Op-Ed: Why things are not good for UK citizens — and how to make them better

* Click here for latest daily postings to and from World Streets on Facebook

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Do It Like The Dutch & Danes: Guide To Becoming A Bike Friendly Mecca

Why are some European cities cycling mad? And how can other cities copy their infrastructure? ECF spoke to Kalle Vaismaa, co-author of the book “Best European Practices in Promoting Cycling and Walking”. (Article source: European Cyclists’ Federation ECF)

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World Streets actively supports the International Day of the Girl

11 October 2012: World Streets supports the full and active citizenship, rights and participation of women of all ages in every home, corner, school and  street of every city and every nation of this planet. See PLan International for today's announcement and a first round of background information on this important day.

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World Transport Policy & Practice – Vol. 18, No. 4

The three articles in this Autumn 2012  issue make an important contribution to transport de­bate and point clearly to different ways of viewing some of the key public policy issues currently underpinning transport and urban planning thinking.

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Op-Ed: Why things are not good for UK citizens -- and how to make them better

- By John Whitelegg

We are not doing very well in the UK on things that matter to most people.  We are the 6^th richest country in the world and yet we come very near the bottom of most rankings on things like child poverty, inequality, pensioner poverty, excess winter deaths, teenage pregnancy, NEETS, percentage of electricity generated from renewables, levels of cycling and quality of public transport.  None of this is necessary and it is safe to assume that local and central government did not set out to achieve these poor quality outcomes.  So what is going on?

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The "Real Economy" vs. the Financial Economy (And then I rembered Laputa)

The Greek Formula One idiocies of late -- see http://goo.gl/E64Tp for ample backgrouknd there -- have me asking myself, on what planet do these good souls and their ilk live? Or think  they live?  And then I remembered Laputa.

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Paratransit for mobility impaired persons in developing regions

- Now available at http://www.globalride-sf.org/paratransit/Guide.pdf

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Third International Share/Transport Forum - Jiaozuo China

This International Forum, the third in the series which got first underway in 2010 in Kaohsiung and met  again in Changzhe in 2011,  is once again, this year on 21/22 September in Jiaozuo China, bringing together leading thinkers and sharing transport practitioners from  the People's Republic of China, Asia and the world, to examine the concept of shared transport (as opposed to individual vehicle ownership or established forms of public transport) from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with a strong international and Chinese-speaking contingent.

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World Streets on Facebook (Check it out)

Why consider joining one or more of these focus groups on Facebook?  Well, because for better of worse social media are here to stay, and warts and all Facebook definitely has its uses -- as we are showing with these fora.  So put aside your reservations and at least check in and have a look for yourself. (And if you don't want to sign in as an identifiable human being, this is no problem. Sign in as your dog (even if you don't have one) and no one will be the wiser for it.)

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Low Carbon Twin Cities Conference 2012 in Tainan : Expanding Horizons with New Mobility Partnerships

* Click here for full presentation    twin-cities-17sep12

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Support the "Getting Around" collaborative project

We have no money gentlemen, so we shall have to think.
– Ernest Rutherford, on taking over Cavendish Laboratory in 1919

If you wish to make a contribution to support the Getting Around: : Cities, Complexity, Indolence and the Sliver Arrow of Equity book project and two-year  research and testing program behind it, here is how to transfer funds to support this work:

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World Streets Reader (First edition)

Here please find a selection of articles taken from the archives of World Streets, each of which reporting briefly on a concept or event that I as editor and author consider to be worthy of the attention of our several thousand international readers. I am reviewing these for ideas, materials and clues in support of a book in progress under the title "The Third Transportation Revolution: Cities, Indolence, Complexity and the Equity Agenda". More will be posted on this project shortly.

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Thinking about Equity-Based Transport Systems: Get Ready to Embrace Complexity (or Get Off the Bridge)

As is or at least should by now be well known, a transportation "system" is well more than a collection of largely free-standing bits of infrastructure, modes, links, agencies, institutions, operators and more, concerning which decision scan be taken on a piecemeal basis. .  It is in fact a textbook example of a disorganized complex system, or more specifically a vast, chaotic but ultimately manageable ecosystem.  And if it is our ambition -- which it should be -- to construct, or rather reconstruct, our city transport systems into functional high-performing sustainable ecosystems. it can help to build up our understanding of the process in steps.

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Op-Ed: Priority for Public Transport in Tallinn

Priority for Public Transport in Tallinn (Probably the Best)

- Eric Britton, 06. september 2012 01:00

Op-Ed from today's Estonian Times: http://goo.gl/7gkFJ (in Estonian)

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Does anybody notice anything weird going on here?

Scenario A: Transport in Cities

In 1951 New York city traffic looked like this:

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What do you think the mayor is thinking about when you walk through the door this morning to talk to her about that very important transport issue?

When I or anyone else with a transportation issue burning in the front of our brain, walk into City Hall  to talk to the mayor about the important topic which bring us into her office, here is what we implicitly assume is her dominant preoccupation behind these exchanges:



If only it were so.

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CFDs: Get the nose of the camel under the tent.

Every day is a great day to take a few cars off the road and think about it

Once a year in mid-summer we wind up the World Car Free Day Collaborative site at www.worldcarfreedays.com as we have done yearly for the last 15 years to get it ready to serve as an information source and contact tool for cities and others who are considering events in the second half of the year.  Most notably among these the numerous Car Free Day events are those that tend to cluster around the end of September, including the annual European Mobility Week and its multitude of CFDs, most but not all of which in Europe, which you can check out for yourself at http://www.mobilityweek.eu/home/.

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On Building New Mobility Ecosystems: The mayor has some questions

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I understand Professor that you are preparing a major public address on new transport ideas for our city tomorrow. My staff tells me you are calling it "On Building New Mobility Ecosystems". Now that sounds quite intriguing, but can you tell me in a few words that you have in mind to talk to us about?

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A Mayor's-Eye View of Sustainable Transportation: Politics as the art of the possible

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, a 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 uniformly 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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Editorial: Why are we losing the sustainability wars? In transport, in cities, in our lives? Because we are . . .

Consider these irrefutable unpleasant truths:

There may be successes and improvements in this project, in this  place, in this way, but when we look at the bottom line -- i.e., the aggregate impact of our transport choices and actions on the planet  -- it is clear that we (that's the collective "we" including all of us who have in some way committed to or accepted this great responsiblity, this author certainly included) are failing, big time. And if we are frank with ourselves, we can see that this is quite simply because . . .

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