NOW!! 17 plus 1 reasons why I am prudently optimistic about the World Climate / Mobility / Work Transition for 2021/22

Shortlist of on-going Transformative Realities and Trends

One of the great recompenses of having watched the sustainable transportation and related technology developments evolve over the course of several decades, is that if one takes the time to step back and scan the evidence for pattern breaks, one can readily spot a certain number of  trends, fundamental structural changes, quite a few of which bode well for a different and better future for transport in and around cities. Here are a handful of the fundamental underlying changes which I have spotted over the last decades on the mobility beat and which I would like to share with you this sunny COVID morning.  Let’s start with a simple listing and then go on to brief comments in an attempt to clarify.

 – PS. G. K. Chesterton put it like this: “If a thing is worth doing . . . it’s worth doing badly”  . (We’ll leave it to you to sort that one out)

SAFE CITY STRATEGIES : MANAGING THE TRANSITION. (Working notes for a wide-open 2022 Collaborative Thinking Exercise)

Safe City Strategies for bringing sustainable transport to your city .

The Seven Pillars

From Australia Archives: 41 Measures to Manage Traffic Congestion in your City

Good morning Brisbane

Comment on: COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS: REVIEW OF URBAN CONGESTION – TRENDS, IMPACTS AND SOLUTIONS

Good intentions that somehow don’t eventuate?

Thanks Eric.

Interesting to a person involved in questioning whether (m)any of these items (strategies, policies, etc) are really being applied widely or only in a few specific cases in Australia as compared with implementation elsewhere

..

There does seem to be a lot of “weasel” words i.e., which are open to interpretation?

World Streets Open 2021 Team Problem-Solving Initiative: Climate/Emergency Mobility/Space Jobs/Work Streets/Cars Private/Shared Vision/Strategy Equity/Women Action/Manage

– – – – – –  > Working draft of 1 May 2020

WORLD STREETS is betting its future on the coming immediate-term transition led by certain ambitious, responsible cities, nations, organizations and citizens in different parts of the world to come together to break the downward pattern of ever-increasing climate stress — and before the challenge to plan and execute highly aggressive near-term initiatives aimed at sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the mobility sector. And doing all this while working with proven tools, policies and strategies that harness cost-effective, readily available, measures, technologies, operational and management competence. Our job is to support them as best we can.

CONTEXT/KEYWORDS:: Climate/Emergency  Cities/Mobility  Vision/Strategy  Streets/Cars  Time/Space  Private/Shared  Equity/Women  Action/Manage

• • You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.  – Buckminster Fuller

THE 2020 FIVE PERCENT CLIMATE/MOBILITY CHALLENGE

Small is beautiful. May we present 2021 Micro-mobility?

In brief:

Micro-mobility is a category of modes of transport that are provided by very light vehicles such as electric scooters, electric skateboards, shared bicycles and electric pedal assisted, pedelec, bicycles.  The primary condition for inclusion in the category is a gross vehicle weight of less than 500 kg. Additional conditions are the provision of a motor, primary utility use, and availability as a shared service. (Thanks WP.)  Note: Additional graphics below purloined from the net. Creative Commons –

Micro-mobility’s 15,000-mile checkup

January 2019 | Article By Kersten Heineke, Benedikt Kloss, Darius Scurtu, and Florian Weig   Source and full text, graphics and links:  https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/micromobilitys-15000-mile-checkup

WOMEN MOVE DIFFERENTLY (and what everyone working in mobility should understand)

Understanding women’s experiences of using a male- oriented mobility system can help improve it for everyone.  Here’s a guide:

1. Mobility is not gender neutral, and may have a male bias.
2. Women have different needs and behaviours when it comes to transportation.
3. Understanding their perspective could improve mobility for everyone.

As multiple studies have shown, women have different patterns, needs and behaviours. Female mobility is characterized by trip-chaining and time poverty. The main reasons for this are that women do 75% of the world’s unpaid care work, the gender pay gap, and women’s physical condition. Women have a smaller range when traveling the same amount of time. Women carry luggage and accompany people, more often on public transport and by foot. The car is less often the default solution.

The Battle for Street Space – Part I (World Streets Archives)

EARNING A PUBLIC SPACE DIVIDEND IN THE STREETS

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

Abstract: Experiments with shared space or “naked streets” have captured imaginations and considerable media coverage in recent years. Most of the excitement stems from surprise that streets without kerbs, road markings or signage can work well and achieve “safety through uncertainty”. This paper looks at another equally important insight from shared space.

It focuses on a series of innovations that, like shared space, re-arrange the roles of streets in new ways to yield a “dividend” of expanded urban public realm, with little or no loss of transport utility. Such a space dividend should be especially welcome in dense cities that are both congested and short of public space.

Introduction

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

The Battle for Street Space

SAFE CITY STRATEGIES : MANAGING THE TRANSITION. (Working notes for a 2021 Thinking Exercise)

Op-Ed. Why our cities must act as beacons for ambitious climate action

Source: https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/cities-must-act-as-beacons-for-ambitious-climate-action/

Cities are a critical player in effective climate action, and many are already making headway where others are falling behind.

Will cities ultimately be viewed as the cause or solution to the global climate emergency? That seems to be the crossroads at which we now find ourselves, and it is a question which is either troubling or inspiring for city planners and mayors alike.

Cities are huge contributors to climate change, responsible for about 70 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions and yet they are also at the frontline of the impacts of floods, extreme heat and drought.

Research by scientists at the Crowther Lab predicted that 77 per cent of cities around the world will experience dramatic change in climate conditions over the next 30 years.

For us, the most effective response begins by helping cities embrace the essential role they play. Cities are a critical player in effective climate action,

• Continue reading – – >  https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/cities-must-act-as-beacons-for-ambitious-climate-action/

#  #  #

 About the World Streets Climate  program coordinator:

Eric Britton
13, rue Pasteur. Courbevoie 92400 France

Bio: Founding editor of World Streets (1988), Eric Britton is an American political scientist, teacher, occasional consultant, and sustainability activist who has observed, learned, taught and worked on missions and advisory assignments on all continents. In the autumn of 2019, he committed his remaining life work to the challenges of aggressively countering climate change and specifically greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the mobility sector. He is not worried about running out of work. Further background and updates: @ericbritton | http://bit.ly/2Ti8LsX | #fekbritton | https://twitter.com/ericbritton | and | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbritton/ Contact: climate@newmobility.org) | +336 508 80787 (Also WhatApp) | Skype: newmobility.)

View complete profile

 

THE WORLD CLIMATE EMERGENCY IS A MAN’S JOB (Apparently)

Ladies, males and independent thinkers:  Do  you notice anything in particular in the following  sequence of images of a hugely important challenge for our planet, or at least the species? Let’s say, some kind of pattern as you move from scene to scene? Or, better yet, some kind of weird, insistent, let’s go so far as to say sick pattern?

The following set of a handful of images offers a pretty fair overview of the so-called ‘manning table’ for this particular mission, i.e., saving the planet.  

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A COMPENDIUM OF ONE HUNDRED BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER MEASURES YOUR CITY COULD START TO IMPLEMENT TOMORROW MORNING TO SAVE THE PLANET . . . cut GHG emissions, get people to work on time, reduce traffic accidents, save lives, clear the air, improve health, strengthen the economy, create a sense of community and improve accessibility, mobility and quality of life for all.

We often hear that sustainable transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

Preparing your next Car Free Day: Check out the fundamentals.

The First Car Free Days Challenge: Toledo Spain, October 1994

Whereas Car Free Days have been organized in cities around the world all over the year for the last two  decades, there is inevitably a spate of high activity in the month of September, much of it the result of the European Commission’s continuing commitment to both the concept of Car Free Days and their own European Mobility Week. And each year we here at World Streets dig into our archives and dust off one or two of the classics as a timely reminder of the fact that the Car Free Day concept has been around and doing its bit since the first international announcement and challenge was made in Toledo Spain on 19 October 1994.

Why do we bother to do this year after year? After all, there is copious documentation and background available at a click, as a quick tour of Google of those three little words yields somewhat more than 55,000 entries, including a fair if distinctly uneven introduction in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car-Free_Days. The problem is that most of this material seriously misses the point, and as a result often handicaps cities and groups wishing to organize a Day (a week or month close) to underestimate potential of this approach. The trick is that all of this is quite a simple as it may at first glance appear.

To this end, here we are once again minding the store with the original 1994 article announcing the concept, along with several others from our archives which would appear here in the coming days. A general reference which the reader may find of use is the general introduction which appears here – https://worldstreets.wordpress.com/tag/car-free-days/. You will find at the end of this reposting, three separate annexes which provide supplemental background on (Annex A) New Mobility – 1988-1994 Program Summary; (B) Other Tools to Get the Job Done; and (C) a listing of more recent references.

2020 CLIMATE/MOBILITY ACTION PLAN & PARTNER SEARCH Invitation to pitch in and join the Five Percent Challenge in your city

THE  FIVE PERCENT 2020 CLIMATE CHALLENGE

          The World Climate Emergency   // //  The New Mobility Action Plan 

You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.   —  Buckminster Fuller

 Communication to individuals and groups contacting us to express interest in knowing more about the Five Percent Challenge program, cities and projects in 2020

Thank you for your expression of interest in our shared concerns about our cities and our planet.  We are honored and look forward to being able to follow progress in your related work and projects as well.

Looking ahead — and just so it is clear — as a result of a vigorous recentering of my priority concerns for 2020 and beyond, I have shifted the totality of my work and engagement to the World Climate Emergency — and the following six key words and references: Climate.Cities.Space.Time.Action.NewMobility.org.

2020 PARTNER SEARCH: 

The 2020 project is aiming to network and bring together . . .

THE FIVE PERCENT CHALLENGE: WORLD CLIMATE/MOBILITY CHALLENGE PARTNERS FOR 2020

DRAFT FOR COMMENT AND EDITING

— to be contacted and integrated into program from the beginning as full partners designing and monitoring the 2020 Five Percent Challenge.

Please share your contact information, addresses, names to that we can bring them into the project from the beginning.

Transport Infrastructure — Car, roads, streets, parking — on- and off-street

Public transporters — Public transport, school and works buses, taxis, free circulator bus services

Automobile lobbies — Owner/drivers, supporting services

Shared mobility — ridesharing, car sharing, shared bicycles, scooters, hitchhiking, slugging, bus pools, etc.)

MicroMobility (bicycles, scooters, very light vehicles, electric scooters, electric skateboards, shared bicycles and electric pedal assisted, pedelec, push scooters.

Mobility substitutes — Proximity, Telepresence, Telework, peak reduction measures

Thinking Exercise: What happens when VKT goes up? Down?

This flowchart as it stands  gives us a good idea of what happens in today’s dominant mobility pattern in most cities,  where each year the net impact of transport policy (or lack thereof) is to nudge up VKT .  (Actually that should better read MVKT — MOTOR Vehicle Kilometers Traveled , since that brings us right to the main core of the challenge.

Which, if we turn it around and look at it closely, gives us a number of good ideas and targets for our 2020 Five Percent Challenge .  Figure out how to reduce VKT and all sorts of good stuff happens!

# # #

To contact the editor with your observations and eventual questions, drop a line to Climate@newmobility.org.  We answer our mail. 

Eric Britton
13, rue Pasteur. Courbevoie 92400 France

Bio: Founding editor of World Streets (1988), Eric Britton is an American political scientist, teacher, occasional consultant, and sustainability activist who has observed, learned, taught and worked on missions and advisory assignments on all continents. In the autumn of 2019, he committed his remaining life work to the challenges of aggressively countering climate change and specifically greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the mobility sector. He is not worried about running out of work. Further background and updates: @ericbritton | http://bit.ly/2Ti8LsX | #fekbritton | https://twitter.com/ericbritton | and | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbritton/ Contact: climate@newmobility.org) | +336 508 80787 (Also WhatApp) | Skype: newmobility.)

View complete profile

 

 

 

# # #

World Streets launches 2021 Collaborative Climate/Mobility Action Plan

– – – – – – – – > Working draft update of 12 December. To be finalized over month.

WORLD STREETS is betting its future on the coming immediate-term transition period led by certain ambitious, responsible cities, nations, organizations and citizens in different parts of the world to come together to break the downward pattern of ever-increasing climate stress — and before the challenge to plan and execute highly aggressive near-term initiatives aimed at sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the mobility sector. And doing all this while working with proven tools, policies and strategies that harness cost-effective, readily available, measures, technologies, operational and management competence. And our job is to support them as best we can.

Women in transport: Reducing inequalities in smart mobility in Europe

Andree Woodcock, a Professor from Coventry University, tells us what we need to know about the H2020 TInnGO (Transport Innovation Gender Observatory) project that concerns the role of women in transport and the need to reduce inequalities in smart mobility.  Source: Source: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/reducing-inequalities-in-smart-mobility/73408/

Why is this needed?

It has long been recognised that women (and other groups) are significantly marginalised in transport. Without research in this area, the transport revolution produced by smart mobility will continue to exclude women and ‘disadvantaged‘ groups (e.g. the elderly, those from lower-income backgrounds, with mobility, cognitive, sensory and communication difficulties). Commuting journeys are privileged by transport systems, over those related to home and social and healthcare. The complex, multilegged journeys by women and those in lower socio-economic groups are not modelled; therefore, future systems will perpetuate the same inequalities.

Recent analysis conducted by TInnGO shows that around 70% of the transport workforce are male and since 1945, only 7% of the transport ministers in TInnGO countries have been female. Gendered and non-inclusive discourses are already being used to promote smart mobility solutions, despite the fact that women most use and support sustainable transport. Clearly, this situation needs to be urgently addressed if the smart city agenda is to fulfil its promises of improving the quality of life for all people.

# # #

Article continues: – https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/reducing-inequalities-in-smart-mobility/73408/

Carfree Times now indefinitely parked: (But the future lies ahead)

Founding editor, Joel Crawford, announces final issue of Carfree Times  

I have decided to suspend my online creative efforts indefinitely. This will probably be the last Carfree Times. I don’t plan to shoot stills or video except incidentally, and there will probably be few or no new videos.

In a sense, what I’m doing is giving up virtual presence in favor of actual presence. I am looking at screens far too much. I enjoy face-to-face interaction, particularly with an audience. I am available for these kinds of events within railing distance of Amsterdam.

We are going to have carfree cities, one way or another, I’m pretty sure. Money, ecology, and happiness all optimize at one and the same point: carfree cities. There is no cheaper way to build decent cities. No other urban form has smaller environmental impacts. Urban quality of life is always improved by removing cars.

DECONGESTION – 7 Steps for Mayors and other City Leaders to cut traffic congestion without the expense of new roads or annoyed residents’

Houston, we have a problem

Our cities are in crisis because they revolve around the car. It’s killing us, our communities and our economy.

Traffic congestion is one of the most significant problems and issues facing Governments, Councils and businesses around the world. In Australia, more than 80% of all trips are made by car and in New Zealander 83% of trips less than 2km are made by car. A British Social Attitudes Survey found that 71% of adults never cycle. Only 3% of Brits cycle every day or nearly every day. There are as many as 38 million empty car seats on the UK’s roads every rush hour.

“The problem is we’re all doing the same things – commuting, business trips and the school run – making the same trips by car at the same time, creating gridlock, congestion, queuing and travel delays’ says Transport Planner and Behaviour Change expert Rachel Smith.

To fix Sustainable Mobility: Ensure FULL Gender Parity in all Planning, Decision and Investment Fora (QED)

Every day is a perfect occasion for World Streets to announce publicly, loudly and yet once again our firm belief that the most important single thing that our society, our nations and our cities could do to increase the fairness and the effectiveness of our transportation arrangements would be to make it a matter of the law that all decisions determining how taxpayer money is invested in the sector should be decided by councils that respect full gender parity. We invite you to join us in this challenge and make it one of the major themes of sustainable transport policy worldwide in the year immediately ahead.