Laying the Base for Public Bicycle Sharing in Penang

As we are seeing in these pages Penang in general and Georgetown in particular are giving serious attention to the possibility of creating a public bicycle system for the city. As a first step they have issued a Request for Proposals which is shortly to come online. This is a great thing because there are many reasons to create conditions for safe and agreeable cycling on city streets across the state.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/80460045]

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Carsharing on the rise in the Netherlands (Act 3)

Thanks to the Dutch Kennisplatform Verkeer en Vervoer (KpVV) (which I roughly translate to the Knowledge Platform for Traffic and Transportation) for this excellent update (June 2013) on the situation for carsharing in the Netherlands. It is part of a series entitled "Trends and developments in the field of sustainable and smart mobility". The numbers are interesting and tell a story, and their analysis is first-class. Recommended reading and in the hope that we shall shortly be able to share with our readers similar country reports and updates of the state of car sharing in other countries, both in Europe and beyond.

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A Short History of Ridesharing in North America

This excellent review of ridesharing history, practices, trends and issues in North America was recently presented by its author, Susan Shaheen of the University of California, Berkeley, to a Webinar organised by the Ridesharing Institute. You may want to give particular attention to her last two pages which are more forward looking: Key Questions from Workshop and Factors to Consider.

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The Sharing Economy Comes Home to World Streets

*  Click here for our 226 articles on sharing.

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Archives: The dangers of shared taxis (2005)

Discussion from archives of the New Mobility Agenda as recorded on  Sustran Global South on 16 Nov. 2005. Simon Norton writes from Cambridge, UK:

When one introduces shared taxis one has to guard against the danger that they take people off buses and trains (or off their feet or bikes) rather than off cars. If so they will actually increase the number of motor vehicles, and furthermore unless the system is transparent and available to casual users (i.e. one doesn't have to live in the area, belong to a club, or book ages in advance) they may prevent the development of genuinely comprehensive mobility systems."

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Honk! Cycling your mind

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

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

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


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

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

Enjoy the ride.

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A "Better than Car" Mobility System

Nobody likes to step down on the scale of comfort and economy. Fair enough, so let's see how we can all step up with an equity-based transport strategy.

The objective here is to combine vision, policy, technology and entrepreneurial skills in such a way to create and make available to all a combined, affordable, multi-level, convenient, high choice  mobility system which for just about everybody should be more efficient than owning and driving a car in or into town.  Let us start with this as our goal and then see what is the work that must be done in order to turn it into a reality.

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Poynton Regenerated: A transformative Shared Space project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vzDDMzq7d0

The regeneration of Poynton Town Centre and its high street, Park Lane, involved a bold approach to the busy traffic intersection in Fountain Place. Martin Cassini's short film documents the background to the project, and the dramatic changes in the fortunes of Poynton, and explores the implications for other towns and cities struggling to cope with the impact of traffic.

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Big House Equity Outreach: Bring in All Local Actors, Views & Implementation Partners

Too often when it comes to new transport initiatives, the practice is to concentrate on laying the base for the project in close working relationships with people and groups who a priori are favorably disposed to your idea, basically your choir. Leaving the potential "trouble makers" aside for another day. Experience shows that's a big mistake. Instead from the beginning we have to take a . . .

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WhipCar closes down P2P carsharing operation in Britain. What does it mean?

On 10 Nov. 2010, World Streets ran an article under the title "The P2P carsharing saga continues: The WhipCar story" by the young entrepreneurs introducing their  new WhipCar P2P carsharing start-up, which story you can find here - http://wp.me/psKUY-13b.  After more than two years of hard work in developing an entirely new, uncharted market for Britain, they have just decided, in their words that: "we have discovered there are still barriers to widespread adoption of peer-to-peer car rental in the UK. As a small team with limited resources, we have taken a good long look at these scaling challenges. And, after much thought, we have made the extremely difficult decision to close WhipCar."

Let's have a look at what they have to say in terms of lessons learned, and at the end of this short piece share with you a couple of thoughts on the meaning of this in the broader context of carsharing and P2P.

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Program Announcement: World Carshare 2013 Policy/Strategies Program for Local Government

Carsharing has a brilliant, in many ways surprising and certainly very different future -- a future which is already well in process. Carsharing is one of the fastest growing new mobility modes, with until now almost all services occurring in the high income countries. But it is by and large new, unfamiliar and does not fit well with the more traditional planning and policy structures at the level of the city. This is a problem. And addressing this problem is the goal of this cycle of reports and events in the year ahead.

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Current conditions for cycling STOP Britain cycling!!!

Transport in cities is a steep uphill affair. If we ever are to transform the quality of the mobility arrangements in our cities, there are certain basic truths about it that need to be repeated again and again. By different people, in different places and in different ways.  Until we win.

Cycling in most cities:  You and I know it. It is broke. It cannot be "fixed".  It needs to be reinvented from the street up. All of which is easy enough to say, but what in concrete terms does that mean? This article which appeared in the Guardian a few days back by Peter Walker,  reports on the testimony of Dave Horton a cycling sociologist who pounds the table on five basic truths of cycling in cities.

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The future of the car in the city: Vol. 1., No. 1. Carsharing Policy Guide for local government

Dear Reader,

The future of the car in the city is morphing fast and is going to be very different from the suddenly long gone 20th century. But this we here are all well aware of. After all we have been swapping information and insights on these issues and challenging each other for more than a decade on a number of New Mobility fora.

Today we want to share some information with you on a new collaborative project that is just forming up, namely to create an expert  guide for mayors and local government specifically  in the field of carsharing.

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Op-Ed: Hard-earned road lessons from Britain

The British journalist, editor and cycling activist  Carlton Reid is in the process of finalizing a "massive free e-book" due for publication this Spring at http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/. His book provides valuable historical background on how we in Britain and the United States got into the present no-choice single-mode road systems that have provided the authoritarian main model for the fast (and less fast) developing countries as they rush to urbanization. The lessons of history, if learned, can, we are told, help us better understand the present and on that firm base decide what we wish to become in the future. So with thanks to Carlton Reid let's see if we can learn this particular hard  lesson from Britain:

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Weekend Musing: Asking the mayor of Freedonia to walk the walk

Asking the mayor of Freedonia to walk the walk

Freedonia City Hall, 12-Jan-13.09:00. The mayor is comfortably seated  at his  imposing desk, looking fondly at an unlit cigar.  The editor of World Streets knocks lightly and waits timidly at the door, entirely drenched and  more than a bit disheveled. Not a pretty sight.

The Mayor: Well sir, you are a fine mess. Careful, you are dripping on my favorite chair.

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Learning from Lyon: Free Public Transport that really works

Here is a "free transport project" that is working remarkably well: In the Spring of 2005 the community of Greater Lyon in cooperation with their supplier JCDecaux launched the world's first mega Public Bike System, Vélo'v. The project put some 3000 bikes into service, available in about 300 stations spread for the most part over the City of Lyon. All this is successful, amply detailed in many places and continues to this day to yield yeoman service for some 60,000 registered users (including the author). To gain access to the system, in addition to one day or one week tickets, the user pays an annual fee of € 25, and when using a bike a caution is debited from the users credit card until it is returned to a parking slot. From a user perspective it is a very successful system and use experience.

* But where is the "free public transport" element?

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Brief: Sydney takes a big step to support carsharing on its streets

Brief: Carsharing set to take up another 300 parking slots in Sydney - on top of the 450 spaces it already holds on the city's streets streets that privately owned cars are banned from using. Lord Mayor Clover Moore has revealed Sydney City Council's target to get 10 per cent of residents into a car share program by 2014 is on track, with up to 300 new members a month. Of those, a third are businesses and the remainder residents.    -->Click here for full text

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"CAR21": A Thinking Exercise (or New Ways of Owning and Using Cars in the 21st Century)

 

From the World Carshare Consortium:  I would like to offer a "thought experiment" with anyone here who may wish to jump in with their ideas. criticism and/or proposals -- or perhaps only to pull up a chair and see what happens in a case like this. The short story is that I would like to see what, if anything, happens with a simple change of title and focus for this group -- the World Carshare Consortium at http//worldcarshare.com + + World Streets on Carsharing at http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/sharetransport/carshare +  Facebook page on carsharing http://www.facebook.com/groups/worldcarshare/ + YahooGroups discussion forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare  -- which for almost 15 years now has been focusing its attention strictly on the varieties of carsharing that are fast multiplying and taking an increasingly important role in the mobility options of people in cities around the world.  Carsharing has a brilliant, in many ways surprising and certainly very different future, which in fact is already well in process.  But there is more to our story than that.

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Brief: Paris - Ambitious mobility plans for economy, efficiency and equity.

Paris: Ambitious mobility plans for economy, efficiency and equity.
This ambitious effort on the part of Paris's mayor and his team is well worth following, even if for some it is may be a bit inconvenient for those not able to easily read in French. The original article appears here. And here in the event is the Google translation. (You may note that this article appears in a journal loved and run by the French Right, the mayor's fierce opponents, so caveat lector.)

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Young Scholars/Future Leaders Fellows Program: Kaohsiung World Share/Transport Forum 2010

The Young Scholars/Future Leaders program organized in association with the inaugural Kaohsiung World Share/Transport Forum provided a highly  innovative and useful component of the 2010 event, which we are keen on build on and extend in the future. To this end, we publish here today background information taken from the original  event, as a stepping stone in the direction of bringing the entire program up to date and making it one of the key building blocks of the still to be decided 2013 World Forum.  More to follow on this shortly but for now read on here.

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