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.

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS A “BICYCLE”?

HELP WANTED:

What are the max dimensions of a “BICYCLE” in your (a) city, (b) country, — as defined with ability to circulate on reserved cycle lanes? If no specifications, thanks for letting us know.

Is there a top speed limit for circulation in bike lanes? How does that work?

COMMENTS, suggestions here or better to Climate.Space@NewMobility.org.

Thanks

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About the editor:

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.)

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ON LUUD SCHIMMELPENNINK AND SOCIAL INNOVATION – GREAT IDEAS HAVE WINGS

World Streets is proposing to support the nomination of  the prolific Dutch environmentalist, industrial designer, provocateur Ludd Schimmelpennink  for a major international environmental award for his life-time contributions to sustainable development, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. (Our timetable for this submittal gives us one week from today, 10 November, to finalise the nomination.)

We invite the readers of World Streets to have a look and, if you will, get back to us with your suggestions to (a) edit, expand and improve the nomination whose draft follows.  And once you have had a look and thought about it, you are invited to join us in supporting this unusual nomination. If so, it would be great to have your name, position and organisation( if any), city and country.  And should you wish to add some brief remarks (less than 50 words max.), please do and our earnest editor will do his best.

PENANG NEEDS A BICYCLE MAYOR PENANG NEEDS A BICYCLE MAYOR PENANG NEEDS A BICYCLE MAYOR PENANG NEEDS A BICYCLE MAYOR PENANG NEEDS . . .

__ THE FIVE PERCENT 2020 CHALLENGE ___

Penang’s Climate/New Mobility Emergency Action Plan and Demonstrations: 2019-2020

Penang heavy traffic bridge no room for cyclists (Remind me, where do you fit them in?)

Proposed New Mobility Penang Demo Project #1.

PENANG NEEDS A BICYCLE MAYOR

Cycling the streets and roads of Penang today is at best difficult. And rare. There are very few provisions for safe and comfortable cycling, the weather can be terribly hot.  The traffic a challenge, and the old cycling culture has almost entirely disappeared.

So the Bicycle Mayor would be starting with a weak base. But what a wonderful place it could be for the people of Penang to get around safely in daily life. So we start with a dream, then we get courage, and then we get the people, to together turn the idea into reality. A gift to themselves and a gift to the planet.

Op-ED. A Blueprint from Israel to Eliminate Traffic Jams

PREFACE: It is always a good idea, no matter how hard and even smart we may be working  on our project, concept or dream, if we are able to have the benefit of the comments and suggestions of some bright and inventive outsider, someone who has not spent all their time 24/7 staring at the challenges in front of us transportation guys.  Let’s have a look at this fresh commentary from one Israeli entrepreneur, Uri Levine, who says he hates traffic jams —  and then take some time to ponder a bit on his vision, ideas  and hopes before we turn back to the tasks at hand. Thanks Uri for your fresh vision.  Let’ see if we can in our next big project — the Five Percent Challenge — respond to your challenge.

I hate traffic jams. Don’t you too?

• By Uri Levine, Start-Up Nation Central. With full text, graphics and references available in the original Jan 27, 2019 Forbes article at http://bit.ly/2FUnIeq

CAPITALIST TRANSITION ON WHEELS: Cars, motorbikes and mobility in Hanoi

Arve Hansen’s excellent PhD thesis on the transition from bicycles and walking to motorbikes and cars in Hanoi is available here bit.ly/2MJEPOU. Thanks to Javier Caletrío <jmontfra@hotmail.com> and our friiends at the UTSG for the heads-up and to the Mobile Lives Forum for the following texte excerpts from their summary presentation at  </jmontfra@hotmail.com>http://bit.ly/2Np3BJB

____________________

1. What is your research topic? What thesis are you defending?

 * Interview with the author, Arve Hansen of the Center for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. 

My overall research topic is consumption and development, and I am particularly interested in changing consumption patterns in contexts of rapid social and economic changes. In my PhD thesis I studied the transition from bicycles and walking to motorbikes and cars in Hanoi. In other words, I studied a transition from very low-carbon mobilities to high-carbon mobilities. I approached the topic at the intersection between macro-scale processes of economic development and everyday mobility practices. And in Vietnam’s capital city, understanding contemporary mobilities first and foremost requires an understanding of the motorbike, a so far surprisingly understudied vehicle in the mobilities turn.

WHAT’S THIS? VÉLO’V! VÉLO’V?

And just in case you may not happen to know . . .  back in early 2005, the City of Lyon, in close partnership  with  the firm JCDecaux (street furniture, outdoor advertising) , got together in a lively partnership and for the first time ever  in a city anywhere on the planet decided to dump  a couple of thousand “public bikes” onto the streets of a city, keep them working  and see what happens.   And they never looked back.

Signs of Europe’s Emerging Sustainable Spring

MAP SHOWING LOCATION, DENSITY OF CYCLING PATHS IN EUROPE.

Invaluable for tourism, leisure and sports cycling. And for many of us our daily (sustainable) mobility.

FRANCE CYCLING/FAST FORWARD 2024: MULTIPLY MODAL SHARE BY A FACTOR OF FOUR. (Can we do it?)

Yes we can!

Report by Jérémie Almosni, head of ADEME’s transport and mobility department, Mathieu chassignet, expert in sustainable mobility, Véronique Michaud, general secretary of the Club des Villes et Territoires and Olivier Schneider, president of the French Federation of Bicycle Users ( FUB).

VÉLIB’ CRISIS IN PARIS: “THE HARDEST IS YET TO COME”

Happier days for Vélib’ in Paris

JCDecaux, which operated the Paris Vélib ‘self-service bicycle service for ten years before losing the market to Smovengo last year, said on March 8 that its successor was not up to the challenge of the delays accumulated in its launch.

The Smovengo consortium chosen last spring by the Autolib ‘Vélib’ Métropole union at the expense of JCDecaux, had promised to install 1,400 new stations (or 20,000 Vélib) by March 31st. According to the latest figures, only 345 stations were in service, making this schedule unreachable. Faced with the controversy and anger of Vélib’ users, the City of Paris announced that it was sending municipal staff to supervise the deployment and work of the provider, a rare decision

TEN GREAT YEARS OF VELIB’ IN PARIS: 2007 – 2017. Introduction and researcher/student quick toolkit:

Vélib’ station in Paris in happier days – 2008

Vélib’ was for ten years an exemplary large-scale public bicycle sharing system in Paris, France. Launched on 15 July 2007, the system encompassed around 14,500 bicycles and 1,230 bicycle stations, conveniently located across Paris and in some surrounding municipalities, with an average daily ridership topping 100,000 in 2017. (Ridership, other key data to be updated.) The name Vélib’ is a portmanteau of the French words vélo (English: “bicycle”) and liberté (“freedom”).

After ten years of sensational performance offering handy and almost free bikes to hundreds of thousands of satisfied Parisians and visitors every day, the project suddenly went terribly wrong as it was preparing to go into a new phase, and has in the last months crashed out of existence. As a result Paris and the world are poorer places

Why did this happen? What are the losses? Were they inevitable? And what are the lessons to be learned? Yes of course in Paris for the future of shared bikes there, but also in towns and cities around the world who might wish to learn these lessons for their own shared bicycle initiatives.

We here at World Streets, who have been following and riding Vélib’s (and Vélo’v’s) literally every day since opening day in Paris on 15 July 2007, have decided to have a look-in on this unexpected story — and in the coming months see what happens if we can share our observations and findings with our international readers and others who may care to drop in here to see if they can find useful information and views on this strange and most unexpected turn of events. Let’s get started.
_______________

The Pity of it all. Paris, Vélib’, Success, Failure . . . and Why?

Visual evidence. Happier days in Paris: Vélib’ at work 2008

What about women as cyclists? Dilatory reflections, notes and world-wide perspectives from Nijmegen ECF 2017

DRAFT FOR PEER REVIEW AND COMMENT

What about women as cyclists at Velo-city 2017?

Benoit Beroud, Mobility Designed for All consultant at Mobiped, attended, the World Cycling Congress, which occurred in Nijmegen (Netherlands) last June. He shares his notes and comments with World Streets after reflection some inspiring thoughts  about women and cycling in their day-to-day lives.

“First impression was given by pictures of the website, program (see above), and flyers of the conference: set of various women cycling. And it is not a misleading advertisement.”

Op-Ed. It’s Friday and concentration gone.

It works like this.

WORLD STREETS PHOTO ARCHIVES: 2003-2018

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

And the excellent . . .

Exhibit (Five hundred photos): https://goo.gl/UgeuWD

Exhibit A: BAN THE BIKE! HOW CITIES MADE A HUGE MISTAKE IN PROMOTING CYCLING

Safe cycling?

 

“City politicians around the world are in a race to make their cities “bike-friendly.” The more they succeed, the nastier things will get. . .  Cycling lanes consume more space than they free up, add to pollution and drain the public purse”

Mr. Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, Source: http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-ban-the-bike-how-cities-made-a-huge-mistake-in-promoting-cycling

Let’s have a look at what Mr. Solomon has to offer when he challenges our thinking on these issues. Your comments as always are more than welcome.

ON LUUD SCHIMMELPENNINK – GREAT IDEAS HAVE WINGS

World Streets is proposing to support the nomination of  the prolific Dutch environmentalist, industrial designer, provocateur Ludd Schimmelpennink  for a major international environmental award for his life-time contributions to sustainable development, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. (Our timetable for this submittal gives us one week from today, 10 November, to finalise the nomination.)

We invite the readers of World Streets to have a look and, if you will, get back to us with your suggestions to (a) edit, expand and improve the nomination whose draft follows.  And once you have had a look and thought about it, you are invited to join us in supporting this unusual nomination. If so, it would be great to have your name, position and organisation( if any), city and country.  And should you wish to add some brief remarks (less than 50 words max.), please do and our earnest editor will do his best.

Our mobile conscience

Dealing with good and evil (in traffic)

In 2010 a 38-year-old motorist filled with remorse entered a police station in the Netherlands to give himself up. Twenty years earlier he had run over a child and was ridden with guilt. The man explained that he slept badly since the accident, suffered from nightmares and could not find a decent permanent job. The approximately five-year-old child unexpectedly crossed the road and he could not brake in time. While another motorist took care of the victim, he drove away and since then he lived contrary to his conscience. Until it was too much for him that morning and he decided to surrender himself.

CARS, BICYCLES AND THE FATAL MYTH OF EQUAL RECIPROCITY

– Ashley Carruthers – https://theconversation.com/amp/cars-bicycles-and-the-fatal-myth-of-equal-reciprocity-81034

Any public conversation about on-road cycling in Australia seems to have only one metaphor for the relationship between drivers and cyclists: equal reciprocity.

An utterance like “Drivers must respect cyclists’ space on the road” must inevitably be followed by something like “For their part, cyclists must ride responsibly and obey the road rules.”

For instance, the campaign promoting a new road safety law in New South Wales tells us:

Drivers, bicycle riders and pedestrians all need to Go Together safely. We should all respect each other’s space and ensure that everyone stays safe.

“Transport Refugees” – Victims of Unjust Transport Policies (From our 2009 archives and worthy of your attention today)

The term “refugee” if used in the context of transportation would normally be understood to mean “the movement of refugees”. But what we fail to comprehend is that for various reasons it is our own transport systems, and the values and decisions that shape them, that are making many of us “refugees” in our own cities? It does not have to be this way.