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

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

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

What happened with Kampala’s first-ever Car Free Day in 2011

It started like a dream, and became a reality. After the long awaited workshop in April this year, some major steps have been taken so far in Kampala. By the end of the workshop which was organized and financed by Kampala Capital City Authority in association with Goudappel Coffeng, Goudappel Africa and Iganga Foundation, a pilot project was prepared by the same partners. With its artistic impressions, Kampala looked like a heavenly city, with the people friendly infrastructure in place.

Rethinking Car Free Days in Taipei: Part II

Upon my return to Paris after a ten-day stint in Taiwan working with local colleagues in support of several on-going collaborative city projects there, and in particular in support of this year’s 10th anniversary Car Free Day program in Taipei City, I received the following letter from the Commissioner of Transportation commenting on their follow-up and plans for the year ahead. (Note: For the first part of this report, click here.) It is highly satisfying to see this steady expansion and achievement when it comes to innovation in support of more people-oriented initiatives and services. If you are looking for a good example from Asia, we suggest that you consider putting Taipei on your list.

Op-Ed: A divine solution for Car Free Days?

One of the sayings we use most often at World Streets is one that goes “you can never tell where the next good idea is going to come from”. Here is an example.

As some of our readers certainly know, we have something of an affinity with the concept of Car Free Days — which we nonetheless attempt to qualify with ample doses of realism and critical thinking (often sadly lacking). So as luck would have it we end up being something of a worldwide turnstile for news and views about how this or that concept of taking a few cars off the streets of the city and thinking about it for a day is treated in different places. Sometimes this can bring surprises.

Rethinking Car Free Days in Taipei City

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a nice day

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

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

Mid-year 2011 update at World Car Free Days
Here you have a quick update of the materials and sources available on the topic from the World Car Free Days Consortium and several other key sources.

Día sin Coches en Bogotá XI : Carlosfelipe Pardo reporting live from the street on occasion of the city’s 11th Car Free Day

This just in from our fearless embedded reporter on the streets of Bogotá Día sin coches XI. Carlos refers in his email to the seminal project which kicked off the basic structure for organizing days without cars back in 1994 under the title “Thursday: A Breakthrough Strategy for Reducing Car Dependence in Cities” . Later Thursday provided a part of the blueprint for the first Car Free Day to be organized in Bogotá under the exceptional leadership of then-mayor Enrique Penalosa on the first Thursday of the new millennium. You can download Thursday here.

For your next Car Free Day, go on a diet.

“When it comes to transport, we’ve become obese. I mean this in multiple senses. Our population of vehicles has burgeoned; already around 1 billion worldwide, it’s expected to double within just 20 years. The vehicle miles we travel, or VMT, continue to swell; just in the U.S., for instance, VMT now fluctuates around 250 billion per month – trillions per year – and grows each month by an average 200 million more. Even our waistlines have expanded due to excess motor vehicle travel; one study attributes six extra pounds to the extra driving done by typical suburbanites.”

Car Free Days 2010: Part 2. Thursday: A breakthrough strategy for reducing car dependence in cities

This is the full unedited text of the original presentation to the Ciudades Accesibles Congress in Toledo Spain organized by the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, Transport and the Environment, with the participation of Car Free Cities Initiative of the EuroCities program and the Direction General XI of the Commission of European Communities.

Car Free Days 2010: Part 1. Origins, Timeline, Progress

“Every day is a great day to take a few cars off the street and think about it.”
Here is how the Car Free Days movement got started and has taken shape over the last 16 years.  This is the first of a series of two articles which we update and post annually just prior to the September rush to get the latest batch of Car Free Day projects off the ground. We hope that these pieces and the references you find here are going to prove useful to those responsible for making a success of their Days in 2010. Getting a CFD right and making it a real success is no easy task and good knowledge of what has worked and not worked in the past should be useful.

World Carfree Day: Interview with Eric Britton

September 22 is an important date to remember – it’s World Carfree Day (WCD). Celebrated in towns and cities all over the world, it’s a day when streets are closed to cars and open for pedestrians, pedalers, parties and pleasure. Eric Britton, a sustainability activist, international adviser and consultant on sustainable transportation, is recognised for his work promoting and propelling WCD to  international attention. Much of his work involves co-ordinating the collaborative New Mobility Agenda and World Streets online journal, which encompass a number of possible transport solutions, including public transport, bike sharing and shared space projects. In an interview with Carbusters, Eric shared his thoughts about the problems, popularity and prospects for WCD, and points out the importance of bringing it into the policy agenda of governments in order to improve urban transport sustainability.

Kaohsiung Car Free Days and a Green Transport Program: Low-carbon, high-amenity transport, one city at a time

With mounting visible evidence of the reality and extremely high cost of climate change, people in Taiwan increasingly feel the importance of being a part of the earth. And the city of Kaohsiung has decided to do something about it.


- Dispatch by Ray Hung, Transportation Bureau, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s second largest city with a population of 1,510,000. And it is a busy city. The large harbor makes it an important trade stop along the Northeast Asia/South Pacific passageway. With visible evidence of the high cost of climate change, people in Taiwan increasingly feel the importance of being a part of the earth. The city of Kaohsiung has decided to do something about it.

2009 Car Free Day activities.

Kaohsiung City Government organized the eighth edition of its annual Car Free Day in September this year, urging the public to use and to think about more green transport and experience energy-saving and environmental-friendly lifestyle.

To celebrate this event, Kaohsiung City Government invited the founder of the World Car Free Days, Eric Britton, to join and promote the concept of sharing low-carbon, high conviviality transportation, as a warm-up for the first session of the “Sharing Green Transportation International Forum” which will be held in Kaohsiung City from 16-19 September 2010.

In addition to the traditional city-wide Car Free Day celebrations and cycling events held on Sunday the 27th of September, the public transportation activities through the full new mobility week, including three days free ride of city bus, car-free day unlimited usage of public bicycle and the bus driver’s selection, had let the public have more opportunities to take public transportation and develop sustainable public transport thinking.

2009 Car Free Day in Kaohsiung – Kaohsiung’s mayor pushing for sustainable transport

Kaohsiung City – The making of a green transport-oriented city

Kaohsiung City Government continues its long term move towards the pursuit of green transport-oriented city.

In 2008, the 42.7 km mass rapid transit system and 24 bus rapid transit road network made the public transport usage percentage significantly increase from 4.3% to 11%.

In order to construct a more convenient MRT road network, Kaohsiung City Government is actively processing the 19.6 km light rail investment operations.

C-Bike: Public Bicycle project now on the street in Kaohsiung

In addition, encouraging commuters and tourists to choose a more environmental-friendly means of transport, Kaohsiung City Government has launched 50 stations and 4,500 bicycles for public bicycle system. (For more on this project please see http://www.c-bike.com.tw/eng/qanda.html)

The Public Cycling System in Kaohsiung – A 365 days a year green transport event

The city is committed to extending the total length of its bicycle paths from the current 110 kilometers to 180 km by the end of this year.

Plans for first World Shared Transport Conference – September 2010

The City of Kaohsiung has during this week of related events committed to hosting an international conference from 16 – 19 September 2009, that will for the first time bring a panel of world leaders working in the field of shared transport systems of many kinds together for an intense three day presentation and brainstorm on this transportation concept which is seeing innovation and rapid growth in many leading cities around the world.

Transport sharing is an important trend, one that is already starting to reshape at least parts of some of our cities. It is a movement at the leading edge of our most successful (and wealthiest and livable) cities.

This International Conference – the first of its kind — will bring together leading thinkers and sharing transport practitioners from around Taiwan, Asia and the world, to examine the concept of shared transport (as opposed to individual ownership) from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with a strong international and Chinese-speaking contingent.

The concept of shared transport is at once old and new, formal and informal, and one that is growing very fast. Something important is clearly going on, and the Kaohsiung event look at this carefully, in the hope of providing a broader strategic base for advancing not just the individual shared modes, but the sustainable transport agenda more broadly.

Are we at a turning point? Is sharing already starting to be a more broadly used and relevant social/economic pattern? Is there an over-arching concept which we can identify and put to work for people and the planet?

These are some of the issues we will examine with prominent invited guests from the fields of economics, politics, psychology, who will join transportation experts to discuss these trends.

The conference will also delve deeper into specific shared transport modes and their applications in a series of parallel workshop sessions which will include various forms of carsharing, ridesharing, bikesharing, taxi-sharing, street-sharing and a number of others, as well as the integration of traditional sharing in the form of public transport.

Places at this event are limited, although for those unable to attend media and web coverage will be extensive.

* To learn more about the forthcoming conference, please visit – www.kaohsiung.newmobility.org
* Or get in touch via email: kaohsiung@newmobility.org

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About the author:

Ray Hung
Traffic Management Center
Transportation Bureau
Kaohsiung City, Taiwan
Email：hideo@kcg.gov.tw

Car Free Days 2. Thursday: A breakthrough strategy for reducing car dependence in cities

This is the full unedited text of the 18 October 1994 presentation by Eric Britton to the Ciudades Accesibles Congress in Toledo Spain  organized by the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, Transport and the Environment, with the participation of Car Free Cities Initiative of the EuroCities program and the Direction General XI of the Commission of European Communities.

Car Free Days: 1. Origins & Timeline

“Every day is a great day to take a few cars off the street and think about it.”
Here is how the car-free days movement got started and has taken shape over the last 15 years. You will find the full story in the World Car-Free Days Consortium website at www.worldcarfreedays.com. * And the latest car free day news here.

The Great Leap China Car Free Days Idea Factory (Draft)

It’s soon 2007 and we have now accumulated more than a dozen years of international experience with Car Free Days of many sorts in many places. Against this background the goal of this proposed group thinking exercise is to see what we might get out of it if we launch an open group brainstorm on how the best of this experience and past lessons may be put to work in in the months and years immediately ahead. Caution: We are certainly not talking here about anything like some direct “transfer of experience”, not least because in fact the overall record of accomplishment of the Car Free Days movement internationally is, despite occasional successes, hardly what one might call a model of success. But there are in all this some germs of ideas, and the goal of this group think and talk exercise will be to see if we can scratch together and come up with something that might have some uses.