A Sustainable Transportation Clean Air Media Cornucopia

From the website of the Clean Air Institute, you have here for your convenient consultation more than 50 audio presentations made during their May 2011 Conference for Sustainable Transportation, Air Quality and Climate Change held in Rosario Argentia. They report that this collection is the largest online collection of audio presentations in Spanish on transportation issues, air quality and climate change. You can access it in Spanish here. And in English, a useable (to us) Google translate version here .

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A Mayor's-Eye View of Sustainable Transportation

The letter that follows is, as you will quickly surmise, not an actual communication from one elected official in one case, but rather a composite, the distillation of experience that I have had over these last years of trying to push the sustainable transportation agenda in many parts of the world, almost always in conjunction and in dialogue with mayors and other city leaders. As you will see, it is not that they are adverse to or not interested in the concepts behind sustainable transportation and sustainable cities. It is just that they have a great many other things on their mind, including staying on top day after day of the considerable challenges of managing their city -- and, in not very long, running once again for reelection. This is the political reality of which those of us who would be agents of change must be aware, that politics is the art of the possible. Now let's turn the stage over to our mayor:

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Common Mobility Cards (Big brother is watching in India too)

A trickle of media reports over the last year or so have been hinting about a new single unified ticketing system or fare collection method being pushed through various big and small cities. That sounds promising, but is there more to it that we should be considering? (Venkatesh Nayak. Access to Information Programme . Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative)

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Changzhi World Share/Transport Forum II: Opening keynote with Chinese subtitles

We have been asked to post the videoconference keynote address to the second World Share/Transport Forum that took place in Changzhi China from 24-25 October with Chinese subtitles which you will find here. Additional background information on the project follows below.

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European City Modal Split Database: An invitation

This open project from EPOMM -- the European Platform on Mobility Management -- is an absolutely brilliant idea. It does not require much explanation to get started; you can be off and going if you simply to click here and dig into their Google map. That said, a few words of introduction may not be altogether without their use to help you take full advantage of their good work.

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World Share/Transport Forum II. Changzhi, China

Changzhi, China. 24 October: The Second World Share/Transport Forum opens in Changzhi today, with the mission of looking into the concept of Share/Transport for selective adaptation, application and extension in Chinese cities. The Forum is supported by a collaborative effort led by the China Urban Transport Development Strategy and Partnership Demonstration Project (CUTPP): National Development and Reform Commission, the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). It builds on and extends the pioneering work on share/transport initiated by the international team who laid the base for the first World Forum that was convened in Kaohsiung Taiwan in September 2010.

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Eyes on the streets: Luis in Quito Ecuador

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Welcome to TEMS - The European City Modal Split Database

This article is presently being revised and expanded with the support and inputs of the EPOMM team. Please come back on Monday for  the full feature piece.

** Paris, 25 Oct.  Click here for full article **

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On "Filtered Permeability" as a sustainability tool

During one of our eternal research and reading probes which had us looking at and weighing the advantages, etc., of the many diverse approaches to creating "Livable Streets" (my favorite that being the term of the great and much missed Donald Appleyard), "Complete Streets", "Quiet Streets", "Fused Grids" . . . (just to cite a few of their many names"), we tumbled onto a phrase "Filtered Permeability" which was altogether new to us. After a bit we identified the person who had coined it, Steve Melia of the University of the West of England, and asked him to fill us in:

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Musing: Your iPad is a bicycle for your mind

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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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Aw-shucks. GM Blunders onto Campus

Not everything the auto lobby does today is greenwash. There is plenty of that about of course, but in addition the honeyed words that are constantly articulated to calm our raging democratic spirits and to bring us to believe that we are all in the same side in this one big happy sustainable family, there are occasions in which the industry and its more hapless proponents fall back into a blatant posture of pure meanness of spirit. As an example let us take a look at a recent vicious campaign of General Motors to sell their cars to young people, at any cost to their future well-being.

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Who read World Streets this morning?

World Streets makes the claim that it is a truly international journal and world-wide collaborative effort. Anyone can say that, it's an easy claim to make.  But just to put some muscle on it here is a map showing the points of origin of the readers who have come in thus far this morning. A day much like any other.

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Rethinking Car Free Days in Taipei City

Your editor was kindly invited by Mayor Hau Lung-pin to come to Taipei City this year to discuss preparations for the celebration of the city’s tenth successive Car Free Day -- and as part of this collaborative brainstorming process to draw on my experience of some seventeen years working with this, one hopes, transformative transportation approach in different cities around the world.

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Op-Ed: Universal Access to Bus Rapid Transit: Design, operation, and working with the community

From Tom Rickert, Executive Director,  Access Exchange International. USA
The ability of Bus Rapid Transit systems to serve persons with disabilities in less wealthy countries seemed obvious at first glance. The earliest graphics of BRT trunk lines in Curitiba, Brazil, depicted wheelchair users crossing boarding bridges into articulated buses. Problem solved! Thus, years later, many may be surprised to find cities where wheelchair users are unable to access one or another BRT system.

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A car to improve lives

What is that famous definition of an intelligent person? Someone who can keep two contradictory ideas in mind without her head exploding? Here is pretty interesting test of this for our more thoughtful anti-car friends.  And yes of course, your comments, caveats, etc. are warmly welcome. Let's turn this one around a bit and have a look at it in the cold light of day.

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Wanted: Group videoconferencing trial participants

A note to readers  who may be interested in giving free group videoconferencing a trial run.
We have been using videoconferencing for our international networking on a daily basis since mid-1993, and have always had great difficulty in understanding why these technologies are not being put to more and better use by our friends and colleagues around the world, especially those with a commitment to sustainable transportation. About every eighteen months (call it a Moore Generation) we find ourselves switching something in terms of hardware or software so as to be able to be more effective in this important part of our overall communications and contact program. We are now on the lip of a new generation and would like to invite you to join us for limited testing and otherwise and laying the base for something that is, I firmly believe, going to be truly useful for us all.

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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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