Here you have the beginning of a basically unstructured reading list of articles and books that dig from a wide variety of angles into the complex but oh so important issues that underlie the concept of an equity-based transport systems and policy. In time we will organize this with greater rigor and more detail (but not too much, time is so important), but here you have it today as a useful first reference point, in addition to those you have yourself. Continue reading
The overflowing inbox this morning brought a reminder of a tool to which in this age of info-overload we had not given much thought of late – the expanded and honed TRID database. This is not just a good database and handy resource – it is an EXCELLENT tool for planners, policy makers, academics, and quite possibly you. If you are not already using it, at the very least check out the quick presentation here. We shall shortly publish a more complete critical introduction to this excellent transportation research resource. In the meantime, here is a quick intro and key to putting it to work. Continue reading
Comments Off
Posted in 2011, resource, tools, World Streets
Whatever it might be there seems to a lot of it apparently going on in various places around Europe — or at least that is what this map seems to suggest. But what exactly is it? Where do you go to find more? Stay tuned. We will be looking at this in the days ahead together with the team that is drawing this map.
Well here it is a bit larger so that at least you can start to read the legends. (And if you click the map you get an even larger, clearer image.)
What if we take a look at the above and contrast it with the map we get showing the locations of the last 80 origins of people who visited World Streets this afternoon. Do we see a pattern, no matter how rough? Hmm.
Let’s leave it at that for today since the team behind the project is not quite ready to maek their formal anouncement with the full story and the ready to use toolset. But soon. We’ll stay right on it.
In the meantime conjectures, and even information, are welcome.
Comments Off
Posted in cities, local government, resource, tools
World Streets has four main functions: (a) It is a specialized daily journal. (b) A collaborative international network. (c) An in-depth international resource. 
And finally (d) an active lobby for sustainable transportation, sustainable cities and sustainable lives, supporting projects and programs all over the world. Here we introduce the resource/research function which, as you will see, provides exceptionally deep and broad coverage of the sector from a truly international perspective.
Please start here:
We cordially invite you to give this a careful read the first time you come to this site, because this is your key to getting full value from this carefully constructed toolset.
The resource base and toolset introduced here has been specifically pieced together with our readers and their needs in mind. Our readers come from many different parts of the world, with often very different cultures and historical endowments, and levels of available resources for dealing with all these issues that vary hugely. What they have in common is that overwhelmingly they either work with cities or public agencies concerned with matters of transportation, environment, city development, land use, public health, etc., or are activists or researchers, professors or students, operators or regulators, consultants or concerned citizens. Or are representatives of the media, new and old.
These are the kinds of people and institutions who we have set out to serve.
How to make best use of the site and toolset:
The blog itself is divided into two main sections. The one that most people are immediately aware of and turn their eye to is the larger central column which presents the main content of the daily newspaper. That is our intention.
However, day after day, month after month the sheer quantity of articles and commentaries that appear here tend to gradually enter into something which is analogous to a close drawer on your desk. It is there, it is maybe important for you at some point, but how to get at it when you need it? That is the second part of our challenge.
So to this end, we will focus here entirely on the smaller column just to your left here, the “rest of the iceberg” if you will. This turns out to be a bit more complicated and is worth introducing carefully so that you can get best use of it. We are confident that the time you invest to familiarize yourself initially with this extensive tool set will be well compensated.
Let us start by simply listing the main headings/categories. that constitute the resource base. And then once you have a quick look at the overall collection we can then examine each in turn and in more detail.
Here is the overall listing as it stands at this date:
1. First time visitor ABC’s
2. World Streets in World Languages
3. Search World Streets: 2009/2010
4. The latest from World Streets
5. Featured series for (month)
6. Featured video clips for (month)
7. Latest news from the world’s streets (Headlines and links)
8. Editorial/volunteer team
9. New Mobility building blocks
10. Subscribe, support World Streets 2010
11. Free daily delivery: RSS
12. New Mobility combined search engine
13. World Streets weekly archives
14. Search all key sources (See below)s
15. Key sources, links, and blogs
16. World Streets sentinels
17. World Streets correspondents
18. In Memoriam
19. They are talking about . . .
20. (Some draft sections)
Now going into more detail:
It is our hope that the entire process will be sufficiently well labeled and logical that most of our readers will simply be able to click through them to see where they lead. But we thought it might be useful as well if we supply some more detailed indications, which is what we shall now do, taking each in the indicated order.
1. FIRST TIME VISITOR ABC’S - This important introductory section is divided in turn into five parts:
A. Start here / The Brief- This 4 page/4 minute introduction is proposed is must reading if the readers to understand fundamentally what this initiative is all about. It is a fast read, quickly setting out the main defining points and characteristics of World Streets, and the New Mobility Agenda just behind it.B. New Mobility / The Strategy – Plan A: Goals, strategy, building blocks. Once again we propose this as an essential read for the first time reader, since it sets out the basic issues and political philosophy that underlie entire approach and selection of the journal. This is not just any collection of “interesting articles” that involve issues of transport in and around cities. It is about sustainable transportation quite strictly defined. Please read.
C. World Streets / The Resource (this page)
D. Expert views / The reaction — 101 readers report their critical views on World Streets. Replaces here because we believe it provides important perspective from readers with high expertise in many areas and for many parts of the world. As editors we can tell you how good we think we are all day long, but these words from entirely independent people provide you with something you can count on.
E. Implementation / Now what: — contribute, subscribe, support, get involved in making World Streets of success. This is for us an extremely important section, though life being what it is and timing as short as it is, we have to keep in mind that many readers will be too busy to give this their attention. We hope you will, because your collaboration is part of what is needed to make this collaborative venture work. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
2. WORLD STREETS IN WORLD LANGUAGES
This is tricky, but very important. It is easy to have prejudices on this in terms of the violence of the translations can do to your language; but be patient, there is more to it than that. There is a language reality out there of which many people working in the field internationally are not necessarily aware. And that is that the bulk of the people on this planet who are involved in transportation policy and practice in any given place where English is not the primary language, simply do not have the time to devote to reading articles, even summaries of articles, that are in something other than their main working language. That is a reality. But since World Streets has the pretension of being a truly worldwide cross-cultural source, we have tried to figure out how to make some kind of inroads into this seemingly intractable problem. With that in mind and making use of this borrowed toolset, from our very first day of publication we have tried to take advantage of best available technology in order to provide workable translations for the roughly 6,000,000,000 people on this planet for whom English is not their main working language. For more on this, have a look at http://tinyurl.com/ws-languages .
3. SEARCH WORLD STREETS: 2009/2010
Remember our analogy that the past content of World streets runs the risk of being equivalents of potentially interesting papers and reports that are caught in a closed-door of your desk? As an example as of March 2010 have been more than 500 articles and commentaries published in the course of the first year. But these are not just articles were given day, but potential resources. This search function scans via your selection of keywords the entire contents of World Streets from its inception. The same familiar approach as for Google. Try when you need it and we think you will not be disappointed. (In other parts of this resource section you will see additional Combined Search Engines which we have created to scan the contents of hundreds of related sources worldwide. You will see more on that below.)
4. THE LATEST FROM WORLD STREETS .
This tool sets out two searches, the first of which calls up the latest articles appearing in the journal with the most recent up top, while the second is the same for your comments.
5. FEATURED SERIES FOR (MONTH)
The items under this heading vary from month to month depending on the goals and orientation of the overall program in that period. In all cases however they are standardized to the extent that the first item calls up the World Streets Monthly Report for the last full month, while the last item — Check out (month’s) featured clips — provides an introduction to the selected video clips for the month, which appear immediately below and are directly clickable.
6. FEATURED VIDEO CLIPS FOR (MONTH)
because we live in a multimedia world, and because in order to advance the sustainable transportation agenda we have to take advantage of every tool at our disposal, this section presents each month a selection of short videos which we propose for viewing, perhaps during your coffee break. As you can imagine, we give careful thought to the selection.
7. LATEST NEWS FROM THE WORLD’S STREETS (HEADLINES AND LINKS
In the big and varied world in which we live the concept of creative linking is a very important one. On the other hand we must be extremely careful since, given the enormous wealth and great facility of making these contacts, you can always end up connecting to everything, and then at the end of the day have no time to do your own work. So in this case what we decided to do is to select a total of a dozen sources of news, generating for the most part daily news, which treat in various ways the main issues to which World Streets is dedicated. (Not necessarily reflecting our views and priorities but working energetically to make these issues and trade-offs better known.
The idea is that our readers will be able to run down that list in a minute or two, and then if they spot something that appears to be possibly relevant for their work, all they have to do is click to it and the original source will be at their service. And if you wish to see more from that source, you can also find them listed in the “Key Sources” section just below. There is considerable variety in the range and tgype of sources selected here, but that is as it must be in a world in which issues are complex and the answers are sure to be surprising. Let us use our peripheral vision to make sure we are not missing anything important.
8. EDITORIAL/VOLUNTEER TEAM
This short section introduces the team of volunteers who are cooperating to lead and support this independent and until now largely unfunded effort in support of sustainable transport worldwide. The second part of this listing provides information such as guidelines for contributors, comments on fair use, and a rough shopping list setting out some of the technical and other innovations and competences that we would hope to build and program without too much delay.
9. NEW MOBILITY BUILDING BLOCKS
-> Marquee: This running display has been set up in order to give someone who is sufficiently curious a review of the way that we view the main components and delivery modes that together constitute the New Mobility Agenda. Admittedly it is almost impossible to read in its present form, but the content is important and will be the subject of articles and clarification in the near future. The bottom line point is this: the future of transport and cities is not a question of cars used in the old way and/or public transit is delivered in the old way. There is a lot more to it than that, which indeed is what World Streets is all about. To continue.
-> Behind World Streets: the New Mobility Agenda: world streets is basically the unified publishing arm of the New Mobility Agenda, whose numerous programs, libraries, message services, and links feed into the Journal and provide it with much of its backing and content.
-> Knoogle search > 800 selected world sources: Knoogle is the Combined Search Engine and specialized knowledge browser that we initiated in 2008 and have subsequently continued to develop it into a search tool which provides access to a very large number of carefully selected sources dealing with sustainable transportation and sustainable cities worldwide.
-> Meet the World Streets Sentinels: The “sentinels” are colleagues working in this field around the world who have agreed to share with us their findings and observations within their cities and countries. (This program is and will continue to be under development.)
-> Read Nuova Mobilità: Nuova Mobilità is our sister publication, the first in what we hope will develop into a series of affiliated projects aiming to provide useful materials on our topic to professionals and others working in that country and language group. The site is in Italian, however on the upper left you will see there is the possibility of into English or other language of your choice. We invite you to drop in and have a look from time to time to see how our Italian sisters and brothers look at the challenges of sustainable transportation.
10. SUBSCRIBE, SUPPORT WORLD STREETS 2010
This section invites our readers to be part of the solution and to join in to support this collaborative program through financial contributions, their willingness to work with us to find sponsors, their availability for writing articles and other forms of technical support, and in general joining in this international collaborative effort. The very important part of this concerns are invitation for readers who share our values to set forth in order to work with us as ambassadors in order to help us intensify and contact organizations known to them, and in particular within their own countries, for future collaboration and exchange.
11. FREE DAILY DELIVERY: RSS
One click access to setting up your preferred RSS feeds for both articles and comments.
12. NEW MOBILITY COMBINED SEARCH ENGINE
Just before we get to the Journal’s archives, which organized by week and year, we thought it would be useful to place another search engine which gives the reader the choice of looking through those archives directory, clicking on yet more general look through the very large number of sources that are covered by our Knoogle knowledge browser. Or more generally the full Web.
13. WORLD STREETS WEEKLY ARCHIVES
Every week somewhere between five and seven new articles are posted, and these archives are intended to be handy to check out daily postings going all the way back to the first edition in March 2009. In most cases when one is referencing anything more than a week or two back, unless you know the approximate date, probably the best way to locate the items you are looking for is via the preceding search engine. Another excellent possibility is to use the key word items that are associated with each article.
14. SEARCH ALL KEY SOURCES (SEE LISTING JUST BELOW)
Yet another search engine, this time aiming at the more than 200 carefully selected sources that are listed just below. So put in other words, if you are curious as to what this collection of outstanding sources as to say on any given subject, you have a very simple tool here in order to carry out your research.
15. KEY SOURCES, LINKS, AND BLOGS
This is a potential gold mine for researchers. We give great importance to this collection of sources and are continuously soliciting our readers to review them and suggest further additions, or if they feel the source is not up to the standard to be dropped from the listing. At the time this page was prepared there were some 204 sources identified on that list, all available with a single click. And all fully searchable through the preceding customized search engine.
16. WORLD STREETS SENTINELS
This world map identifies the first one hundred-plus people working in more than forty countries on all continents who have stepped forward with offers to share with all interested latest information and clues from their cities, good news and bad news that has perhaps lessons for others. This listing is continually in process, and recommendations for qualified people are much appreciated. (For more, click here – http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/03/world-streets-correspondents.html )
17. WORLD STREETS CORRESPONDENTS
List of some of the people reporting on projects, problems, etc. in their cities in different parts of the world. (Ever in process)
18. IN MEMORIUM
If you are familiar with the work of these pioneering figures, you will understand why we are here and working to build on the foundation they have so generously given us.
19. THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT . . .
this is not a particularly sophisticated collection of links, but we at least find some use in reviewing them from time to time to get a better feel for the extent to which World streets, Nuova Mobilità and the New Mobility Agenda are being referenced or in the news.
20. TABLE OF CONTENTS (working draft)
This is at this point a catch-all with ideas for bits and pieces to be integrated, perhaps, into the resource base at an appropriate time
# # #
Dear reader.
I have to admit it. This has been a long slog, for us to write and you to read. But that is exactly what sustainability is all about: new mental architecture, carefully thought-out philosophy, breadth of vision, consistent criteria, great energy, unremitting discipline, deep collaboration, and an ability to hang in there for the long slog. This is not a job for lazy people. :-)
Eric Britton
Editor, World Streets
There are several alternative ways of accessing and keeping track of the considerable daily contents 
of World Streets, among them the various RSS links and bookmarks you will see the top of the menu just your left. It has been our experience in other programs of the New Mobility Agenda, that one of the best ways for colleagues to try all of this together is through a group forum, such as is introduced here.
World Streets has four main functions: (1) A daily (and monthly) publication; (2) a valuable resource for concerned public agencies, researchers, policy makers, students, the media, and active citizens; (3) an on-going collaborative process bringing together something like two thousand colleagues and observers in more than seventy countries on all continents; and binding all this together (4) a worldwide lobby for sustainable transport, sustainable cities and social justice.
This section presents the access, archiving and search functions, which permit our readers to have ready access to the hundreds of articles, postings and comments posted by colleagues around the world since opening of publication on 2 March 2009.
* Click here to check out the Forum. (Access to contents is available to members. See below for quick sign-in routine.)
Subscription: The Forum provides our readers with a handy way to sign in and thereby to make sure that they are efficiently updated in a concise manner concerning all articles and postings that appear in the pages of World Streets.
Signing up is simple – all it takes is a quick e-mail to subscribe@WorldStreets.org identifying yourself by name, institutional affiliation if any, city, country, and preferred e-mail or other contact information.
News options: When it comes to receiving notification and postings, you have three choices, in the event that you are (justifiably) worried about information overload, which we try in any event to make unlikely since there is rarely more than one article per day posted to the site.
You can choose either (a) to receive news of new articles as posted, (b) to receive a compact daily digest, or (c) if you prefer, to receive only special notices which are sent out rarely but which give you an open channel of communications for exception information (this option being only rarely used). These choices you can make at the time you first sign in.
Archives, Library and Reading Room: This 
function is straightforward, namely that members now have access to the full content of the site, including all published articles and associated communications. The contents are fully searchable (simple keyword and advanced), as you will see on the Messages page.
Forum discussions and comments:
To post a message to the Forum, address your email to WorldStreets@yahoogroups.com. Again, before doing this a first time we invite you to have a quick read of the Welcoming Note at http://forum.newmobility.org/
* Click here to go to Forum
* Click here to sign in.
This carefully compiled seasonal report from Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute is a fine tool and up to date source guide for researchers and policy makers worldwide. We are pleased to present it in its entirety here, together with references you will find handy to take these entries further. Thanks for your continuing fine work Todd.
News from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Winter 2010 Vol. 13, No. 1
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute is an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transportation problems. The VTPI website (http://www.vtpi.org) has many resources addressing a wide range of transport planning and policy issues.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Editor’s note:
All of the content of the extensive VTPI site including their extremely useful Online TDM Encyclopedia — http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/index.php — can be conveniently searched using the special New Mobility Knoogle Combined Search Engine that you will find in the left column here, which scans the content of the close to two hundred carefully selected Key Sources, Links and Blogs. You can also access it here direct by clicking http://tinyurl.com/knoogle-WS-key-sources
New Documents
====================
“Raise My Taxes, Please! Evaluating Household Savings From High Quality Public Transit” ( http://www.vtpi.org/raisetaxes.pdf )
High quality public transit consists of service sufficiently convenient and comfortable to attract travel that would otherwise be by automobile. This paper uses data from U.S. cities to investigate the incremental costs and benefits of high quality transit service. The analysis indicates that high quality public transit typically requires about $268 annually per capita in additional tax subsidy and $104 in additional fares, but provides vehicle, parking and road cost savings averaging $1,040 per capita, plus other benefits including congestion reductions, increased traffic safety, pollution reductions, improved mobility for non-drivers, improved fitness and health. This indicates that residents should rationally support tax increases if needed to create high quality public transit systems in their communities. Current planning practices tend to overlook or undervalue many of these savings and benefits and so result in underinvestment in transit quality improvements.
“Parking Pricing Implementation Guidelines: How More Efficient Pricing Can Help Solve Parking Problems, Increase Revenue, And Achieve Other Planning Objectives” ( http://www.vtpi.org/parkpricing.pdf )
Efficient parking pricing can provide numerous benefits including increased turnover and therefore improved user convenience, parking facility cost savings, reduced traffic problems, and increased revenues. This report provides guidance on parking pricing implementation. It describes parking pricing benefits and costs, ways to overcome common obstacles and objections, and examples of successful parking pricing programs. Parking pricing is best implemented as part of an integrated parking management program. Current trends are increasing the benefits of efficient parking pricing. Legitimate objections to parking pricing can be addressed with appropriate policies and strategies.
Updated Documents
=================
“Where We Want To Be: Home Location Preferences And Their Implications For Smart Growth” ( http://www.vtpi.org/sgcp.pdf )
“The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be” (http://www.vtpi.org/future.pdf
“Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs” ( http://www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf )
* * * * *
Published Elsewhere
===================
“Evaluating Carbon Taxes As An Energy Conservation And Emission Reduction Strategy,” Transportation Research Record 2139, Transportation Research Board (www.trb.org), pp. 125-132; at http://www.vtpi.org/carbontax.pdf
Carbon taxes are based on fossil fuel carbon content, and therefore tax carbon dioxide emissions. This paper evaluates British Columbia’s carbon tax, introduced in 2008. It reflects key carbon tax principles: it is broad, gradual, predictable, and structured to assist low-income people. Revenues are returned to residents and businesses in ways that protect the lowest income households. It supports economic development by encouraging energy conservation which keeps money circulating within the regional economy.
“Transportation Policy and Injury Control” Injury Prevention, Vol. 15, Issue 6, 2009. ( http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/15/6/362.full )
This short article describes a paradigm shift occurring in the field of transport planning, and its implications for traffic safety. The old paradigm assumed that “transportation” means automobile travel. The new paradigm recognizes a wider range of options and planning objectives.
“The VMT Reduction Target Debate: Will This Get Us Where We Want to Go?” TRB Annual Meeting session video recording ( http://www.bethereglobal.com/trb_2010/shop/index.php?searchstring=litman&showresult=true&exp=0&resultpage=&categories=off&msg=&search=index.php&shop=1 ).
“Complete Streets” (EIP-25), Planners Advisory Service Essential Information Packets ( http://www.planning.org/pas/infopackets/#25 ), American Planning Association ($30)
Complete streets accommodate all users. Over the past several years, communities across the country have embraced a complete streets approach to the planning, design, construction, and operation of new transportation facilities. In this Essential Info Packet, PAS compiled a variety of articles, reports, and other resources detailing best practices for planning and building complete streets, including the VTPI “Introduction to Multi-Modal Transportation Planning: Principles and Practices.”
Recent Planetizen Blogs ( http://www.planetizen.com/blog/2394 ):
* “Raise My Taxes, Please! Financing High Quality Public Transit Service Saves Me Money Overall”
* “Carfree Design Manual”
* “Accessibility, Mobility and Automobile Dependency”
“Report from TRB”
“Fun With Research: Higher Fuel Prices Increase Economic Productivity”
* * * * *
Current Projects
===================
Canadian Tax Exempt Transit and Cycling Benefits
“Cost Estimate of Proposed Amendments to the Income Tax Act to Exempt Certain Employer-Provided Transportation Benefits from Taxable Income” ( http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/PBO-DPB/documents/Costing_C-466_EN.pdf ).
Proposed Canadian legislation C-466 would exempt from income taxes employer-provided commuter benefits up to $1,800 annually for transit and park-and-ride expenses, and $250 for cycling expenses. This study evaluated the fiscal impacts of this legislation. It concluded that net tax revenue foregone would be negligible overall, and the reduced vehicle traffic should provide economic benefits leading to increased productivity and therefore tax revenues.
To support this legislation send letters to:
Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance
21st Floor, 110 O’Connor Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0G5
A model letter is available at http://www.vtpi.org/files/C466.doc .
Drive Less, Pay Less: Pay-As-You-Drive Auto Insurance Performance Standard ( http://www.ceres.org/Page.aspx?pid=1157 )
VTPI is working with a coalition of transportation and environmental organizations to develop a Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) vehicle insurance performance standard to help regulators, insurers and consumers identify truly effective PAYD policies. This standard defines specific requirements for policies to achieve Bronze, Silver and Gold ratings. For more information see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-s-lubber/drive-less-pay-less-win-w_b_391373.html .
* * * * *
Upcoming Events
=================
“Multi-modal Transportation Economic Evaluation: Cut Costs and Improve Mobility” at the Urban Transportation Summit, Toronto 3 March 2010 ( http://www.strategyinstitute.com/030210_uts8/dsp.php )
“Parking Innovation Workshop” at the American Planning Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 11 April 2010 ( http://www.planning.org/conference/program/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=138154 ).
“Smart Driving: Evaluating Mobility Management” at the Edmonton International Conference on Urban Traffic Safety, 28 April 2010 ( http://www.trafficsafetyconference.com ).
* * * * *
Useful Resources
=================
“Preventive Medicine; Special Supplement on Active Communities for Youth and Families: Using Research to Create Momentum for Change,” Vol. 50, Supplement 1, January 2010; at ( http://www.activelivingresearch.org/resourcesearch/journalspecialissues ). This special, free journal issue contains articles describing new research on the relationships between land use policy, urban design, travel activity (walking, cycling, transit and vehicle travel), body weight and health outcomes.
“Bicycling and Walking in the U.S.: 2010 Benchmarking Report” (www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/site/index.php/site/memberservices/C529.
This comprehensive study by the Alliance for Biking & Walking reveals that in almost every state and major U.S. city, bicyclists and pedestrians are at a disproportionate risk of being killed, and receive less than their fair share of transportation dollars. While 10% of U.S. trips are by bike or foot, and 13% of traffic fatalities are bicyclists and pedestrians, yet biking and walking receive less than 2% of federal transportation dollars. The report indicates that states with the lowest levels of biking and walking have, on average, the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. International comparisons indicate that the U.S. investments less in biking and walking and has less biking and walking activity than its peers.
“Integrating Bicycling and Public Transport in North America” by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2009, pp. 79-104; at http://www.nctr.usf.edu/jpt/pdf/JPT12-3Pucher.pdf.
“Child and Youth Friendly Land Use and Transport Planning: Guidelines and Literature Review” ( http://www.kidsonthemove.ca ) is developing guidelines for municipal transportation and land-use planners as tools to create communities that meet the needs of children and youth – and everyone else.
“Abu Dhabi Urban Street Design Manual” ( http://nelsonnygaard.com/Documents/Reports/Abu-Dhabi-StreetDesignManual.pdf )
This innovative Manual provides guidance to planners and designers on ways to create more walkable communities. It introduces the concept of the pedestrian realm as an integral part of the overall street composition. It uses extensive illustrations, examples and instructions to help designers, planners and decision-makers implement a new vision of urban development. It responds to the needs of a rapidly-growing city that desires to preserve cultural traditions and design features, provide natural comfort in a hot climate, accommodate diverse populations, and achieve sustainability objectives.
“Who Owns The Roads? How Motorised Traffic Discourages Walking And Bicycling,” by Peter L. Jacobsen, F. Racioppi and H. Rutter, Injury Prevention, Vol. 15, Issue 6, pp. 369-373; ( http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/15/6/369.full.html ).
This article examines the impact of vehicle traffic on walking and bicycling activity. It indicates that real and perceived danger and discomfort imposed by traffic discourages walking and bicycling, and interventions to reduce traffic speed and volume can improve public health by increasing walking and bicycling activity.
“A Study on the Impact of the Green Transport Mode on Public Health Improvement,” KOTI World-Brief, Vol. 1, No. 1, Korea Transport Institute, May 2009, pp. 6-8 ( http://english.koti.re.kr/upload/eng_publication_regular/world-brief01.pdf ).
This study found that commuters who switch from automobile to walking or cycling for eight weeks experienced significantly reduced lower blood pressure, improved lung capacity and improved cholesterol counts. It estimated that commuters who use active modes achieve annual health and fitness benefits worth an average of 2.2 million Korean Won (about $2,000). They found that incorporating these values into transportation policy and project evaluation significantly affected outcomes, resulting in higher values for policies and projects that increase active transportation among people who otherwise achieve less than 150 weekly minutes of physical activity.
“Transitway Impacts Research Program” ( http://www.cts.umn.edu/Research/Featured/Transitways ) investigates how high quality urban transit systems affect travel activity and land use development.
“Analysis Finds Shifting Trends in Highway Funding: User Fees Make Up Decreasing Share” (http://www.subsidyscope.com/transportation/highways/funding )
This analysis of Federal Highway Statistics found the portion of U.S. highway funding paid by motor vehicle user fees has declined significantly. In 2007, 51% of highway construction and maintenance expenditures were generated through user fees (fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and tolls) down from 61% a decade earlier. The rest came from other sources, including income, sales and property taxes.
“Estimates of the External Costs of Transport in 2007″ KOTI World-Brief, Vol. 1, No. 3, Korea Transport Institute (www.koti.re.kr), July, pp. 8-10; at http://english.koti.re.kr/upload/eng_publication_regular/World-Brief03.pdf .
This study estimates that during 2007, South Korean household expenditures on transportation totaled 11.4% of GDP, and external transportation costs (congestion delays, accident damages and pollution emissions) totaled 5.4% of GDP. The study compares South Korea’s transport costs with other countries and indicates changes over time.
“Transport: External Cost of Transport In Switzerland” ( http://www.are.admin.ch/themen/verkehr/00252/00472/index.html?lang=en ). This comprehensive research program by the Swiss government provides detailed estimates of various transportation costs, including infrastructure, accidents and pollutants.
“International Fuel Prices 2009″ ( http://www.gtz.de/fuelprices)
The 2009 International Fuel Prices report provides an overview of the retail prices of gasoline and diesel in more than 170 countries, discusses pricing policies, presents case studies on the impact of high and volatile fuel prices in 2007/2008 in developing countries and provides access to numerous additional resources.
“Rethinking Transport and Climate Change” ( http://www.transport2012.org/bridging/ressources/files/1/96,Rethinking_Transport_and_Climate_Chan.pdf ) and “Changing Course: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Urban Transport” ( http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Paradigm-Sustainable-Urban-Transport/new-paradigm-transport.pdf ).
These two new reports by the Asian Development Bank conclude that current transportation planning practices are unsustainable and discuss policy and planning changes needed to create more efficient and equitable transport systems.
“Transit Benefit Ordinance” ( http://www.transitbenefitordinance.com). This new website provides specific information on how municipal governments can encourage or require larger employers to offer transit benefits.
“Carfree Design Manual” by Joel Crawford, International Books ( http://www.carfree.com/cdm ). This comprehensive and attractive book, featuring hundreds of photographs and drawings, describes the theory and practice of carfree (and car-light) urban planning.
“How Free Is Your Parking?” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_O6dR7YfvM&feature=player_embedded )
# # #
About the author:
Todd Litman is founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy 
Institute, an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems. His work helps to expand the range of impacts and options considered in transportation decision-making, improve evaluation techniques, and make specialized technical concepts accessible to a larger audience. He can be reached at: 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, Canada. Email: litman@vtpi.org. Phone & Fax: +1 250-360-1560
Comments Off
Posted in demand management, Op-ed, resource, sustainability, Traffic reduction
This series strives to try to provide a balanced view reporting on how the practice of sharing cars is progressing in countries and cities around the world. Including in places that have yet to create their own carshare operations or pubic programs to investigate or support them. The case of Iceland is one among many, showing how the roll-up takes time and the importance of convincing of those who have yet to embrace the broader new mobility approach to transport and environment. Let’s have a look.
This in today from Morten Lange, World Streets Sentinel in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Here is an ultra-short report from Iceland:
1. At present there is none.
2. The relatively new NGO here in Iceland called Society for a Carfree Lifestyle ( Samtök um bíllausan lífsstíl, http://www.billaus.is ) applied for a grant from the government last year to write a report exploring the possibilities for a carsharing club or company.
3. Sadly they were turned down, and since that not much has been happening on that front as far as I understand.
4. They might be interested in joining the World Carshare Forum so, I copied this email to a contact within the board at Bíllaus, whom I promised to inform about the World Carshare forum and this series.
# # #
The author: 
Morten Lange describes himself as “as an advocate for cycling and other healthy transport (in my spare time and then some)”. He lives, works and pedals in Reykjavik Iceland
# # #
Commentary:
With a regional population of about two hundred thousand, distinguished by per capita car ownership among the highest in the world at more than 500 vehicles per 1000 residents (an average of well more than one per household), and a high standard of living despite the recent economic meltdown, it is hard to imagine that there is not ample space for some kind of carsharing operation or at least a preparatory program in the region — if only to take a first hard look at how it might play a role in the area’s transportation system. And if we add to this otherwise favorable situation for carsharing, the fact that income levels have plunged as a result of the crisis, it would seem that the considerable economic advantages that carsharing can offer should make it an important part of the current policy scene.
It is a fine thing that Morten Lange and others in Iceland are taking the time and trouble to get more people to thinking about carsharing in their country, and it is great luck that he is not alone in this. When we set up the World Carshare Consortium back in the closing years of the last decade, one of our objectives was to provide an open forum for peer group support and exchanges of information and experience in this key sustainable transport mode. And gradually over this decade we have seen others come in to do the same with strong programs of their own.
Among these the original “Moses” project of the European Union – “Car-Sharing project within the City of Tomorrow – mobility services for urban sustainability” (see http://www.uitp.org/Working-Bodies/Car-Sharing/pics/moses-KeysToCarSharings.pdf for a good summary of this program); and currently the (somewhat wierdly named) successor program – “momo: More options for energy-efficient transport through carsharing” at http://www.momo-cs.eu. (We hope to present a report on this important long term EU effort to help inspire and support more and better carsharing at a later point in this series. The EU is to be congratulated for sticking to this program; continuity being one of the vital keys to the transition to sustainable cities. )
Likewise since 2005 the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) has created its own UITP CarSharing Platform at http://www.uitp.org/Public-transport/carsharing/index.cfm, aimed at bringing together all actors of the sector, i.e. car-sharing operators, public transport operators, organizing authorities, the industry, and academic members and stimulating interaction, debate, and the exchange of good practices in order to promote and develop car- sharing worldwide.
In addition to these international efforts we are seeing a plethora of national support programs organized in various ways in almost all of the countries that are already well into the carshare development cycle. These you will see more about in the various country reports in this series.
Stay tuned. More follows.
The editor
Comments Off
Posted in Carshare, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing
Kevin McLaughlin, one of the key figures in advancing the carshare agenda not only 
in his city (Toronto) but also across Canada and more broadly in North America as a whole, has taken time out from his busy schedule to tell our readers about the state of carsharing in Canada as we head into 2010.
# # #
An update on Car Sharing in Canada in 2009 (with the important proviso that I am writing from Toronto, the isolated, self-centre of a surprisingly diverse country qui parle deux langues et qui vive moins qu’un ou deux heures de l’etats unis mais parchance etais plus que six mille kilometres entre nous.)
Car Sharing in Canada (and North America) turned 15 this year, thanks to the quiet, tortoise-like-success of Communauto. Félicitations au Benoit, Marco et tous l’equipe!
While the economic problems of the world impacted Canada and its car sharing companies, for a variety of reasons, the economy in the larger cities did not seem to suffer as much as in many ‘industry towns’ and the USA. It would seem that member growth in the establised, larger urban centres – Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec – may have had its first ever ‘reduced growth rate’ year, but these cities still experienced decent growth in new members. Most importantly, everyone seems to have been managing their fleets (fixed costs) to grow at a much slower rate than their members. For example, AutoShare in Toronto grew our fleet by a net of only 5% (10 cars), but added over 2,000 new members (20%) with gross revenues up about 15%.
At the end of 2009, there were about 1,800 shared cars in Canada – more than half of them in Quebec (all Communauto) and less than 350 Zipcar (in Vancouver & Toronto).
There remains strong interest in smaller cities across the country, which no bigger 
companies seem interested in serving without subsidy. New organizations have sprouted in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and several town in BC. Grand River Car Share continued to reflect its new regional name by partnering with local folks to launch a car share in Hamilton. Halifax launched ate in 2008, and worked hard to build their Maritime market.
The co-operative movement is very strong in Canadian car sharing, and the Canadian Co-operative Association funded a cross-country promotional effort (the first of its kind). The second oldest car share in North America, Vancouver’s Co-op Auto Network hosted the annual Socially-responsible Car Share Organizations of the Americas conference in October, which this year brought groups from across Canada, USA, Brasil and Australia.
Having arrived in Toronto in 2006 in a blaze of advertising spending, 2009 was actually quiet year for Zipcar in Canada. They continued to provide spill-over media coverage and brand-name recognition (en Canada anglais) from their efforts south of the border, especially the iphone app launch. But in general, there was less ad spending from anyone in Canada and more focus on service – and perhaps social media. The boom of Twitter (and decline of ‘old school’ blogging) was echoed in the world of car sharing, as customers began talking about their daily trips, joys and #fails with their @Zipcar, @AutoShare, etc…
In Toronto, the city is finally realizing that its all about parking. Both AutoShare and Zipcar have been taking advantage of the development offsets being granted to new condo builders if they provide carsharing parking in their buildings (often as high as 10 few spaces per shared car, in the range of $200,000 cost savings!). Toronto recently approved its first large condo (300 units) with NO PARKING for residents, and 9 shared vehicle onsite. And, 11 years after car sharing arrived, council finally approved its first on-street parking pilot, with 20 spaces to launch in early 2010 (to be shared by AuoShare & Zipcar).
Communauto continues to enshrine itself into the transportation and cultural fabric across the province of Quebec, with new city, transit and provincial partnerships, laurels from leaders, and relentless growth. (They now have as many as 20 Toyota Matrix, in case you need something other than one of their 1,000 Toyota Yaris. And, you haven’t been allowed to smoke in their cars for several years.)
Vancouver’s Co-op Auto Network made one of 
the biggest transitions there is for any organization, saying farewell to their founding Executive Director Tracey Axellson after more than 12 years. (Tracey and I met at a transportation conference in Vancouver in November 1995. She hung a sign-up sheet asking “who wants to start a car share” and I was the only one to sign my name.) In 2009, CAN also won the RFP to deliver car sharing to the City of Vancouver including City Hall, installed OpenCar’s technology in all 230 of their vehicles, continue to grow their service in communities across their region – and scooped-up a great new URL which I hope they rebrand under soon, “car.coop”.
Metavera picked-up steam as a global systems provider, adding new customers on several continents, keeping their system on the leading edge with new features like smartphone access, and perhaps most importantly, inked a deal with in-car tech leader Convadis, creating a seamless service-product offer for an industry notoriously short of the tools to deliver on the promise of our idea.
We said goodbye to CityFlitz, a short-lived fleet advertising company that offered cars for rent at $1 a day – and drew sharp criticism when they appropriated the term ‘car sharing’. (While generating big revenue for their wrapped cars, they buckled under the costs of maintaining their fleet.) We also extend a late-year ‘bienvenue’ to Connect by Hertz, which snuck-in quietly, late in the year, onto a university campus near Edmonton.
Ongoing information about car sharing in Canada can be found at CarSharing.ca
Kevin McLaughlin
President, AutoShare
Publisher, CarSharing.net
co-founder, Co-operative Auto Network
# # #
A mid 1990’s news story from Europe spawned the first car sharing network in Canada 
in October of 1998. Since then, co-founder Kevin McLaughlin has worked tirelessly on making AutoShare an affordable and viable option to car-ownership in cities across Canada. His dedication to the environment does not end there, as he has also co-founded Evergreen, a national NGO aimed at bringing communities and nature together to form a healthy and sustainable environment. Despite these responsibilities, Kevin helps to raise his young son and still finds time to volunteer at a bird and dog rescue program started by his wife. (From Treehugger interview of 11.16.06)
Comments Off
Posted in Carshare, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing, tools
Tagged Sharing
In addition to the country review that are appearing in these pages in the weeks ahead, you may be interested to know that we have developed some tools that permit you to dig deeper and faster. Here are four you may wish to check out for your own research purposes.
No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .
1. All World Streets articles on carsharing – http://tinyurl.com/ws-carsharing
This calls up all articles that have appeared in the pages of World Streets since opening day of the publication in 2 March 2009.
2. The World Carshare Consortium at http://www.worldcarshare.com
The Consortium is the special monitoring and exchange program to group the information and expertise of carshare groups, concerned public agencies and researchers since 1994. the site if very very large and rather difficult to navigate, but there is a search function on the lower left menu that you may find useful.
3. Search World Carshare’s member forum – http://tinyurl.com/wcs-messages
More than three thousand postings but the people and groups who know most about carsharing on the planet. You have to be a member of the WCS forum to make this work, but that’s no problem. Just send a quick email to the editor here – editor@worldstreets.org and it will be done
.
4. Search New Mobility Knowledge Base at http://tinyurl.com/kn-carshare.
This combined search engine has been created by the New Mobility Partnerships in 2008/9 as part of a knowledge building, silo-bridging project in cooperation with a team of researchers from the University of Michigan, and is specifically intended to help policy makers, local government, researchers, NGOs, activists, consultants, concerned citizens and the media keep up efficiently with the work and activities of the leading international groups, programs and sources leading the field of sustainable transport and sustainable cities worldwide. This setting of the search engine is tuned to search for all references relating to carsharing. The search scans a collection of carefully screened and selected sources, which at this point covers 626 programs and sources worldwide. (See (http://knowledge.newmobility.org for background on this search engine and the program behind it..)
(Careful here: this will call up more than 500 references so you may want to think about narrowing your search to a country, city, supplier, whatever. For that drop to the bottom of the page and try “Search within results”. You’ll see.)
As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly 
practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. (It is also cool, economic and a great way to meet nice people)
She can do it. I can do it. You can do it. So . . . let’s do it.
Eric Britton,
Editor (and still pushing)
Carsharing has been a slow starter in the UK, lagging considerably behind the 
leaders. However in the last half dozen years the operators have gained considerable momentum and are now entering into the mainstream of practical transport innovation and day to day practice. Carsharing is really hitting the road in Britain in 2010.
One has to ask why the great delay? Might it be because the British are more devoted to their own cars than the rest of the OECD nations? One has to doubt it. Might it have to do with the ambiguity of words. The British call what the rest of the world knows as carsharing by their very own phrase: Car Clubs. (Carsharing being their terms of choice for ridesharing or carpooling).
Whatever might be the case, carsharing by whatever name is coming along quite nicely throughout Britain today, as you will see here in the report from the non-profit umbrella group
Summary of the UK Car Club Industry
1. History
The pay-as-you-go car club concept was first introduced to the UK in 1999 inspired by German and Swiss “carsharing” schemes that started in the early 1990s. UK government support was approved in 1997 for a flagship car club project in Edinburgh, which was jointly funded by the then Scottish Executive and the Edinburgh City Council. It particularly benefited from “know how” from Bremen and was launched in 1999. Car clubs have steadily gained recognition as they have demonstrated that they provide a viable. cost-effective and sustainable alternative to car ownership by local authorities, property developers, employers and the general public.
Growth in recent years has been fast but it has been mainly concentrated in London (see data in Section 2). This is a result of two factors – the “attractiveness” of a large concentration of potential residential and business users in the London market. Secondly, the combination of commitment and investment from the public sector to support its transport, planning and environmental agendas, has in turn stimulated private funding for a business model that requires time to achieve critical mass, high utilisation and therefore profitability.
There are a number of locations in England outside London where the partnership between local authorities and operators has delivered successful schemes. Using the lessons learned from these, in Section 5 we have identified barriers and opportunities to expand the sector. These local schemes have emerged in different ways, with some benefiting from external funding to support the cost of new infrastructure and local marketing.
In some other locations where the market conditions are favourable, progress has been slow. In the absence of a supportive environment it has required strong local champions to promote the establishment of the right conditions for a car club scheme over a number of years. In cities such as Birmingham and Nottingham an effective scheme is still to be launched despite significant local interest.
There is increasing evidence of the environmental benefits of car clubs. These benefits are extended into the long term as members opt for access over ownership – and as a result have financial and health incentives to embrace (other) sustainable travel habits. The data on behaviour change alone shows that car clubs make significant impact on emissions. The car club fleet emits on average 63% of the emissions of cleaner the privately owned vehicles it replaces.
Compared to the ‘average’ person, car club members make more trips by public transport and walking or cycling, and considerably fewer trips involving a car, lift, taxi or motorbike, (16-23% of their journeys, as compared to 66%). TRL 2009Combining the effect of fewer miles driven in a more efficient car creates savings of between 0.7 and 1.04 tonnes CO2 per member per year in the UK. These saved emissions are equivalent to a return flight to Barcelona. Carplus 2009
Car club operators have already begun to embrace use of ultra low carbon vehicles (see details in section 4) and the potential for a partially electrified car club network in the medium to long term is evident. Currently, however there are practical restrictions regarding the extent to which EVs can be used as a mainstream fleet vehicle for shared use. There is also consumer resistance to the actual vehicles, which we accept will be reduced considerably as the manufacturers take up a larger market share. This is partly due to the investment required to lease or purchase the vehicle and partly due to the recharging time between bookings that applies to electric vehicles used for short bookings. We would expect that fast charging technology will make these problems less significant in the medium term. There are some trials that operators are undertaking in this area but so far the emphasis has been on hybrid vehicles.
At a recent Low CVP conference, a spokesperson for the SMMT acknowledged that in future, more vehicles (and batteries) will be part of a service provided to the customer rather than a purchase or leasing arrangement, and that this may lead to greater synergy with the way car clubs operate. In the future, it will not be unusual for the consumer to access flexible motorised travel through shared vehicles which embrace the best technology.
2. Statistics for Car Clubs in the UK
Table of locations and numbers
3. Best Practice Examples
Examples of best practice from local authorities can inform future initiatives. Inevitably the early adopters have to an extent been venturing into unknown areas. Identifying the lessons of unsuccessful and less successful schemes is also an important element in assisting local authority partners and operators in planning successful schemes.
3.1 Local Authority Involvement
• London Borough of Islington has provided useful examples in raising public awareness and in funding through S.106. By promoting car clubs in the Parking Permit Renewal Notices, the borough has been able to target people when they are considering the cost of their own vehicle. Islington is also testing the creation of Low Car Neighbourhoods, which involves landscaping streets with amenity space in exchange for residents agreeing to join the car club.
• Leeds City Council has provided useful examples of corporate use along with the city’s universities. Leeds contributes to the expansion of the scheme by making significant day time use of the club’s cars for business use. Leeds carried out research to back up the move from use of the “grey fleet” to support inter-department promotion.
• London Borough of Camden is running trials of electric car club vehicles. It has been innovative in the way it has supported the growth of the car club through the use of parking standards in new developments.
• Westminster City Council launched on a large scale for maximum impact using a new model of operation where the car club is a Council badged service, managed internally but the service provider is Zipcar. Westminster has also set up an EV pod dedicated to the car club for use by an all electric Citroen C1 and a hybrid Prius.
• Newcastle City Council selected a local community interest company, Option C through a recent tendering process and the council is exploring a number of new initiatives with the operator. Their ability to develop the requirements in the tender specification was facilitated by having an operator trialling a scheme in the city prior to the tender and Option C was already established in nearby Durham.
• Kirklees Council: Despite early investigation of the potential for car club in Huddersfield it required a political champion to overcome the barriers to reducing the grey fleet – mainly in requiring changes to the employee user allowances. Over 5 years after early discussions, the scheme has finally been launched initially with 5 cars and is set to develop in the town centre.
3.2 Operators’ Initiatives
• Marketing: Streetcar has initiated the car club scrappage promotion offering members £200 worth of drive time in exchange for giving up their own car. Zipcar has launched the “Low Car Diet” promotion which they had previously used in the USA.
• Vehicle choice: A number of operators now offer vans to complement their fleets of small hatchbacks, estate cars and people movers.
• One way trips: Streetcar are now trialling one way trips where, for an additional cost of £25 per trip, the vehicle can be left anywhere within the M25 to be collected by Streetcar staff.
• Communications: Zipcar has improved their service using innovative texting technology.
• Community partnerships. Commonwheels has fostered strong community partnerships within the areas they work, which has brought marketing skills and financial contributions to the scheme.
• Members vehicles: Commonwheels has designed a scheme to include members’ own cars in the fleets in exchange for free drive time.
3.3 Rural Community Car Clubs
A rural car club development programme was operated by Carplus with funding from the Countryside Agency in the period 2002-05. Working with a number of partners, pilot schemes were established in Yorkshire and the South West regions in a variety of rural areas.
Several current operators such as Stroud Valley Car Club, Moorcar in South Devon and Hour Car in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire have survived from this programme with limited funding resources and are made viable as a result of the commitment of members, dedication of staff and volunteers, and the adoption of innovative low cost models.
This sector, which also operates schemes in some smaller urban areas (e.g. Oxford, Exeter) is largely “not-for-profit” and is an important element of the car club sector with a different business model and generally lower charges.
The more established of these car clubs are increasingly working together to strengthen their status. Carplus has recently facilitated a new interoperability scheme between these clubs.
4. Car Clubs and Low Carbon Vehicle Technology
Car club fleets have consistently moved towards lower emissions vehicles, mainly using small and medium sized petrol and diesel vehicles. The consumer is increasingly willing to accept cars with smaller engines. For the operator, the leasing charges are now more favourable. Finally as the commercial operators are replacing cars about every two years, the fleet gets cleaner every year.
The fleets have a significant presence of the lower emissions version of popular cars including the VW Polo and Golf, Vauxhall Corsa and Astra, Ford Fiesta, Citroen C1 and C3 and Minis. Larger engine vehicles are charged at a higher rate and are usually booked for specific purposes where greater capacity or longer journeys make them more appropriate. For a minority of car club members the brand and type of car is still important and a small part of the fleet reflects that (e.g. Zipcar’s small BMWs). For a significant number of members in cities such as Bristol and Brighton & Hove there has always been a limited choice in each cluster of cars to allow for families and larger groups to make their chosen journey in a suitable medium sized vehicle.
Commercial car club operators are already embracing ultra low carbon vehicles and in some cases have been trialing vehicles with LPG and hybrids for some time (more details below).
A number of the operators have (or have operated) hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic in London and other cities. Early trials with LPG have now been discontinued. Locally sourced recycled bio-diesel has been central to the fleet planning for some community car clubs, notably Hour Car in Hebden Bridge. Limited experience has been gained in operating EVs mainly due to factors outlined above, but several new initiatives are in the planning stage or due to be launched shortly.
4.1 London
The London Borough of Camden is working with Connect by Hertz to trial a pure electric car club vehicle. Westminster City Council has supported Zipcar to put 20 hybrids and one pure electric Citroen C1 in the fleet.
4.2 York
WhizzGo has had a Toyota Prius at the Railway Station in York for two years.
4.3 Bath
City Car Club, working with Bath and NE Somerset Council, is committed to introducing and operating six hybrid cars in 2010 as part of the EU Civitas programme
4.4 Newcastle
Newcastle City Council has announced plans to set aside a recharging point for the car club run by Option C and plan to expand this.
4.5 Oxford and Hebden Bridge
Cars in both locations have been running cars on recycled waste vegetable oil for some time.
5. Barriers and potential government interventions to achieve significant growth in car clubs.
5.1 Funding
In establishing car clubs in new locations the most fundamental barrier is a lack of investment for the initial set up and the delivery of a growing network of on-street bays. For example, funding is required to cover the cost of Traffic Regulation Orders to convert parking bays as well as the council officer time to manage the process. Staff time (either council employed or external body like Carplus) is also critical for the development process.
It is important to ensure all council departments are involved (transport, planning, parking, staff transport and human resources) and potential partners in an area are encouraged to buy into the project. This is particularly important in a smaller city or town where the viability of scheme in its initial development is only possible if an employer is willing to become a committed user from the start (see example of Kirklees Council – Huddersfield scheme).
Many of the more successful city-based car clubs have only been launched where the initial funding has been found from sources such as EU funding – Civitas and LTP (Bristol), S.106 (York), Air quality (Sheffield) and EU funding – Target, (Leeds).
In establishing stronger more successful schemes in cities and towns where a start has been made and a partnership exists between local authority and operators we commend the arrangements developed by Transport for London for funding expansion in London boroughs.
Funds for borough schemes in London are subject to annual bids to Transport for London, which is willing to support well prepared proposals for converting street space to dedicated parking bays, signage and promotion. It has also successfully established a way of funding initiatives that will test innovation in a limited scheme to establish its potential viability across the region. This has significantly accelerated growth in membership and operator investment, particularly in the more challenging market conditions of some of the outer boroughs.
5.2 Funding for innovation
Car clubs are a catalyst to changing travel behaviour and a means of securing long term commitment and enhancement to other initiatives. Local authorities that have embraced the car club as an integral part of their transport strategy (e.g. Bristol, Leeds, Brighton & Hove, Sheffield and Edinburgh) have in recent years been able to integrate car club design into new housing, new residents parking zones (CPZs), new public transport infrastructure (e.g. Edinburgh tram network), but many of these initiatives have required intervention at an early stage of planning.
There is now an opportunity to ensure car clubs are included in the planning of two important initiatives:
o Expansion of EV charging pointso Introduction of interoperable smart card technology for use with different public transport modes
As part of expanding the network of EV charging points, there is an opportunity to develop the infrastructure for car clubs, particularly for shared use of plug-in hybrids, as we propose below.
An integrated approach is important to those developing sustainable transport initiatives in the public and private sectors. The wider use of smart card technology for public transport – and including car clubs – could transform the perception of the sector as part of the wider public transport offer. This has effectively been achieved in several mainland European cities, such as Bremen and Hanover.
In addition public transport interchange design and the development of shared cycling schemes would all contribute significantly to the promotion of car clubs to a mainstream audience – and thus increase viable operation beyond the “core cities”.
5.3 Supportive policy
There is a lack of a supportive policy framework at a national level which leads to a similar situation at a local and regional level. It can lead to car clubs not receiving the degree of policy prioritisation that cross-cutting initiatives require to be successful. It also prevents officer time and funding being allocated to this relatively low cost initiative.
A policy statement is required supporting car club development. It is important for many reasons:
o To establish the positive contribution to transport, land use planning and environmental policies that car clubs make locallyo For councillors to support the parking bay set up process (especially when public objections are made)
o To encourage council business use of the cars to support initial day-time usage of car clubs located in city and town centres.
o Releasing funding and officer time
o Ensuring support in the planning development control teams for car clubs in new developments
o Ensuring support in the parking team for the set up and management of bays
5.4 Guidance
Car club development is a complex process which is hindered by a lack of expertise and links to best practise. The limited resources of Carplus currently restricts the availability of support to local authorities and other stakeholders which risks effective delivery.
5.5 Awareness
A high level of awareness amongst potential users is required to ensure a take up of services. Although the operators are mainly responsible for marketing, there is a need to integrate car clubs into government promotions and to support a co-ordinated national voice on the concept of car clubs through the media and the internet.
# # # 
Carplus is the national charity promoting responsible car use. As an impartial body it works with local authorities, developers, employers and community groups to support the development of an integrated national network of car clubs and car sharing schemes to complement other sustainable transport solutions.
Antonia Roberts is Director of Carplus. She has played an integral role in the development of the charity since its inception in 2000. Antonia takes a lead in the dissemination of best practise of car clubs and car sharing within the organisation. Currently this involves leading programmes of work for the DfT and TfL whilst managing research work for local authorities across the UK. Antonia set up the Car Club Accreditation Scheme which encompasses a comprehensive data collection and survey system for the industry. She has also directed: the production of online guidance, regular knowledge sharing seminars for officers, a public facing website with comprehensive bay data and the creation of a set of generic branded marketing materials.
# # #
Want to know more on carsharing/car clubs in the UK
No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .
1. Click this search engine to interrogate our extensive international New Mobility Knowledgebase (www.knoogle.net) for all references relating to car clubs and the UK.
* http://tinyurl.com/wcs-kn-uk
2. For more search options, click here to
* http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/01/world-streets-annual-new-mobility_12.html
And if you find any errors or omissions, please be sure to let us know via: editor.worldstreets.org
As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly 
practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. (It is also cool, economical and a good way to meet nice people.)
Try it if you are not already on board. You’ll see.
The Editor
Comments Off
Posted in Carshare, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing, UK
If not such a great moment for the US car industry, 2009 was quite a year for carsharing in the States! Dave Brooks of www.Carsharing.us out of Portland Oregon reports for World Streets on carshare developments in the United States over 2009, with some reflections on where things might be heading in the year ahead.
# # #
Best wishes to World Streets readers for 2010.
Here are some thoughts about the past year on carsharing in the US (sometime dropping back a little further into late 2008). The big news is that car sharing in North America turned 15 this year, thanks in no small part to Communauto - a silent leader of the industry.
The big news in my mind was the launch of car2go in Austin. It’s a very gutsy move on Daimler’s move to launch in an archetypal US city . As I have said on http://www.carsharing.us, I don’t believe that car2go is necessarily targeting the classic market, so it has the potential to be the game changer that American urban transportation needs.
I haven’t (yet) written about it (since I’m directly involved with it), but another start up that announced itself in 2009 promising to unveil another operating scheme – RelayRides – the first peer to peer (or person to person) carsharing service. It will enable private car owners to make their vehicles available for carsharing for a day or more at a time with the possibility to earn a substantial chunk of money each year. Of course, the operational challenges are significant since you now have to manage both the member/driver and vehicle owner sides of the equation.
There continued to be a strong growth in membership in existing carsharing cities. My guess is that most companies also experienced a growth in revenues and profitability, especially Zipcar (since they haven’t added any new major cities or expansion in overall fleet size (compared to where they were at the time of the Flexcar merger). I would be amazed if any carshare didn’t experience an increase in vehicle utilization (hours per day) helping out the bottom line.
What expansion that occurred was primarily in college and university carsharing services – which can be a very good deal for the carsharing companies since they usually involve a contractual arrangement with guaranteed revenues and handling of some (most) of the fleet management to the university. As has been pointed out elsewhere if you look at the budgets of higher education, they really seem to “get” the issues of transportation and are willing to do spend some money on it.
Meanwhile cities with revitalizing downtowns seemed to realizing that carsharing offered something of benefit and several RFPs (“request for proposals” – tenders to the rest of the world) hit the street – Miami Beach, Baltimore and Pasadena, to name a few. Meanwhile, in the LA basin, which once had more than 200 Flexcars, are edging toward putting out some incentives to attract carsharing – Long Beach, Santa Monica, Los Angeles city proper – as part of more comprehensive strategy to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals set by the State of California.
Partnerships — carsharing companies made some headway in 2009: I-Go Carsharing in Chicago announced a major partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority, ace-ing out Zipcar, for the Chicago Card Plus – a stored value card for transit travel and an RFID card for carsharing. Earlier, I-Go signed another partnership with the Parks District
Developments — Kevin McLaughlin reminds me that, “In Toronto, the city is finally realizing that it’s all about parking. Both AutoShare and Zipcar HAVE BEEN TAKING advantage of the development offsets being granted to new condo builders if they provide carsharing parking in their buildings (often as high as 10 few spaces per shared car, in the range of $200,000 cost savings!)” Toronto recently approved its first large condo (300 units) with NO PARKING for residents, and 9 shared vehicle onsite.”
The City of Winnepeg also provided a developer an alternative to meeting parking requirements by setting up an in-house carsharing service (since no commercial company operates in Winnepeg at the present time; Hertz, Enterprise are you listening?) http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/City-drives-hard-condo-bargain-44292562.html
On street parking continues to a conundrum for many cities. For some reason most continue not to “get it”! They’re happy to provide parking for taxi cabs, which are operated by private companies but somehow providing carsharing is controversial, even though the benefits to the city (of having cab stands) are much better documented and flow to the residents not (primarily) to visitors.
Technology
On the technology front, the big news was the major investment in French carsharing technology company Eileo by Hertz. Another major development is the joint marketing agreement between Convadis (Swiss car computer maker) and Metavera (Toronto-based carsharing reservation system provider). It was a natural link up since Convadis faced limitations selling their product since they didn’t have an integrated reservation system and Metavera was looking for a more fully-featured option to supplement their long-term link up with OpenCar Networks, used by most all of the independent carshares in North America.
Apps — Zipcar continued its focus on the flash with the industry’s biggest marketing coup of all time, scoring inclusion on stage at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference to showcase its iPhone app (replacing the interesting but limited Where app). While scoring headlines and TV segments, as happens with technology, the actual rollout was delayed for months over a seemingly trivial hardware glitch – making sure all the Zipcar’s could honk their horns with a tap of the button on the iPhone screen. But the independents were on the wave, as well, and Metavera, which provides reservations and support to most of them, unveiled its a mobile reservation site to work with iPhone, Blackberries, etc., while continuing to improve its web carsharing system with functionality that keeps up with Zip.
Battery electric vehicles edged closer to becoming a viable alternatives to gasoline/diesel with Nissan unveiling the Leaf EV; Daimler, after a year to testing their Smart ED (electric drive) in the UK, announcing the start of manufacture; BMW demonstrating the EV concept in a Mini, with a host of other companies threatening to manufacture – Th!nk, . The most interesting is Electrovaya, which opened what they called “carsharing” in Baltimore with a service called Altcar.com. By the year’s end all the vehicles were all located at one location downtown, the Maryland Science Center.
Better Place, Shai Aggasi’s much promoted and heavily invested EV battery service, which has always indicated it wasn’t interested in carsharing, cleverly signed a deal in Denmark for the railroad system (DSB) to operate Better Place vehicles in a public carsharing service at several train stations in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Finally, the City of Paris continued to move closer to their Autolib, EV carsharing system, taking time out in 2009 to get the surrounding cities to participate in the program as well. Similar to car2go, Autolib would offer one way carsharing between stations.
Meanwhile, given the US fascination for plug-in hybrids, in 2009 Zipcar followed HourCar (including a solar recharger station) and Autoshare into the Plug In Hybrid world with a single vehicle on their system in San Francisco.
Some comments about specific companies during 2009:
Hertz Connect continued to grow their fleet in Manhattan up to over 400 by the end of the year – certainly attracting members that have been frustrated with Zipcar’s on-going customer service problems there. Near the end of the year Hertz surprised everyone with announcements of major new international operations in Madrid and Berlin. Fleet sizes in existing cities are up slightly Paris now with 77 and London at 115. Hertz did send a message to Zipcar by listing 4 cars in Boston and further challenged them with token vehicles in Chicago and San Francisco.
U-Carshare (U-Haul) went live in Salt Lake City with 28 vehicles – concluding a protracted RFP process. The Salt Lake operation branched out from the traditional ad-covered PT Cruisers with a wide range of vehicles, including the requisite Mini Cooper, hybrid Civic and Ford Escape, Prius, as well as Toyota Yaris, Mazda 3, Ford Focus and several pickups and larger Ford vans, both passenger and cargo configurations. In other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, U-Carshare vehicle numbers are static and they continue to take a very passive approach to marketing – with no visible advertising other that on-street here and presence at a couple of public events.
WeCar (Enterprise) – continues to play its cards very close, with several university/college deals including University of South Florida in Tampa. Of course, Enterprise has the biggest challenge integrating carsharing into their existing business model of any car rental company since they already have extensive network of neighborhood rental locations, which, arguably would lose a little business from carsharing but would also likely funnel some longer-term rental business they would otherwise have missed
Independent carshares in North America continue to move forward – most continuing to grow at a more modest rate than previous years.
* Philly Carshare seems to be on the upswing after disastrous decision to terminate members and raise rates.* Nonprofit Boulder Carshare signaled a change of strategy with it’s new name EGo, expansion and upgrade of its fleet in Boulder and more significantly locating 2 vehicles in Denver. They continue to offer vehicles at the remarkably sensible prices of $4/hr. + 30¢ per mile.
Another nonprofit, * Austin Carshare, which has been struggling to figure out where the capital to grow would come from since its founding 3 years ago, sent out a letter in the fall to members that they were considering becoming a cooperative. Nothing decided yet – perhaps watching what happens to car2go.
* Chicago’s I-Go Carsharing passed the 13,000 member mark announcing further expansion in targeted suburban pods including Oak Park, Evanston, Skokie, Forest Park, and most recently Des Plaines.
* Cooperative Auto Network in Vanccouver, BC, continues to provide excellent service and supports a number of smaller services in British Columbia with their Carshare Everywhere reservation system.
Meanwhile there’s a host of smaller carshares all over the US and especially Canada – with 5, 10, 25 vehicles. And there’s continued interest in startups for the second tier cities that the “big boys” don’t seem to want to do into. (Portland would never have carsharing today if Zipcar and Flexcar were making the decisions.)
Zipcar – last but not least, the market leader probably crossed the line into overall profitability, amidst several mentions of an Initial Public Offering sometime in the not to distant future. They got to profitability by very carefully managing their business – continuing drive more usage (hours per day) on the existing fleet. What expansion they did was primarily in contracted deals with universities, which produce a good flow revenue. Near the end of the year they announced another overseas investment, in Avancar, Barcelona, Spain. The exact terms of the investment are a sketchy but it’s going to give Avancar the ability to grow and there’s certainly plenty of potential in Barcelona, as well as other cities in Spain. Laying the groundwork for this expansion was an analysis and press release claiming a world wide potential for carsharing at 37 million members and over 10 billion dollars in annual revenues.
Ikea — You might have missed it, but back in March, there was a minor flurry of speculation that multinational retail giant Ikea might be getting into the car business under the brand name of Lesko, around which they developed a stealth marketing campaign. Speculation ran from manufacturing a vehicle to operating a carsharing service. It turns out Lesko IS a carsharing service – but in the UK sense of the word – and what Ikea did was set up a “covoiture” ride board on their web site so people could hitch rides. How they would get all their stuff home is not explained. (If they’d waited just a little longer they could have bought Saab or Volvo!)
I’m sure I’ve overlooked some significant developments, so let me know what you think was important in 2009. I wish World Streets and its many readers worldwide the best for 2010.
# # #
Dave Brook is a pioneering figure in US carsharing and now works as a consultant in carsharing and new mobility services to start up companies and government agencies. He occasionally posts ideas about carsharing in North America and the world to his website www.Carsharing.us.
# # #
Want more on carsharing around the world?
No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .
1. All World Streets articles on carsharing – http://tinyurl.com/ws-carsharing
2. The World Carshare Consortium at http://www.worldcarshare.com
3. Search World Carshare’s member forum – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/messages (You have to be a member of the forum to make this work, but that’s no problem. Just send a quick email to the editor here – editor@worldstreets.org and it will be done.)
4. Finally check out our rather huge, tightly focused New Mobility Knowledge Base (http://www.Knoogle.net on carsharing world-wide at http://tinyurl.com/kn-carshare. (Careful here: this will call up more than 500 references so you may want to think about narrowing your search to a country, city, supplier, whatever. For that drop to the bottom of the page and try “Search within results”. You’ll see.)
As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives.
We can do it.
The Editor
Comments Off
Posted in Carshare, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing
At the beginning of each new year the New Mobility Agenda invites 
the approximately two thousand individuals and groups from more than seventy nations on all continents who log into our dozen-plus focus sites to share overviews of the “state of the nation” in their particular area of interest and activity. This year we start with carsharing.
The following update note and invitation sent on Monday of this week to the almost five hundred members of the World Carshare Consortium, has set off the annual country updates on carsharing that will this year for the first time be published on World Streets. Over the course of the coming weeks, we shall be presenting their reports in these pages. You will see: 2009 was a great year for carsharing, and 2010 is going to be even better.
Carsharing: the last nail in the coffin of old mobility.
Contents:
1. Progress report – 2009
2. Countries and cities consulting WCS in 2009
3. The carshare/city/national government interface – Joint projects?
4. Carsharing and World Streets:
5. It’s your forum – Do your bit
6. PS. Two questions for your attention
7. Annex: Countries and Cities consulting World Carshare in the last days
8. Want more on carsharing around the world?
1. 2009 State of World Carshare – Progress report:
2009 was the eleventh consecutive year of the World Carshare Consortium. Hurrah for continuity in a start and stop world.
Though I was somewhat disappointed to find that World Carshare was not nearly as lively and useful to you all in this last year as one might have hoped. I trust we shall be able to do better in 2010. In any event your can count on us to try.
We had received like 350 messages to the group over the year, one a day on averages, and have been host to close to 500 members, including a good number of the people who know more about how to make a carshare operation work than anyone on the planet. But it was precious hard to get anything out of most of you – which I guess is not altogether a bad sign, since I take it to mean that you were too busy running your operations to ask or deal with the more general, often strategic questions that are close at least to my heart and vision of things.
There is in fact more consultation than communication in our group, with close to ten thousand people checking in over the year, Here for example is a map showing the contacts over the last several days. The basic pattern is one we have seen here over the years, but there is some indication of spread of interest beyond the now traditional OECD region.
2. The carshare/city/national government interface – Joint projects?
The years pass but this is still in my view the weak link – the great unasked questions of carsharing. Our better and best carshare operators have now gleaned enough experience, have enough good examples to be able to plan, operate and of maintain viable accounts. That’s no longer the question.
The following chart taken from Adam Millard-Ball’s TRB report “Carsharing: Where and How It Succeeds” is worth taking out for a spin with since it reminds us of some of the apsects of this complex interface.
The big deal though is that even after a decade of carsharing that works most of our cities still fail to understand how carsharing fits into the larger whole of the sustainable transport strategy. We need more work, better references, clearer guidelines and examples of best practices to stimulate wider public policies in this area. I very much hope that we will find a way at least to follow and possibly to contribute to this in the year ahead.
I personally am interested in team or personal advisory and consulting assignments with both carshare operators and the respective public sector originations and agencies, both at the city and the national level. So if you have an idea or a project we might discuss , don’t be shy, get in touch. And if I am not the person best suited to do the job, ask and I can make my best recommendations.
3. Carsharing and World Streets:
We started World Streets over this last year with the idea in mind that it would serve as a place to share with a much broader range of readers some of what is going on at the leading edge and most important for the success and contribution of carsharing, and of course the other areas that together constitute the New Mobility Agenda. if you click to http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/search/label/carshare you will see that we were able to post more than twenty I think rather interesting articles treating carshare developments in a number of countries as well as worldwide.
But to do a better job in 2010 we need more contributions, a bit more liveliness on the part of our members here (ahem!). It is not of course useful simply to publish a feature article around one more plain vanilla carshare operation, or some announcements of great stuff to follow. But our readers do want to hear about the innovations, the new ideas, the new cities, the problems, the barriers, and the outstanding examples that other cites, countries and operators can give some thought to. I hope we shall hear from you on this in the year ahead. After all, it is a collaborative program.
4. Support World Carshare and World Streets – 2010:
You may be aware that since World Carshare first cranked up in 1998, it has been totally financed by the person who is signing this letter. With from time to time a little help from our friends.
A handful of you have been kind enough to make contributions to World Streets to keep all this work going over 2009, ranging from $50 to $500. 2010 is going to be the year in which we either get the support on the scale we need, from public and private sector, or we will simply be unable to continue to serve you. So kindly take a bit of time as this new year starts up to give a careful read to the attached
Here in closing are four things I would like to ask you to have a look at before making up you mind on this.
1. Our four page/four minute summary which you can click to here – http://tinyurl.com/ws-4-4sum
2. A synopsis of 101 comments that we have received from expert readers worldwide, at http://tinyurl.com/ws-101
3. Our outline work program for 2010 – at http://tinyurl.com/ws-2010b
4. And finally, our background note for supporters and contributors – at http://tinyurl.com/ws-support2
That’s it carsharers. I really hope you have taken the time to read 
this, and that you will at the very least let me have your reactions. It’s great to put our shoulders behind a good idea like carsharing, but better yet when we have someone to help push.
Eric Britton
Editor
PS. Two concrete, I think rather important questions for your attention in closing:
a. Street safety for others: Is carsharing less dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists than own-car driving – in terms of deaths, injuries and accidents? – Please share with us your numbers and reports on this.b. Accidents: Do carshare drivers have fewer accidents than own-car drivers?
If we know these two things for sure we know something very important and very useful.
Annex: Countries and Cities consulting World Carshare
Here’s a list of the countries that have checked in over the last two months to our home page at http://www.worldcarshare.com. They are listed here in the order of the number of contacts over the period. Pretty much what one might expect, though one might take note of Qatar and the Emirates. In any event, we can see from it that things are not standing altogether still. (I have bolded those countries where memory serves me currently have operating carshare services. If I have this wrong in any way I count on you of set me right.)
1. United States
2. Canada
3. Qatar
4. United Kingdom
5. France
6. Germany
7. Spain
8. Australia
9. Japan
10. Switzerland
11. Ireland
12. Poland
13. India
14. United Arab Emirates
15. Czech Republic
16. Portugal
17. Luxembourg
18. Sweden
19. Austria
20. China
21. Argentina
22. Israel
23. Brazil
24. Belgium
25. Italy
26. Bahrain
27. Chile
28. Europe
29. South Africa
30. Russian Federation
31. Korea, Republic Of
32. Finland
33. Netherlands
34. Turkey
35. Malaysia
36. Romania
37. Greece
38. Denmark
39. New Zealand
40. Morocco
41. Egypt
Annex B. Consulting cities:
The list of cities checking in is no less fascinating. Here you have the latest in order of number of consultations, from high (Doha in Qatar??? ) to low. Again what fascinates me is to think about those cities that do not yet have carsharing but are apparently giving thought to it. Looks like 2010 is gong to be a very big year for carsharing.
2. Doha
3. Montreal
4. Paris
5. London
6. Madrid
7. Chicago
8. Englishtown
9. Aberdeen
10. Sydney
11. Zürich
12. Dublin
13. Dubai
14. Madras
15. Miami
16. Hamburg
17. Calgary
18. Szczecin
19. Vancouver
20. Quebec
21. Leesburg
22. Burlington
23. Westminster
24. Winnipeg
25. Rottweil
26. Beijing
27. Buenos Aires
28. Rochester
29. Toronto
30. New York
31. Stockholm
32. Moscow
33. Springfield
34. Louth
35. Albany
36. Cambridge
37. Durham
38. Bexley
39. Saint-Leu-La-Forêt
40. Graz
41. Lisboa
42. Eugene
43. Brockville
44. Dortmund
45. Santiago
46. Asan
47. Ostrava
48. Zaragoza
49. Prague
50. Hyderabad
51. Yehud
52. Uetersen
53. Osaka
54. Fortuna
55. Istanbul
56. Boulder
57. Brooklyn
58. San Pablo
59. São Paulo
60. Barnsley
61. Sheboygan
62. North Vancouver
63. Brussels
64. Bloomington
65. Oviedo
66. Turin
67. Bremen
68. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux
69. Salem
70. Helsinki
71. Kingston
72. Berlin
73. Johannesburg
74. Warsaw
75. Ubobo
76. Melbourne
77. Barcelona
78. Littleton
79. Darmstadt
80. Ashburn
81. Coimbra
82. Choszczno
83. Richmond
84. Saint Petersburg
85. Poznan
86. Nogent-sur-marne
87. Cape Town
88. Birmensdorf
89. Entroncamento
90. Rutledge
91. Frankfurt Am Main
92. Yarramalong
93. Cannes
94. Reading
95. Bucharest
96. Colorado Springs
97. Leipzig
98. Lansing
99. Beaumont
100. Vienna
101. San Jose
102. Guyancourt
103. Ipswich
104. Porsel
105. Savyon
106. Iráklion
107. Atlanta
108. Venice
109. Victoriaville
110. Beverly Hills
111. Pincourt
112. Cairo
113. Lisbon
114. Albuquerque
115. Athens
116. Mountain View
117. Sheffield
118. Lausanne
119. Dudley
120. Sugar Land
121. Beenleigh
122. Canberra
123. Hägersten
124. Kuala Lumpur
125. Rennes
126. Lévis
127. Saint-jérôme
128. Las Vegas
129. Ossining
130. Trévoux
131. Kirkland
132. Saint-Germain-En-Laye
133. Ålborg
134. Victoria
135. Perth
136. Kanata
137. Stamford
138. Marbella
139. Waiblingen
140. Strasbourg
141. Hutto
142. Halifax
143. Gladwyne
144. Lincent
145. Davidson
146. Ahmadabad
147. Saint-hubert
148. Austin
149. Archamps
150. Cary
151. Ketchum
152. Auckland
153. Munich
154. Meudon
155. Los Angeles
156. Glenview Nas
157. Den Haag
158. Aachen
159. Stuttgart
160. Roselle
161. Rio De Janeiro
162. Buffalo
163. Lubin
164. Oakland
165. Göteborg
166. Denver
167. Casablanca
168. Tel Aviv
169. Amsterdam
170. Crofton
171. Le Mans
172. San Antonio
173. Boston
174. Tarpon Springs
175. Valbonne
What lessons in this other than that at least the curiosity is wide spread? (Though we also know that many of these cities already have carshare operations working on their streets.)
# # #
Want more on carsharing around the world?
No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .
1. All World Streets articles on carsharing – http://tinyurl.com/ws-carsharing
2. The World Carshare Consortium at http://www.worldcarshare.com
3. Search World Carshare’s member forum – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/messages (You have to be a member of the forum to make this work, but that’s no problem. Just send a quick email to the editor here – editor@worldstreets.org and it will be done.)
4. Finally check out our rather huge, tightly focused New Mobility Knowledge Base (http://www.Knoogle.net on carsharing world-wide at http://tinyurl.com/kn-carshare. (Careful here: this will call up more than 500 references so you may want to think about narrowing your search to a country, city, supplier, whatever. For that drop to the bottom of the page and try “Search within results”. You’ll see.)
As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives.
We can do it.
The Editor
Comments Off
Posted in Carshare, Japan, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing
It’s a huge world out there and when you are looking for something that relates to 
the interests that bring us together here, Google is a wonderful tool. However even with careful use of key words, it often can be a source of confusion, given the very large number of things that it inevitably dredges up. With this in mind, we have set up three levels of more defined search that you may find of interest.
But first a quick intro: What is this?
The following is perhaps more understandable if we take a moment to put it into its broader context. Let’s try:
World Streets tries hard to serve four important, rather different functions as a motor, all for, as we incessantly say, sustainable transport, sustainable cities, and sustainable lives. They include:
1. Journal: Daily source of information, stimulation and perspective2. Resource: A world wide resource on sustainable transport and all that relates to it.
3. Collaborator. Ready and able to put people and expertise together to support projects and programs setting out to be the best.
4. Lobby: A driving force for the sustainable transport renaissance that our cities and planet so critically need and deserve.
The following is an example of how we try to serve that Resource responsibility.
The Three Search Engines:
1. Search World Streets content:
This first and most tightly defined search engine – looking specifically and uniquely at the content of World Streets since its first edition on 2 March 2009. You will find it just to your left (scroll down a bit), and if you pop in your search term it will call up the result in the main frame right here. Very handy.
2. World Streets: Key Sources, Links and Blogs:
This is second and considerably more inclusive search engine starts with your key words and then scans the full content of the growing list of carefully selected specialized programs, sources and blogs with whom World Streets has created working links. There are presently (as of 30 Nov. 2009) something like 176 such linked sources, and you can then with a single click scan their entire content from the second search box to your left.
3. New Mobility Knowledge Environment (Knoogle): This is more ambitious yet and is the result of a joint research project with a group at the University of Michigan, in which we created a new combined search engine that presently scans (at last count) 937 carefully selected sources. (A bit more on Knoogle will be found below. For the full story go to http://www.knoogle.newmobility.org/
If you are planning a trip or starting out on a new topic for research or a media piece, this can be a handy way to get started.
More on Knoogle New Mobility
The origins of the Knoogle project (KNOwledge + goOGLE) was a concern that while there are a growing number of capable programs and organizations working on the same important problems of transport, environment and climate that concern us here, we were seeing quite a bit of “silo-ing” of information and effort. Perhaps to be expected given the natural tendency of human beings and groups to be attached to and protective of what they see as their “turf”, however in the present dire circumstances a very real threat to both better understanding of the challenges and of our ability to get together to create strong and informed consensuses for change.
Knoogle New Mobility 1.2 is the second iteration of a power search engine under development by the New Mobility Agenda in cooperation with the SMART program of the University of Michigan, and specifically tailored to help policy makers, local government, researchers, NGOs, activists, consultants, concerned citizens and the media keep up efficiently with the work and activities of the leading international groups, programs and sources leading the field of sustainable transport and sustainable cities worldwide.
We invite you to test Knoogle to view the results of a quick unified scan based on your selected key words, combing through more than one thousand carefully selected institutions, programs and sources that we view as leading the way in their work and competence in our heavily challenged sector world-wide. (And if you want to reach beyond your initial Knoogle datadump, you are only a keystroke away from a full database search.)
Knoogle developed as part of a project is getting underway in which we are looking into ways to create tighter linkages and better coordination between the fast expanding number of programs and agencies that are concerned with issues of sustainable transportation, climate, environment, etc. For full background on this project in process click to http://www.knowledge.newmobility.org And if you wish to get involved or contribute in any way please get in touch.
The all but invisible (unless you were looking for it) trend behind true 
sustainability in the transport sector is . . . sharing. We now know that the only way to significantly reduce the CO2 load of our transportation arrangements is through corresponding reductions in motorized traffic (VMT/VKT). Which means efficiently getting more people and goods in those vehicles still plying the road. And to do this well, we need to learn a lot more about sharing.
Kaohsiung 2010 Conference plan in brief
The objective of this International Conference – the first of its kind — is 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 goal of this event is to bring together leading thinkers and sharing transport practitioners from around Taiwan, Asia and the world, and to provide them with a high profile opportunity to share experience, perspectives, ideas, and recommendations on this important trend.
The concept of shared transport is at once old and new, formal and informal, and one that is growing very fast. However to now attention has focused on the technical details of each project and approach — as opposed to stepping back first to gain a broader understanding of the basic human, societal, and economic trends and realities behind this kind of behavior more generally.
But something important is clearly going on, and the Kaohsiung event will be looking 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
Background: Sharing in the 21st century – Will it shape our cities?
After many decades of a single dominant city-shaping transportation pattern – i.e., for those who could afford it: owning and driving our own cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, getting into taxis by ourselves, riding in streets that are designed for cars and not much else — there is considerable evidence accumulating that we have already entered into a world of new mobility practices that are changing the transportation landscape in many ways. It has to do with sharing, as opposed to outright ownership. But strange to say, this trend seems to have escaped the attention of the policymakers in many of the institutions directly concerned.
Largely ignored by the transport policy establishment perhaps but 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 — not just a watered down or second-rate transport option for the poor.
With this in view, we are setting out to come together to examine not just the qualities (and limitations) of individual shared mobility modes, but also to put this in the broader context of why people share. And why they do not. And in the process to stretch our minds to consider what is needed to move toward a new environment in which people often share rather than necessarily only doing things on their own when it comes to moving around in our cities worldwide.
As a contribution to international understanding in this fast emerging but largely unexplored field, the city of Kaohsiung is organizing, together with an international team from the Chinese Institute of Transport (CIT), the Global New Mobility Project, Megatrans Taiwan, and National Taiwan University, a three-day international conference and brainstorming session to take place from 16 – 18 September 2010, in which a number of people working at the leading edge of these matters will come together, first to examine together the general concept of sharing in the 21st century. And then, once this broader frame and understanding has been established, go on to consider how sharing as an organizational principle is working out in each of the individual mobility modes which are rapidly gaining force in cities around the world.
Sharing in Transport (Quick introduction)
Below is our latest list of the shared transport modes to be considered by the conference. (This list to be prioritized, pruned and consolidated as useful for the conference. Only selected topics will be covered by the formal sessions.)
1. Bikesharing
2. Carsharing (includes both formal and informal arrangements
3. Fleetsharing
4. Ridesharing (carpools, van pools, hitchhiking – organized and informal).
5. Taxi sharing
6. Shared Parking
7. Truck/van sharing (combined delivery, other)
8. Streetsharing 1 (example: BRT streets shared between buses, cyclists, taxis, emergency vehicles)
9. Streetsharing 2 (streets used by others for other (non-transport) reasons as well.)
10. Public space sharing
11. Work place sharing (neighborhood telework centers; virtual offices; co-workplace; hoteling)
12. Sharing SVS (small vehicle systems: DRT, shuttles, community buses, etc.)
13. Cost sharing
14. Time sharing
15. Successful integration of public transport within a shared transport city? Including bus and rail
16. Team sharing
17. Knowledge-sharing (including this conference)
Initial conference details (to be finalized)
Event: Three day international conference and planning workshops
Dates: 16-18 September 2010.
Theme: “It was there all the time: Putting shared transport to work in our cities”
Location: City of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC
Hosts: City of Kaohsiung, with support of the Chinese Institute of Transport and National Taiwan University
Speakers
• Presenting the leading edge of thinking, policy and practice in this fast emerging field.
• Panel of distinguished international speakers will be joined by Taiwanese and Chinese leaders
Participants
• Researchers, city administration, activists, NGOs, students, media, and suppliers to the sector
• From Taiwan, China, South-East Asia and all other interested
Participant questionnaire:
Each participant is invited to fill out a short questionnaire prior to registration, to help the organizers structure the conference and in particular the breakout sessions on the various share modes to serve the needs of the group better. Comments and suggestions are also welcomed, and the organizers commit to answering your communications and questions.
Call for papers: (To follow.)
Poster sessions invitations: (To follow.)
Other events in planning stages:
There are several other closely related events that are to be integrated into the program. While final details are not yet available, but here are several of the events that are presently under discussion:
1. Integrating the meeting with the 2010 Kaohsiung Car Free Day (the seventh in their series since 2003)
2. Ditto for a New Mobility Week presently under discussions.
3. A possible New Mobility Master Class (again focusing on Kaohsiung)
4. Working links to the Taipei Low Carbon Cities program
5. Kids Sharing Channel (Open school project)
6. University Media project:
7. A guided tour program for visitors taking them to key sharing and new mobility projects and cities in both Taiwan and the PRC.
Language: Chinese/English. Full translation of all sessions
Sponsors: Under discussion. Both private and public sector partners being invited to participate.
Conference venue: Garden Villa Kaohsiung – http://www.gardenvilla.com.tw/eng/index.php
Media: The program will be media rich, all the way through from using the latest Web, internet, videoconferencing and virtual presence technologies, to extensive use of film and videos to provide a higher impact and more rapid understanding of the principles. Goal is to share conference freely and broadly.
For further information: Contact details just below.
Why Kaohsiung?
The city of Kaohsiung is taking this initiative because it realizes that most of our cities need new thinking and new approaches to resolving the insufficiencies of our present transportation arrangements, theirs included. The city is putting new ideas and real resources into their transport challenges. They have has already introduced one of the first shared bike projects in Asia, are looking into taxi-sharing, have been celebrating Car Free Days since 2003, and are building cycling infrastructure at a steady pace. Carsharing is a new idea for Kaohsiung and visitors will be able to see how they are approaching it as one more shared transport option.
The city has a spanking new metro, but the transport means of choice for about two thirds of all trips is the South Asian special, motorized two wheelers. There is something about “seeing the future” as you observe this striking pattern on the street, and it pushes the mind to consider how to come to grips wiht this new and largely unmapped phenomenon.
So when you come to Kaohsiung for the conference in September, you will also be able to take advantage of a two day new mobility tour of the city’s transportation arrangements, challenges and plans for the future. Planners and policy makers from cities around the world are going to recognize a lot of what they see in Kaohsiung.
The conference materials pack will contain extensive background on and leads to further information on each of these topic areas. To be made available before the meeting convenes.
The conference address is www.kaohsiung.sharetransport.org.
For more, contact:
For Chinese media, participation, sponsor and administrative contacts:
Susan Lin, Project Leader
Mega Trans International Corporation
Hansheng East Road
Banciao City Taipei County 22066 Taiwan
Susanlin0823@gmail.com Tel. +886 922 661 235
For meeting logistics, overall organization and UK contacts:
Rory McMullan, Project Manager
PTRC Education and Research Services Ltd.
1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street,
W14 0RL United Kingdom
rory.mcmullan@ptrc-training.co.uk Tel. +44 (0) 20 7348 1970 Skype: roryer
For matters relating to content, ACOST, speakers, jury and moderating
Eric Britton, Program Chair:
New Mobility Partnerships
The Commons/EcoPlan international
Le Frêne, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara. 75006 Paris, France
eric.britton@newmobility.org Tel. +331 4326 1323 Skype: newmobility
Comments Off
Posted in Beautiful City, behavior, Bike Sharing, Carshare, climate, event, Global South, New Mobility, partnership, pattern recognition, Pedestrian, Policy, politics, resource, Rideshare, Share/Transport, Sharing
Tagged Sharing
After many decades of a single dominant city-shaping transportation pattern (i.e., 
old mobility) — there is considerable evidence accumulating that we have already entered into a world of new mobility practices that are changing the transportation landscape in many ways. It has to do with sharing, as opposed to outright ownership. An important pattern that is thus far escaping notice at the top.
“On the whole, you find wealth more in use than in ownership.”
- Aristotle. ca. 350 BC
Sharing in the 21st century. Will it shape our cities?
After many decades of a single dominant city-shaping transportation pattern – i.e., for those who could afford it: owning and driving our own cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, getting into taxis by ourselves, riding in streets that are designed for cars and not much else (i.e., old mobility) — there is considerable evidence accumulating that we have already entered into a world of new mobility practices that are changing the transportation landscape in many ways. It has to do with sharing, as opposed to outright ownership. But strange to say, this trend seems to have escaped the attention of the policymakers in many of the places and institutions directly concerned.
However 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 often wealthiest and most livable) cities — not just a watered down or second-rate transport option for the poor. With this in view, we are setting out to examine not just the qualities (and limitations) of individual shared mobility modes, but also to put this in the broader context of why people share. And why they do not. And in the process to stretch our minds to consider what is needed to move toward a new environment in which people often share rather than necessarily only doing things on their own when it comes to moving around in our cities worldwide.
Sixteen sharing options you may wish to give some thought to:
1. Bikesharing2. Carsharing (formal and informal)
3. Fleetsharing
4. Ridesharing (carpools, van pools, hitchhiking, slugging – organized and informal).
5. School share (Walking school bus, walk/bike to school)
6. Taxi sharing
7. Shared Parking
8. Truck/van sharing (combined delivery, other)
9. Streetsharing (example: BRT streets shared between buses, cyclists, taxis, emergency vehicles)
10. Activity sharing (streets used by others for other (non-transport) reasons as well.)
11. Public space sharing
12. Workplace sharing (neighborhood telework centers; virtual offices; co-workplace; hoteling)
13. Sharing SVS (small vehicle systems: DRT, shuttles, community buses, etc.)
14. Time sharing
15. Successful integration of public transport within a shared transport city (Including bus and rail)
16. Knowledge-sharing (including via World Streets)
For more:
1. Lyon Conference: If you want to learn more about this, consider going to Lyon France for their conference on transport sharing later this month (30 November, in French) – http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/11/transportation-sharing-and-sustainable.html
And while you are there, you can do worse to spend some time to see how they are progressing on the sharing front themselves: bikesharing and carsharing are both in place and doing well. And if you keep your eyes open you will see more.
2. Kaohsiung Conference: Or next September think about coming to Kaohsiung Taiwan for their first International Conference on Sharing Transport – see www.kaohsiung.newmobility.org . Again, a city that is already into bike sharing and looking hard at taxi sharing, among others.
3. You: And tell the world about your events, papers, media, accomplishments, problems and your ideas.
4. Us: And stay tuned to World Streets. We do sharing.
5. And now a few words from our sponsor. (30 seconds)
Pedal Power Doc on Sharing: Quick interview with Eric Britton
from Cogent Benger on Vimeo.
Comments Off
Posted in Beautiful City, Bike Sharing, Carshare, climate, New Mobility, Policy, public space, resource, Rideshare, Share/Transport, Shared space, Sharing
Our entire and often disputatious new mobility family members agree on some 
things, less on others. But one important, even central point that we keep coming back to is the growing importance of sharing in transportation – as opposed to necessarily having to own everything you move around in. But it is one thing to do it, and quite another to know what you are doing. Which is what the Lyon meeting is all about.
On November 30th a consortium of French university and transport groups and agencies are organizing a one day meeting in Lyon under the title “Modes partagés et mobilité durable” which is bringing together experts from Canada, Switzerland, the US and France reporting on carsharing, bikesharing and ridesharing.
* For full conference details (in French) click to http://entpe.fr/fr/content/download/3839/23547/file/LPA_RENCONTRES.pdf
Here is our loose translation of the opening statement:
The concerns of sustainable development continue to grow. And there is not a day that the transport sector is not singled out as a critical contributor to the mounting problems of pollution, consumption of nonrenewable resources, public health or safety.
At the same time different approaches are emerging to contribute to the achievement of more sustainable transport, including the development of alternatives to the more typical transportation arrangements long favored by planners and policy makers in the past. Shared modes such as carsharing (car clubs), ridesharing (car and van pools) and self-service shared bicycles (PBS or public bicycle systems) are among these emerging alternatives, and are opening up new ways to travel, new ownership arrangements, and new modal choices.
Although shared transport modes are increasingly present on the street and in political discourse aimed at promoting more sustainable transport behavior, there are as yet few tools to allow us to properly assess their contribution. Almost everywhere, carsharing schemes, shared bicycles or preferential measures to favor ridesharing are being implanted, but more often than not without having well structured understanding of their market potential, the condition necessary to favor their success, or an objective assessment of their role in the global transportation system of an agglomeration.
The November 30 meeting in Lyon will be looking at these issues with presentations by scientific experts, operators and politicians. Full information is available on the meeting here (in French).
# # #
World Streets, the New Mobility Agenda and many of our 
partners and colleagues worldwide are highly interested in the concept and the reality of sharing, and you will continue to see extensive coverage of projects, programs, and events which can help us better understand this important sustainable transport tool. Stay tuned.
Comments Off
Posted in BRT, Cars, Carshare, event, New Mobility, resource, Rideshare, Share/Transport, Shared space, Sharing
Tagged Sharing
If you have a morning to spend researching the state of the art and opinion on the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen (COP15), you may wish to have a look at the collection of 170 key resources called up by our Knoogle (KNOwledge + goOGLE) combined search engine.
If you click here to http://tinyurl.com/knoogle-COP15 you will see the results.
For the record, Knoogle New Mobility 1.1 is the first iteration of a power search engine developed by the New Mobility Agenda in cooperation with the SMART program of the University of Michigan, and specifically tailored to help policy makers, local government, researchers, NGOs, activists, consultants, concerned citizens and the media keep up efficiently with the work and activities of the leading international groups, programs and sources leading the field of sustainable transport and sustainable cities worldwide.
Knoogle is being developed as part of a project in which we are looking into ways to create tighter linkages and better coordination between the fast expanding number of programs and agencies that are concerned with issues of sustainable transportation, climate, environment, etc. For full background on this project in process click to http://www.knowledge.newmobility.org And if you wish to get involved or contribute in any way please get in touch.
The current version of Knoogle (1.2) searches a total of 618 carefully selected sites and sources that have been carefully chosen to provide leading edge coverage of developments and news in the specific area of sustainable transport and new mobility. (For the record, full Google search for COP14 calls up more than 167,000 sources. A bit more than a morning’s work.)
You can also review World Streets complete coverage of COP15 b clicking to http://tinyurl.com/ws-COP15.
Comments Off
Posted in 2009, resource, tools, World Streets
This hefty seasonal report from Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute is a fine tool for researchers and policy makers world-wide. We are pleased to present it in its entirety here, together with references for you to take it further. Thanks for your continuing fine work Todd.
VTPI NEWS
News from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Autumn 2009 Vol. 12, No. 4
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute is an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transportation problems. The VTPI website (http://www.vtpi.org) has many resources addressing a wide range of transport planning and policy issues. VTPI also provides consulting services.
New Documents
“Where We Want To Be: Household Location Preferences And Their Implications For Smart Growth” ( http:vtpi.org/sgcp.pdf).
This paper investigates consumer housing preferences and their implications for future urban development patterns. Market research indicates that households increasingly prefer smart growth features such as location accessibility (indicated by shorter commutes), land use mix (indicated by nearby shops and services), and transportation diversity (indicated by good walking conditions and public transit services), and many will choose small-lots and attached homes that offer these features over large-lot sprawl homes that do not. The current stock of large-lot housing should be adequate for decades, but the supply of small-lot and attached housing will need to approximately double by 2025 to meet consumer demands.
“Evaluating Transit-Oriented Development Using a Sustainability Framework: Lessons from Perth’s Network City” (www.vtpi.org/renne_tod.pdf ), by Professor John Renne.
Transit-oriented development (TOD) is compact, mixed-use development that facilitates walking, bicycling, and use of public transport through its urban design. This chapter from the book ‘Planning Sustainable Communities,’ presents a method to evaluate TOD sustainability based on outcomes, including travel behaviour, local economic development, natural environment, built environment, social environment and policy context. The study applies this analysis framework to five rail transit precincts in Perth, Western Australia to test the feasibility of data collection and analysis.
“Who Is Really Paying For Your Parking Space? Estimating The Marginal Implicit Value Of Off-Street Parking Spaces For Condominiums In Central Edmonton,” (www.vtpi.org/jung_parking.pdf ), by Owen Jung.
This master’s thesis (economics) uses hedonic pricing to estimate the marginal effect of each additional structured parking space on condominium prices in downtown Edmonton, Alberta. The analysis indicates that the value of a parking space is statistically significant but substantially less than the typical cost of supplying such spaces. The results suggest that retail prices do not fully reflect the parking costs. This adversely affects housing affordability because developers must charge more per unit, and to the degree that the additional parking costs cannot be recovered by higher prices, are likely to provide less housing, leading to a higher market-clearing price, particularly in lower price ranges.
“Making the Most of Models: Using Models To Develop More Effective Transport Policies And Strategies” ( http://www.vtpi.org/FerWig_Modelling.pdf ) by Peter Furnish and Don Wignall
This paper discusses how simplified transport models in evaluating transportation policies and programs. An example of a simplified model is described to illustrate the use of this type of modelling for policy and strategy development purposes.
Published Elsewhere
“Healthy, Equitable Transportation Policy: Recommendations and Research” (188-page report) and “The Transportation Prescription: Bold New Ideas for Healthy, Equitable Transportation Reform in America” (36-page summary report) by PolicyLink and the Prevention Institute Convergence Partnership ( http://www.convergencepartnership.org/transportationhealthandequity )
These publications, written by leading academics and advocates, discuss key issues related to health, equity and transportation. They identify specific transportation policies and programs that can improve public health and quality of life, particularly for vulnerable communities. Includes an introduction by Representative Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
‘Mobility as a Positional Good: Implications for Transport Policy and Planning,‘ by Todd Litman, in “Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-Mobility” (Jim Conley and Arlene Tigar McLaren eds), Ashgate ( http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754677727 ). Introduction at http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Car_Troubles_Intro.pdf . Chapter summarized in http://www.vtpi.org/prestige.pdf .
This book, with chapters written by various researchers, uses social theory, specific case studies and policy analysis to examine issues related to automobility.
“Parking Solutions: Essential Info Packet, Planning Advisory Service” http://www.planning.org/pas/infopackets), published by the American Planning Association’s Planning Advisory Service. Includes papers by various authors including Todd Litman if VTPI.
These packets include:
• ‘Parking Solutions’ (130 pages): six documents that describe modern approaches to parking management.
• ‘Shared Parking” (133 pages): more than thirty documents concerning shared parking, parking in-lieu fees, parking requirement reductions and exemptions, and downtown district special parking requirements.
• ‘Green Parking Lot Design” (66 pages): three documents that describe ways to improve parking lot environmental performance including landscaping, stormwater management and reduced heat island effects.
• ‘Permeable Pavement and Bicycle Parking’ (38 pages): five documents concerning the use of permeable parking lot pavement materials and five documents concerning bicycle parking requirements and design.
“Investment Of Commonwealth And State Funds In Public Passenger Transport,” 31 July 2009, Rural And Regional Affairs And Transport References Committee, Australian Senate; at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/public_transport/report/report.pdf . Todd Litman’s comments are at http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S12320.pdf .
This study identified various benefits of public transportation and recommended various reforms to increase the value of transit investments.
‘Creating Safe and Healthy Communities,‘ by Todd Litman, in “Environments: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies,” ( http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/research/environments/index.html ), Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 21-43.
‘Integrated University Parking & Access Management Programs’ by Dennis Burns and Todd Litman, in “Parking Management – Planning, Design and Operations” (Volume 3 in the Parking 101 Series, 2009), International Parking Institute ( http://www.new.parking.org/products/parking-management-pdo ).
Recent Planetizen Blogs ( http://www.planetizen.com/blog/2394 ):
“Rea Vaya (‘We are Moving’) In South Africa” ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/41414 )
“Sidewalk Design Vehicle” ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/41262 )
“Universal Design – Accommodating Everybody” ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/41097 )
“Home Location Preferences And Their Implications For Smart Growth” ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/40461 )
“Moving Cooler Report: Solutions and Criticisms” ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/39945)
Recent presentations by VTPI:
“Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: Implications of Population Aging on Transportation and Community Planning” presented at, Exploring Age-Friendly Environments, Winnipeg, Canada.
“Capacity Building for Young Professionals,” professional development classes in Argentina. This enjoyable visit to Buenos Aries involved teaching transportation and land use planning principles to a class of smart, enthusiastic young professionals. Muchas gracias to my hosts!
“Sustainable Transport Performance Indicators,” presented at Toward Sustainable Transport System for Green Growth in the North Pacific, sponsored by the East-West Center and Korean Transport Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Upcoming Events
“Where We Want To Be: Home Location Preferences And Their Implications For New Urbanism,” to be presented at The Congress for the New Urbanism’s 2009 Transportation Summit ( http://www.cnu.org/transportation2009 ) to be held in Portland, Oregon, 4-6 November 2009.
This Summit will advance new ideas for creating compact, walkable communities that provide residents a high quality of life while preserving the natural environment. It brings together 150 to 200 expert engineers, planners, public officials and design professionals to present ideas and work toward reforming transportation standards that obstruct urbanism.
“Bicycle Friendly Planning,” to be presented at the International Cycling Symposium for Gumi, South Korea, 18 November 2009.
“Transportation and Health: The Evidence and the Opportunities,” to be presented at the American Public Health Association 137th Annual Meeting, Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 10:30 AM, in Philadelphia, PA. ( http://apha.confex.com/apha/137am/webprogram/Session27792.html ).
“The VMT Reduction Target Debate: Will This Get Us Where We Want to Go?” (P10-0710)
Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, 10-14 January 2010, Washington DC (http://www.trb.org ).
This session will debate the role of VMT reduction targets to help achieve climate change emission reductions and other planning objectives .
Todd Alexander Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Canada
Marlon G. Boarnet, University of California, Irvine
In opposition to the use of VMT Reduction Targets as an effective GHG reduction strategy: (P10-0723)
Alan E. Pisarski, Consultant
Samuel Staley, Reason Foundation
Useful Resources
“Economic Impact Of Public Transportation Investment,” American Public Transportation Association ( http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/economic_impact_of_public_transportation_investment.pdf ). This report describes methods for evaluating the economic development benefits of investments in public transportation.
“Non-Toll Pricing: A Primer,” ( http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop08044/cp_prim6_00.htm ). This short document by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration describes various innovative pricing reforms, including efficient insurance and parking pricing.
“What Policies Are Effective At Reducing Carbon Emissions From Surface Passenger Transport? A Review Of Interventions To Encourage Behaviroual And Technological Change,” ( http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/ResearchProgrammes/TechnologyandPolicyAssessment/0904TransportReport.aspx ) by the UK Energy Research Centre.
“On-Street Parking Management and Pricing Study” ( http://www.sfcta.org/content/view/303/149 ).
This study by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority reviews the city’s existing on-street parking management programs, considers innovative strategies and technologies for improved parking management, and discusses residential parking management issues, including the use of parking revenues to support neighborhood transportation enhancements. It includes several peer city parking management case studies. It provides recommendations for comprehensive neighborhood parking management to improve parking conditions and support policy goals.
“Walkability and Health; BC Sprawl Report 2009,” ( http://www.smartgrowth.bc.ca/Portals/0/Downloads/sgbc-sprawlreport-2009.pdf ).
This study by Ray Tomalty and Murtaza Haider evaluates how community design factors (land use density and mix, street connectivity, sidewalk supply, street widths, block lengths, etc.) and a subjective walkability index rating (based on residents’ evaluation of various factors) affect walking and biking activity, and health outcomes (hypertension and diabetes). The analysis reveals a statistically significant association between improved walkability and more walking and cycling activity, lower body mass index (BMI), and lower hypertension. The study also includes case studies which identified policy changes likely to improve health in specific communities.
“Moving Cooler: Transportation Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” ( http://www.movingcooler.info ).
This report, sponsored by a number of major transportation, business and environmental organizations evaluates several dozen climate change emission reduction strategies, including their emission reductions, implementation costs, impacts on vehicle costs, and equity impacts. It estimates the emissions that could be reduced under a range of assumptions about how they are implemented.
“Real Transportation Solutions for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions” ( http://www.transportation1.org/RealSolutions/index.html ).
This report by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials identifies various ways to reduce transportation climate change emissions.
“A Conceptual Framework For The Reform Of Taxes Related To Roads And Transport” ( http://apo.org.au/research/conceptual-framework-reform-taxes-related-roads-and-transport ), School of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University for the ‘Australia’s Future Tax System’ review by Treasury, Canberra.
This report examines how transport services in Australia should be priced and transportation facilities funded. It discusses various economic principles related to efficient prices and taxes, estimates various transportation-related external costs (road and parking facilities, congestion, accidents, energy consumption and pollution), evaluates current pricing efficiency and recommends various reforms to help achieve transportation planning objectives.
“Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities” ( http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities1.pdf ).
This study by Joe Cortright of CEOs for Cities evaluates the effects of walkability on housing prices using the used Walkscore ( http://www.walkscore.com) and 95,000 real estate transactions, controlling for house (size, number of bedrooms and baths, age) and neighborhood characteristics (proximity to the CBD, income, and accessibility to jobs). It found that, each walkscore point increase was associated with a $700 to $3000 increase in home values, after controlling for other observable factors, so for example, shifting from a 50th to a 75th percentile walkscore typically increases a house’s value $4,000 to $34,000, depending on the market.
“Are TODs Over-Parked?” ( http://www.uctc.net/papers/882.pdf ).
This study by Robert Cervero, Arlie Adkins, and Cathleen Sullivan investigated the degree to which residential developments near urban rail stations are “over-parked,” that is, more parking is provided than needed. It found the mean parking supply of 1.57 spaces per unit was 31% higher than the 1.2 spaces recommended in ITE Parking Generation, and 37% higher than the weighted-average peak demand of 1.15 parked cars per unit at 31 residential projects near BART rail stations. The analysis indicates that increased parking supply tends to increase vehicle ownership: an increase of 0.5 spaces per unit is associated with a 0.11 additional cars parked per unit at the peak. Parking demand tends to decline with improved pedestrian access to stations and improved transit service frequency.
“Applying Health Impact Assessment To Land Transport Planning” ( http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/research/reports/375.pdf ).
This report by the NZ Transport Agency describes Health Impact Assessment (HIA), a process to inform decision makers about the likely positive and negative effects of a proposal on public health and on health inequalities in order to avoid unintended consequences and to make informed decisions. This report recommends transport policy and planning practices to protect and promote public health.
“Transportation Demand Management: A Small and Mid-Size Communities Toolkit” ( http://www.fraserbasin.bc.ca/programs/documents/FBC_TDM_toolkit_web.pdf ).
This toolkit provides guidance on implementing TDM programs and strategies in smaller and medium-size communities. It includes an introduction to transportation demand management (TDM) and what it takes to implement a TDM strategy. There are 10 TDM case studies of small and mid-size communities. The toolkit shows how to start a TDM initiative and how to turn it into a comprehensive program, offering helpful resources.
Co-Benefits Asia Hub Website ( http://www.observatory.ph/co-benefits_asia ) provides information on climate change emission reduction strategies that provide additional benefits related to environment (e.g. air quality management, health, agriculture, forestry and biodiversity), energy (e.g. renewable energy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency) and economics (e.g. long-term economic sustainability, industry competitiveness, income distribution).
“Getting More with Less: Managing Residential Parking in Urban Developments with Carsharing and Unbundling” ( http://www.citycarshare.org/download/CityCarShare2009BestPracticesReport.pdf ).
This new report describes examples of residential developments that rely on unbundled parking and on-site carshare services to significantly reduce parking requirements. Provides guidance to developers and planners on applying these strategies.
“CityTalent: Keeping Young Professionals (and their kids) in Cities,” ( http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/CEOs_CityTalent_Kids.pdf )
This new report by CEOs for Cities helps urban leaders understand, support and scale the behaviors of multi-generation urban families. Researchers studied parent concerns of safety, space and schools developing concepts to counter them through density, public space and using the city as a classroom.
“The Challenge of Sustainable Mobility in Urban Planning and Development in Oslo” ( http://www.toi.no/getfile.php/Publikasjoner/T%D8I%20rapporter/2009/1024-2009/1024-2009-nett.pdf )
This report provides detailed analysis of transportation and land use development trends in Oslo, Norway. It indicates that smart growth policies and investments in alternative modes (particularly high quality public transit) can reduce per capita vehicle travel and energy consumption. It discusses this decoupling of economic development and VMT.
# # #
About the author:
Todd Litman is founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems. His work helps to expand the range of impacts and options considered in transportation decision-making, improve evaluation techniques, and make specialized technical concepts accessible to a larger audience. He can be reached at: 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, Canada. Email: litman@vtpi.org. Phone & Fax: +1 250-360-1560
Comments Off
Posted in Author, demand management, Policy, resource, strategic planning
The UK Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) announce “a powerful new tool for 
planning practitioners, local authority officers and Councillors for better integration between land use and transport planning”. Planning for Sustainable Travel is a web-based resource with a summary practice guide, identifying the 11 key land use levers that planners and transport planners can use to help achieve lower trip rates, shorter travel distances and greater use of sustainable travel modes.
“The guidance makes two key recommendations:
1. Much more attention should be given at an early stage to analysing locational options for major development – selecting places likely to generate low trip rates and the greatest potential to offer a competitive alternative to car use.
2. New developments should be planned to achieve levels of car distance travelled per head that are lower than the average for the transport authority area and that are good practice benchmarks
It is intended that the guidance acts as a resource bringing together current sometimes disparate advise under one website and guide.”
# # #
* For a short intro to the report – http://www.cfit.gov.uk/pn/091023/index.htm
* For project website – www.plan4sustainabletravel.org.
* Full guidance is available at www.plan4sustainabletravel.org.
* Planning for sustainable travel (summary guide)
* Planning for sustainable travel (leaflet)
* Planning for sustainable travel (background and technical analysis)
* For background on the CfIT – http://www.cfit.gov.uk
Contact:
Daniel Parker-Klein
Transport Planning Policy Officer
Commission for Integrated Transport
55 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0EU
t +44 020 7348 1970
f +44 020 7348 1989
m +44 07894 620655
e daniel.parker-klein@ciltuk.org.uk
Comments Off
Posted in demand management, frugal, infrastructure, Land use, resource, Safety, tools
Thanks to environmental writer and columnist Jay Bookman for this heads-up, and right behind him the New York Times, World Streets now has a new thing that keeps us up at night. Any reduction on our part of oil consumption, say through some of the projects and measures being pushed by World Streets and others, is (do we have this right?) a form of theft. Fair is fair we would say, so let’s get together and work this one out. Get out your checkbooks. Compassionate capitalism.
From the New York Times of 14 October:
Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues
- by Jad Mouawad and Andrew C. Revkin
Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.
The oil-rich kingdom has pushed this position for years in earlier climate-treaty negotiations. While it has not succeeded, its efforts have sometimes delayed or disrupted discussions. The kingdom is once again gearing up to take a hard line on the issue at international negotiations scheduled for Copenhagen in December.
The chief Saudi negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, described the position as a “make or break” provision for the Saudis, as nations stake out their stance before the global climate summit scheduled for the end of the year.
“Assisting us as oil-exporting countries in achieving economic diversification is very crucial for us through foreign direct investments, technology transfer, insurance and funding,” Mr. Sabban said in an e-mail message.
This Saudi position has emerged periodically as a source of dispute since the earliest global climate talks, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is surfacing again as Saudi Arabia tries to build a coalition of producers to extract concessions in Copenhagen.
Petroleum exporters have long used delaying tactics during climate talks. They view any attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by developed countries as a menace to their economies.
The original treaty meant to combat global warming, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, contains provisions that in Saudi Arabia’s view require such compensation.
Mr. Sabban outlined his stance at climate talks in Bangkok this month.
Environmental advocates denounced the idea, saying the Saudi stance hampered progress to assist poor nations that are already suffering from the effect of climate change, and that genuinely need financial assistance.
“It is like the tobacco industry asking for compensation for lost revenues as a part of a settlement to address the health risks of smoking,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The worst of this racket is that they have held up progress on supporting adaptation funding for the most vulnerable for years because of this demand.”
Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on oil exports, which account for most of the government’s budget. Last year, when prices peaked, the kingdom’s oil revenue swelled by 37 percent, to $281 billion, according to Jadwa Investment, a Saudi bank. That was more than four times the 2002 level. At one point in 2008, the average gasoline price in the United States surpassed $4 a gallon.
Saudi exports are expected to drop to $115 billion this year, after oil prices fell. American gasoline prices are hovering around $2.50 a gallon.
The one-year swing in the kingdom’s revenues shows that oil prices are likely to be a bigger factor in Saudi Arabia’s future that any restrictions on greenhouse gases, said David G. Victor, an energy expert at the University of California, San Diego.
Mr. Victor dismissed the Saudi stance as a stunt, saying that the real threat for petroleum exporters came from improvements in fuel economy and rising mandates for alternative fuels in the transportation sector, both of which would reduce the need for petroleum products. “Oil exporters have always, in my view, far overblown the near-term effects of carbon limits on demand for their products,” Mr. Victor said. “For the Saudis this may be a deal-breaker, but the Saudis are not essential players. In some sense, one sign that a climate agreement is effective is that big hydrocarbon exporters hate it.”
A recent study by the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized nations, found that the cumulative revenue of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would drop by 16 percent from 2008 to 2030 if the world agreed to slash emissions, as opposed to the projection if there were no treaty.
But with oil projected to average $100 a barrel, the energy agency estimated that OPEC members would still earn $23 trillion over that period.
Mr. Sabban, however, cited an older study by Charles River, a consulting firm, which found that the losses in revenue for Saudi Arabia alone would be $19 billion a year starting in 2012.
The Copenhagen talks were a major point on the agenda of the last OPEC conference.
But not every oil-exporting country is falling in line with the Saudi position. Some have been trying a different approach that has earned the backing of environmental groups. For example, Ecuador, OPEC’s newest member, said last year that it was willing to freeze oil exploration in the Amazon forest if it got some financial rewards for doing so.
The Saudi negotiator said that the compensation mechanism was an integral part of the global climate regime that has been in place since the 1990s and that was not up for renegotiation.
“It is a very serious trend that we need to follow and influence if we want to minimize its adverse impacts on our economies and our people,” Mr. Sabban said in an e-mail message to other OPEC officials. “That does not mean we would like to obstruct any progress or that we do not want to join any international agreement. We will do that if the deal is fair and equitable and does not transfer the burden to us.”
# # #
Thanks to Jay Bookman for his good heads-up on this important news. He maintains a very interesting blog specializing in foreign relations and environmental and technology-related issues. which you can check out at http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog\
And here you have our editor, overcome with emotion as he tries to figure out how World Streets is ever going to find the wherewithall to compensate for our actions leading to all those big number reductions in oil imports. (He really should have thought of that first.)
Comments Off
Posted in Economic instruments, economic measure, greening, media, oil/petroleum, resource, taxes
Looking for something sustainable? What about over on the left-hand side of World Streets. (Contribution by Gail Jennings. Original article appeared in Mobility Magazine, South Africa in 7 October edition.)
If you are looking for a comprehensive list of sustainable transportation websites, organisations, and institutes leading the way worldwide. here’s just a sample: a partial glance down the first three letters of the alphabet.
* Active Transportation Alliance
* African Community Access Programme (AFCAP)African Community Access Programme (AFCAP)
* Alliance for Biking & Walking
* Association for European Transport
* Bakfiets Cycle News
* Better Transport (UK)
* Bicycle Design
* Bicycle Fixation
* Bicycle Partnership Program
* Bike-sharing Blog
* Brazilian Pedestrian Association
* Brookings Institute – Metro
* C40 – Large Cities Climate Leadership
* California Center for Innovative Transportation
* Campaign for Better Transport
* Carsharing US
* Center for Neighborhood Technology
* Centre for Science and Environment
* China Dialogue
* Cities for Mobility
* CitiesACT (Asia)
And that’s just a sample from the top. In the event you wish to search all the 150-plus programs and databases linked to the site, all youi have to do is click here to http://tinyurl.com/ws-search-ws
Under ‘Key Sources, Links and Blogs’ you’ll also find the World Streets archives, insights and contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners around the world. It’s even better than Facebook
The five most recent stories from World Streets are also visible on the right-hand side feed of Mobility Magazine in South Africa, the Oxford Transport Network in the UK, and Parisar in India. We are all getting together to tighten the sustainability link and collaboration across city and national borders.
Caption: Want sustainable transportation and sustainable lives? You got to push for it… Like Eric Britton, editor World Streets, is doing . . .
# # #
Gail Jennings, Mobility Magazine, Cape Town, South Africa. Gail writes about issues such as social and environmental justice, energy and climate change, community-based projects, non-motorised transport, and edit Mobility Magazine (a quarterly transport publication for the southern African public sector).
Have a question about sustainable transport projects, techniques, applications, institutions, anywhere in the world? Say about BRT in Delhi, public bikes in Mexico, carsharing in Austria, or anything else that falls under the sustainable transport/new mobility agenda? Planning a trip to a city and want to check up on what is going on there so that you get off with a running start? So now what?
Turn to Google most likely. Not bad — but let us see if we can offer you a more efficient way to carry out your search.
* First try our Collaborative Search Engine links.worldstreets.org/
Over the course of the past year the members of our worldwide network have helped us to piece together an inventory of and working links to an impressive number of groups, programs and sources leading the way in this area, and as of today if you look on the left menu of the section (a bit down) entitled Key Sources, Links and Blog, you will see are 156 are already listed. (For the visual effect we list them below, but to be useful of course you really have to click down to that section of the site.)
This is a wonderful collection of sources on our subject, and if you first click to http://links.worldstreets.org/ and from there start asking your questions, you will see what these specialist groups and sources have to offer on your topic. It will be a fraction of what you get with a full Google search, but much more closely honed given that these are the leading edge groups working in these area.
Have and candidates who are port of this leading edge and who should be included in our combined search engine. Please let us know and we can add them.
156 Key Sources, Links and Blogs you may wish to check out for your project
Active Transportation Alliance * African Community Access Programme (AFCAP) * Alliance for Biking & Walking * Association for European Transport * Bakfiets Cycle News * Better Transport (UK) * Bicycle Design * Bicycle Fixation * Bicycle Partnership Program * Bike-sharing Blog * Brazilian Pedestrian Association * Brookings Institute * C40 – Large Cities Climate Leadership * California Center for Innovative Transportation * Campaign for Better Transport * Carsharing US * Center for Neighborhood Technology * Centre for Science and Environment * China Dialogue * Cities for Mobility * CitiesACT (Asia) * Citistates Group * City CarShare * City Fix * City Mayors * CityRyde * CityRyde (USA) * Ciudad Viva * CIVITAS * Clean Air Initiative (CAI) * Climate Alliance of European Cities * Climate ark * Clinton Climate Initiative * Community Transportation Association of America * CROW – Technology Platform for Transport & Public spac * ELTIS * ELTIS case studies * Embarq – Center for Sustainable Transport * Embarq – WRI * Energy Foundation China.org * EPOMM – European Platform on Mobility Management * EUROCITIES mobility * European Federation for Transport & Environmen * Feet First. * Flexibility.co.uk * Forum for the future * Friends of the Earth (Transport) * Frixo traffic reporting * Gehl architects. * Global Alliance for EcoMobility * Global Environment & Technology Foundation * global Transport Knowledge Partnership * Go For Green * Google maps bike there * Gotham Gazette * Green 2009 * Green car congress. * Greenstreet Sweden * Grist * GTZ * Guardian Transport * I Bike T.O. * I Walk to School * IBSR – L’Institut Belge pour la Sécurité Routière * IEEE * IFRTD * INRETS (France) * International Downtown Association * International Federation of Pedestrians (IFP) * International Transport Forum * International Walk to School * ITDP – China (photo library) * ITDP – Institute for Transportation & Development Policy – * Japan for Sustainability (JFS) * Key NewMob definitions * Knoogle combined search of all following blogs and sources * KonSULT * Land Transport Authority – Singapore * Livable City * Livable Streets Network * MindsinMotion.net * Mobility Magazine (South Africa) * Network Musings * Next American City * One Street * Oxford Transport Network * Pan Africa Bicycle Information Network * Parisar (India) * Partners for Public Spaces (PPS) i * Perils for Pedestrians * Planetizen * Polis * Practical cyclist Blog * Prevention Institute * Reconnecting America * Regional Community Development News * Reinventing Transport * Safe Kids * Safe Routes to School * Shared Space.Institute * Shrinking Cities * Sightline Institute * Smart growth america * Smart Growth Online * Social Data * Spokes.org.uk * STPP * Street-Films * Streets Alive * Streetsblog (NYC) * Sustainable Cities Net * Sustainable Connections * Sustainable Development Gateway * Sustainable Energy Africa * Sustainable Urban Transport Project * Sustran – Global South Forum * The Commons * The Idea Factory * The Nation – Transportation * The PEP – Transport * Health & Environmen * the transport politic * Tne Infrastructurist * Transaid * Transition Towns * Transport Research Knowledge Centre * Transportation Alternatives * Transumo * Treehugger-transportation * UITP * Urbamet * Urban Buzz * Urban Design * Urban Design and Planning * Urban Land Institute * Urban places and spaces * Urban Transport Issues Asia * Urban Trransportation Monitor * Value Capture News * Velo Mondial * Victoria Transport Policy Institute * Virginia Tech Transportation Institute * Walk & Bike for Life * Walk to School (UK) * Walking School Bus * Wash Cycle * Where * WHO – Transport and Health * Wiki on Sustainable Transportation * Wikipedia entry (for comment) * WiserEarth (WE) * World Business Council for Sustainable Development * World Changing * World Resources Forum * World Resources Institute * Worldwatch Institute * Wuppertal Institute
* Again that’s links.worldstreets.org/. You may wish to bookmark it.
Roy Russell, founding Chief Technology Officer of Zipcar, read yesterday’s feature article on carsharing in North America and immediately wrote to add his experience, thoughts and views on this to further round out the big picture on carsharing in the US . (Additional comments are as always warmly solicited.)
Eric,
I haven’t been with Zipcar for a while now so my only source of information is whatever they choose to say to the press — I don’t have any better numbers that Susan does.
However, I do wonder what the limits to growth of car-sharing are and what would encourage it to be more widely adopted. I do think that it is potentially a multi-billion dollar business, both in North America and worldwide. However, in order to achieve this I think there are lots of regulatory practices that need to change that will make the full costs of personal car ownership more apparent and place car sharing vehicles on an equal footing with these private vehicles.
For example, the cost of parking for residents of most cities is heavily subsidized by the municipality. It costs me $8 per year to be able to park my car anywhere on the city streets with a “resident” permit. However, a car sharing vehicle which is shared amongst 50 “residents” must pay the full commercial cost of parking, perhaps $1200 per year or more. If the cost of a resident permit were increased then many more residents would dispose of their under-utilized personal vehicles, opting for the use of a car-sharing vehicle instead.
If the cost to operate a personal vehicle included a per-mile charge for driving on public roads then we’d be more inclined to use our personal vehicles less, and more of us would dispose of them as the under-utilized assets-turned-burdens they become.
As Susan mentions, insurance is also an important factor. If government regulators encouraged insurance-by-the-mile, where you pay depending on how much you drive then people would respond by driving less. And again, the less you drive, the less you require your personal vehicle for regular daily use, the more appealing car sharing gets.
So I think it will take some enlightened municipalities to lead the way and stop subsidizing personal car ownership as much as they have been. This will result in structural changes that will naturally encourage large-scale changes in behavior. Once the benefits are realized by a few, there will likely be broad adoption of improved practices in most cities.
I have encouraged my local city officials to increase the resident parking permit fee. Their reaction, while predictable, is disappointing. They agree that it makes sense and yet they think that it isn’t politically possible. Changing the status quo is hard, made even harder by the fact that this change is an increase in fees or taxes. I think the way around this is to somehow tie the increased revenue to explicitly pay for something, rather than simply fill the general coffers. Locally, I’m pushing for the added permit revenue to pay for increased alternative transit improvements such as bike lanes and bicycle parking. I’m hoping this will generate enough political support to offset the negative reaction from car owners unhappy with the increased fee.
Author:
Roy Russell is a software developer, entrepreneur, founding CTO of Zipcar, and Meadow Networks CTO. Prior to that he managed software development for several startups and large high tech companies. (Mr. Russel’s picture at the top of this page is a copy of a painting executed by his youngest daughter.)
Comments Off
Posted in Author, Carshare, local government, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing
Tagged Sharing
This article is part of our series of updates on carsharing status, problems, projects and plans from members of the New Mobility Agenda’s World Carshare 
program. Why so much attention to a mobility form that will never account for more than a percent or two of all trips in our cities? Simple. Carsharing is one of the vital keys to sustainable transport.
2009 North American Carsharing Update
Higher fuel costs, increased environmental awareness, and a slowing economy are supporting carsharing growth in North America. The principle of carsharing is simple: individuals and businesses/government fleets gain the benefit of vehicle access without the cost and responsibility of private vehicle ownership. Members access a fleet of vehicles for use on an as-needed basis, typically paying by hour and mileage.
The authors estimated that there were 650,000 carsharing members sharing approximately 20,000 vehicles worldwide as of October 2008. In recent years, carsharing in North America has expanded to be the largest market in the world. As of Fall 2008, the North American market accounted for approximately half of the worldwide carsharing membership and nearly 40% of the worldwide carsharing fleets deployed.
As of July 1, 2009, a total of 60 carsharing operations have been deployed in North America since 1994. Of these 60 carsharing operations, 42 are operational and 18 defunct. Reasons for closures include experimental programs, high insurance costs following 9/11, and cost and staffing considerations.
As of July 2009, there were 26 carsharing organizations in the U.S., with approximately 324,000 members sharing more than 7,700 vehicles. As of July 2009, there were 16 carsharing operators in Canada, with more than 53,000 members sharing approximately 2,000 vehicles.
In Canada, member-vehicle ratios have steadily risen over the past ten years, from 14:1 in 1998 to 26:1 in 2009. In contrast, the U.S. is one of three nations worldwide with substantially higher member-vehicle ratios. In July 2009, U.S. member-vehicle ratios were 42:1. Higher U.S. member-vehicle ratios have been a business strategy undertaken by many operators to increase vehicle usage and profitability, particularly among the largest for-profit and non-profit operators.
In North America, five major business models have emerged:
1) for-profit,
2) non-profit,
3) cooperative (owned by its members),
4) public transit (carsharing operated by a public transit agency), and
5) university research programs (operated by universities for research purposes).
In both the U.S. and Canada, for-profit operators continue to account for the majority of carsharing members and fleets deployed.
As of July 2009, 30.8% of the operators are for-profit (eight of 26), in the U.S.; accounting for an estimated 86% and 88% of members and vehicles, respectively. In Canada, 37.5% of the operators are for-profit (six of 16) and account for approximately 87% and 86% of the members and vehicles, respectively.
Commercial Mainstreaming of North American Carsharing
The October 2007 merger of Flexcar and Zipcar, which created the world’s largest multi-national operator, marked the beginning of carsharing’s commercial mainstreaming phase in North America. Since late-2007, North American carsharing has been marked by the following trends:
1) increasing availability and affordability of insurance,
2) market growth and diversification,
3) market entry and competition by traditional car rental services, and
4) continued public policy development.
In North America, the cost and availability of insurance has had a substantial impact on carsharing. Initially, insurance was either unavailable or cost prohibitive, particularly in the U.S.
As carsharing has mainstreamed, insurance has become increasingly available and affordable. This has coincided with market diversification and expansion into new markets, including government and corporate fleets, small business, and colleges/universities.
Three North American carsharing operators have entered municipal fleet contracts with the cities of Berkeley, CA; Philadelphia, PA; and Vancouver, BC. Market diversification has been more common in the U.S. with the expansion of carsharing services to over 150 North American college and university campuses, the majority in the U.S.
Another major trend has been the recent launch of carsharing services by traditional car rental companies, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s WeCar, Connect By Hertz, and U-Haul’s U Car Share.
As carsharing becomes increasingly more mainstream in North America, a number of policies are being considered. The majority of these policies are in the U.S. in locations with existing carsharing services that support large memberships; however, a few policies have been developed to encourage carsharing startups. Some of the carsharing policies include developer and zoning regulations, fleet reduction, participant subsidies, on-street and off-street parking, and taxation.
As carsharing continues to expand, both supportive and unsupportive policy approaches will continue to influence carsharing’s growth and locations in the U.S. and Canada.
Bibliography
Berkeley and City CarShare to Make History: First Shared Municipal Fleet in the U.S. Press Release, City of Berkeley, California, July 15, 2004. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/mayor/PR/pressrelease2004-0715.htm. Accessed July 28, 2008.
City to Join PhillyCarShare, Cut 400 Vehicles. City of Philadelphia, Press Release, April 12, 2004. http://www.phila.gov/pdfs/City_to_Join_PhillyCarShare.pdf. Accessed November 12, 2008.
Cohen, A., S. Shaheen, and R. McKenzie. Carsharing: A Guide For Local Planners. PAS
Memo, May/June 2008.
Millard-Ball, A., G. Murray, J. ter Schure, C. Fox, and J. Burkhardt. TCRP Report 108: Car-Sharing: Where and How It Succeeds. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2005.
Shaheen, S.A., A.P. Cohen. Growth in Worldwide Carsharing: An International Comparison. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1992, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2007, pp 81-89.
Shaheen, S., A. Cohen, and M. Chung. American Carsharing: A Ten-Year Retrospective. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2009, forthcoming.
Shaheen, S. A., A. P. Cohen, and J. D. Roberts. Carsharing in North America: Market Growth, Current Developments, and Future Potential. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1986, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2006, pp. 116–124.
Shaheen, S. and M. Meyn. Shared-Use Vehicle Services: A Survey of North American Market Developments. Proc., 9th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (CD-ROM). Chicago, Ill., Oct. 2002.
Shaheen, S. A., A. Schwartz, and K. Wipyewski. Policy Considerations for Carsharing and Station Cars: Monitoring Growth, Trends, and Overall Impacts. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1887, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp. 128–136.
The authors:
Susan A. Shaheen is a Research Associate, Mineta Institute , &Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) University of California, Berkeley. She can be reached at sashaheen@tsrc.berkeley.edu
Adam P. Cohen is a Research Associate, Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC)
University of California, Berkeley. He can be reached at apcohen@cal.berkeley.edu.
New Mobility Agenda references:
* New Mobility Agenda at www.newmobility.org
* World Carshare Consortium at www.worldcarshare.com
* World Carshare Cafe (forum) at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/
World Carshare Consortium: This free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, world wide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers.
To put this report into its broader international context, the following map taken this morning from the World Carshare Consortium discussion forum pinpoints the last eighty message origins, and in the process provides some visual clues as to where the action is in the sector worldwide. Basically what we are seeing is that the number of contact points is steadily expanding as new countries and cities start to get involved in the forum discussions. A first step in a process which we have seen in many places lead to carsharing itself.
Comments Off
Posted in Author, Carshare, New Mobility, resource, Share/Transport, Sharing
World Streets is the daily reporting arm of the New Mobility Agenda. Its content derives from adherence to a consistent set of overall program goals, mediated by a network of collaborative relationships that have been built up over the last two decades, which involve on the order of two thousand collaborating expert colleagues and friends of sustainable transport worldwide. The goal: sustainable transport policy and practice.
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” — Albert Einstein
The New Mobility Agenda, active since 1988, provides the unifying strategic base, the firm bedrock on which all the work and content of World Streets is oriented. The orientation is very specific. On the one hand is the Mission Statement, which is set out here. On the other, the overarching goal and m.o. of the program, as set out on its title page: The New Mobility/Climate Emergency Project, is “The Politics of Transportation: New thinking & world-wide collaborative problem-solving”.
Focus programs:
The Agenda is organized into and supported by a collection of specifically targeted “focus programs”, continuing collaborative projects, each addressing one or more (but far from all) of the key building blocks of sustainable transport. More than two dozen of these focus programs have thus far been developed since the Agenda first got underway in 1988, of which you have the currently most active listed here. Each is supported by its own website and discussion forum and library.
It is not out of place here to repeat the strict 2-4 year results horizon and strategy that underlie all these initiatives — and of the paramount importance of rapid GHG reductions as a driver for policy, practice and reform in a sector that accounts for nearly one firth of all planetary emissions. That is the insistent hard core of the Agenda
Active New Mobility Agenda programs and groups:
1. The New Mobility/Climate Emergency Project- http://www.newmobility.org
2. World Streets – http://worldstreets.org/
3. Nuova Mobilità – http://nuovamobilita.org
4. New Mobility Partnerships – www.newmobilitypartners.org
5. World Carshare Consortium – www.worldcarshare.com
6. World City Bike Implementation Strategies – http://www.worldcitybike.org/
7. Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice – www.journal.newmobility.org
8. xTransit – Shared small vehicle systems – www.xtransit.org
9. World Car Free Days / New Mobility Weeks – http://www.worldcarfreedays.com/
10. Kyoto World Cities – http://www.kyotocities.org
11. Lots Less Cars in Cities (Idea factory) – www.lotslesscars.org
12. New Mobility City Dialogues – http://www.dialogues.newmobility.org
13. Land Café: Value capture and land tax reform (Forum) – http://www.landcafe.org/
14. Global South – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss/
15. Gatnet: Gender, Equity and Transport Forum - http://www.gatnet.net/
16. New Mobility Media Partnerships – www.media.newmobility.org
17. International Advisory Council – http://ecoplan.org/briefs/general/panel.htm
18. New Mobility Knowledge Environment http://www.knowledge.newmobility.org
19. Knoogle 1.1 – http://www.knoogle.net/
20. Talking New Mobility (all discussion fora)– http://www.talking.newmobility.org
21. World Eyes on the Streets Sentinels network – http://tinyurl.com/ws-sentinels
Example of coverage and participation:
It is not without interest to reflect briefly on the message of the following map, which though it merely maps the locations of the last eighty visitors to the New Mobility Agenda site this morning nonetheless give us an idea as to where the search for new ideas and solutions is most underway. It is gnerally quite typical of the pattern that we observe for this project.
To close, a quick look at the map for the same period for the World Carshare Consortium discussions. This tells us where carsharing is for the most part happening today.
Which is fine, but far from enough. Our goal of course is to put it into every city and community on the planet. Carsharing is an integral part of our sustainable future.
EU mobility management The City Fix
New Mobility Cafe India Streets Safe Streets Challenge World City Bike Forum ValueCapture/Tax Reform Nuova Mobilità World Streets Forum The Commons (1973) Allinx Mobility Management aboodoo carlosfpardo Enrico Bonfatti eeepee RideYourCity Rory McMullan johnwhitelegg Kourosh Rad Karthik Rao-Cavale Faizan Robert Stüssi voodikon Eric Britton, editor
Top
- - > 
