in a conscious way. It´s time to move on.

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World Streets from Aug. 20 to Sept. 20: Gone fishin'

While World Streets is a collaborative journal fed by a steady flow of contributions of hundreds of contributors from countries around the world, plunging the depths and enormous variations of the challenges of sustainable transportation and sustainable cities, our entire massive editorial staff consists of a single person, also known as Eric Britton, your servant, whose day job it is to spot, incite, cajole and eventually coordinate the articles, photographs, illustrations, letters, commentaries and other media which regularly populate these pages.

But in the late summer month directly ahead, I will be unable to ensure this function since I have been invited to participate and take a significant role in no less than three major international projects which are online for that period and which are simply too good to miss. 

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Homage to Lee Schipper: Physicist and Iconoclast

From the New York Times. Leon J. Schipper, a physicist whose passion for data led him to question the value of popular energy policies, like government subsidies for ethanol and for electric cars and the “cash for clunkers” program, died Tuesday in Berkeley, Calif. He was 64.

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Homage to Lee Schipper: We were all his students

From Steve Winkelman:
Our dear friend and valuable colleague, Lee Schipper, transportation research guru par excellence, died on August 16th after a fast and fierce battle with cancer. We’ve lost a giant.

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In homage to Lee Schipper

Our long-time colleague and very dear friend Lee Shipper left us on Tuesday evening, warmly surrounded by family and loving friends. Since he meant so much to so many of us who have been involved in the uphill struggle for sustainability in all its forms and corners of our lives, I thought it would be appropriate to open up these pages over the next days, and possibly more than that, to a selection of pieces in which the author reflects on the kind of very special person that Lee was.

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World Vehicle Population Tops 1 Billion

The number of vehicles in operation worldwide surpassed the 1 billion-unit mark in 2010 for the first time ever. According to Ward’s research, which looked at government-reported registrations and historical vehicle-population trends, global registrations jumped from 980 million units in 2009 to 1.015 billion in 2010.  - By John Sousanis. WardsAuto.com, Aug 15, 2011 9:00 AM

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Weekend break: Photos of Mumbai's infrastructure changing, since 1864

Click to access (And you may wish to spend a bit of time with the comments)

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IV. The Female Quotient: Next steps on World Streets - Leadership Profiles

After the first article in this series appeared in these pages on July 27th, more than fifty people from a dozen countries responded with suggestions and nominations for profiles of outstanding women who through their work, character and originality are, quite literally, shaping and re-shaping the transportation agenda. Based on that strong response, their quality and the evident interest in the topic, we have decided to see if we can work with those making these nominations to provide a series of leadership profiles to improve the international visibility concerning the contributions that women are making in the field at all the key levels involved.

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Weekend break with Lee Schipper on Vibes

Lee (The Phunky Physicist) Schipper  on Vibraphone at Better Air Quality 2008 workshop in Bangkok, Thailand --  playing at Imperial Queen's Park Hotel on Nov, 11th 2008.

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Car Free Day in Vilnius. Finally a mayor who really cares.

[caption id="attachment_7021" align="alignright" width="168" caption="Have a nice day"][/caption]

Here is a rough chronology showing how information gets around in the world-wide sustainable transport network in 2011. Last Monday, 1 August, someone named Meras Zuokas (whom we do not know but whom we definitely like and who by all indications lives in Lithuania), uploaded a 104 second video onto YouTube with commentary in Lithuanian, showing a dynamic mayor dealing directly with the classic sustainable transport problem of illegally parked cars encumbering circulation in designated bike lanes in the capital city of Vilnius. That was the first stop on a lightning journey around the world that in a few days brings us here.

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Mr. Meter on America’s "Cash for Clunkers"

(While Lee Schipper is recovering, here is another example of his always-on prescience in the poorly lit streets of this gasping planet.) If matters of climate, sustainable transportation and careful use of scarce resources are close to your heart, and you happen to be European, you may have some reserves about your country's ecologically billed, and energetically buttressed "Cash for Clunkers" (in more polite Euro language of course) program. Let a couple of Americans energy policy experts help you feel a bit less embarrassed. You are not alone.

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