World Streets Monthly – June 2009Welcome to our monthly paper compilation of World Streets for June 2009. As you will quickly see then presentation is pretty rough and a bit cumbersome,. But it's all there and for the rest give us time. More and better will follow.

* * Best way to review June's posting though is to click here - http://tinyurl.com/WS-June **

This document pulls together the content of the 43 contributions posted over the month. It does not contain the comments and discussions, for which you are invited to click to the site. It's easy to do, just click the Read On link at the end of the article you wish to follow up on.

To give you a feel for readership over this period, the following map reports the location of readers who came in on 30 June. A total of 13,064 page loads were registered over the month.

Over the month Streets was visited by users in: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States,

World Streets, a collaborative project of the New Mobility Partnerships.

New Mobility Agenda - The Commons - 8 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France T: +331 4326 1323

New Mobility Partnerships - 9440 Readcrest Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90210 T: +1 310 601-8468

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Heads-up: Keeping up with World Streets

Using LinkedIn to keep up with World Streets

- Paul Minett, Trip Convergence Ltd, New Zealand

This is a practical post with a suggestion. I found that I was not keeping up with World Streets because I do not use the RSS feeds. And I wanted a weekly summary rather than daily emails or the monthly summary. Some people are hard to please!

Using LinkedIn to keep up with World Streets

What I found is that if you join the World Streets Working Group on LinkedIn - a free social/professional networking site -- you can get a daily or weekly (your choice) summary of the World Streets posts sent directly to your email. I use the weekly version to keep up myself.

Here is how you do it:1. Sign in to LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com (or click on the link in item 2)

2. Go to Groups and click on the World Streets Working Group (alternatively just click this link: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=668837.

3. Click the ‘Join Group’ button.

4. You will see that you get options for how often you would like to receive summaries of activity in the group. The way it is set up, all World Streets posts go to this group, and then are summarised for you at whatever frequency you would like. Like something you see there, a single click takes it to you the World Streets site.

An additional benefit of joining the LinkedIn World Streets group is that you can see who else is there, and communicate directly with others there who share this interest.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 07:42 0 Comments

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Media! Carsharing - passion at the wheel (Bilingual edition)

* Click here for a 45 second French (what else?) video on passionate carsharing

But what is this quirky little video doing here?

For starters, this is one of a series of three developed by the Mobizen carshare operator in Paris, based on the theme "C'est (presque) votre voiture" - It's (almost) your car.

There may be a fairly large number of people around the world who have deep knowledge about various parts of the new mobility agenda, and there certainly are many good projects and services which are showing the way, but somehow the bottom line results are simply not there. We continue to live in a high-cost, low-choice, high-carbon world. We are not getting the vital messages across. We are simply not successfully selling our ideas.

We live in an era in which few people are willing to read long papers, never mind books or reports, so no matter how much of these we produce they will never in themselves be enough to get the job done. We have to learn to make far better use of media which is available at our fingertips, to help bring about the cultural change which must lie at the heart of the transition strategy needed to save our planet, our cities, and the quality of our daily lives.

Do you have any good candidates for us? Be sure to share them, perhaps in the Comments section that follows just below.

* * * More on New Mobility Media here. * * *

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 06:29 0 Comments

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Dialogue: Who is going to take the lead?

Who are going to be the main actors leading the transition to sustainable transportation in and around our cities?

This is not entirely self-evident since there are a fair range of what would seem to be possible candidates. However in order to sort this out, it will be important that we first have a realistic understanding of what has been going on up to now. And to say the least, the news is not good.

When it comes to "sustainable transportation" there is out there a rich world of rhetoric, claims, advertisements, notices, media pieces, announcements of projects and events, that taken together can give one the impression that something important, something even transformative is going on. But when you get down to the harsh reality of what is going on at the level of the street, a very different picture emerges.

The sad fact is that after twenty years of talk, and, it has to be said, a rising crescendo of messages and even actions, the sad news is that every day in just about every city on this planet, traffic is getting worse, the amount of scarce resources consumed continues to escalate, the injustices extended, the basic economics ever less viable, and the environmental cost steadily mounting and edging toward climate meltdown. We are failing to meet the challenge. It would be exceptionally weak-headed of us to be optimistic under these circumstances.

We all know that something must be done and that it should be done without further delay. However it is far less clear who is going to do what under these circumstances. The fact is that despite all of the conferences, reports, talk about treaties, and even pioneering projects and accomplishments here and there, there is a continuing leadership vacuum. Who is going to fill it?

The goal of this week’s open dialogue is to ask you for your views on this. Later we can build on your feedback and ideas in older to develop a broader analysis, but what better way to start than to ask the hundreds of knowledgeable people who check into World Streets every day for their own views.

To get us started on this, you will find your left a small reader poll asking for your views on this. In addition, you will find is always that there is space for comments right below here, and we invite your contributions with real interest.

Here are our candidates. If we missed anyone important, please let us know.

* International organizations* NGOs* Scientific/academic community* National governments

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* Industry and private sector* Cities and local government * Local associations/transport, environment, etc activists/groups* The media* Children, schools * Foundations* World Streets* You – as a citizen, parent

The word is now to you.

The editor

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 05:38 0 Comments

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Bad News Dept: Law requires disabled people to wear signs (Indonesia)

Jakarta – June 28, 2009, The Straits Times

"Lawmakers voted unanimously this month to demand disabled people wear signs announcing their condition so motorists won't run them down as they cross the street."

Indonesia's traffic nightmare

Jakarta – June 28, 2009, The Straits TimesNEW laws requiring disabled pedestrians to wear traffic signs have met with frustration and derision in Indonesia, where in the eyes of the law cars have taken priority over people.

The laws will do nothing to improve road safety or ease the traffic that is choking the life out of the capital city of some 12 million people, and serve only to highlight official incompetence, analysts said.

Within five years, if nothing changes, experts predict Jakarta will reach total gridlock, with every main road and backstreet clogged with barely moving, pollution-spewing cars.

That's too late for the long-awaited urban rail link known as the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), which has only just entered the design stage and won't be operational until 2016 at the earliest.

'Just like a big flood, Jakarta could be paralysed. The city's mobility will die,' University of Indonesia researcher Nyoman Teguh Prasidha said.

Instead of requiring level footpaths and ramps, lawmakers voted unanimously this month to demand disabled people wear signs announcing their condition so motorists won't run them down as they cross the street.

Experts say the new traffic law is sadly typical of a country which for decades has allowed cars and an obsession with car ownership to run rampant over basic imperatives of urban planning.

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'It is strange when handicapped people are asked to carry extra burdens and obligations,' Institute of Transportation Studies (Instran) chairman Darmaningtyas said.

'The law is a triumph for the automotive industry. It's completely useless for alleviating the traffic problem.' The number of motor vehicles including motorcycles in greater Jakarta has almost tripled in the past eight years to 9.52 million. Meanwhile road space has grown less than one percent annually since 2004, according to the Indonesian Transport Society.

'Traffic congestion is like cancer,' Institute for Transportation and Development Policy specialist Harya Setyaka said. 'This cancer has developed over 30 years as Jakarta begins to develop haphazardly beyond its carrying capacity.' A 2004 study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency found that traffic jams cost Jakarta some 8.3 trillion rupiah (822 million dollars) a year in extra fuel consumption, lost productivity and health impact. -- AFP

- - -Thanks to Sudhir Gota of the CAI-Asia Center, Manila, Philippines for this heads-up.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 16:07 3 Comments

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Profiles: Guidelines for submittals

Preparing a World Streets Leadership Profile

We welcome well written articles that report on outstanding groups and programs dealing with

problems and solutions in our chosen sector, looking out for tools and approaches that have potential very broad, hopefully universal application. Probably the best point of reference to guide your submittal is the tone and content of Streets itself. Beyond that considering authors are invited to check the contributor notes here.

It's a big world out there -- and as you know are there are literally thousands of groups and programs, each doing their bit to advance the sustainability agenda in our sector. If for instance you simply scroll down on the left menu to our listing of hot links to key organisations and programs working in our area, you will see more than a hundred of them listed here. And if you click to our Knoogle New Mobility knowledge base, you will see that we have scanned and included more then twelve hundred. And you know others yet.

Profile subjects:

Against this rich backdrop, we are inviting World Streets Profiles on and from selected organizations and programs around the world whom we regard as important players in the push toward sustainable transportation, sustainable cities and sustainable lives, and about whom we figure our readers will want to know more. Some of these profiles will report on the work, accomplishments and offerings of international organizations and NGOs, others regional or cooperative programs, outstanding projects, and yet others quite local activities that nonetheless to our mind represent interesting models for study and possible replication in other places. Activist university, research and specialized consultancy groups will not be immune to our interest either.

And yes, we shall also from time to time be profiling private sector groups whom we see as potentially part of the solution. There is certainly wide scope for profiles where there is evidence of their strong commitment to the sustainability agenda. But at the same time, dear reader, be sure that we will not be doing any greenwashing in these pages. No time for that.

In short we are looking for reliable information and inspiration for the hundreds of readers coming to Streets each day from more than 40 countries around this troubled planet. We want them to come away from their read of your profile pleased to know more about you and your work, and better yet with a few ideas about some things that they might now be able to look into or get to themselves.

Profile content:

A typical profile runs anywhere from 300 to 3000 words. However please bear in mind that you probably will have the reader's full attention no more than five to ten minutes. (At least not for the first piece that will be placed on line. There is place for links to more for those who wish to dig deeper.)

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You certainly have figured this out for yourself, but let's just for the record run down the list of the kinds of things that our readers expect to see covered in a profile:• Who you are• What you do• How you got started• How you do it• Why you do it• How you pay for it• How, if at all, do you work with others• Where to turn for more background and details on your work, possibly useful tools and reports, accomplishments, etc• What you intend to do in the future

And if you have any good graphics or photos that help the reader to get a better feel for your project, that can be very useful.

The idea is for our authors to be collegial and frank with their peers. So share with the reader too some of the outstanding lessons you learned, possibly at times a bit painfully, through your hands-on experience, just in case the reader is interested in trying or replicating all or some part of your approach. Your counsel as to potential problems, bottlenecks, and things to avoid/provide in advance for will be precious. And if you have at any point run into problems and had to change course, back-peddle or otherwise figure out how to cope, I am sure that our readers will be grateful to hear about this as well. They have to know how hard it is . . . but also to understand that with adequate preparation, monitoring, adaptability, energy and brains on their part it can be done.

From a reader perspective:

Bearing in mind that our readers are smart people coming from many countries around the world and with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience, we try to provide for them articles which are highly readable, informative, and which look at whatever it is from their perspective.

We invite you to start by considering our readers and what they generally are looking for when they come to Streets. Information and inspiration in about equal parts I would say. And if possible all that to be written in an engaging way, bearing in mind that they are busy people and there is a lot of competition for their time and attention. Bear in mind too as you draft your piece that your readers come from many different places, live and work often in very different cultures, and more than half do not have English as their first language, meaning that we really do try to avoid too familiar usage, insider jokes, and slang.

Questions? Suggestions? Nominations? This is the place to come. Write, call or Skype to . . .

Eric Britton, Editor| editor@worldstreets.org | +331 4326 1323 | Skype ericbritton || 8/10, rue Joseph Bara | 75006 Paris | France |

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 05:50 0 Comments

Friday, June 26, 2009

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Profiles: Shared Space Institute (Netherlands)

Sharing Knowledge on Shared Space- Sabine Lutz, Shared Space Institute, Drachten the Netherlands

On June 23 a stunning article was posted on World Streets, by Paul Barter, of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the University of Singapore. He refers to experiments with shared space or ‘naked streets’ which have drawn considerable public attention in recent years. Indeed they have. From 2004 – 2008 seven European partners from five countries have been sharing knowledge on Shared Space.

It takes shared space to create shared understanding

In the Netherlands, since February 2009 the Shared Space Institute is operational, as one of the project’s tangible results. On June 10th 2009 the Institute had its official opening. The institute is dedicated to further exploring and applying the Shared Space principles. What do they teach us about the ins and outs of successful public spaces, and what changes need to be made to maintain them? And perhaps even more important: what does the Shared Space concept teach us about wealth and health of the people living there?

What does ‘Shared Space’ mean, and why do we think it’s needed?

Over the past decades, traffic objectives and traffic legislation have determined the way in which public spaces were designed. This was meant to improve traffic flows and traffic safety. But it was at the cost of the quality of the public spaces and the living environment of people. And it was also at the cost of the personal conduct in public, and the professional capacities of those who are responsible for public spaces.

In contrast to current practice, Shared Space strives to combine rather than separate the various functions of public spaces. By doing so, the quality of public spaces will be improved, and responsible behaviour will be evoked. So, when designing spaces, Shared Space relies on information from the surroundings to guide road users' conduct, instead of forcing them to strictly obey to traffic rules and signs. When there is a primary school, we don’t want to hide it behind fences and sign posts. Instead, we extend the school yard out into the street. We think that car drivers are not stupid. If they can see children playing in the streets, they will reduce speed and drive as careful they possibly could.

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We need space for traffic and space for people

Of course, this does not mean that rules will be entirely superfluous. Without rules of the road, some well meaning drivers would drive slowly, others would drive quickly, believing correctly that they were doing so safely, and still others would drive quickly but not as safe as they thought they were. Therefore, Shared Space makes a clear distinction between traffic areas and those spaces, which should serve as people space and thus must invite to behave socially. In his article from Tuesday, June 23, 2009 on http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/, Paul Barter very clearly pointed out the characteristics of these areas.

Both of them, roads and motor ways on the one hand and streets on the other, are depending on one another. Only if there is a suitable network for fast traffic, we can design all the other public space for the purposes it’s meant for: all those surprising and interesting things people want to share with each other.

We need to change our minds

But that’s not all. We learned that Shared Space does not only change our thinking about how to handle traffic and how to design our roads and public spaces. It also points out how to tackle the overwhelming power of rules and legislation in politics and in our daily lives. Shared Space gave way to the search for new ways to achieve key improvements in the interrelated areas of road safety, spatial quality, economic prosperity, governance, community capacity and confidence. It stimulates the capacity of communities to be more creative in the way they tackle a broad range of issues. And it also assists politicians, decision-makers, city staff and citizens to 'think outside the box' when looking for ways to address public issues.

Who is working at Shared Space Institute?

We are ten professionals in the Netherlands, experienced in various working fields, such as traffic engineers, urban planning, psychology, process management and geography. We are and connected

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to a worldwide network of researchers, practitioners and citizens. We all share the mission to develop a new way of thinking about public domains.

However, the quality of public space is not a goal in itself. We think it’s important to create ‘people spaces’, places where people can meet, engage and communicate. Space only has quality if it contributes to the quality of life. So, public space is about people and their living environment. And it is also about the quality and justice of society. As a consequence, society itself should be organised in a way that people can act as responsible members of that society.

Shared Research Program

Shared Space Institute is an international knowledge institute, dedicated to knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and knowledge implementation in the field of Shared Space. It is our starting point that public space is the heart of society. Through its quality, public space supports people in their humaneness.

Research and knowledge creation on these aspects are at the heart of our activities. Our approach is integral and cross-sector. This means that:• research should always be carried out in partnerships with stakeholders in society, to make sure that it is based on the demands of society• various disciplines should participate and that research should always be related to every day practice in the working fields• our aim is not to gather theoretical information. Research never should be an aim on itself. If we say ‘research’, we always start from concrete projects• these projects deliver research questions to be answered. The answers on their turn deliver knowledge to be applied in the projects.

Please find more background information about the Shared Space Institute’s research activities on: http://www.sharedspace.eu/en/activities/research

Needless to say, that our staff is ready to support authorities, professionals and interest groups in development and innovation processes. You’re always welcome for a lecture or a field trip to interesting Shared Space locations. For more details about Shared Space – schemes in the Netherlands please refer to http://www.sharedspace.eu/en/activities/projects.

Next steps?

At the moment, we are busy on working out the Shared Space – research program. Our main research question is centered at the cross roads of the knowledge domains as illustrated in the figure on the right. How are these domains connected to each other, and how do they influence each other? If you improve one of them, what changes does it cause to the others?

Of course, our research will further plunge into projects addressing safety issues, solving community severance, tackling congestion and enhancing economic vitality in streets and public spaces. Our main interest is at developing innovative approaches to the process of planning, designing and decision-making towards new structures for municipal organization and public engagement.

European collaboration

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Perhaps interesting to mention: we would like to apply for European funding to build a partnership in the North Sea Region countries working on new strategies towards balancing rules and ethics to facilitate healthy social and economic organisms. We believe new alliances of public and private stakeholders can provide a better quality of life through a new sense of civility.

Our central result will be to deliver a proved strategy which allows to delegate responsibilities to where they belong. Partners will demonstrate this through sharing management and governance, and forming new alliances between authorities, agencies, networks and individuals. Our target groups are: public authorities, business clusters, research institutes, universities, public support agencies in urban and rural areas, and citizens' organisations. All those who are interested to join the partnership are invited to contact us.To know more:Shared Space InstituteLavendelheide 21 NL 9202 PD DrachtenSabine Lutz - s.lutz @sharedspace.euP: +31 88 0200 475 M: +31 6 83 20 90 78-----Editor's note: Remember this? - The unexpected interview in Groningen: Homage to Hans Monderman

* Click here for 90 second videoRead on: Posted by Eric Britton at 09:47 5 Comments

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Happy Birthday Vélib’ (Oh dear, what’s wrong with you?)

Next month, on July 15th Paris will celebrate the second anniversary of the path-showing Vélib

project. You have seen many different views from many corners of the planet about what is going on here: its perfection, its foibles, its extensions, and more recently news reports that it is about to go into the tank since there are no bikes left. With this in view, we thought we would celebrate this important anniversary with you here on Streets, with a series of visits and conversations in order to give you a State of the Vélib report as it gets ready to move into Year III. To set the stage, here you have our first Happy Birthday message.

Paris, 15 July 2008

Today is the first anniversary of the city of Paris’s highly innovative, much sung public bicycle project Vélib’, which as pretty much everyone by now knows is a contraction of the French words for bicycle (vélo) and liberty (liberté). Over this first year hundreds of thousands of Parisians and visitors have hopped on a Vélib’ and made something on the order of 26 million trips on the streets of this fair city, most of them paying nothing more than a modest subscription fee for what is otherwise a free trip.

There has been a great deal of media coverage and a large number of visitors - and visiting critics. As you can well imagine in a situation where all those people coming from so many places, with such different competences and with so many points of view, there are a wide range of views and opinions about the project, including its high points and shortcomings. These as you will see range wildly from the legitimate to the fanciful.

The purpose of this piece then is to provide you with a sort of Vélib’ FAQ, in which I have attempted to take note of the critical observations passed on through personal contacts, press articles, visiting delegations from a number of countries, newsgroups, blogs, e-mail commentaries, woman on the street interviews, etc., as well as daily use of the system myself. Basically then this is a kvetch or complaint list.

In the commentaries that follow I do not pretend to provide “scientific answers”, although in a number of cases the feedback you will find here does draw on polls, surveys and other more or less scientific compilations. But basically my specialty is pattern recognition -- and so what you see here is my attempt to spot the overall patterns and give you what I hope is a measure reaction to these complaints, questions and claims.

Finally, I want you to know that while I think Vélib’ is a very important project for many reasons, I do not wish to give the impression of defending any aspect of it. This is a new venture and one that is unique and highly innovational. It has many strong points, and things where further work and fine tuning is needed. This kind of open criticism openly discussed, a public critique, is what is needed both here in Paris. And possibly even more so back home if you are thinking about doing a “Vélib’’ of your own.

Now on with the show.

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Eric Britton

Happy Birthday Vélib video

Before you dig in here let me invite you to have a look at a second Happy Birthday Vélib’ piece -- a video by the talented Elisabeth Press of StreetFilms in New York. Elisabeth spent a week in Paris researching her film, and spent enough time riding it to have a good understand of what works, and what works maybe a bit less well.

* Click here to view the 8-minute Happy Birthday video.

Thirty things that are terribly terribly wrong with Vélib’

1. The bikes are too heavy They weigh 22 kg, roughly a third more than maybe your own bicycle. And sure! if your intention is to put it on your shoulder and carry it up five flights of stairs to your apartment, you’re absolutely right -- it’s real heavy. But the fact is that this cycle has been carefully designed in order to do the job that it needs to do. That extra weight turns out to be necessary to provide the full range of support and components necessary for it to do its job. And the necessary robustness -- bear in mind that little bike is going to be ridden by thousands of people of different weights, sizes, cycling skills, etc. over the year. And by and large when you are on the street and peddling away that weight is really no problem (though it can be a drag if you have a steep hill to climb, but you are there for the exercise anyway). In addition the weight and the careful balancing of the bicycle provides good stability, including on the cobblestone Streets which can be a little challenging (see below).

2. Paris is not doing enough to make the city safe for cycling Let’s start by bearing in mind that until now there are very few cities in the world which are “safe enough”. Paris has doubled the number of safe cycling lanes and protection over the last five years, and is adding on the order or 40-50 km. of additional protection each year. In addition, there are the growing number of “slow speed’ projects which are reducing traffic speeds to 30 km/h, and in places, 15 km/h in an extended number of streets and zones. In addition, the city is pushing for a

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“Street Code” (as opposed to the national “road code” which is oriented to highways and high speed areas, which will among other things require that in the case of an incident the drivers of the heavier vehicles are required to prove their innocence– as opposed to the present practice which requires a proof of guilt (far harder to do). Bottom line: Paris is today a safe city for informed and prudent city cyclists. And it is getting safer all the time.

3. Bike lanes are inconsistentThere are two ways of looking at this. Starting from the pure Paris perspective: the streets and sidewalks widths and surfaces here vary enormously from place to place, meaning that it is out of the question to have the sort of unified cycle paths or lanes as will be seen, for example, in the better North American or other out of town leisure cycling projects. This means that there must be a wide variety of strategies for dealing with the opportunities and problems that arise when it comes to protecting cyclists in such radically different environments. So as you cycle Paris you will see a varied network consisting of painted lanes (which they do extremely well , I might add), longitudinal barriers separating bikes from motorized traffic, provision for one way cycling, a variety of ways of separating bikes from pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, careful signage, bike boxes, and more. There are also places in which you have to rough it out, share the road with the traffic. All of which is to say that this is above all a real world environment for “city cycling” and to do it well knowledge and experience helps.(Just like when you drive your Ferrari.)

If by contrast to Paris your city has been laid out with a uniform grid with wide streets and ample space for making a uniform sets of engineered cycle lanes, well go for it. But that will rarely be the case. So you will almost inevitably have to do as they have in Paris and use your noggin. Sorry.

4. Only for young healthy malesIn Paris, something like 40% of all cyclists are female. And you will see plenty of older people on the streets, on Vélib’s or their own bikes. Moreover there is a strong trend – the more cyclists there are on the streets, the safer they become for cyclists. And as this happens, more women and older people will join the happy fray every day.

5. Paris drivers are aggressive and dangerous More folklore than truth to this. This is a fairly common complaint of visitors who have myths in their mind about the French but who have not spent enough time in a bike on the road even in their own city. It is right to the extent that most people who are in temporary control of a couple of tons of hurtling steel and rubber, and in a hurry (and what driver is not?), such drivers and inevitably is going to constitute a menace to smaller, less visible vehicles, such as you or me on a bike. So, as long as drivers can speed, cycling is going to be a slightly risky venture.

But here in Paris if you spend enough time on the streets you will observe that drivers are being tamed. And the key to this is the greatly increased number of cyclists out on the streets today. The cyclists are de facto following the tried and true strategy: “occuper le terrain”, which can be loosely translated as “safety in numbers”. The more cyclists on the street, the safer it becomes. And that already is a strategy.

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6. Can’t find a bike/parking slot:This can be a problem, especially for people who are not accustomed to “working the system”. The odds are that if you try it enough there are going to be occasions when you can’t find a bike in the first (or second) station you go to. Or that if you are in a hurry and show up at your intended destination you may find it full. There are three strategic responses to this two-headed dilemma. The first is to wait. The second is to learn the system, in which event you just head like an arrow to the station you by experience know is more likely to offer what you are looking for (remember with 1451 stations in this small city (105 sq. km) you are unlikely to have to walk or peddle more than five minutes to get to the next station. Simplest of all, you can click button 4 on the Velib station monitor, and then you can with one more click (5) check out the status of all nearby stations for free bikes and parking slots. There are thousands of practiced users of Vélib’, and that’s what they do every day. (All while waiting for better times to come).

7: Can’t even get good information about bike/parking availability.

Yes you can, even if it is not yet perfect. You can if before your trip you check out the couple of web sites that provide you with this information with a single click. The one that I use daily is http://www.parisavelo.net/ (I never leave home without it.). There is also an ‘official” one from the city of Paris at http://www.en.velib.paris.fr/trouver_une_station, and another excellent one is at http://www.unvelovite.com/Velib/

Of course you are not always at your computer, so what can I tell you to help you avoid bike angst. Well, you will see that the map on each Vélib’ station does indeed show the nearest stations, but they do not (yet) provide information on their status. (This already exists in Lyons and there is every reason to think we will be seeing it in Paris.) There is also a still-clunky WAP 1 gizmo that you can use with your mobile phone for which you can find instructions at http://www.velib.paris.fr/actualites/decouvrez_velib/les_stations_velib_sur_votre_mobile. (I for one

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have never had the patience, but that’s just me.)

The final word on this is that the city and the operators are working on it and we are sure to see continuing improvements, both in Paris and in the other leading city projects. In the meantime, develop your knowledge by using it, and you will see that you will use it every day.

8. Many broken bikes at stationsBy my own rough calculation, on average I encounter one bike with a problem per ten or so. In most cases the problem is immediately apparent: a loose chain, flat tire, problem with the steering alignment, maybe something with the seat, and more rarely other less visible problems. For a while there has been a fad to cut off the bike baskets but on the basis of daily visual inspection this fad seems to have calmed. If there is something wrong with your bike the etiquette is that when you leave it off or discover the problem, you crank the seat down and turn it in the opposite direction. Then the next person (and the staff) will know immediately. Mechanical problems come with the terrain, and once again point up why managements and maintenance are the keys to the success of any of these systems.

9. My bike doesn’t work! That probably because you failed to apply the 100% no-brainer start-up test of the regular user. You start by visually inspecting the bike for damage or malfunction. Then you pinch or kick both tires to verify air pressure, pick up the bike and spin the rear wheel, squeeze both brakes, and then adjust the seat to your size – all before flashing your smart card and checking it out. Now this does not guarantee 100% glitch free cycling, but it does 98% or better.

10. Velib’ is not “tourist friendly” – Some tourists credit cards cannot access bikesHey. Reality 1: The system is intended as daily transport for Parisians and not tourists (see below). All bank cards with smart chips work just fine, and Amex too. Otherwise no problem, you should most probably be renting a bike anyway.

11. Bikes are too expensive for tourists who want to use them to stroll through ParisThat’s quite right. If you keep it for an uninterrupted four hour stretch, for example, your bill will quickly run up to 19 Euros. That’s more than it would cast you for a full day if you rent it from a bike shop.

12. They are killing the bike retail business Wrong. More cyclists on the street attract yet more cyclists. The number of people riding their own bikes has roughly doubled over this first year of Vélib’. And while some of these bikes have come out of the attic, others are coming new from the shops. The bike hire, purchase, and maintenance business is doing well in Paris. (But this did not happen by accident.)

13. The stations are not sufficiently visible to cyclists on the move

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This is true. In other cities the stations are more visibly marked, but the Paris authorities decided to protect their built environment and not have aggressive signing or lighting of the stations. There is doubtless room for doing better, but the protection of the beauty of the city has to be a high priority.

14. Bus drivers are aggressive and threateningI don’t observe this in my own cycling here. First of all the drivers are professionally trained, and those in particular who operate on the reserved lanes where cyclists share the right of way with buses and taxis proceed with great caution. I would offer that the onus by and large is on the cyclists (though the taxis drivers could do with better prepping) One nice touch you will see when you get into a bus lane here is that when the bus pulls up behind you to signal its presence, the drivers will ring a bicycle bell. Nice symbol and an agreeable way to share public space.

15 Vélib’ cyclists undisciplined and dangerous.

Performance is uneven here. While I observe that the Parisians by and large are safe cyclists (after all they know the terrain and are not just kidding around), the same is not always true of visitors who may, for lack of prudence or experience on the road, put themselves in the way of trouble. Both the city and the operator of the system are aware that increased efforts and information and education are called for. But it will be up to the tourists to do their part.

16. Vélib cyclists should be obliged to wear helmetsOn the several occasions in which there have been accidents the media and some of the public suggest that helmets should be mandatory. Now, an ample amount of observation and work have been done on this subject such that it has been concluded by a majority of experts with knowledge of city cycling that this is something that should be vigorously encouraged but not mandated by law. Compulsory helmets would mean an end to city cycling as it is widely practiced today in the leading cycling cities and countries (See www.ecoplan.org/library/helmets.pdf for more on this).

17. No bikes at the top of hillsThey do tend to accumulate at the base of the hills since many folks apparently don’t want to pedal or walk their Vélib’ up a mountain (of which there are none in Paris of course but there are inclines that can raise a sweat.) So if you are looking for a bike and unless a nice lot of fresh Vélib’s has just been delivered to your favorite hilltop station, you may want to walk to the base of the hill to find your steed. (That said, the operator and the city have recently come up with a scheme which provides some incentive for getting your bike up to the top f the hill

18. No rear view mirror on bikesRight. And in my view there really should be, but this is not an easy call. In any event, part of being

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a good cyclist is to profit from your unhindered full field of vision, which also requires the ability to look behind both right and left. But then again, not all or tourists or all our new Vélib’ users may have that level of skill. (Moreover we have to bear in mind that one more piece of equipment may not be without its fair share of maintenance challenges.)

19. Vélib’ is not reducing car traffic and pollution.It is, but the calculation is a subtle one and can be carried out really only at a basic conceptual level. As a rough rule of thumb, one survey showed that more than 10% of all trips were reported as substituting for car trips. Thus if there were 26 million Vélib’ trips performed over the year, for an average trip of 4-5 kms. I..e, more than 100 million (polluting cold start, center city) vehicle kms of which 10% or so are substituting for car trips. Ten million vehicle kms-plus is a number, after all.

Beyond that what we are seeing here is a process: as people start to cross over to non-car solutions for their local transport requirements, the car itself slowly begins to become redundant for many city dwellers. Public bicycles are an important part of this conversion process. More use of bikes, of public transportation, of taxis, rental cars. And finally you go over to carsharing and sell that old banger once and for all. Or hang on to it for as long as it makes sense for your out of town trips.

20. They only steal passengers from public transport carriersThis is interesting, and not entirely baseless. However the synergies are not altogether negative . In Paris a bit more than half of all Velib trips might otherwise have been taken by bus or metro . There are however two, and at time quite considerable advantages of this dynamic trade-off. First of all if the Vélib’ user voluntarily takes a bike, it’s because she thinks it is quicker and often more agreeable. And since the transit services of Paris, like may other cities, are often pushed to capacity and beyond, so in good weather at least the Vélib’ option provide better conditions of transit for all those hoping to find a seat on the bus, train or subway. Win-win, as some insist on saying.

21. Bikes take away parking spaces for carsThey sure do, but given that most of those cars carry only one person most of the time, this modal shift is a good thing not only for the city but also for local commerce. People who come into stores by bike or on foot, come more often and, studies show, tend to spend more money for higher quality produce. Not only that, the Vélib’ trip can in most cases in the city be quicker and bring the customer closer to the point of purchase.

22. Bikes steal street space from cars.Yes, that’s right, and so they should. Public bikes need a bit of road space, and if they get what they need it has to be taken from somewhere – that being namely the chaotic street space that is most often used to poor efficiency by high carbon, un-sustainable, high cost (to all concerned), threatening, often dangerous and space-hungry car transport. This needs to be accomplished carefully and with respect to those who up to now have depended on their cars for much or all of the transportation needs. So this needs to be managed as a subtle, strategic process.

23. Bus lanes are too wideThis point has been made on repeated occasions by the adversaries to Vélib’ , and more generally to the new mobility innovations in Paris. The shared lanes are 4.5 metres wide, which is the size required for safe overtaking and worked out through careful negotiations between all the concerned parties.

24. Paris buses not equipped to carry cyclesNo they are not. And most probably given the size of the service area, the availability of public bikes and the density of the public transportation network, this is not a significant option for Paris.

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(But this does not mean that this is something that your city should not at the very least be looking into).

25. Vélib’s do not like cobblestone streets and intersectionsThey do not at all. And if your city has a lot of them you will do well to consider how to work around this problem. In such cases maintenance costs zoom up, and when it rains so too do the accidents. Cobblestones and public bikes are not friends.

26. Too ugly and numerous to position near to historic monuments and plazasThis is weird, but it is a point that has been made by several groups concerned with the protection of the built patrimony environment in Paris. The irony is that while there is plentiful provision for car parking near to these monuments and public spaces, yet for now the Vélib’ stands are required to hide on side streets. This is a situation which surely will not last.

27. Theft and vandalism are threatening the projectThe reported figure is on the order of three thousand bikes stolen or completely trashed in the first year. That’s a lot, but think of it as on the order of 300 per month or ten per day. And that out of 15,000-plus bikes on the road every day. Difficult but surely workable. (This should not be taken as encouraging laxity on your part I you are thinking about a PBS in your city. The vandalism and theft challenge is a real one and an indicator among other things of the level of social peace and inclusiveness in your city. From this respect it is every bit as important as climate and topographic considerations, and of course the quality and extent of safe cycling infrastructure.

28. It’s a “left wing” projectOh dear. This does seem to crop up in certain media from time to time. It’s a pure blue herring. Public bicycle systems are social and environmental systems that correspond to our 21st century need for low carbon, resource-efficient, high amenity life styles. And that’s all there is to it.

29. It is wrong to have street advertisingThis is essentially a pure demagogic position. Each city will have its own policy about outdoor advertising. If a public bicycle project makes use of a partnership of this kind, what is important is to get it right. And the mechanics of that can be quite delicate. That’s for sure.

30. The whole project is just a gadgetThis is a very mature challenge actually. The fact is that the Vélib’ project in Paris, and

indeed in all the other high impact cities with such systems, until now accounts for only a sliver of the total number of trips needed to ensure a healthy economy. But they signal and support an important change to a new way of getting around in cities. And that is at the end of the day probably their major contribution. And BTW, they also work. Including in Paris.

Happy birthday Vélib’. Great going Paris!Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 09:24 4 Comments

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Tell us what you think about World Streets (in 2 lines)

Two boys were playing football in my street this morning. What a wonderful sight. Time to reclaim our World Streets!

Paris. 19 June 2009. See that crowd? - you are there somewhere. One of forty thousand readers of World Streets. On March 2nd, after six months of hard work, we published Vol. 1, No. 1 of the planet’s first independent daily wholly devoted to advancing the sustainable transportation and sustainable cities agenda worldwide.

Now it's your turn. Click here to tell us how we're doing. Two lines will do just fine. Two lines, two minutes, and you have your favorite sustainability daily sitting on your desk tomorrow morning. Fair enough? (And it's sustainable.)

Number visitors signing in to support World Streets: starting 19 June and to this date.

Since Streets opened its doors in March close to forty thousand of you have already dropped in to have a look, joining us from your homes and work places in from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, and the United States, And by way of reminder you will below find a map reporting the origins of the people who checked in this morning.

Glad you are enjoying it, and here is something that you can do for us in turn

We are now trying to figure out how to pay for the whole thing, and while we have received close to two thousand dollars in generous donations from about two dozen subscribers and friends of World Streets over the last weeks in response to our Support Streets campaign, this is far from enough to ensure that we can keep up the work needed to bring this to you in style you want and deserve. Which means that we are now going to have to turn to agencies, foundations and concerned individuals of means for support. And that is where you come in.

So, dear reader, what do we ask of you today? Very simple, take two minutes to pen a couple of

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lines telling us that you think Streets is a valuable public service, signed with your name, affiliation if any, city and country. This will then allow us to approach eventual sponsors and show them that this thing is for real.

Do you think you might do that? Here is an example that came in just this morning from one reader in South Africa:" I really do think that World Streets is the best of all the sustainable transport sites, as the news is updated all the time, always a reason to visit the site.". Gail Jennings, Mobility Magazine, Capetown South AfricaThanks Gail, that’s a fine start and exactly what we were looking for to launch the process. Now let's see what happens.

Click here to send us your message.

Eric BrittonEditor, World Streets

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 05:46 83 Comments

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Battle for Street Space - Part II

Innovations that Expand Public Realm in the Streets

- Paul Barter, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, University of Singapore

Traffic Calming—The First Wave

For several decades there have been efforts to use roadway modifications, such as humps and chicanes, to control motor vehicle speeds on streets whose primary roles are non-traffic ones (Hass-Klau 1990). Such traffic calming began in north-west Europe and by now is familiar almost everywhere.

Early traffic calming tended to focus on streets at the lowest levels of the roadway hierarchy to reinforce the primacy of access and pedestrian activity at that level. More recently, adaptations of traffic calming techniques have been applied to some streets at higher levels of the hierarchy, such as short stretches of shopping streets and the main streets of towns. An early Dutch traffic calming innovation, the Woonerf or “home zone”, involved a complete redesign of urban residential streets to make it clear to motorists that they were guests in a home environment. This was a precursor to the more ambitious shared space experiments.

Tempo 30 Zones (Or “Twenty’s Plenty”)

A variation on traffic calming is to simply signpost very low speed limits, notably 30 km/h (or 20 miles/h). Many European cities now have extensive Tempo 30 zones (Figure 1). Graz in Austria has been a pioneer, with a blanket 30 km/h speed limit over much of the city. Only major roads allow higher speeds of 50 km/h or more. Sweden’s “Vision Zero”, which aims to eliminate road deaths and minimise the effects of the “foreseeable crashes” between pedestrians and motor vehicles, has prompted more Tempo 30 zones in that country.

Shared Space (Or “Naked Streets”)

The shared space approach to streets emerged in the 1990s, pioneered by the late Hans Monderman in towns across the northern region of the Netherlands. Sometimes called “naked streets”, this approach is also seen as a second generation of traffic calming that has been spreading rapidly with trials underway in many countries. Shared space completely overturns the idea that urban road safety depends on predictability and on clearly defining who has the right of way (Hamilton-Baillie 2008). Shared space designs often remove most traffic lights, signs and kerbs. No particular user or movement has automatic right of way. This forces road users (car or truck drivers, bicycle users and pedestrians alike) to proceed cautiously and to negotiate their way forward, mostly through eye contact. Australian innovator, David Engwicht (2006), calls this “safety through intrigue and uncertainty”. If this is difficult to imagine, then the videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/Sharedspace will help.

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Low speeds are both a consequence of and a necessity for this social mode of negotiated motion. In high-speed traffic the human mind is not capable of negotiating with other road users through eye contact. We can only do this at or below about 30km/h. Both crash incidence and the probability of death or injury, even for pedestrians, are very low at these speeds (Shared Space project 2005). Trials have included main streets and intersections in town centres. Surprisingly, travel times hardly suffer because, although top speeds between junctions are much lower, there is much less stopping at intersections.

Even though shared space includes motor vehicles, they become very much part of the public realm at low speeds. Monderman made clear that shared space design is only for the parts of the network that can be designated as public realm. His vision of an expanded public realm includes many surprisingly busy streets. However, it does not include those major arterial roads on which high speeds remain important. These remain traffic space.

Accidental Shared Space

The informal emergence of shared space street dynamics can be seen when pedestrians and/or slow vehicles dominate a street space, leaving motorists little choice but to proceed on a negotiated and cautious basis. This is common in inner urban streets of many developing countries (Figure 2). It can be seen also on the narrow streets of Singapore’s Little India area. Such “chaos” is of course widely lamented, with pedestrians and other road users blamed for indiscipline. Moreover, at times of low pedestrian activity, traffic speeds do rise and crash risk and severity can become very high. However, the imposition of traffic-focused design in such places would often be a mistake. A better option for these streets might be shared space by design rather than by accident.

Bicycle Boulevards/Slow Streets Network

Traffic-calmed “bicycle streets” on which bicycles have clear priority over motor vehicles are common in German cities, among others (Pucher and Buehler 2008). A number of North American cities, notably Berkeley, California, have successfully used bicycle boulevards to enhance their network of safe, low-stress routes for bicycle users. Bicycles enjoy relatively uninterrupted journeys along these streets, whereas motor vehicles often face detours.

Multi-way Boulevards

Surprisingly, it is also possible to create public realm and local access functions on very busy roadways that move a large volume of fast-moving traffic. Multi-way boulevards are one way to do this. The Boulevard Book by Jacobs et al. (2002) highlights their potential and provides guidance on design. The trick this time is to create slow spaces at the edges

Some of the most elegant and successful streets in the world, such as many of the avenues in Paris, are multi-way boulevards. They are typically grand streets that have a central zone that is primarily traffic space. Then there is a tree-lined landscaped zone with walkways. This wide median separates the main traffic lanes from a smaller roadway next to another footway and the building line (Figures 3 and 4). In the best boulevards, this side-access street forms the low-speed public realm where traffic, bicycles and pedestrians can share the space safely. The authors argue that well-designed multi-way boulevards, such as Avenue Montaigne in Paris or the Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona, have good safety records, and the traffic lanes work better than equivalent space on conventional roadways. Many countries in Asia, including India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia, also have a tradition of multi-way boulevards. Some, such as CG Road in Ahmedabad, already work well while

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others could benefit from an effort to ensure low traffic speeds in the service lanes in order to include these lanes and their adjacent medians as part of the public realm.

“Road Diets”

“Road diets” is another innovation that allows public realm to be created with minimal impact on the utility of traffic space. As you may guess from the name, arterial roads have their traffic lanes reduced (and sometimes narrowed). However, a centre turning lane or turning bays are added, often with medians and an expansion of pedestrian and cycling space as well. In many situations, all this can be done without a loss of vehicle capacity.

ReferencesDepartment for Transport (DfT) U.K. March 2007. Manual for Streets http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/ manforstreets

Engwicht, D. 2006. Intrigue and Uncertainty: Towards New Traffic Taming Tools. Creative Communities International (This is an e-book which can be downloaded via http://www.lesstraffic.com/index.htm).

Hamilton-Bailie, B. 2008. Shared space: Reconciling people, places, and traffic. Built Environment 34 (2), 161- 181.

Hass-Klau, C. 1990. The Pedestrian and City Traffic. Belhaven Press, London.

Jacobs, A.B., Macdonald, E. and Rofé, Y. 2002. The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Patton, J.W. 2007. A pedestrian world: Competing rationalities and the calculation of transportation change. Environment and Planning A, 39(4), 928 – 944.

Pucher, J. and Buehler, R. 2008. Making cycling irresistible: Lessons from the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Transport Reviews 28 (4), 495-528. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/01441640701806612

Shared Space project. June 2005. Room for Everyone: A New Vision for Public Spaces. Report of the European Union Iterreg IIIB project ‘Shared Space’. Available via http://www.shared-space.org

Shared Space project. Oct. 2008. Final Evaluation and Results: It Takes Shared Space to Create Shared Understanding. Report of the European Union Iterreg IIIB project ‘Shared Space’. Available via http://www.sharedspace. org

Svensson, Å. ed. 2004. Arterial Streets for People. Report of the ARTISTS Project (Arterial Streets Towards Sustainability). Available via www.eukn.org/urbanmatrix/ themes/urban_policy/urban_environment/La

---Paul Barter is an Assistant Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore where he teaches infrastructure policy, urban policy, transport policy and an introduction to public policy. He has published studies of transport policy in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. His current research interests are in innovation in transport demand management, public transport regulation, and contested priorities in urban transport policy.

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--- This article appeared in the May number of JOURNEYS, a new LTA Academy publication (The Land Transport Authority of Singapore) and is reproduced here with their kind permission and that of the author. We felt that this is such a good survey it deserves wide circulation and international, and we are pleased to provide it here. To view the original article and illustrations, you are invited to click here.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 11:01 0 Comments

A Dutchman looks at the bike renaissance in the Big Apple

Following up on yesterday's Streets peice contrasting (some) biker attitudees in New York and Paris. New York is changing; I have never seen so much cycling on the streets as this spring. Not in an abundance as Amsterdam, but closing in on Paris and London at least.

Paul White and his staff are doing a wonderful job at Transportation Alternatives. When he and I addressed a professional crowd of planners, one of the people present was almost moved to tears when he said that they had been working so long and so hard to achieve something and that now, all of a sudden, it was happening indeed.

Janette Sadik-Khan, the Commissioner for Transport of the City of New York, whom I met at a dinner party during the Bike Film Festival, in the meantime closed off part of Times Square: a wondrous experience.

Many people taking pictures, and I was one of them. Here you can see the impact of this closure to pedestrians. Have a look:

Pascal J.W. van den NoortExecutive Director Velo Mondial

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 09:42 0 Comments

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Mass Bike Rides in Paris – Vive la différence

We were talking bikes a bit back with Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives

in New York City (“Our mission is to reclaim New York City's streets from the automobile, and to advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit as the best transportation alternatives”) about a problem they face when an open conflict flares up occasionally between the organizers of the Critical Mass bike rides (who want to do it freely, i.e., when and where they want, i.e., their way) and the city authorities and the police (Oops!). Paul was asking,” Is there another way?”

Americans often think of the French as being individualists, hot tempered and unruly. Hey, that can happen, but at a time when you in New York are simmering in June, not only from the your local warming but also and far more permanently, consider the story of the mega bike rides in Paris. A bit of a cautionary tale.

If you come to Paris . . .

If you come to Paris with your bike or skates, you will be able to join a mass ride once or twice a week and make a grand swing of the city lasting a couple of hours, and all that in safety and harmony with the city, the police and the public (other than some drivers who can get a bit excited if they have the chance, but we have them under control). You will not be stopped, you will not be warned, you will not be arrested, and you will not be struck or manhandled. But if you are from New York City you may be a bit disoriented and surprised by the way it works here, police and all.

The Paris Friday Night Skate organized by http://www.pari-roller.com is the big event, with up to fifty thousand on line skaters joining the ride, but this note will look at its little brother the mass bicycle rides in this beautiful city. They have a lot in common.

While there is also several weekly bicycle mass rides, the main one is a regular Friday night ride organized by a public group "Paris Rando Vélo". The ride starts at City Hall at 10:00 pm and takes about two and a half hours to cover 20-25 km. An average of 500, 600 cyclists participate in the summer, half that number in the winter months.

How it all started

The bike mass first took shape in 2000 after a major transport strike which had the effect of bringing a lot more cyclists onto the streets. An organizing group – which later formed an “Association” (a main form of organizing and registering community and public interests activities in France) took shape and their first step was to meet with the Prefect of Police to report on their

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intentions and to ensure that they were in full compliance with the law.

The police said OK, but you have to organize and police yourselves (having run into some problems and manpower requirements with the much bigger Friday night skating mass ride for which after a rough start beginning in 1995, eventually came to be have good police, emergency and city services support. But such support ties up resources so the Prefect insisted that the cyclists would have to do their own policing (We can do the skaters in another letter from Paris for you.)

So the event is entirely self-organized , with the Association providing a couple of dozen staff members as monitors, with a handful leading to way to stop traffic at all intersections and the rest simply keeping an eye on and herding and when needed lending a hand to anyone who may get into a bit of trouble. Paris Rando Vélo also organizes private rides, so if you come to Paris with a bunch of friend and want to do a bike tour of your own, you will find their full coordinate at the end of this short piece.

Both mass events are encouraged by City Hall and the elected officials, who see them as good for Paris and good for Parisians. The police are apparently having a second look about possibly providing further backup, but with or without it the Paris bike mass works.

Cycling in cities: It is, in fact, “One more Convenient Truth”.

Lessons for New York from the Paris experience over these last years? Hard to say what these might be Paul because the basic cultures are so different, but here are a few thoughts that come to mind:

1. Transportation professionalism. If you want to change something in the transport sector, you better be a pro. While French cyclists can be as self-centered and aggressive as anywhere in the world, their success has come through taking off the hard edge and coming in as a responsible community group that can perform -- they have found that it is more effective to organize, prepare, contact and negotiate than to engage in street warfare with the authorities.

2. Iron discipline: Given the complexity, the delicacy of the transportation metabolism of a city – even at 10:00 on Friday nights – there must be absolute discipline for both the route and the timing. Nobody likes surprises, including those who will have to carry the ball if you drop it.

3. Be there or be square: Numbers count and so does regularity. Everyone should be accustomed to you being out there when announced and start to see you and the event as part of the normal city landscape. And of course if you ever find yourselves at odds with the authorities it certainly helps to have fifty thousand voters smiling and riding right behind you. Numbers talk

4. Have your man in City Hall: It really helps to have your man in City Hall (In Paris it’s Denis Baupin, who is vice-mayor, a Green and a cyclist himself. And he is committed). And there is no doubt that a great key is to have the mayor on your side as well (which is the case with Mayor Delanoë here). If your guy is just there for the odd photo op, get rid of him and find yourself someone with real commitment, day after day after day.

5. Be your own good cop: The ability to do the monitoring and self-policing work yourselves is a big plus. Perform with discipline and the authorities come around. They may have to bite their lip, but they will become part of the solution

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6. Communicate like a winner: Reaching out to the press and the media, and in the process getting your main message across. That being about winning, not about either fighting, losing or raw deals (even if that is also true for now).

A final thought from this side of the Atlantic has to do with self confidence and steadfast determination. (Am I starting to sound like your grandmother?) Cycling – and mass cycling events, well organized, without a chip on your shoulder and coordinated with the community as a whole – is a part of the process of solution to the pressing problems of transport, the economy and quality of life in all our cities, New York included. Cycling can show the way for the rest.

* * *More on Paris Rando Vélo

The website for Paris Rando Vélo, the organizers, is here, complete with photos and videos (and of course in French). If you click here you can follow along with a typical Friday night ride . You will not see a great deal of violence.

Here is the plan for next Friday's ride: 21 kilimoeters for a leisurely two hour ride with a water brreak in one of Paris's parks. Coming?

Paris Rando Vélo09 rue Lavandiere St Opportune Paris, 75001 FranceTel. +336.60.64.20.20

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Battle for Street Space - Part I

Earning a Public Space Dividend in the Streets

- Paul Barter, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Abstract: Experiments with shared space or “naked streets” have captured imaginations and considerable media coverage in recent years. Most of the excitement stems from surprise that streets without kerbs, road markings or signage can work well and achieve “safety through uncertainty”. This paper looks at another equally important insight from shared space.It focuses on a series of innovations that, like shared space, re-arrange the roles of streets in new ways to yield a “dividend” of expanded urban public realm, with little or no loss of transport utility. Such a space dividend should be especially welcome in dense cities that are both congested and short of public space.

Introduction

What are streets and roadways for? An obvious answer is traffic movement. But that is clearly not the whole story. A second role is to allow the reaching of final destinations— the role we call “access”. Thirdly, streets can be valuable public places in their own right. In addition, moving high-speed motor vehicles differ enormously from movement by low-speed, vulnerable modes such as bicycles. Unfortunately, speedy motor traffic movement and the other roles of streets are in serious conflict. For almost a century, the tension between these roles has been at the heart of debate over street design (Hass-Klau 1990; Jacobs et al. 2002). This article reviews emerging resolutions to this tension.

The Battle for Street Space

The essence of a street is that it serves all these roles simultaneously—providing for traffic movement and access, and as public space for urban activities. However, mainstream roadway management has spent many decades seeking, like Le Corbusier, the “death of the street”. It tends to turn everything between kerbs into “traffic space” where motor vehicle movement is the design priority (Patton 2007).

Motorised traffic, slow modes and pedestrians are strictly segregated in both space and time. The role of streets as “public realm” has been largely restricted to the pavements (sidewalks) and to pedestrian zones. Most cities are desperately short of attractive public space and space for the networks needed by the gentle but vulnerable modes such as walking and cycling.

Since the 1930s, traffic engineers have routinely classified every roadway in a hierarchy according to the degree to which it serves either traffic movement or access. Major arterials and expressways which are at the top of the hierarchy are managed primarily for maximum vehicle mobility. Any

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access functions are carefully limited to contain “friction” with the mainstream traffic. Only streets at the lowest level of the hierarchy are used mainly for access. Furthermore, the planning process often seeks to remove as much activity as possible (and hence, the “public space” role) from roadways and their vicinity. The influential UK report of 1963, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, reinforced the idea that segregation was essential (Hamilton-Baillie 2008).

The roadway hierarchy has no place for streets that serve both traffic and multiple other purposes (Svensson 2004). Yet, traditional urban streets and main streets remain ubiquitous. They provide (inadequately) for both access and mobility and are sites of perennial conflict. Such conflict is especially obvious in the heavily used streets of many dense Asian cities. The conventional traffic engineering approach offers little guidance for such multi-role streets (Svensson 2004).

Expanding Public Realm without Evicting Motor Vehicles

Recently, a series of promising street management innovations has emerged that re- assert in new ways the multi-purpose nature of the street. (See Box Story “Innovations that Expand Public Realm in the Streets”.) They offer ways to increase the public realm without removing the motor vehicles or seriously undermining the utility of the motorised traffic system. Does that sound too good to be true?

These innovations exploit common insights and principles. First, they involve making a strong distinction between “traffic areas” or “highway” and public space or the “public realm” (Shared Space project 2005). Traffic areas are the realm of conventional traffic engineering where high-speed motor vehicle movement is primary, with its flow carefully segregated from slower users like pedestrians and cyclists.

Second, some of this redefined “public realm” can be shared. It includes new spaces designed for the peaceful co-existence of public place activities, slow movement by vulnerable modes as well as motor vehicles, especially those seeking access to the vicinity. The key to such co-existence lies in keeping speeds low, ideally to no more than about 30 km/h (Shared Space project, 2005). Low speeds mean that motor vehicles need not be excluded but those present will mainly be making access movements or on the “last mile” (or the first) of their trips.

Third, these innovations shift the boundary between public realm and traffic space, so that a surprising amount of what we now think of as traffic space becomes part of the low-speed public realm. In shared spaces and in other slow zones, such as Tempo 30 zones and bicycle boulevards, whole streets and intersections are converted to public space. In multi-way boulevards, public realm includes everything from the building line to the outer edge of the central, high-speed traffic lanes. This newly expanded public realm serves local motor vehicle access, slow-mode movement, public space roles and sometimes some through-traffic (with low priority and at low speed). Only the high-speed traffic movement is excluded and kept within traffic space.

Fourth, a key design goal is that both the public realm and traffic space should work better by being kept distinct (Shared Space project 2005). Cities still need high-speed traffic space of course, just as some pure pedestrian space must also remain. But a surprising amount of shared public realm could be reclaimed without diminishing total traffic capacity. The key is that most of the expansion of the public realm envisaged here would take over traffic space that does not work very efficiently anyway. For example, the capacity of many of today’s motorised traffic lanes is reduced by turning movements, kerbside drop-offs, parking, loading and other street activities. After transforming such spaces into public realm, the remaining traffic space can be re-designed more thoroughly for its traffic function. Moreover, the new public realm retains some traffic function, albeit at low speed,

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as a safety valve at times of extreme congestion.

A high percentage of traffic volume in most cities is carried by roads at the top of the roadway hierarchy. Much of the remaining traffic is in fact short-distance traffic, or is on the first or last “mile” of a longer trip, or is circling for a parking spot. Such traffic does not need high speeds. In fact, a slower environment is more appropriate for access movement. Furthermore, although public realm requires very low peak speeds, the approaches discussed here also usually reduce the need for stopping and starting, so that average speeds and travel times are often little changed. Therefore, reclaiming such space as public realm has less impact on traffic performance than one would think based purely on the percentage of traffic space “lost”.

Expanding the low-speed public realm would also allow us to be much more tolerant of a diverse range of small, vulnerable vehicles that currently do not fit easily into our transport systems. These include bicycles, in-line skates, skateboards, kick scooters, wheelchairs and many other “Personal Mobility Devices”.

Barriers to Change

As with most innovations, change will take more than a simple policy decision. In most countries, roadway management practices are deeply embedded in institutions, their missions, objectives, performance-measures and boundaries of responsibility between agencies; in professional guidelines, codes and design standards; and in traffic rules and road user education.

Fortunately, little change is needed in conventional roadway management when it is applied to its appropriate domain i.e. the highspeed arterials and highways. It is only within an expanded public realm and at its boundaries that drastic change is called for. Standard practice must no longer apply to such spaces. Level of service (LOS) has no place here. Nor do conventional approaches to road safety, such as removal of “fixed hazardous objects”. Roadways that form part of the shared public realm should not resemble highways despite the presence of motor vehicles. Design principles for such streets, including signage and road markings, must be different from those for traffic space.

The public realm of streets needs a whole new set of procedures, guidelines and metrics of success. More research is needed to develop them. This is beginning to happen through experimentation in many countries (Shared Space project 2008; Hamilton-Baillie 2008; Jacobs et al. 2002). The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom have revised their guidance manuals on street design (e.g. DfT 2007). Traffic engineers will need to adapt their problem solving to the special challenges of designing shared public realm. They will need to collaborate more with urban design professionals and urban planners, who will also need to take more interest in the streets that they have long neglected.

Conclusion:

This article has provided a quick review of promising new ways to reconcile movement, access and place-making within our precious urban rights of way. New public space is gained through including low-speed access movement by motor vehicles within the public realm. It is this “public space dividend” that has been my focus. It may be too soon to tell if these ideas can deliver on their promise. We may only find out by trying them out.

-----This article was first published in the May edition of JOURNEYS, an Academy publication of the Land Transport Authority of Singapore(LTA). We thought that many of our readers might not have

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picked it up, so we are most pleased to reprint here with their kind permission and that of the author.

Paul Barter is an Assistant Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore where he teaches infrastructure policy, urban policy, transport policy and an introduction to public policy. He has published studies of transport policy in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. His current research interests are in innovation in transport demand management, public transport regulation, and contested priorities in urban transport policy.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 06:04 0 Comments

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Satoshi Fujii: Think your way to travel less

The most effective target is car users, and the most important point is to provide an opportunity to think their way to travel less. For achieving environmentally sustainable society, various types of pro-environmental behavior to reduce CO2 emission are believed to be called for. These include: adjusting the temperature of air-conditioning, turning off lights and electronic appliances as often as possible, and . . . the reduction of car use.

Among various pro-environmental behaviors that people can perform in daily life, car-user-reduction behavior is known to be the most effective option. Yearly CO2 reduction by reduction of car use for 10 minutes a day (588 kg;/year) is around 20 times greater than adjusting the thermostat by 1 degree through the year (32 kg/year), and around 300 times greater than the one resulting from turning off a TV (32 kg/year).

However, this “fact” is not well known to drivers. Therefore, their pro-environmental behavior would often be inefficient in terms of CO2 reduction, even though they were to be highly motivated to reduce such greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, practical measures to promote people’s voluntary behavior change to reduce car use are strongly called for in environmental policy making.

In order to reduce car use, many developed countries including European countries, Australia and Japan have implemented mobility management. Mobility management focuses on attempting to change travel behaviour using communication.

A typical mobility management communicative measure is a travel feedback programs (TFP). In the TFP, participants receive information designed to modify behaviour. Such feedback would be effective because it induces behavioural awareness, an essential element in modification.

This feedback may also prompt participants to increase their knowledge of specific methods for modifying their travel behaviour. A meta analysis of effectiveness of TFPs shows that about 20% car use has been reduced on average for those who participated in the programs.

This substantial effectiveness of such communicative measures implies that people can change their behavior for the purpose of contributing to public wellbeing. It was also implied that a reason for them not to change their travel behavior in the past would be just a lack of opportunity to think their way to travel less. Thus, a program to provide such an opportunity to think their way to travel can have a substantial effect in reduction of car use.

Transport policy makers, and environmental policy makers, need to give attention to the fact that car use reduction is the most effective approach for CO2 reduction from daily life, and mobility management such as TFPs offers a promising method for significant car use reduction.

---- Satoshi Fujii is professor of psychological-based transportation planning research in Kyoto University and director of the Japanese Conference on Mobility Management.

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Drive Train Technology vs. New Mobility

- Chris Bradshaw, Ottawa, Canada

The real efficiency in transportation will come from social innovations, or should I say, return to social practices. As a former carshare provider, I consider sharing to be mankind's oldest technology. "Technology?" Yes, because it takes some invention to get it to work so that it is sustainable -- so that it doesn't self-destruct.

When sharing occurs on a small scale -- within the family or between neighbours and friends -- it needs little technology other than people being kind and attentive to a small number of others. Simple individual memory keeps track of favour and payback. Many cars are shared on this informal scale.

When it occurs at a larger scale, more formality is necessary. And there is a role for electronic/communications technology and formality of roles. Who owns the cars? Who makes sure they are roadworthy? Who makes sure each user pays his rightful share of the common costs? Who decides whether rules on access are being followed.

More complicated? Yes, but also more flexible and more powerfully efficient. The informal method can only handle maybe three drivers, and what happens when two of them want the vehicle for the same time slot?

Formal sharing can handle the 20-60 users that currently is the rule, and that is for a boutique market that hasn't yet led to land-use reforms that will squeeze out distance for all people's trips. It is also before we get advanced carsharing in which several members going the same way simultaneously can share (trans-seat,' see next), and at the destination, the car is released for another route and driver, rather than sitting idle, thanks to each leg of the trip being separately reserved.

Our suburbs and our competitive consumption patterns ("I have more/better 'stuff' that you.") have done a great deal to make sharing a dirty word.

People have been coached by champions of consumer growth to protect their privacy, no matter how lonely that makes them. And how expensive it is to acquire so much stuff, most of which is not the right model for the buyer, is under-utilized, and is ineptly maintained? People drive cars alone not just because they want fast, no -wait transportation; they also are buying privacy (and if many other people are seeking the same on the same section of road at the same time, the no-wait criterion will vanish). Many, much of the time, don't even want to share a ('their') car with other members of the household.

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But we are seeing with the internet that people who are guarded in their dealings with neighbours and friends are quite open with complete strangers in the anonymous world of the internet. Formal carsharing uses this propensity to provide essentially anonymous sharing, mediated by a computer and its service organization. My concept of transit, which I have dubbed "trans-seat," uses shared vehicles to allow this sharing to expand from consecutive to simultaneous, but without the ridesharing experience which tries to create an instant community, but soon becomes 4-7 people plugged into personal MP3 players and phones.

It seems that people are more keen on being open to strangers when they aren't trapped into a repetitive situation. This is the market which "trans-seat" will try to tap, making it a kind of sharing between ridesharing and transit. With each seat accessible to the outside via its own door, there will not be any need for sharing physical space inside the vehicle. There will also be no "standing" area -- either you have a seat or you are not a passenger (no second-class patrons).

Reservations will also be possible, so that a trip across town via several vehicles, for a small fee, can be seat-guaranteed (including a bicycle seat) for each 'leg' of the trip.

The 'trans-seat' vehicle's driver, another member going somewhere, but who meets higher driver standards, will get a break on his travel fees for doing the extra chore of piloting (although not going off his route, as those accessing a seat will walk to a 'pod' -- pedestrian-oriented depot -- on the nearest arterial on their own (taxis and valet carsharing/rental will still do the door-to-door thing).

These are some of the elements of sharing in transportation that I have been thinking about. They are all intended to squeeze out all the extra metal and space that are not productive. That re-establishes walking as the primary mode for neighbourhoods, transit and 'trans-seat' for inter-neighbourhood travel in cities, and common-carriers (bus, train, boat, plane) for the rarer long trips.

There won't be much room for the personal car, except in museums. If we get it right, people will find more freedom and enough privacy to make them wonder what was it they saw in having, maintaining, storing, and earning money to transform public thoroughfares and semi-public parking lots into private spaces, especially when they have to pay the piper for the privilege.About the author: Chris Bradshaw retired from city & regional planning in 1996, and co-founded Ottawa's carsharing company, Vrtucar in 2000. He has been an advocate for walking and pedestrian rights for 30 years. In retirement, he is championing a society-wide transition to a second-generation version of carsharing (integrating car-sharing, taxis, ridesharing, car-rental, and delivery). He lives 'car-lite' in downtown Ottawa with his wife of 40 years.

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Thursday, June 18, 2009

WHO on Road Safety: 'We are responsible for our future'

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday its first global report on road safety worldwide. The news is grim.

The report is based on data drawn from a survey of 178 countries. It concludes that something on the order of 1.3 million people are dying in traffic accidents each year, that this number is accelerating, and that anywhere from 20 to 50 million people are injured as a result of traffic crashes. If you check out their five minute video on this page, you will hear them reminding us that these numbers sum to one person being injured in traffic every second, and someone dying -- being killed rather is a more accurate way to state it -- every thirty seconds. (Keep that image in mind as you work your way down this page.)

Of these totals roughly half (46%) of the victims killed on streets and roads worldwide are pedestrians, cyclists, and riders of motorized two wheelers – the most vulnerable road users.

Dr. Kelly Henning, director of global health programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation that has sponsored and paid for the work behind the report, recommends that the answer lies in more laws and better enforcement of them. To this the report adds recommendations for increased use of seatbelts and helmets, along with tougher punishment of drunken drivers.

The point needs to be made that these recommendations are heavily influenced by the fact that over 90% of the world’s fatalities on the roads occur in low-income and middle-income countries, which have only 48% of the world’s registered vehicles. But as we here know both these figures are increasing every year. And we know too, sadly, that the measure currently in place to reverse these trends are altogether inadequate to do the job.

Those are certainly good steps in the right direction if properly conceived and implemented, and certainly golden counsel for the low and middle income countries in which the slaughter is the most tragic. However it will never have the impact which is needed if driving is to be less of a personal tragedy, social menace, and economic catastrophe.

It is our view here at World Streets that we need to dig deeper if we are ever going to get a major reversal of this disastrous trend. One of the authors of the report, Adnan Hyder, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, gives us a clue when he points out that:

Road safety is an area in which we truly as a global community can say, 'We are responsible for our future'.

Let's step back and take a quick look at this from a new mobility perspective and see what that might suggest.

First a reminder as to why people get killed or injured in traffic? Because someone is traveling too fast in a motor vehicle, which is far heavier than the victim and hence less likely to suffer the same level consequences.

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Now if you have been following over these first three months the various detailed statements and views from many quarters that collectively define the New Mobility Agenda, you will note that our dual focus is (a) to reduce considerably the number of cars, buses and trucks on the road (less traffic but with better mobility), and (b) when it comes to areas in which there are pedestrians and cyclists on or near the road to slow it down dramatically. Less traffic moving slower is certainly the best answer to this part of the old mobility challenge.

The WHO recommendation on this reads: "Decreasing speed is an important way of reducing road traffic injuries, particularly among vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists). Urban speed limits should not exceed 50 km/h, while local authorities should be able to reduce these where necessary - for example around schools or in residential areas."

However as is often the case in the complex and highly diverse world in which we live, the ultimate solution is going to be some combination of all of the above. And for sure different combinations and permutations for different places.

Click here for WHO video presentation of report.

We at World Streets and our collaborators in different parts of the world look forward to working with all those behind the WHO report in order to see how we might contribute to the process which now needs to be put in place to deal with these issues from the very beginning.

* To obtain a copy of the WHO report, please click here.

* Recent World Streets articles on slowing traffic as a key sustainability strategy:- Honey, you got to slow down"- The ShLOW! (Show me How Slow) project- Slowth: To win the war of new mobility- Street Code: A World Streets Campaign for 2009- Safe cycling strategies: Lessons from Europe

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Media! Information led transportation - Check this out

Our friends from over at Zipcar sent us this little three minute video yesterday which we gladly share with you, with a couple of thoughts in mind. It shows how they have worked with the iPhone team in order to provide you with a couple-of-click interface for finding, ordering, entering etc your short term rental car. Very nice!

But what is of more interest to us is the underlying concept, that of providing you with a first rate in-the-pocket interface between the means of transportation and the way to get hold of it. What this spells out in capitals is that we are going to see these kinds of applications for all carriers coming on very fast now, and if you stay up with Google’s work on this, you will see that the noose is closing.

Let’s see now, you can use it for a shared car, a shared bike, a taxi, and of course the list will go on very fast indeed. This is a strong argument for the future, a more sustainable transport future if only we get it right. Which is the job of governance.

Now let's have a look at their video.

"At Apple's WWDC in San Francisco, Luke Schneider of Zipcar shows off a new application for the iPhone. The new software enables Zipcar users to find and reserve the nearest available vehicle on a city map. It also sports a feature that will beep the horn of the reserved Zipcar and unlock it when the user is close by."

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Why transport planners need to think small

Why transport planners need to think small to tackle climate change

- Simon Bishop, Delhi, India

No matter how big or small all movements have their heresies and orthodoxies. In

the domain of transport policy, questioning the primacy of motorized public transport over cycling and walking is like suggesting that the world may not be flat after all. The mercury rose and emails flew on the Sustainable Transport (Sustran) online discussion group earlier this week when Beijing’s announcement to make the city ‘a public transport city’ by 2015 hit the wire. One contributor questioned Beijing’s strategy, which was based solely on raising levels of rail and bus ridership to 45%. Once the mainstay of China’s urban transport system, the bicycle, didn’t even get a mention.

From where I'm sitting in Delhi I added that there is a tendency to see 'motorized, mass public transport', through rose tinted glasses as if it is 'the' solution to growing automobile use. A huge amount of emphasis is put on the Metro and now BRT as ways to solve congestion (never mind about all the other externalities). Bicycles and legs are ignored despite holding a huge modal share, over half of all trips in Delhi.

I think it was the Indian economist Dasgupta who showed that you could make public transport free in the UK and still only effect a very small shift to it from the car (6%). The fact is that cars are damn convenient and people will use them unless they are literally prized away from doing so. The vast majority of people use public transport in London and NY because they have to. It’s well nigh impossible to park your car and it will cost you big time if you do! I hope that Beijing's approach will witness parking restraint and pricing as a lynchpin of its policy, otherwise it will be a funding drain and a white elephant.

The rose tinted spectacles also ignore the role of cycling as faster and more convenient than the bus over short to medium distances. Why swap a more convenient form of transport for a less convenient one? The only other thing that can compete with the car over these distances is the motorcycle, which should also be deterred for safety reasons and its high emissions of Nitrogen Dioxide.

Presently people don’t ride, or use cycle taxis because motorised vehicles make them less safe. They need an ‘image makeover’. And planners continue to ignore rider comforts like tree cover and vendor zones in hot countries air pollution all over.

Cheap interventions like prioritising access for cycles and pedestrians across high speed vehicle

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canyons should be a priority. These interventions save lives, make cycling and walking practical, and come in cheap - kilometre for kilometre a cycle track in London would cost less than 1/400th the amount of the Jubilee Line extension.

In terms of our greatest challenge, global warming I am perturbed. Where you have quality bus systems (with good timetables in the off peak and feeder services) they consume amounts of per capita energy rivalling that of the car. Quoting London, the average actual CO2 emissions of a bus is 40% that of a car, PM10 emissions are 3 times and SO2 emissions 25 times greater - that's not much of an improvement and certainly not enough to stabilise carbon emissions at 450ppmv. In Taipei, taking account of door to door emissions, the Metro actually consumes more energy than a car!

The counter argument to all this is that Asia is not London and you can’t compare ridership levels in London with Asian cities. True for now, but planners need to think about the future. What people put up with now is not what they will put up with as they get richer and have choices. Delhi does not yet have a public transport network that those with a choice of private, motorized transport would opt to use. The figures that we quote on fuel efficiency for buses in Asia NOW are not those that will exist with the kind of network needed to get wealthier citizens on the bus. And by the way I’m not talking about rich citizens, I’m talking about ones who can afford motorcycles that run on less than 1 rupee a kilometre.

To get motorcyclists and car users to switch in future, or at least stay on the bus, even WITH very strong demand management measures and low fares, we'll need to increase frequency, add A/C in some cases, bring down the 'crush factor' and widen geographical scope, all of which will inevitably result in more energy consumed per passenger. It's hard to disagree with this line of thinking without adopting a line of ‘one standard of public transport comfort for 'the West' and one for the developing world’.

This should not be construed as an argument AGAINST public transport, particularly buses, after all the more of us that use them the better, and there will always be a need for those who cannot cycle or walk, but it IS an argument for Beijing to re-discover leg power, put greater emphasis on travel demand management, and control urban sprawl. If the world is to face its greatest challenge, that of averting catastrophic climate change, we have no choice.The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

-Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1974

- Simon Bishop is working as a transport and environment consultant in Delhi, where he lives with his family. In India he has worked on bus and cycling projects like the Delhi BRT and helped set up the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership. Before coming to India two years ago Simon worked in London as a planner on demand management and travel marketing schemes, receiving an award from the Mayor for "London's Most Innovative Transport Project". He authored 'The Sky's the Limit' - Policies for Sustainable Aviation' while working as a policy adviser in the Institute for Public Policy Research.

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Bad News Dept. Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret

"We are a generation of great talkers."

How optimistic can one reasonably be concerning our ability at this point to meet the enormous challenges facing our sector and the planet in time to make the needed big differences in the years ahead? Here are two comments on this that were made back in 1996, subsequent to a high level international conference on just this subject. Each runs about one minute:

* Try this "dirty secret" comment from 1996 - Click here* And this "what next" comment - Click here

Sometimes it can help to remember the past. Listen for example to this one minute extract from a presentation given by the editor to a planning session of the OECD Environment Directorate on the occasion of a review of the accomplishments of the high level 1996 Vancouver Conference, "Towards Sustainable Transportation". That meeting, in the words of the OECD "brought together over 400 policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives to assess the state of the art knowledge in reducing transport's environmental impacts and to chart a path towards more environmentally sustainable transport systems". And what exactly did those "400 policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives" accomplish, sustainable transportation-wise?

* Click here for 1996 audio file.

1996 text accompanying Dirty Secret presentation:

That, in our words, is Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret. Worse yet, the sad truth is it does appear to be not just a transient anomaly but rather a sign of our times, of our generation, of our egregious (un)willingness to organize ourselves and get around to doing (a lot) better.

Check out the leading edge of the research, the many related web sites and all the conferences on global warming, carbon dioxide build-up, ozone depletion, and the rest, and one comes to a pretty simple, pretty solid conclusion. From an unbiased eco-perspective we are misbehaving very badly indeed. And what is worse yet is that, rhetoric aside, there is little out there on the radar screen that promises much better. Indeed the numbers all suggest that things are going from bad to worse. Emissions targets are being timidly set, after a huge amount of hemming and hawing. And then flagrantly missed. What a bad, what an inexcusable joke.

That, in our words, is Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret.

I see this presentation as a much needed call to a more thoughtful, more innovative, more layered

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("packages of measures"), more open, and more technology-assisted approach to the challenges of sustainability in a frankly non-sustainable world -- a world of people, habits and political arrangements that to all appearances has no real intention to make the fundamental changes that are needed for the planet and in our daily lives. I ask you, what are the differences between the way we are looking at all this today, and back in 1996? Have we made any notable progress over these thirteen long years?

No certainly not. So what we need to do now to kick-start the system? (The system, incidentally being us.)

Your comments and ideas on this are as always warmly invited. And for the rest, back to work.

Your faithful editor

PS. Here in closing is a remark and proposal I made to the meeting by way of activation and follow-up -- click here for the one minute audio file. It was not well received. Check it out here to see why.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 06:54 0 Comments

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Reducing transportation's carbon consumption - Comments

Last Thursday, 11 June, we posted here an advanced working draft of a proposal and

recommendations for a joint work program of the US Dept of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency in our area of expertise -- to be submitted after peer review here, and subsequent amendment, to the public site of organized by the National Journal in Washington DC where expert opinion is being gathered in a broad-based collaborative effort to provide high profile information and insights for the incoming Obama policy teams in those two important institutions.

The original question posed by the National Journal team can be found here. along with all the responses to be posted as of this date. Our original draft posting of 11 June here.

* Click here for Comments and peer discussion as of this date. (Recommended!)

Our continuous challenge here, and beyond, is how can we help assemble the ideas, energies, and expertise of the broadest range of sources and views to help inform and guide public policy. While the other half of democracy is active citizenry, it is not always so evident how to achieve that. Each of us has to do their part.

This process of public consultation and open peer review of which you have one exmaple here is one we take very seriously, and if you have the time and taste to dig in here you will see why. As editor I find that this interactive process of mutually challenging our ideas is one of the great strengths of this World Streets project.

And you, of course, are invited to add your comments to the above.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 21:40 0 Comments

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Media! 6 Reasons The World Needs More Girls on Bikes

- April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden, in Treehugger

Photo thedigitel via flickr.

Most bike commuters find that the negative assumptions they had about bike commuting are mostly false. This goes double for women, who might find that riding in high heels is easier than walking in them; a special wardrobe is not necessarily required (though fun); and that biking boosts a sense of freedom in ways a car no longer can. Benefits to women are multiple, and the benefits to society are just as big. Read on for how we all get dividends when women take to their bikes.

Click here for full text of April's Treehugger article:.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 12:40 0 Comments

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Gunfight at the OK Corral ( Saving the carshare maiden)

This just may prove to be the longest 22 minutes you'll confront today. "Gunfight at the OK Corral" is a video produced with a star cast, and which, though far too long for what it has to say and exasperating from beginning to end, is nonetheless worth a spin for what it tells us about what happens in an important area when old thinking faces off with the New Mobility Agenda.

Click here to call up the video.

We suggest you get comfortable and if you have not yet done your stretching exercises today, this will give you an excellent opportunity to do them as you follow the drama of the presentation.

Let us leave it to Jack Welch, Ms. Welch, and the confident top team of Hertz Rent-A-Car to explain to us what they intend to do to become the dominant player on the world carshare scene in the next three years with their fledgling Connect by Hertz carshare operation. It is a curious episode, but a good reminder of how very different the new world of public policies and private practices is at time in which the old arrangements no longer make much sense. We all still have a lot to learn.

From our perspective here at World Streets this is no small matter, since carsharing has a key role in the transportation reform process that now needs to be engaged. We call carsharing a "one percent solution" -- which may sound like not much, but it is a critical one percent. So must be ready to learn from anyone who has something to teach us about how to make it work better.

We are posting this to both World Streets and to our expert forum at the WorldCarShare consortium, and invite your comments and observations. Kind thanks to Kevin McLaughlin of the long established and successful Autoshare.com carshare operation in Toronto for drawing this to our attention.Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 10:48 1 Comments

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Subscribe to World Streets today.

Do your bit to support the planet's only sustainable transport daily.

29 Euros and it shows up on your doorstep every morning. Cheap!

After three months of proving its worth bringing carefully selected news, expert views, comments and leads to more than thirty thousand visitors from more than forty countries on all continents, day after day, edition after edition, World Streets is reaching out to get active subscriber support. The tough reality is that we will be unable to continue publication unless we have your support.

The annual subscription has been set at 29 Euros ($39.00 if you prefer) -- the same price as for a subscription to Vélib's great and otherwise free share bike service. This strikes us as a good model, since like Vélib once you have signed up the rest is free. First class sustainable mobility for all. Help yourself. And help the world. So please, if you can possibly afford it, get out your virtual check book and click here to send us your 2009 subscription today.

How to transfer funds: To pay by credit card or PayPal, kindly click here for step by step instructions. (If you need help or additional payment instructions for bank transfers or check, click here).

Subscribers will have full access to all sections of the site, and will as well receive the monthly summary edition which will be available only to them. You also for your money get a guided tour to Vélib, Mobilien (BRT), "breathing streets", our "political tramway" and the other remarkable highlights of the ongoing process of sustainable transport innovation in Paris when your travels bring you here. Also, we are here to answer your questions and review eventual problems or projects with you by email or Skype. It is very much an active subscription.

Please note: In more than twenty years of international collaborative networking and sustainable transport project support in the New Mobility Agenda and all its support programs/focus groups, we have never asked for payment or contributions of any sort. So if we are asking you for your support today, you can be sure that it is needed. Thanks for bearing this in mind.

And what happens if you cannot afford to subscribe?

We are well aware that a number of our readers, particularly those in the poorer developing countries and unfunded local environment and transport groups, cannot afford even such a small amount. To you we have three messages of solidarity.

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First, please do continue to come into World Streets and make use of the hard work of all those who are pitching in here. We need you to carry on with your work and contributions, and if we can help you in this way, so much the better.

Second, we invite you to keep an eye on what is going on in your city and country, and when appropriate let us know of projects, problems, accomplishments, which will help us all to better understand the full complexity of our shared task. One excellent way to do this, is to sign in to the World Eyes on the Street network, for which full details are available if you click here.

Finally, send us a simple email message telling us that you appreciate and are making use of our work. And perhaps a few suggestions and reactions for us to consider as we strike to do better. Also, if we have a large number of these messages of support, this will help in our search for longer term funding to support this work. After all, we have to be sustainable too.

Thanks to those who have already pitched in:

Over this first three months we have received paid in subscriptions and other support from about twenty of our international colleagues. This is very heartwarming and while only a small part of what we need to be able to continue publication, is extremely encouraging. So from the bottom of my hear, thank you for showing your support and solidarity.

If you are interested to know about other forms of support needed beyond simple subscription, I invite you to click here.

World Streets. Tying the global and the local together five days a week all year long.

Eric BrittonEditor, World Streets

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 05:11 1 Comments

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Honk! Not all coming up roses for cyclists in Paris

Every day you get out there and every day there is this thin line between the sheer joy and efficiency of cycling in the city, and all that lurks out there on the street to possibly ruin your day (and more).

Click here to view video

This eight minute amateur video has been created by a Parisian cyclist with the idea of showing to all you out there that even with more than 400 km.s "protected cycling provision" and 20,000 free public bikes on the street, it is not indeed all roses in the City of Light. We have our problems too. Eternal vigilance and then you are going to be OK. But this shows how much more work is needed even here until we will be able to apply Gil Penalosa's eight-to-eighty rule for safe cycling -- safe for the eight year old child and safe for the eighty year old cyclist.

I find it highly didactic and a useful point reminder of all that needs to be done every day in all our cities to create safe cycling environments. The crucial handshake with law enforcement certainly jumps out at one, as does the process of co-learning and adaptation of all who are out there and moving around in the very mixed, highly charged new mobility environment.

So off we go again. Plenty to keep us all busy for a few more years and certainly no reason to throw in the towel. (Thanks to Eyes on the Street partner Andrew Curran in Vancouver for the heads-up.)Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 06:37 0 Comments

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Friday, June 12, 2009

World Streets greets 2009 Cities for Mobility World Congress

Greetings from World Streets to our City of Stuttgart friends on the occasion of their forthcoming 2009 Cities for Mobility World Congress.

* Click here for 2009 Congress program.

The 3rd World Congress of Cities for Mobility will be held from 14 - 16 June 2009 in the city of Stuttgart. The event addresses municipalities, public transport and private companies, universities and NGOs. The main focus will be laid on the social dimension of transport with special attention on the provision of mobility opportunities for motorized and non-motorized traffic users. For more click to http://www.cities-for-mobility.net

We look forward to your reporting back on your findings and recommendations for next steps. We understand that you are going to have more than four hundred participants with very strong representation from cities across all continents of the Global South. We hope that they will be forthcoming in their views as well and will be pleased to air selected commentaries and reports from them in these pages.

By the way, today's World Streets' editorial -- Reducing Transportation's Carbon Consumption - Plan B -- is very much in line with the basic theme of your conference, and you may also find some value in the Comments from colleagues round the world that are coming in to challenge and complement it.

Best wishes from us all for your well deserved success next week.

Eric BrittonEditor, World StreetsRead on: Posted by Eric Britton at 10:52 1 Comments

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Op-Ed. Safe cycling strategies: Lessons from Europe

- Eric Britton, Editor and slow city cyclist

The following was drafted yesterday in response to a lively discussion over at www.LivableStreets.com , looking at different approaches to providing cycle paths and other forms of street architecture modifications, major and minor, to protect the cyclist. The discussants were looking at this in the context of New York's ongoing efforts to develop a major cycling program after many years of neglect. International experience at the leading edge, mainly in European cities that are doing the job, puts some interesting lessons on the table. Here is a look-in from Europe.

For starters, let’s make sure that we do not allow ourselves to get too comfortable too fast. By that I mean I am not at all sure that the best approach to safe cycling is to start by shopping around for the most attractive cycle path designs to be put in your city's streets here or there. I can understand the temptation but we have here a systemic problem which requires more than occasional attractive street architecture.

Safe cycling is based on the existence of networks which provide a safe travel environment over the areas and routes most taken by cyclists. By which I mean to say that a lovely cycle facility here and there does not by itself promote safe cycling (in fact conceivably it can make cycling even more dangerous). What is needed from the beginning is without letting up to drive toward that basic network. To accomplish this, it means targeting a solution set that is pretty pervasive, far more so than most plans today even dare aim for.

What do you do when what you need to do definitely outstrips the resources, approaches and plans that are traditionally available to you? The only way to get the job done then is to change the rules. That happens in five main parts.

1. Speed reductions: ("Don ‘t leave home without them.") The first pillar of new mobility policy is to slow down the traffic on EVERY street in the city. I do not say this lightly and I understand the extent to which this runs against long-standing practices and what people regard as their fair interest. But there is no longer any mystery about this at the leading edge. I do not imagine that there is a competent (note the word) traffic planner today who will argue for top speeds in excess of 30 mph in the city. 30 mph is terrific, and though too fast for safe cycling is something which we can reasonably target for the Main Avenue's and thoroughfares. For the rest a policy of 10/20/30 is feasible, fair and do-able. Once you get over the shock.

2. Reclaim street space: The second prong of the strategy is that the creation of a safe network requires taking over at least portions of a quite large number of streets in the city. This is accomplished in two ways, the first being the alteration of the street architecture, taking over lanes for fully protected cycling. The most popular, parking lane out/bike lane in, often works very nicely when the cycle lanes work against the flow of traffic. The second prong of street reclaiming is the hard edge of speed reductions. In these cases top speeds on the side streets drop to something like 10 to 15 mph, with 10 leading better than 15. Again for most cross-town traffic in Manhattan this should not be a problem.

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3. "Occuper le terrain": (French for safety in numbers. )You are seeing that in New York already, though I have to guess you are not yet at the tipping point on that. But the more people you get out on the street on their bicycles every day, the more that everybody involved moves up a couple of notches day after day in the learning process. The cyclists learn how to behave better to protect themselves in traffic, drivers get accustomed to looking out for those small wavering frail figures, the police learn how to play their part in this learning process, and the system they have today learns and adapts.

4. "Street code":The Highway Code, a collection of laws, advice and best practice for all road users, which mainly functions as a written basis for learning to drive as well as stipulating the letter of the law (licensing, required safety equipment, default rules, etc.) In Europe this happens at a national level, with room in some places for stricter local ordinances. In the US mainly a state prerogative.

I understand that you are looking into this for New York. Many European cities are advancing on the idea of establishing a far tougher "street codes" specifically adapted to the special and more demanding conditions of driving in city traffic. This is becoming especially important as we start to see a much greater mix of vehicles, speeds and people on the street. The underlying idea is that culpability for any accident on street, sidewalk or public space, is automatically assigned to the heavier faster vehicle. This means that the driver who hits a cyclist has to prove his innocence, as opposed to today where the cyclist must prove the driver's guilt (not always very easy to do). This is not quite as good as John Adams' magnificent 1995 formulation whereby every steering wheel of every car , truck and bus would be equipped with a large sharp nail aimed directly at the driver’s heart-- but it can at least help getting things moving in the right direction.

5. It's a Learning System: Once you start to break the ice to the point where provision of cycling facilities even starts to be an issue, it is probably best to think of the city and the street network as a learning system. And learning of course takes place over time, and if you are lucky leads to a continuous stream of adjustments as you go along. There may be a bit of comfort in that, if you are patient enough, because what it definitely means is that any cycling improvements you can conceivably come up with today has to be thought of not as a solution but as the start of the path. This is very definitely process oriented planning.

* * *

So we really do know what to do, and we do know that it requires a combination of foresight, originality, guile and pragmatic planning from the beginning. Fortunately there is plenty of international experience which backs this up.

Paris is an example that I live with and cycle in every day over a decades-long period of steady adaptation and change. It is definitely not Copenhagen or Amsterdam. It is work in progress. Only a few years ago Paris was a city that was planning almost exclusively for cars and yet over the past decade has gradually began to build up a network for safe cycling. Perhaps not so much safe as safer, and the role of the planners here is to use the full cookbook of approaches in a dynamic organic manner so that each day things get a little bit better. Because all this has become part of the culture, the mainstream culture, it is no longer a big deal and so do the good works are able to go on every day.

Of course if cycling is your game it would be great to be able to import whole hog those terrific physical infrastructures that are found in Dutch and Danish cities. But this takes decades and I do

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not see it happening overnight in most US cities, New York among them. What is interesting about the Paris example, and we are certainly not the only one, is the manner in which safe cycling infrastructure is being built up step by step and day by day. We are not yet at the point at which we can feel comfortable with Gil Penalosa's "8 to 80 rule", remember, where cycling is safe for your eight-year-old daughter and your eighty-year-old grandfather. But give us a time and we will get there - and I hope you will too.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 07:49 0 Comments

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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Benevolent virus approach to sustainable cities

- Luud Schimmelpennink, Inventor of the free city bike, Amsterdam

Back in the 1960s, when I was young, and I thought smart, the idea occurred to me and some of my friends that bicycles were surely the best way for people to get around cities. We could see that for ourselves every day on the streets of Amsterdam. However as we thought about it, it struck us that something was missing. So we came up with something we called the White Bicycles. Free bikes.

A benevolent virus approach to transportation reform

It could not have been more simple. Basically all we did was get together with anyone who wanted to pitch in, collect a couple of dozen old bikes, paint them white, and then “park” them out on the street for anyone to pick up and use as they wish. The project was immediately a success (in over view) and attracted a lot of media attention, not all very kind to our idea. The success was that the bikes provided free, safe, zero-carbon public transport and were heavily used by citizens who simply wanted to get somewhere on their own personal timetable. That was great because that was our idea, our motivation for doing the whole thing.

However, the world being the kind of complicated place it is, and bicycles being such frail things out in public places on their own, it did not take all that long for most of the white bikes to disappear into places unknown, some ending up in our canals. At the same time, and somewhat surprisingly, the police decided that they were illegal because the law required that all bikes should be locked in public. And ours of course were not. It did not take very long for the newspapers and others to chime in with their opinions that this was a crazy idea that never should have been done in the first place. A failure.

But this little idea, this so-called failure, was maybe not quite as stupid as they were announcing. To

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the contrary, this little idea changed enough in at least some people's heads that it eventually set off a series of free or almost free shared bike projects around the world, for many years modest and not well-known. But certainly as everyone reading these "messages" will know , within the last couple of years all of this has started to change. And ever since the day that the city of Paris had the "crazy" idea in 2007 of putting 20,000 shared public bicycles onto their streets, this little idea is starting to have some very significant impacts. Maybe it was not so stupid after all

Today, a full generation after those young people got together to paint all those white bikes in Amsterdam, a growing group of people are coming to share the belief that every city in the world should be looking carefully at the idea of creating a public bicycle project of their own. The world has had enough experience with them over the last decade that we know there are many different ways of going about it, not all of them necessarily exactly aping our original concept of painting them white and leaving them anywhere. And if you hear from time to time about this or that project running into this or that trouble, relax because the idea is so simple and so powerful that these difficulties are going to be overcome by all of those smart people in that place who really want it to work. A great idea engages, and engages widely.

But here in closing is my final, respectful and a bit less direct message which I should like to share with all of you in Washington who have been charged by President Obama with the responsibility of creating sustainable transportation projects, sustainable cities and sustainable lives for people of all economic and social classes across the United States. Do not shy away from an idea just because it may at first glance strike you as a bit crazy. Sometimes that is the way it is with a new idea that really could make a difference. So before automatically saying no, just because the idea strikes you at first as untenable, get comfortable, sit back and think it through from the beginning. You may find that within it are the germs of a great idea. A benevolent virus.

Some URLshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_bicyclehttp://www.citybikenewmobility.org

Luud SchimmelpenninkY-tech Innovations CentreAmsterdam, the Netherlands

Contribution by the author to the world wide collaborative project “Messages for America: World-wide experience, ideas, counsel, proposals and good wishes for the incoming Obama transportation team”. See www.messages.newmobility.org for latest version of this report of the New Mobility Agenda.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 19:07 1 Comments

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Reducing Transportation's Carbon Consumption - Plan B

The following question has been asked of the expert group on Monday in the "insider discussions" concerning transportation policy for the incoming Obama administration that are taking place under the aegis of the National Journal in Washington DC:

How Should EPA And DOT Reduce Transportation's Carbon Consumption?How can Washington regulate and reduce the transportation sector's oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions? What are the appropriate roles and responsibilities for the Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency? How should those roles be incorporated into the climate change legislation and surface transportation reauthorization that Congress is expected to tackle?

As a member of the panel I was invited to respond. My presentation follows.

Summary: "Ready. Fire. Aim!" Better not do that. So before we get off to the races with our answers and recommendations, let me suggest that we first step back a bit and make sure that we have a full understanding of the important underling issues and forces that need to be taken into consideration. And then once we have this in hand we may end up getting an entirely different set of responses. We need a carefully thought out consistent base for informed public policy in a very different world context. In order then: (1) Strategy; (2) Actions; (3) Actors.

1. STRATEGY

First step. STOP! Remember? " Ready! Fire! Aim?"

We certainly don't want to start in the middle of such an important question -- a big problem I might add we often encounter in many of these proto-transportation/environment discussions. It seems as if as soon as the discussion opens everyone in the room stands up and starts to trot out their favorite concept, project or technology -- and then carry on as if their favorite pony somehow fits with the real priorities. As if all that were something that could be left to a shared implicit understanding. Well, it can't!

So before rushing into discussions about roles and responsibility, legislation and reauthorization, important as they are, let's see if we can first come to some sort of agreement concerning the basics that provide the foundation for all these questions and their eventual answers. Which is to say that we need a strategy fit for these times.

It's 2009 and one thing of which we all are fully aware is that the conditions out there are very very different from anything we have ever known in the past. So this is unlikely to be a matter of fixing stuff and marginal adjustments here and there. We have to reinvent the sector in the most profound manner that we can. And for that we better know where we have to go.

So what are the basics of this new mobility system, this new paradigm for transportation policy and practice at all levels? We have to get a handle on the big issues, the big trends and the big priorities, before we start to rush in to answer this questions of detail. My proposal to shake things up a bit here before we start to get too comfortable with what we pre-guess are going to be the answers – starting by setting before you a sequence of eight defining policy statements or propositions which in my view constitute the true bedrock of the issues and the choices we now need to make.

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(As you move down this list I invite you to make a mental or jotted note to the "yes or no" query in each case. It may be that you agree with some of these points, but not others. We can then ideally go down the revised list here or in some other forum and THEN have a shared basis for deciding what next. Without a strong foundation fit for our times, we will risk just playing at the edges with stuff which is not central to the challenges at hand. At enormous opportunity cost.)

Let's have a look at our eight basic propositions:

Proposition 1. Climate emergency: The most urgent single policy challenge confronting us today in America and in every part of this planet, and requiring immediate and urgent action, is that of climate modification. The core of the problem lies in our continuing massive generation of life-threatening greenhouse gas emissions, which despite all the hot air and claims of success, continue to swell every day: every month, every year, and in every part of the world with close to zero exceptions. This is the bedrock issue of public policy today and we cannot afford to run away from it any more. (And yes step one is to recognize that we are running.)• Peak oil: And if climate modification seems too abstruse for your taste, we always have the co-issue of peak oil, which has the advantage of hitting almost all of use directly where it hurts most, in the wallet. So if you prefer we can use this as our whip for immediate, large scale action and intervention, on the understanding that at the end of the day the two run in very close parallel. And since that is the case we will continue to use GHG as the guiding metric in this case, for all the reasons that are set out here.

• Yes (i.e., Accept as probably valid) or no (not sure or possibly just wrong)?

Proposition 2. Global policy goal: The over-arching goal of public policy across the board should therefore be massive GHG reductions. (See Prop. 4 below for more background on this point.)• Yes or no?

Proposition 3. Transport share: The transport sector accounts for roughly 25 +/- 5% of this total load (And something like twice that when it comes to fossil fuel consumption.) . It is thus a priority target for public policy.• Yes or no?

Proposition 4. Sustainable transportation: Turns out that we are in luck. Happily, GHG reductions work as an excellent surrogate for just about everything else we need to fix in our sector as well: namely, giving us a strong strategic framework and leverage to attain all of the necessary preconditions of sustainable transport, This includes reductions of traffic and its consequences, rationalization of speeds, fossil fuel savings, energy independence, affordable mobility, personal and public economics, public health, social equity, etc. Drive down GHGs and we are well on the way to achieving the rest. (Now, it does not automatically solve all our specific sustainable transportation problems, but it does give us the robust envelope of priorities and conditions within which to make our specific choices.)• Yes or no?

Proposition 5. Time window: The critical time window to achieve these reductions is the 2 to 4 years directly ahead. (Hey! the period of the first Obama administration or your own period in office.) And less we forget, planetary stresses are so severe that any failure to put off these near-term large-scale reductions will have disastrous consequences.• Yes or no?

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Proposition 6. Scale: How big should the reductions be in this suddenly very short target period? Whatever it is it must be bold. It must be on that scale to have the level of impacts that are required to avoid the worst. It may have to be as high as 20 to 50 percent for the four year period. But of course the exact target will depend on place, etc.• Yes or no?

Proposition 7. Traffic reductions: The only way to achieve the scale reductions required in that tight timeframe is through achieving corresponding scale cutbacks in motor vehicle traffic, and more specifically in terms of VMT/VKT (vehicle miles/kms travelled) reductions. (There is NO OTHER WAY TO DO IT. And don't think that this is going to be a purely negative policy. To the contrary with a well thought- out policy we can get more and better mobility with a lot less traffic - and that has to be our overarching goal.)• Yes or no?

Proposition 8. Feasibility: We are in luck. This is not utopian thinking. Our sector has so much fat in it that we are going to be able to slim it even at the very high levels which are needed. Using technology aggressively (that is IT and organizational skills) we are going to be able to get more bang per mile, more bang per gallon of the vehicles that are out there on the road. We are going to have more, better and fairer mobility with less traffic, less pollution, less energy, and less wasted public money. And it will be a policy with far more options and choices at that any period in the past. Did someone say . . . yes we can?• Yes or no?

* * *

How are we doing? To this "insider" the least that I can say is that this simple list gives us the core of the strategy which we now need to articulate, then work to get some kind of strong consensus on (it won't be universal, you will see), and finally put to work.

In summary whatever we give attention to in this high emergency context:• Must be capable of achieving significant bottom line GHG reductions in the two to four years directly ahead.• And offer a new combination of more mobility (access)0 and less traffic.

If your preferred technology or policy option passes these two tests, then it is an eventual candidate for short sting . And if not, not!

2. ACTIONS

We now have a pretty good idea of what we need to do -- next comes the task of figuring out how we are going do it. The means, the actions, policies, services, technologies, procedures, institutions, roles, pricing arrangements, legal frameworks, enforcement, finance and all the rest.

So, what are the sorts of things that we need to be giving attention to in this new paradigm. To get us going on this, let's sketch some examples of the literally thousands of tools, technologies, measures, policies, services, instruments (economic and other) that can be combined to achieve our ambitious objectives. Here are a first handful of different approaches to get the discussions going.

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1. Trip elimination/travel substitutionThis is the most powerful single instrument we have at our disposal, though some of them, land use changes come to mind, are going to lie toward the outer edge of our target period. Still, there is a lot that can be done to bring them on line into our time frame. Bearing in mind that we are talking about the elimination of motorized trips here (think carbon transport), among the wide spectrum of choices available : trip planning, chaining, grouping, land use shifts, scheduling (4 day weeks for instance), teleshopping and tele- quite a few other things as well, and the substitution of electronic for physical travel (of which there is a huge variety of examples). Most of these are low cost , readily implementable, and if we get them properly orchestrated can be made into significant components of the overall new mobility reform strategy. We also have seen enough successful examples of their use in a wide variety of circumstances that this indeed not be an area of great uncertainty and failure. Plenty of solid experience and information out there to build on.

2. Move away from SOE (single occupancy vehicles) – and toward something betterThere is a huge range of approaches for increasing load factors in the cars out there on the street, without impinging on free choice or increasing costs in unfair manners. To the contrary, once we get the policy frame right, the new arrangements will be "BFC" – better, faster, and cheaper for those who decide to shift over to them. Voluntarily mind you, and as much for anything else for economic reasons.

Here is a first sample of the sorts of things that are available to get us going on this: ridesharing, carsharing, taxi sharing, competitive public transit, and new forms of group service that are heavily reinforced by new information technologies and organizational forms.

3. Move from motorized to non-motorized transport This process is already in place well engaged: cites at the leading edge are giving a greatly expanded role to and support of bicycles and walking. The examples are many, varied, clear and there for the taking and adaptation. The key being infrastructure modification, about which there are two key points to be made here. First, none of it is to require new construction, Rather the public space is taken from what previously were used (for the most part poorly) by high-carbon and also space-inefficient transport, and recycled to these no-carbon, space efficient, healthy and finally social systems of private transport. True auto-mobility if you will. Beyond this, the shirt from motorized to non-motorized transport has to be accompanied by a ballet legal measure favoring lighter slower transport, enforcement of the law, and fiscal and tax shifts.

4. New forms of public and shared transport There is enormous room for improvement here since public transport has by and large been fossilized in what are basically early 20th century delivery and institutional patterns. Fixed route, fixed schedule. This is no substitute for car travel, but we now have to clean out the stables of laws, ordnances, practices, and open up the possibility of a true renaissance in the sector. Most of this is going to involved small and medium sized (and some large) vehicles with motors (and in the year immediately ahead mainly internal combustion engines, albeit of greatly improved performance in the three key areas (fuel efficiency, emissions, and costs)). The whole thing to be driven as is the case in almost all of these new mobility services by great gobs of information and communications technologies that are going to give the services the very high levels of performance that is possible once you set your mind to it. (The upper limit of new system construction is state of the art tramways, which we are seeing being built on the streets at reasonable levels of cost (though not always) and within our time frame (albeit at the upper limit).

5. Infrastructure adaptation The key word for the new policy in our plan period is adaptation -- not construction. There will be

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no time for any large new infrastructure road, bridge or metro projects, but enormous opportunities for adapting the infrastructure we already have in place. Our roads and streets are so unstrategically used today in most places that it is almost imposable to have done worse. (We must have been trying.) So as we reduce the number of moving and parked motor vehicles to replace them with more effective services, this will open up a renaissance of adaptations, opening up room for safe cycling, walking and public spaces, including eventually local parks and play and recreational areas. These parts of the streets become not just conduits as in the past, but even destinations. And the adaptations will include slow streets, complete streets, naked streets and all the rest.

Parking policy, practices and pricing will be important components of this fundamental overhaul. There are few places in the world today that have a completely rational parking policy – the only one that can help us attain the objectives of this Plan B transition strategy. And it is not just a matter of eliminating parking but also in making it more efficient. We must never lose sight of the fact that we are still going to have lots of cars in and around our cites, so we getter know where to stash them conveniently when not in use. Once again lots of IT in that.

6. Economic and fiscal instrumentsThe present pricing, fiscal and legal instruments in most part of the world favor, for historic reasons, private cars and motorized transport more generally. The playing field is not level, and there is enormous room for using these instruments to more toward full cost pricing. And full cost pricing, fair pricing is going to provide incentives for the better forms of mobility which are needed if we are to make the transition to a low carbon society with all that entails. And as we have seen with the vigorous debates and divergences encountered in virtually all congestion or road pricing proposals in this first decade of the new century, these are complex considerations which need to be handled with subtlety and care. But it can be done, and it should be done.

To conclude this section on actions and measures: the point is that there are a huge range of concepts and tools that are available to be put to work to shape the system in the years immediately ahead, so the question becomes not so much what but how to do it. Which brings us to our third and final section of this recommendation.

3. ACTORS

To open up this final section, let's refer back briefly to the opening question: "What are the appropriate roles and responsibilities for the Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency?"

Big question, but rather than try to answer this universally and in an abstract sense here, let's instead take and examine how this might workout in the case of a single and rather simple new mobility example: carsharing.

Here are a few useful truths about carsharing to get us going on this

• Carsharing is not by itself going to solve the problems of local transport in our cities, suburbs and rural areas. It is just one new mobility tool ,among many.

• The actual number of cars and trips ultimately is never going to be that huge. Carsharing is neither going to solve all our problems of local transport, nor will it save the US automotive industry.

• Carsharing is thus what we call a "one percent solution", in addition to which it has this unusual lynchpin role. But even where we have it in place and working well, we are still going to have to

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figure out the remaining ninety nine percent. And that is what the New Mobility Agenda is all about.

• That said, it has a key role to play, namely as a vital linchpin in the pallet of new mobility modes. Carsharing serves in a dynamic sense to provide a bridging strategy for people, first to test how they might live without actually owning a car, or at least one less car. Or perhaps never to buy a car in the first place and still be able to drive when they need one. Carsharing is flexible and trying it requires little commitment or cost. But once in any given place a reasonable number of non-car mobility options begin to appear, the idea of carsharing begins to take a new shape. For some multi-car families it will allow them to shed one of their cars. For others once the full range of non-car options is in place, there will be people who are in a position to get rid of their own car altogether.

• As it happens there are more than one thousand cities in the world where you can pick up a carshare vehicle this morning. And that this number had doubled in the past three years alone. It is thus a fully operational system and on a high growth trajectory, which already provides some useful clues for the supporting role that these government agencies might execute.

• It is now fair to say and based on the wide range of experience already in existence, that every city and many smaller communities across the United States, including in rural areas, are potential candidates for carsharing. That carsharing until now something practiced in the main in the States by relatively affluent city dwellers, is also something that needs to be explored both for poorer people.

• So the question then becomes, what can these federal agencies do to bring about this important alternative mobility arrangement quickly, universally and well?

Rest of this section to follow.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 19:00 16 Comments

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Honey, you got to slow down

- David Levinger, Mobility Education Foundation

The Obama Administration and the world at large can learn a lot from other practices at the leading edge about speed mitigation. Traffic safety research supports the adage that “speed kills.” In State Highway Safety Plans mandated by the 2005 SAFETEA-LU legislation, many states have targeted “speeding” as a top priority. There is an important difference between this focus on “speeding” and a focus on “speed” in traffic safety and congestion management. When law enforcement agencies target “speeding,” they focus on extreme behavior, but ignore the normative behaviors.

Federal policy makers and transportation leaders can have tremendous impact on safety, congestion, and road construction costs by learning from many international efforts to mitigate traffic speeds to benefit of all roadway users. Here are several effective and inspiring innovations:

• Lower limits for residential areas. Residential streets should have maximum speed limits of 20 mph (presently states have minimum speed limits of 25 mph or 30 mph). (EUROPE)

• Due Care provision. Implement driver training to a national standard of "Due Care". This requires drivers to yield to anything obstructing their path, even if that thing should be yielding right of way to the driver. (UK)

• Home Zones/Woonerven/Living Streets. An American pilot programs should be launched to make neighborhood streets conducive for community interaction and safer children to play next to. (UK & THE NETHERLANDS)

• Enforcement should be at 4 mph over the limit. US enforcement agencies typically provide a lenient 10 mph buffer before they enforce speed limits. This means that the defacto speed limit on a 25 mph residential street becomes 35 mph. New Laser RADAR increases accuracy, and has resulted in countries formally adopting policies to enforce at 4 mph over the limit. (SWEDEN)

• Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA). ISA is an in-vehicle system that informs, warns and discourages the driver to exceed the statutory local speed limit. (SWEDEN)

• Dynamic Variable Speed Limits. The M25 in London and highways elsewhere actually vary their speed limits for maximum flow and safety. (UK, FRANCE, others).

• Lower speed standards for urban highways. Present standards make US highway replacement cost-prohibitive. Introducing a new “urban highway” classification with lowered speeds through

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dense urban areas would eliminate the need for wide shoulders and travel lanes, saving Billions of dollars in construction costs, increase fuel efficiency, and reduce the toll of traffic noise. Compliance with a 50 mph speed limit is achieved via automatic photo enforcement. (EUROPE)

URL Refs:* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Variable_speed_limits * http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2078-15 * http://publikationswebbutik.vv.se/upload/4314/2008_109_an_independent_review_of_road_safety_in_sweden.pdf

David Levinger, david@mobilityeducation.org is President of the Mobility Education Foundation, in Seattle, WA, USA

Editor's note: Click here to read a good earlier piece under this same title by Robert Winkle which originally appeared in the New York Times on 13 November 2005Contribution by the author to the world wide collaborative project “Messages for America: World-wide experience, ideas, counsel, proposals and good wishes for the incoming Obama transportation team”. See www.messages.newmobility.org for latest version of this report of the New Mobility Agenda.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 10:51 0 Comments

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Plan B: The New Mobility Agenda ( Mission Statement)

Plan A, with its stress on supply, vehicles and infrastructure has been favored for decision-making and investment in the sector over the last 70 years. It is well-known and easy to see where it is leading. Responsible for something like 1/5 of all greenhouse gas emissions, costing us a bundle, draining the world's petroleum reserves . . . Plan A is a clear failure. Time for Plan B.

World Streets is not exactly what one would call a neutral source. We have a very definite position on transport policy, planning and investment, the result of long experience of working with and observing the sector in its daily operation in cities around the world. It would not be true to claim that these views are unique to us; indeed they have been distilled over the years as result of contacts and work in collaboration with farsighted colleagues and policymakers in many places. They are shared, at least in good part, by many of our most distinguished colleagues.

It is only appropriate that I clearly state the underlying philosophy of this new sustainability journal in no uncertain terms right here at the outset. Our position on this is clear: namely, that we face a major planetary emergency that requires immediate high priority action at the very core of public policy, and that we have the means available to make the difference. But until now we are not addressing the issues at the level of intensity required. We need a plan of action. So let's have a look.

The New Mobility Agenda in brief

The main reference point for all that you will read in these pages is the long-term program, the New Mobility Agenda, an international collaborative effort focusing entirely on transportation in and around cities. It has been in operation since 1988 with continuous interactive presence on the internet as one of the pillars of the collaborative knowledge-building process that is behind it. And this is what we have concluded:

Virtually all of the necessary preconditions are now in place for far-reaching, rapid, low cost improvements in the ways that people get around in our cites. The needs are there, they are increasingly understood -- and we now know what to do and how to get the job done. The challenge is to find the vision, political will, and leadership to get the job done, step by deliberate step.

But we have to have an explicit, coherent, ethical, checkable, overarching strategy. Without it we are destined to play at the edges of the problems, and while we may be able to announce a success or improvement here or there, the overall impact that your city needs to break the old patterns will not be there. We really need that clear, consistent, omnipresent, systemic strategy.

The Agenda provides a free public platform for new thinking and open collaborative group problem solving, bringing together more than a thousand leading thinkers and actors in the field from more than fifty counties worldwide, sharing information and considering together the full range of problems and eventual solution paths that constitute the global challenge of sustainable transport in

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cities.

Managing the transition: Basic principles

And it must be understood that the shift from old to new mobility is not one that turns its back on the importance of high quality mobility for the economy and for quality of life. It's just that given the technologies that we now have at our fingertips, and in the labs, it is possible for us to redraw our transportation systems so that there is less inefficient movement (the idea of one person sitting in traffic in a big car with the engine idling is one example, an empty bus another) and more high-efficiency, high-quality, low-carbon transportation that offers many more mobility choices than in the past, including the one that environmentalists and many others find most appealing: namely, getting what you want without having to venture out into traffic at all. Now that's an interesting new mobility strategy, too.

Here you have in twelve summaries the high points of the basic strategic policy frame as we see it: principles that we and our colleagues around the world have diligently pieced together over the years of work, observation and close contact with projects and programs in leading cities on all continents under the New Mobility Agenda. (If you click here you can see in a short video (four minute draft) a synopsis of the basic five-point core strategy that the city of Paris has announced and adhered to over the last seven years. With significant results.)

1. Climate-driven: The on-going climate emergency sets the base timetable for action in our sector, which accounts for some 20% of greenhouse gasses. At the same time GHG reduction works as a strong surrogate for just about everything else to which we need to be giving priority attention in our cities, chief among them the need to cut traffic. Fewer vehicles on the road means reduced energy consumption, less pollution in all forms, fewer accidents, reduced bills for infrastructure construction and maintenance, quieter and safer cities, and the long list goes on. What is so particularly interesting about the mobility sector is that there is really a great deal we can do in a relatively little time. And at relatively low cost. Beyond this, there is an important joker which also needs to be brought into the picture from the very beginning, and that is that these reductions can be achieved not only without harming the economy or quality of life for the vast majority of all people. To the contrary sustainable transport reform can be part of a 21st century economic revival which places increased emphasis on services and not products.

2. Tighten time frame for action: Select and gear all actions to achieve visible results within 2-4 year time frame. Spend at least 50%, preferably 80% of all your transportation budget on measures and projects that are going to yield visible results within this time frame. Set firm targets for all to see and judge the results. No-excuse transport policy.

3. Reduce traffic radically. The critical, incontrovertible policy core of the Agenda -is BIG percentage cuts in vehicle miles traveled. If we don't achieve this, we will have a situation in which all the key indicators will continue to move in the wrong direction. But we can cut traffic and at the same time improve mobility. And the economy. That's our new mobility strategy.

4. Extend the range, quality and degree of integration of new mobility services available to all: A whole range of exciting and practical new service modes is needed if we are to keep our cities viable. And they need to COMBINE to offer better, faster and cheaper mobility than the old car-intensive arrangements or deficit-financed, heavy, old-technology, traditional public transit. We need to open up our minds on this last score and understand that rather than being stuck in the past with a 19th century version of how "common people" best get about, it is important to move over to a new paradigm of a great variety of ways of providing shared transport mediated in good part by

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21st-century information communications technologies.

5. Packages of Measures: As distinguished from the old ways of planning and making investments what is required in most places today are carefully interlinked "packages" of numerous small as well as larger projects and initiatives. Involving many more actors and participants. One of the challenges of an effective new mobility policy will be to find ways to see these various measures as interactive synergistic and mutually supporting projects within a unified greater whole. A significant challenge to our planners at all levels

6. Design for women: Our old mobility system was designed by, and ultimately for, a certain type of person (think about it!). And so too should the new mobility system: but this time around it should be designed to accommodate specifically women, of all ages and conditions. Do that and we will serve everybody far better. And for that to happen we need to have a major leadership shift toward women and, as part of that, to move toward full gender parity in all bodies involved in the decision process. It's that simple.

7. The shifting role of the car: State-of-the-art technology can be put to work hand in hand with the changing role of the private car in the city in order to create situations in which even car use can be integrated with a far softer edge into the overall mobility strategy . These advantages need to be widely broadcast so as to increase acceptance of the new pattern of urban mobility. The new mobility environment must also be able to accommodate people in cars, since that is an incontrovertible reality which will not go away simply because it would seem like an ideal solution. We are going to have plenty of small and medium-sized four-wheel, rubber tired, driver-operated vehicles running around on the streets of our cities and the surrounding regions, so the challenge of planners and policymakers is to ensure that this occurs in a way which is increasingly harmonious to the broader social, economic and environmental objectives set out here.

8. Full speed ahead with new technology: New mobility is at its core heavily driven by the aggressive application of state of the art logistics, communications and information technology across the full spectrum of service types. The transport system of the future is above all an interactive information system, with the wheels and the feet at the end of this chain. These are the seven-league boots of new mobility

9. Play the "infrastructure joker": The transport infrastructures of our cities have been vastly overbuilt. And they are unable to deliver the goods. That's just great, since it means that we can now take over substantial portions of the street network for far more efficient modes.

10. Frugal economics: We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% of the transport related budgets and use it to address projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years.

11. Partnerships: This approach, because it is new and unfamiliar to most people, is unlike to be understood the first few times around. Hence a major education, consultation and outreach effort is needed in each place to make it work. Old mobility was the terrain in which decisions were made by transport experts working within their assigned zones of competence. New mobility is based on wide-based collaborative problem solving, outreach and harnessing the great strengths of the informed and educated populations of our cities. Public/private/citizen partnerships.

12. Pick winners: New approaches demand success. There is no margin of error. So choose policies and services with track records of success and build on their experience. (And there are plenty of them out there if you are prepared to look and learn.)

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Where to from here?

To move ahead in time to save the planet and improve life quality of the majority of the people who live in our cities -- no, they are not all happy car owner/drivers; get out there and count them; you'll see -- we need to have a fair, unified, coherent, and memorable strategy.

There may be other ways, better ways one would hope, of facing this emergency. If so we are ready to learn, let us hear from you. This is the challenge to which World Streets and the New Mobility Agenda are addressed.

Eric Britton, Editor, World Streets, Paris, FranceRead on: Posted by Eric Britton at 10:30 3 Comments

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Honk! Basel Mobility Ticket (For visitors)

We have often said that new mobility is a strategy which is ultimately made up of a very large number of often very small things. Here is one example of the latter for your consideration: the Basel Mobility Ticket. Do you have one in your city? Should you?

It could not be simpler, so much so that you will wonder why you or your city had not thought of it before. It works like this.

Every visitor who stays in a hotel in the City of Bale in Switzerland is immediately handed a Basel Mobility ticket. It looks like this:

The ticket offers the visitor free transport on the city's public transport system, the TNW Tarifverbund Nordwestschweiz, good for unlimited travel on the city's buses and tramways. It is thus a partnership between the transporter and the city, with the cooperation of the city's tourist office and all the local hotels. The service is paid for by the general visitor's tax which is added to all hotel bills.

It's interesting to us that while the great idea has been around since start-up in 1999, it is the only city we know that has adopted this measure. Surely there must be others, but surely too it has the makings of what should be a universal New Mobility measure, one more small step in the direction of sustainable transportation, sustainable cities and sustainable lives.

Now what about a Mobility Ticket for your city? One small good idea that will surely lead to others. New Mobility is viral.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 07:28 3 Comments

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Monday, June 08, 2009

Governance: The politics of transportation

"Two cheers for the market. Not three."*

Günter Blobel is one Nobel Prize winner who is not resting on his laurels. Friday's New York Times published an Op-Ed piece which goes right to the heart of the concerns and priorities of World Streets and the New Mobility Agenda - the politics of sustainable transportation and the need for wise governance to provide the dynamic frame that is needed for the energies of democracy to work. We thank Dr. Blobel for agreeing to share his thoughts with World Streets.

Eyes on the street in Dresden:

Save the Dresden Elbe Valley- By Günter Blobel

Published: June 4, 2009, International Herald Tribune

The Dresden Elbe Valley is likely to be deleted from the list of World Cultural Heritage sites at the annual meeting of the World Cultural Heritage Committee of Unesco on June 23.

This is due to the construction of a huge four-lane highway bridge that bisects the Elbe Valley site at its most sensitive position, thereby destroying one of Europe’s last river landscapes.

Ultimately responsible for this impending calamity is Chancellor Angela Merkel herself. As chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union she failed to correct the misguided politics of her party colleagues in Dresden, the capital of the federal state of Saxony. She did not publicly oppose their numerous provocations of Unesco. And with her assertion that this is a “regional” problem, she has ignored Germany’s contractual obligations to Unesco.

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-> The full text of this article is available from the NYT on-line by clicking here.- Günter Blobel, professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is founder of the nonprofit Friends of Dresden, to whom he presented the lion's share of his million dollar 1999 Nobel award. ________________________________________________________

Here is some first background on this important project and clash from Unesco World Heritage Website at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1156

Dresden Elbe Valley

Brief Description

The 18th- and 19th-century cultural landscape of Dresden Elbe Valley extends some 18 km along the river from Übigau Palace and Ostragehege fields in the north-west to the Pillnitz Palace and the Elbe River Island in the south-east. It features low meadows, and is crowned by the Pillnitz Palace and the centre of Dresden with its numerous monuments and parks from the 16th to 20th centuries. The landscape also features 19th- and 20th-century suburban villas and gardens and valuable natural features. Some terraced slopes along the river are still used for viticulture and some old villages have retained their historic structure and elements from the industrial revolution, notably the 147-m Blue Wonder steel bridge (1891–93), the single-rail suspension cable railway (1898–1901), and the funicular (1894–95). The passenger steamships (the oldest from 1879) and shipyard (c. 1900) are still in use.

* For full text of article click here.

And from a Unesco report of 04.07.2008.

Dresden's status was called into question in 2006 because the Waldschloesschen bridge now under construction was viewed as a threat to the valuable cultural landscape. UNESCO has recommended the bridge be replaced with a tunnel.

Voters approved the bridge construction in 2005, however UNESCO offered a grace period last year so alternatives could be evaluated.

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* For full text of article click here.

________________________________________________________

Editor's comment: From a New Mobility perspective.

Here we have a perfect microcosm of the kinds of conflicts we face every day and in every corner of this beleaguered planet in the struggle for sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. On the one side, unexamined inertial attitudes reinforced by a broadly shared failure to recognize the imperatives of this very different new century. And on the other hand, a failure of the proponents for preservation to reach deeply enough into the issues and choices to convince.

I would like to think that it is not too late to band together to encourage an immediate halt to construction subsequent to an independent review of the bridge options, of which there are surely a number which can be packaged in such a way as to deal with the concerns of those who need to get from A to B in their city. There are organizations and groups in Germany, and internationally, who can work with the city and key actors on all sides to help sort this out in a way that deal with the concerns of the public while at the same time preserving their magnificent heritage.

It would seem to me that the strong push to the Green parties across Europe in the just-concluded European elections, and in Germany, signal that the time is right for this kind of review and rethink. It is not just a matter of one bridge and one city, but of the future of the planet. No less!

We intend to keep on with this governance dialogue, which to our minds is not getting nearly enough attention. It is of course deeply political, and that is the one area in which progress is most needed. How to get a strong majority of citizens behind the sustainability agenda? Stay tuned.

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 23:38 2 Comments

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Honk! Winter perils pedicab venture in Cape Town?

Will winter swamp new pedicab venture in Cape Town?

- Cape Town, South Africa. 8 June 2009

Winter arrived in Cape Town this week – and with it, the rain (50mm of it this afternoon alone). But unlike in most international cities, umbrellas do not spring up like mushrooms the moment the raindrops appear. Capetonians hunch their shoulders and scurry from one building shelter to the next, because here, the rain does not fall from above. It attacks from the side, from below, from all directions it seems – and only a newcomer would think an umbrella could mitigate against the galeforce-powered storms.

But this season, central Cape Town’s streets have been brightened by 10 newcomers: blue and yellow 18-speed pedicabs imported Colombia. They are equipped with hydraulic brakes, brake lights, indicators, hooters and seatbelts – even sunshields and flimsy rain covers. But that’s for the passengers…

Thus Bertie Phillips, project founder and CEO of Cyclecabs Cape Town, found himself spending the weekend in outdoor gear stores, shopping for rain ponchos – and hoping that the winter wind and rain will not dampen the spirits of the new cyclecab riders. Cape Town has neither an umbrella nor a commuter-cycling culture, so the bright yellow cycle-specific ponchos beloved by Europeans cannot be found here.

Pedicabs have long been a feature on the streets of cities from London to Bogota, but they have been slow to gain momentum locally – licensing and liability issues as well as that lack of cycling culture are the main stumblng blocks.

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Transport planner Phillips has been planning the venture for some time, though. ‘I wanted to launch Cyclecabs for Velo Mondial 2006 [an international NMT conference hosted in Cape Town], but there was not enough time. I had the plan in the back of my mind and decided that with Fifa World Cup 2010, the timing was just right.’

The Cyclecabs took to the streets in late April, and have provided formerly unemployed recruits from the NGO Men at the Side of Road with the prospect of a business career. The eight riders are shareholders in the promising enterprise, and will soon have the opportunity to run pedicab businesses of their own under the Cyclecabs banner.

Riders have received a range of training, from riding the pedicabs and understanding the rules of the road to developing core business skills, which ‘is critical because it’s not just about creating jobs but empowering them as entrepreneurs’.

The original idea was that riders would be required to rent a pedicab each for a R50 daily fee, and build their own businesses – but the winter rains have delayed this next phase. Instead, riders will receive a weekly stipend of R250 as well as meals, to help them until spring time.

By Gail Jennings, Mobility Magazine, Cape Town, South Africa

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 16:42 1 Comments

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Friday, June 05, 2009

World Streets/World Environment Day 2009

The theme of this year's World Environment Day is combating climate change through direct citizen involvement, community action and global partnerships And since that too is our strategic bottom line -- i.e., when we figure out how to achieve big GHG reductions we are well on the way to all the rest of our key objectives (See Mission Statement) -- we are honored to make WED 2009 the principal feature of today's edition. Team work for our small planet!

About WED 2009:

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

Commemorated yearly on 5 June, WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. The day's agenda is to:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;

2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;

3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;

4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests.

This year’s host is Mexico which reflects the growing role of the Latin American country in the fight against climate change, including its growing participation in the carbon markets.

Click here to go to WED site - http://www.unep.org/wed/2009/Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 23:35 1 Comments

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Profile: Open Green Map's global launch today

We have known the GreenMaps team since we ran into them in Stockholm in 2000 as part of the Stockholm Challenge Environment Awards. They looked great to us back then and they still do today. Like World streets they are at once local and global. That's the ticket.

Here is an announcement about their latest collaborative local/global project which launches today in cooperation with World Environment Day.

Open Green Map Launch! June 5 Celebration!

Green Maps highlight local natural, cultural and green living sites to promote personal and community well-being. Transforming local information into global interaction, the new Open Green Map social mapping platform spurs healthy participation as it shares diverse public viewpoints. Preview our platform in progress here!

Open Green Map's global launch celebration will take place on Friday, June 5 - World Environment Day! On the same day, special events are being planned all over the world: Cape Town, Geneva, Jakarta, Stockholm, Baltimore, Pereira Colombia, the UK towns of Swansea, Clackmannanshire, Neath Port Talbotand other places!

Get involved and support this effort! Download a press release or slideshow and watch the video below. Help spread the word. Participate by Twitter, too. Follow us at Greenmap. Include the word 'greenmap' in your tweet so it will be automatically mapped on twittermap.tv!

For more on Green Maps - http://www.greenmap.org/. Here is a quick summary taken from their website to get you going:

Green Map System promotes inclusive participation in sustainable community development worldwide, using mapmaking as our medium.

We support locally-led Green Map projects as they create perspective-changing community ‘portraits’ which act as comprehensive inventories for decision-making and as practical guides for residents and tourists. Mapmaking teams pair our adaptable tools and universal iconography with local knowledge and leadership as they chart green living, ecological, social and cultural resources.

Over 365 unique, vibrant Green Maps have published to date, and hundreds more have been created in classrooms and workshops by youth and adults. Both the mapmaking process and the resulting Green Maps have tangible effects that:

* Strengthen local-global sustainability networks* Expand the demand for healthier, greener choices* Help successful initiatives spread to even more communitiesRead on: Posted by Eric Britton at 08:27 0 Comments

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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Query? Whatever happened to road hierarchy?

The following open question on the present status of "road hierarchy" uses and standards for planning just in from Stephen Marshall of the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL - and right up the middle of the street (as it were) of our concerns here. Full contact information follows. You are invited to post your responses directly to him, but it would be good for all here if you could also register it just below as a Comment to this posting. We hope to report on this in due course as the results come in.

Dear all

Following Manual for Streets and other local streets-oriented design guidance, where does this leave road hierarchy?

By road hierarchy I mean the conventional set of road types such as Primary Distributor, District Distributor, Local Distributor, Access Road.

I am asking this list because it can be difficult to track how this is actually used, through published documents, since a document may not mention hierarchy explicitly, but it may still be applied in some way. Or, even if mentioned in a document, it is not always clear how practitioners actually use it, when designing a road network.

I am interested in hearing of any cases where:

(i) Road hierarchy is still used - even if not expressed explicitly in documents - if so, how is it applied?

(ii) Road hierarchy has 'evolved' where there may be new road types added over and above the basic set - if so, what are they?

(iii) There is more than one set of guidance coexisting (e.g.conventional engineering guidance + urban design guidance) - if so, is the relationship between the two clear and consistent, and how are they actually applied in practice?

(iv) Urban design style street types are used, but are expected (implicitly or explicitly) to correspond to levels in the conventional hierarchy (e.g. a Boulevard may be equate with a District Distributor; a Mews may be an Access Road) - if so, how does this work?

(v) Road hierarchy is applied to the "higher levels" (e.g. trunk roads, county roads) while the lower level use a range of labels (e.g. access street, high street, etc.) - if so, how is the high/low level split

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decided?

(vi) Road hierarchy is no longer used - if so, what if anything has replaced it?

I would be interested in hearing of any examples of these instances, and how they work, especially in the UK (e.g. local authority practice), but also non-UK examples where the equivalent of road hierarchy applies.

I will let the list know of any interesting results coming out of this. This is part of an investigation into better integration / articulation of road / street hierarchy / layout principles. This research is part of the EPSRC funded project SOLUTIONS (Sustainability Of Land Use and Transport in Outer NEighbourhoodS).

Stephen Marshall, Senior Lecturer, ucftsma@UCL.AC.UKBartlett School of Planning, University College London Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB,Tel +44 20 7679 4884, Fax +44 20 7679 7502Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 14:18 1 Comments

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Honk! Public bike developments in Italy

Over the months of April and May the Italian Bicincitta PBS program added six more cities to their “Community Bicincitta”, bringing them to a total of 42 in Italy and 2 in Spain. Brief background on each new city project together with links and contact information follow.

1. Terni, with 5 workstations,

2. Syracuse , opened at the recent G8 summit, the first service of Bike Sharing in Sicily and first service Bicincittà - offering both traditional and bicycles with pedal assisted (e-bikes),

3. Bassano del Grappa, with 5 stations in the historic center,

4. Bergamo, larger project with 15 stations throughout the city, managed by ATB;

5. Schio, revolutionizes the design of sustainable mobility with new Municipality of bicycle lanes safe and secure and the system of Bike Sharing BiciSchio;

6. Asti, in Piedmont, offering a free service for all citizens.

For further information, visit their website at www.bicincitta.com . The specific services can be indentified under their “Adhered Cities” link on the top menu.

Photo showing the "La BiGi" service in Bergamo.

* For more on how Bicincitta works, click http://www.bicincitta.com/progetto.asp

We shall in due course be presenting an overview of the Bicincitta project, along with all of the other major PBS projects worldwide.

Contact info:Via Genova, 2 - 10040 Rivalta (TO) - ItaliaTel 0119023711 - Fax 0119023721 m.quario@spaziocomune.com

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 07:12 0 Comments

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Wednesday, June 03, 2009

World Streets Monthly Editions

World Streets Monthly Editions are available here. They offer a print version of the entire content of the month's postings. And while the articles in each case are presented without the section with comments and discussion, these can be had readily in each case -- if you click the Read on link at the end of that article, which will take you directly to the full posting and the discussions on the website.

MS Word versions of full month's contents available here:

* World Streets this month: June 2009 (to follow)* World Streets this month: May 2009 (* World Streets this month: April 2009* World Streets this month: March 2009

Alternatively click here:* Article archives for June 2009* Article archives for May 2009* Article archives for April 2009* Article archives for March 2009To create a paper version for easy reading away from your computer, all you have to do is to print the frame. This will yield a handy paper or PDF edition of the selected month's contents. Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 11:24 0 Comments

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Op-Ed: Can Cape Town’s new mayor drive improved public transport?

Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor Dan Plato elected Executive Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa, and has pledged to improve the state of public transport. The 48-year-old Plato replaces Helen Zille, who has taken up the position of Premier of the Western Cape after the April elections.

‘Our citizens want jobs, first and foremost,’ Plato reminded his electorate in his acceptance speech. ‘But it is not for the Cape Town local government to employ people and create jobs. We need a stable economy, and we need money to stream into Cape Town. We need to enable businesses to thrive.’

Currently, businesses are constrained by poor electricity supply, acute poverty, crime, municipal red tape – and poor public transport,’ he said. It follows, therefore, that improved public transport is one of the keys to job creation and a thriving economy – considering that only 40% of South Africans own private vehicles.

Now to a reader outside of South Africa, Plato’s pledge to improve public transport might seem an obvious pledge to make – especially ahead of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, now just under 365 days away. The developed world everywhere is focussing on improving public transport, as well as on getting more people onto bicycles or car- and ride-shares, and grappling with air quality, gridlock and cleaner fuels.

In South Africa, however, we have yet to create public-sector-led public transport (or sidewalks and bike lanes, for that matter…). Our transport needs are met (in the most loose application of the term ‘met’) either by private vehicles or by a militant, unregulated and unsafe minibus taxi industry (which moves about two-thirds of public transport passengers).

Yet South Africa’s promise to implement the first phases of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) before the World Cup have been mired in politics, between the opposition-led Cape Town and provincial/national government; and between all tiers of government and the minibus taxi industry (they believe they stand to lose their livelihood).

Cape Town thus far – to differentiate its scheme with those of other South African cities – insists on referring to an IRT (Integrated Rapid Transit) system rather than a BRT.

And instead of lobbying national treasury to have funding moved forward from 2010/11 to 2009/10 (to have a Phase 1A built for 2010), officials, we are told, have been making budget cuts instead, suggesting that a public transport system is not, in fact, a FIFA requirement… (FIFA has responded by saying that the organisation itself will transport fans and VIPs, although the mini-bus industry, of course, had hoped for that slice of the pie…).

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‘The point with BRT is that it is not supposed to be glorified city bus service,’ says a frustrated national government transport official, watching the Cape Town situation unfold. ‘BRT is supposed to be a fundamental urban transformation, which creates liveable and walkable liberated zones. You will never get this with a city bus service that is shiny new vehicles and nothing else.’

‘It will be a tragedy for Cape Town to have a R4bn stadium and a R500m city bus service that calls itself a BRT....’

Plato and his team of transport officials have pledged that ‘the City will work closely with the national and provincial departments of transport to ensure the successful implementation of the IRT system,’ but Cape Town could end up with a compromised end product, or a loss of decision-making and implementation authority entirely.

The BRT system has now become a presidential and cabinet level issue. It is the first real transformative test since 1994 in the public transport sector. If South Africans do not fight for it now, we will still be fighting for it in 10 years’ time, as the challenges are not going to be solved with multi-million new freeways and minibus taxi upgrades…

By Gail Jennings, Mobility Magazine, Cape Town, South Africa

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 07:03 0 Comments

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"Pedaling Revolution" - Book review from today's International Herald Tribune

Today's International Herald Tribune carries a book review of "Pedaling Revolution; How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, by Jeff Mapes. I firmly doubt that any of our regular readers are going to learn a great deal from the book as described here. But it is perhaps useful for us to get some understanding of what is going on in the States -- in people's minds as well on the city streets -- as the process that interests us here begins to kick in.

For a first paragraph of the review and the link to the full text, read on:

Full disclosure: I’ve ridden a bike around New York as my principal means of transport for 30 years, so I’m inclined to sympathize with the idea that a cycling revolution is upon us, and that it’s a good thing. Like Jeff Mapes, the author of “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities,” I’ve watched the streets fill over the years with more and varied bike riders. It’s no longer just me, some food delivery guys and a posse of reckless messengers. Far from it.

* For remainder of review, click here. Or, if that does not work for you, here. Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 06:10 0 Comments

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Monday, June 01, 2009

Op-Ed: Chaotic India has an Urban Edge

- Dinesh Mohan, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

“The unprecedented urban growth taking place in developing countries reflects the hopes and aspirations of millions of new urbanites. Cities have enormous potential for improving people’s lives, but inadequate urban management, often based on inaccurate perceptions and information, can turn opportunity into disaster.”- State of World Population 2007, UNFPA.

“I regard the growth of cities as an evil thing, unfortunate for mankind and the world, unfortunate for England and certainly unfortunate for India...It is only when the cities realize the duty of making an adequate return to the villages for the strength and sustenance which they derive from them, instead of selfishly exploiting them, that a healthy and moral relationship between the two will spring up.” - M. K. Gandhi

Here we have two views about cities, almost reconcilable. The first by a humane visionary, and the second a consensus view of some professionals in the early 21st century including me. It is difficult to say who will be right in the “long run”, especially in light of the assertions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their predictions about global warming. But, cities are here to stay, and I guess Gandhi’s second concern (above) will have to be taken seriously if IPCC is correct in their assessment.

For many millennia human beings had to limit their greed because excess consumption demanded more manual labour. This limited their travel, the size of house they could build, clothes they could own and food they could eat. This put a limit on the use of natural resources. The industrial revolution changed all that. Our machines provide us with ready to cook food, houses, clothes and effortless travel. This has changed the concept of needs and greed. Our world is now a place where the rich and powerful can use up huge amounts of energy to transform natural resources into objects of daily use, travel and ultimately weapons of mass destruction. The world view has changed into a belief that there are endless resources and science and technology has solutions to every emerging problem without constraint. Most of the responses to IPCC warnings have this belief as their base. But, Gandhi’s concerns refuse to go away, even if at times I find it very difficult to be a faithful follower.

Greed overpowering need is even more dominant in the domain of urban transport. Transportation planning has generally relied on the most simplistic applications of “technology solves all” paradigm. The heady experience of speed from late nineteenth century onward has dominated all

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thinking. Human beings had not experienced comfortable speeds greater than 5 km per hour for all of their existence as a species except in their dreams. The launch of the train, motor car and the airplane in late 19th and early 20th century changed all that. With no genetic hunches to go by, we became speed addicts and like any other addict placed all concerns secondary to the new craving. Scientific theories and models taught all over the world for a century assumed that the main objective of a trip was to ensure smooth and unlimited movement of cars and if there were any “unintended” effects like deaths, diseases and destruction of living patterns (called externalities by economists) they could be resolved by greater application of technology.

International experience

Unending problems of traffic congestion, CO2 production, accidents and pollution in every single city of the world has forced us to re-evaluate both our theories and practices. Many urban planning groups and professionals all over the world are into deep introspection. Experts like Professor Hermann Knoflacher from Vienna warn us that “Car traffic is cooling social relationships by heating up the atmosphere! Traditional transportation engineering is a discipline to maximize congestion and as a side effect damages the urban fabric and finally the city. Global warming as a consequence is inevitable.” Voices like his are not alone or new. Jane Jacobs, the legendary urban planner explains our current problems “Of course, if you have advisors that come from the West as advisors you're likely to get such a city. What American traffic engineer going to the Middle East doesn't want to make limited access highways and doesn't think in terms of wide streets and automobile capacities? They victimize American cities this way. Why won't they victimize foreign cities this way?”

These are not voices of doomsday advocates. Their concern arises from the fact that most western cities have not been able to solve the problems that we are grappling with in India. According to the latest report from the Texas Transportation Institute congestion has increased in every single urban area in the USA in the past 25 years in spite of all investments in transit and road construction. Peak time delay in urban areas increased almost threefold between 1982 and 2007. The report warns us that “One lesson from more than 20 years of mobility studies is that congestion relief is not just a matter of highway and transit agencies building big projects”. USA is not alone in this. Almost all cities in the world face severe congestion on arterial roads. During peak times car speeds average 10-15 km/h in cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, Jakarta, Tehran or Mexico City. The fact is that rich cities have not been able to reduce car use to very low levels in spite of extensive public transport infrastructure in place (See Table 1).

All the cities in included in this table (except Singapore) had matured before the onset of the twentieth century, before cars became dominant. Their structures were determined by the need for people to walk or take the tram or the train. Even they have not been able to keep car use to very low levels. These data show that the car is used for more than 40% of the trips in most cities even when public transport is available. Evidence from cities like London, Paris and New York indicates that public transport use is greater than 60% only in the small inner core where parking is very limited and roads are perpetually full. In the rest of the city car use is generally more than 60% as roads are less crowded and there is easy availability of parking. Detailed studies from these cities point out that car owners generally shift to public transport only when no parking is available at the destination and average car speeds are less than 15 km/h. This empirical evidence suggests that car use (not ownership) is low only when walking and bicycling trips also form a significant proportion of all trips in cities.

It appears that car use is encouraged when high speed entry and exit is ensured to city centres by building multi-lane wide avenues and elevated roads through the city. The classic example of the

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decay of American cities is given as proof of this phenomenon. Public transport use also becomes difficult when large colonies or gated communities are put in place. These neighbourhoods ensure long walking distances to public transit and discourage use. It has also been observed that when cities have very noisy roads and elevated metros, richer citizens move to quieter suburbs requiring long car commutes.

This international experience should give us some important pointers. All urban transportation policy reports prepared by consultants in India assume that car use can be reduced just by providing more pubic transport facilities and assert that if their prescriptions are followed 70-80% of the trips would then be taken by public transit. The fact is that no city in the world has accomplished this feat! Further, car use as a proportion of all trips is so low in India that only very innovative thinking and practices may reduce growth in personal transport trips. In the richest cities of India, Mumbai and Delhi, recent estimates suggest that car trips constitute less than 10% of all trips. In all other cities this proportion would be lower. Additionally, the share of public transport is in these two cities is certainly higher than most of the cities in Europe or North America. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine how car and motorcycle use can be contained as we get richer if the international experience is anything to go by. Obviously, business as usual and copy-cat emulation of rich cities is not going to help.

. . .

The way forward in the face of global warming

What does sustainable transport mean for us? At a fundamental level it requires less energy consumption. The choices available are: low emission vehicles, alternative fuels, fewer trips, shorter trips, more use of public transport instead of private vehicles, and maximising the number of walking and bicycle trips. Obviously, all options will have to be pursued for maximum gain. But, we will have to establish priorities on our political agenda as the shift is not going to be easy or painless both socially and technologically. Let us examine each option briefly here.

At present our policy makers are putting the maximum stress on low emission vehicles and alternative fuels. This is horribly short-sighted. For the next twenty years there is no hope of huge reductions in CO2 primarily through low emission vehicles because the small gains will be more than offset by the rising number of vehicles and longer trip lengths. We know that as fuel consumption reduces people travel more and end up using more fuel. Production of biofuels has already become controversial internationally because of rising food prices. In a food and water short India, this is going to be even more difficult. Most international experts do not see biofuels as a solution in India. Even vehicles driven on electricity are not CO2 efficient because thermally produced electricity produces more CO2 (including transmission losses, etc.) than diesel/petrol powered vehicles. And, this does not include the negative effects of the huge amounts of fly ash associated with electric power. Even in public transport an efficiently run bus system produces about half to two-thirds the CO2 per passenger than a metro rail system. This is not to suggest that we should not have low emission vehicles, we must, and sooner than later. But, it will not be the main stay for a sustainable transport system.

Fewer trips, shorter trips, more use of public transport instead of private vehicles, and maximising the number of walking and bicycle trips has to be the priority, and it has a lot to do with how we develop our cities and streets. Now we know that no matter how many roads we build and how wide they are they always get filled up with vehicles. The number of vehicles people own is always more than road space available as evidenced by road conditions in small towns of India to car and road based cities like Los Angeles in USA. Therefore, vehicle emissions in a city are directly

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proportional to the area of road space in a city. The higher the percentage of road space and more the number of elevated transportation corridors in a city more the pollution and CO2 emissions. This also applies to one way and signal free roads. These roads force people to travel longer distances and keep their vehicles on roads for longer times. For example, my neighbour used to get out of his house, turn right on the main road and go 2 km to his office. Now all the turns have been blocked, he has to turn left, go 2 km to the next major junction and then make a U-turn to travel 4 km more to his office. Instead of 2 km, now his daily office trip is 6 km!

Public transport will only be used by choice if it is safe to walk and cross the road to take the bus. Provision of very safe roads then becomes a pre-requisite for promoting public transport and hence cleaner air. In a hot country the access trip to the bus must be less than 5-10 minutes away,or less than 500 m. This means that no city block can be more than 800-1,000 m long. At present many of our neighbourhoods and gated communities are larger than that. This discourages public transport use. The short walk must be safe from crime also. This can be ensured only if there are shops and street vendors on the road. So mixed land use, and intensely so, becomes imperative.BUs use in hot climates can become a mode of choice if all buses are air conditioned. An air conditioned bus only adds half a rupee per trip over its life time.

How do we ensure fewer and shorter trips? Rich and highly qualified people find it more difficult to find work close to home than those less qualified or poorer. Therefore, poor people should not be forced take long trips by moving them to the periphery. Short trips for most residents of the city can be enabled by policy. Poor neighbourhoods should be allowed to exist cheek by jowl with rich ones and all should be less than a sqkm in area. Small shops, restaurants, hospitals and businesses have to be an integral part of residential areas to make all this possible.

If the above conditions are met then you can have dedicated bus and bicycle lanes on all major roads of a city. A typical arterial road being two car lanes, one dedicated bus and bicycle lane each, a 2 m pedestrian path and a 1 m tree line in each direction. Such a road can move at least 35,000 persons in each direction at peak time. If such roads exist every 0.8 -1 km all over the city you have adequate capacity for moving people. Such a road does not have to more than 45 m wide.

This is the way forward for a sustainable transport option. Our cities are ready for it. Many of these options are present “illegally” already. We have to recognise them as solutions and not problems as we currently do. Unless we re-think our plans for flyovers, wider roads, gated communities, “slum” removal, and elevated transport corridors, our cities will turn out to be “warmer” than we can tolerate.

====For the complete paper as published by the Journal Civil Society - http://web.iitd.ac.in/~tripp/media/dmarticles/chaotic%20india-civil%20society.pdf

To contact the author:Dinesh Mohan, PhD - dmohan@cbme.iitd.ernet.inProfessor and CoordinatorTransport Research and Injury Prevention ProgrammeWHO Collaborating CentreIndian Institute of Technology DelhiHauz Khas, New Delhi 110016

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 18:41 0 Comments

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Honk! Battered Bicycles in Paris

Vélib, Paris's pioneering, city-transforming public bike project has had its fair share (actually unfair

share I would say) of vandalism and theft, and while it does not threaten the integrity and viability of the service, it is part of the landscape of public bikes and needs to be understood and taken into account. There is, in fact, a great deal that can be done to reduce the magnitude of these challenges , and indeed steps are being taken here. That said, let's have a look at some of the examples of damage, which have been collected for us by vigilant Eyes on the Street Sentinel in Paris, Larry Langner.

And here you have a poster placed on one of the JCDecaux street signs in Paris, warning that: "Breaking a bike is easy. It can't defend itself".

And then: "16,000 bikes vandalised, 8000 disappeared. Velib is yours. Protect it.

For more examples, click to http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-264472

* Editor's note: Click here to read report on "Reports of Vélib’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated"

Read on: Posted by Eric Britton at 05:51 3 Comments May 2009 Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

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