Free-for-all: Cities/Organizations around the world supporting free public transport

The following listing of organizations around the world that are “fighting for free public transport” has been compiled by the Swedish activist group Free Public Transport, whose aim is to provide a global forum for the free public transport movement. Their website among other things provides information about local organizations around the world fighting for free public transport, as well as cities which have already implemented it. For their latest listing, click to http://freepublictransports.com/organization/.

Op-Ed. Italian Perspectives on Carsharing: Past Practices, Future Prospects

This report on carsharing history, practices and prospects in Italy is contributed by Carlo Iacovini who has been one of the most active figures in the development of the industry in Italy since he became actively involved in planning and developing new carsharing systems in 1996.

World Streets on Facebook (Check it out)

Why consider joining one or more of these focus groups on Facebook?  Well, because for better of worse social media are here to stay, and warts and all Facebook definitely has its uses — as we are showing with these fora.  So put aside your reservations and at least check in and have a look for yourself. (And if you don’t want to sign in as an identifiable human being, this is no problem. Sign in as your dog (even if you don’t have one) and no one will be the wiser for it.)

World City Modal Split Database: An invitation

This open project from EPOMM — the European Platform on Mobility Management — is an absolutely brilliant idea. It does not require much explanation to get started; you can be off and going if you simply to click here and dig into their Google map. That said, a few words of introduction may not be altogether without their use to help you take full advantage of their good work.

Italians are moving less. But using public transport more

The economic crisis combined with the rising cost of fuel has caused significant changes in travel behavior of Italians — is what emerges from the year-end economic report Audimob of 2010 of the Observatory on Mobility Behavior of the Italian National Institute for Training and Research for Transport (ISFORT)

A family of small mice needs some help with new mobility

Today we want to tell you about a children’s book on our subject, and beyond that to see if any of you out there might be interested in lending a hand so that we can create a handsome electronic version, and possibly in other languages.

– Alvin reports from Paris.

Car Free Days: Origins, Timeline, Progress

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

“Frog” wrote about this CFD shot taken in Wellington New Zealand: “This photo below shows the space fifty people in cars take, and the space taken by the same amount of people in a bus.  It’s also supposed to show the space the same number of people on bicycles take up, but the cyclists seem to be mingling in sociably with pedestrians and and other gadabouts and gossipers. There’s even a couple cuddling in the corner! So the end result is you don’t really get a good impression of the space cyclists would take up if they all sat in tidy rows. I guess that’s either the benefit or problem with cycling, depending on your point of view.

Here is how the Car Free Days movement got started and has taken shape over the last 23 years.  This is the first of a series of two articles which we update and post annually just prior to the September rush to get the latest batch of Car Free Day projects off the ground. We hope that these pieces and the references you find here are going to prove useful to those responsible for making a success of their Days in 2017. Getting a CFD right and making it a real success is no easy task and good knowledge of what has worked and not worked in the past should be useful.

When English is not enough. Well then let’s do it in Italian,. (Or Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Chinese, French or . . .)

1. Start here: Italy, Italian and New Mobility. In June 2009, after four months of successful publication and an enthusiastic public reception in many parts of the world, the World Streets team found ourselves talking with an Italian colleague, the environmental activist Enrico Bonfatti who had been scanning the readership maps of World Streets and in the process noted that there were only one or two regular readers of the publication in Italy. Why? Good question.

Might it be that there was no interest in the concept of better explanation?

2. Time and language:
We concluded that Italy was in many ways a typical case, and that while there is plenty of interest in many parts of the country in these matters, almost everyone is suffering from major information overload on the one hand — and furthermore that very very few of us, even those of us who know another language well, are all that comfortable if we have to read daily dispatches on these complex if interesting matters in anything other than our own main language.

Now that may come as a surprise to anyone who thinks that English is taking over as the universal language. But if you actually take the time to speak with and get to know the people who are working with these matters at the level of cities, agencies, public interest groups, or even universities in different parts of the world, you will see that when it comes to day-to-day communication all of us really do work best in our main language. (The reactions to this claim turn out to be quite interesting and are by no means unanimous. However we have found upon careful examination and discussion with those directly involved that the thesis stands up to inspection and is realistic and relevant. So we have not hesitated to make it a pillar of our work.)

3. 1 July 2010: Nuova Mobilità goes on line in Italy.
After careful consideration and diligent preparations over a two-month period, starting on 1 July and with Enrico Bonfatti stepping forward as managing editor of the new publication, we set out on an adventure to bring these concepts into the daily life of colleagues across Italy, with the publication written in careful Italian and adapted for the Italian institutional context and felt priorities.

Over the remainder of 2009 we saw readership expanding regularly and could see from the stats that the journal was being visited by individuals and groups in more and more cities up and down the peninsula. As of this date we are seeing something on the order of anywhere from 100 to 200 Italian readers checking in each day, and thus far have noted visits from more than 60 Italian cities and, somewhat surprisingly, roughly 2 dozen from other parts of the world.

What is especially striking about this map for those of you happen to be familiar with Italy, is that in addition to the expected heavy readership in the northern half of the country, we are also seeing real interest from the South. This is an excellent sign for the future.

And if you wish to practice your Italian, nothing could be more simple: all you have to do is click to www.nuovamobilita.org. And if your usually excellent Italian should fill you, no problem, you will see the machine translation tool on the top left of the site. Benvenuti nel futuro della mobilità sostenibile in Italia.

4. What about other language/country editions?

One lesson we have abundantly learned over the last year of hard work in creating and publishing daily this Italian Journal is that it is not a job to be undertaken lightly. Despite the fact that roughly 2/3 of all the articles that appear are adapted from the latest postings of World Streets, there is more to it than simply having the skills to produce a good translation. The articles need to be selected and adapted for Italian readers, in the Italian cities, institutional and policy context; –but in addition to that there is the entire challenge of creating specific Italian content, which is also a time-consuming mission and which continues to be a process that even after all these months still needs to be fully engaged.

As result, we have discovered that organizing and maintaining anything along the lines of Nuova Mobilità is pretty close to a full-time job for one talented, hard-working person. This of course has economic implications, with which our readers will be entirely familiar.

5. Bridging the language gap:
What to do in the event that there is still this challenge of finding a way to bridge the language gap, but in a first instance perhaps not taking on the full load and financial implications of creating a new dedicated publication? This is a problem which we are facing with several colleagues and concerned organizations in Sweden, Finland, Portugal, France and Taiwan — and here is the way in which we are collaborating to get the job done.

The key lies in the creation of a special monthly edition of World Streets which provides in the target language a careful synopsis and one click access to the full contents of all content and commentaries published in the daily journal over the preceding month. These monthly reports are specially created by the World Streets team, working closely with the collaborating national sponsors in order to ensure that the final product is not only accurately and quickly developed, but that it is presented in a form which is agreeable to read and easy to move beyond through one-click links to the full sources in each case.

* * * Here is an example of a typical World Streets Monthly Edition, in this case is prepared to summarize for our subscribers/sponsors all items appearing over the month of April 2010 – http://tinyurl.com/ws-apr2010. For a copy of the other language editions, get in touch and we will be pleased to share them with you.

6. The last kilometer challenge

The “last kilometer” or “last mile” is, of course, a term from the telecommunications and cable television industries involving the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider (in this case World Streets) to an end-user (in this case you and your busy colleagues). Here it is specifically aimed at supporting and expanding the network of those agencies, local authorities, universities, operators, associations, consultants and concerned citizens working on these issues within their country or region.

The following diagram and notes are intended to give a picture of how this can be made to work.

Once the current monthly report has been prepared with our language partner, they are then dispatched to all of those in the host country who are concerned with these matters. This listing turns out to be quite extensive in all cases thus far encountered, and includes not only the key national ministries and agencies charged with matters of transport, environment, cities, economics, social justice and more, but also all those working on these challenges at the level of the specific city or local administration, researchers, transportation operators, university programs, consultants, public interest groups, concerned citizens, and the national media.

Our goal in each case is to create an outreach in which the map in each cooperating country will gradually grow and eventually come to resemble the same level of coverage which we are achieving in Italy.

7. Want to discuss a collaborative outreach project?

We will be pleased to provide further information on both approaches and invite interested readers to get in touch by phone, e-mail, snail mail, Skype or, best of all, this is the power so we can talk about all this in person. Here is a quick summary of our main contact information:

Eric Britton, Editor
World Streets/The New Mobility Partnerships
8, rue Jospeh Bara, 75006 Paris France
Tel. Europe – +331 7550 3788
USA +1 (213) 984 1277
Skype: newmobility

Le origini e la diffusione del car sharing in Italia The origins and structure of Car Sharing in Italy

With this latest report from our Italian sister publication Nuova Mobilità, we put before you our second article on the growth and status of carsharing in Italy. Italy, as you will see here, has a very different development trajectory from most of the rest of Europe or North America. What else is new? La creatività italiana

Il bike sharing in Italia: un’istantanea del 2010. (This is a W/S language laboratory experiment)

You may have noticed that the first half of the title of this journal is the word “World”, and that to us carries a real obligation. If we bear in mind that there are barely five hundred million of us who use English more or less easily as our daily working language, that leaves something like six billion who do not. Oops. So if we feel any commitment at all to be true to that first half of our title, this is clearly something we have to figure out.

Figure out with a little help from our friends, fortunately, in this case Google Translate. So this first “language lab” experiment will be in cooperation with our excellent Italian sister publication Nuova Mobilità, from whom we have selected a recent article that we know will be of interest to many of our readers — and then to turn it over to you so that, if you wish, the full text will be accessible to you in an operational if not quite Shakespearian English (or more than a dozen other languages of your choice), with a single click. And oh yes, the topic is our report on bicycle sharing in Italy. But of course you already figured that one out.

And once you have an opportunity to review both the substance of the article and to organize your thoughts as to the usefulness of this kind of translation, it would be great to hear from you. This you can do either by posting your comments to the editor at editor@Worldstreets.org or alternatively clicking the Comment button at the end of this article to post them directly here.

– – > Now all you have to do is to click here for full text of the article in English.

[Not happy with the quality of the language as it appears? Two quick points then if I may: First, may I suggest that you think of this as an opportunity to learn from a person who is highly knowledgeable on the subject but who does not fully master your language? Would you still wish to listen to such a person on that subject? Second, let’s not forget that this is still work in progress, and if you had been following it for the last few years you would note enormous, steady improvement. So stay tuned, it will get steadily better and your patience will be rewarded. But at the end of the day, it’s your choice.

Note: The Google Translate tool in the top left column for now works only to translate our articles from English to the other indicated languages. ]

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Da Giorgio Ceccarelli riceviamo questo interessante report sul bike sharing in Italia: molte cose sembrano essersi mosse negli ultimi anni e molto resta ancora da fare per raggiungere una qualità di servizio paragonabile a quella di altri paesi europei. Le difficoltà che incontrano i servizi di biciclette pubbliche in Italia sono conseguenti anche alle particolari caratteristiche demografiche del nostro paese, oltre che alla mancanza di scelte politiche coerenti.

Il bike sharing in Italia
Giorgio Ceccarelli

Attualmente in Italia sono attivi circa 130 sistemi di bike sharing con una prevalenza nei Comuni del Nord e del Centro rispetto al Sud.In particolare le regioni in cui si rileva una maggiore presenza del bike sharing sono:
Emilia Romagna (19) – Piemonte (16) – Veneto (15) – Lombardia (13). Seguono Marche, Puglia, Liguria e tutte le altre regioni, escluse Campania, Calabria e Basilicata.
(fonte: relazione dell’Ing. Lorenzo Bertuccio al Congresso del Club delle Città per il Bike Sharing – Milano, ottobre 2009)

Questa quantificazione tiene conto soltanto dei sistemi di bike sharing evoluti (che possono essere definiti di terza generazione) e non considera i casi del tutto riconducibili al tradizionale noleggio, quale è ad esempio quello di Bolzano.

A loro volta questi 130 sistemi possono essere suddivisi in due tipologie:

• meccanici a chiave
• a scheda magnetica.

Nel primo caso l’utilizzatore deve acquisire tramite uno sportello una chiave che inserita nel posteggio libera la bici e lo identifica; la bici dovrà essere riconsegnata, senza particolari limiti di orario, nello stesso stallo per poter ritirare la chiave.

I sistemi a chiave sono in genere gratuiti e permettono l’utilizzo delle bici in città diverse con la stessa chiave.

I sistemi a scheda magnetica invece permettono la riconsegna in un qualunque altro posteggio e soprattutto permettono, mediante la regolazione tariffaria, di incentivare l’uso della bici per un breve periodo, in modo da riconsegnarla e permetterne l’utilizzo ad un altro utente: quindi poche bici per tante persone.

I sistemi a scheda magnetica inoltre hanno la possibilità di registrazioni tramite internet e di pagamento tramite carta di credito o telefoni portatili; sono inoltre i sistemi che, come vedremo, aprono le nuove prospettive dell’integrazione tariffaria tra i vari sistemi di trasporto.

In tutti i Comuni che utilizzano la scheda magnetica, esclusa Roma, la tariffa prevede la prima mezz’ora di utilizzo gratuito, con le successive ore a pagamento via via aumentato, fino a prevedere dei veri e propri blocchi dell’abbonamento se si superano le quattro ore di utilizzo, come è previsto ad esempio a Milano

L’utilizzo dell’una o dell’altra tipologia di bike sharing in Italia dipende in pratica dalla divisione del mercato tra due sole aziende fornitrici:

• C’entro in bici per il sistema a chiave
• Bicincittà per il sistema a scheda.

Su circa 130 sistemi attivi ad oggi 2/3 sono chiave e 1/3 a scheda, con una distribuzione territoriale molto legata alla localizzazione d’origine e alla conseguente penetrazione commerciale delle due aziende fornitrici.

C’entro in bici che ha sede a Ravenna è prevalente nelle zone dell’Emilia e del Veneto, mentre Bicincittà è di Torino e ha la prevalenza nel Nord Ovest; Bicincittà è inoltre presente anche sul mercato internazionale con i sistemi di Pamplona e Losanna.

Questa forma di duopolio legato a una partizione territoriale tra sistemi tecnicamente diversi è sintomo di come il bike sharing in Italia sia ancora giovane e debba ancora evolvere verso una molteplicità di offerta caratteristica di un mercato più maturo.

Unica eccezione a questa partizione rigida del mercato fra due aziende, ciascuna con la propria differente tecnologia, è rappresentata dal Comune di Milano, che utilizza il sistema sviluppato dalla società americana Clear Channel.

Milano è attualmente il sistema italiano di maggiori dimensioni: denominato BIKEMI, è stato inaugurato nel Novembre 2008, prevede 1.300 bici distribuite su circa 100 stazioni ed è economicamente basato sul sistema di concessione di spazi pubblicitari in cambio dell’attivazione e gestione del servizio da parte di Clear Channel.

Dato il successo registrato da BIKEMI, che ha quasi raggiunto il livello di saturazione rispetto agli utenti previsti, è in progetto la sua estensione fuori dalla Cerchia dei Bastioni, arrivando a toccare nodi ferro viari periferici e poli universita ri: in totale 170 nuove stazioni a 33 stalli e un parco di 5.000 bici clette

Sono però emersi problemi tra l’Amministrazione e la ditta appaltatrice, legati soprattutto al tema economico degli introiti pubblicitari, che in qualche modo stanno rallentando il previsto sviluppo del sistema.

Una nota particolare meritano i sistemi di Genova e Siracusa in quanto rappresentano in assoluto le prime esperienze di utilizzo di biciclette a pedalata assistita su veri e propri sistemi di bike sharing, mentre già se ne potevano trovare su tradizionali ciclonoleggi.

Il sistema di Genova, inaugurato nell’Aprile 2009, è denominato MOBIKE, dispone di 55 bici distribuite su 6 stazioni ed è stato realizzato grazie a un contributo del Ministero per l’Ambiente a favore della mobilità elettrica. E’ realizzato e gestito direttamente da Bicincittà.

L’utilizzo delle biciclette assistite può essere indicato in una città come Genova che presenta molte parti collinari, anche se le postazioni realizzate ad oggi, collocate lungo l’arco del vecchio porto e nelle zone centrali, presentano un dislivello fra loro inferiore a 50 metri, decisamente accettabile anche per una bici tradizionale.

L’utilizzo del bike sharing genovese risulta comunque fortemente penalizzato dalla quasi totale mancanza di percorsi protetti per le bici.

Analogamente il sistema di Siracusa, aperto poco dopo Genova, si basa sulla tecnologia di Bicincittà e utilizza un finanziamento dato dal Ministero per l’Ambiente in occasione del G8.

Il sistema è in questo caso di tipo misto con la previsione a regime di 200 bici tradizionali e 50 assistite, distribuite su 15 stazioni.

Tra i sistemi di cui si attende una prossima apertura è da segnalare quello di Torino, la cui inaugurazione è prevista nel Giugno 2010.

Dopo due gare andate deserte, l’ultima gara di appalto è stata vinta da Bicincittà che avrà la gestione di spazi pubblicitari in cambio di un sistema, denominato ToBike, che prevede 1200 bici su oltre 100 stazioni: si tratta finalmente di un progetto di grande impatto che dovrebbe coprire una parte importante della città.

In attesa dell’apertura di Torino, il bike sharing di Milano si può ritenere ad oggi l’unico sistema che in Italia sia numericamente paragonabile con le grandi realizzazioni europee: tutte le altre città presentano numeri di bici o di postazioni nettamente inferiori.

In particolare, con riferimento al numero di biciclette previste, i sistemi in Italia numericamente più consistenti dopo Milano sono:

• Brescia (200)
• Ravenna (140)
• La Spezia (135)
• Bergamo (120)
• Trento (88)

Rapportando il numero di bici al numero di abitanti, tra i migliori rapporti risultano:

• Modena (1/900)
• Milano (1/1.000)
• Cuneo (1/1.100)

Siamo dunque ben lontani da valori tali da rappresentare un significativo contributo alla mobilità urbana, come quelli che troviamo ad esempio in grandi città francesi quali Parigi (1/100) o Lione (1/160).

In generale quindi l’Italia si caratterizza per un elevato numero di sistemi prevalentemente di piccolissima dimensione.

Nella tabella seguente il dato italiano è confrontato con quello di Francia e Germania:

Si può inoltre ragionevolmente supporre che questa tendenza aumenterà nei prossimi anni con il prevedibile estendersi dell’interesse per il bike sharing nelle città del Centro e del Sud.

La diffusione di sistemi di piccolissima dimensione è una tipicità italiana che può dipendere dalla conformazione del nostro territorio, caratterizzato da una urbanizzazione diffusa, con molte città medie o piccole.

Le dimensioni limitate delle città probabilmente non consentono di innescare livelli di redditività tali da consentire la realizzazione da parte di privati di sistemi di bike sharing in cambio della concessione di spazi pubblicitari, come invece avviene altrove.

Ne deriva quindi la necessità da parte delle Amministrazioni locali di rivolgersi quasi esclusivamente a fondi pubblici con la conseguenza di avere finanziamenti limitati, tempi incerti e prospettive non sicure circa il mantenimento del servizio.

Non è da sottovalutare inoltre l’ostacolo alla creazione di sistemi numericamente importanti rappresentato dalla arretratezza italiana nella realizzazione di infrastrutture ciclabili.

Spesso nelle nostre città i percorsi ragionevolmente fattibili in bici si riducono a poche aree centrali in cui solo le zone 30 o le zone pedonali consentono di muoversi con un minimo di sicurezza.

Lo sviluppo del bike sharing può avvenire se coordinato con altre azioni aventi come obbiettivo la ciclabilità, così come accade se le Amministrazioni si dotano di un apposito Biciplan che, oltre al bike sharing, preveda percorsi, facilitazioni per chi va in bici quali rastrelliere o scivoli, promozione e informazione, manutenzione dell’esistente.

Ad oggi in Italia sono pochi gli studi o le ricerche sul fenomeno del bike sharing e non esiste una approfondita analisi di carattere generale su di esso.
Si muovono comunque in questo senso le iniziative di alcune Associazioni, tra cui si possono segnalare:

Il C.C.B.S. – Club delle Città del Bike Sharing, promosso da Euromobility, www.euromobility.org , l’Associazione Italiana dei Mobility Manager, a cui aderiscono oltre 30 città.

Il C.C.B.S. ha come scopo la promozione del bike sharing e organizza annualmente un convegno in cui viene presentato il report aggiornato delle situazione in Italia, costituendo al momento la visione più complessiva che si possa trovare.

F.I.A.B. – Federazione Italiana Amici della Bicicletta www.fiabonlus.it , aderente a E.C.F. European Cyclist Federation, che promuove tra l’altro un forum di discussione dedicato al tema e la raccolta di documentazione sul bike sharing nel sito istituzionale.

Il progetto europeo OBIS – Optimising Bike Sharing in European Cities www.obisproject.com , che si propone di identificare i fattori di successo, i limiti e le potenzialità del mercato sia a livello europeo che negli otto stati che hanno aderito al progetto.

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L’autore:
Giorgio Ceccarelli, architetto, è consigliere nazionale della Federazione Italiana Amici della Bicicletta – FIAB e responsabile sul tema del bike sharing e delle biciclette pubbliche.
Si occupa di progettazione legata ai temi della mobilità attraverso il ridisegno e il recupero di spazi urbani e di uso collettivo, con particolare attenzione all’applicazione di metodologie partecipative.
Nell’attività rivolta alla bicicletta, oltre progetto di percorsi e alla redazione di piani comunali per la ciclabilità, ha curato il servizio di bike sharing del Comune di Genova, primo sistema realizzato con biciclette a pedalata assistita.

Vai all’elenco di post sul bike sharing

Nuova Mobilità reports on carsharing in Italy

As you are seeing in the other country reports in this series, the state of carsharing in 2010 is very much a different story in different places. To get a feel for the status of carsharing in Italy today, check out the latest article from our sister publication Nuova Mobilità, along with a choice: either the original article as it appears in Italian, or a machine translation into workable if not quite perfect English. Take your pick.

Putting World Streets to work in other languages. Example: Nuova Mobilità, Sustainable Transport in Italy

From the outset in late 2008, we were aware that the reach of World Streets into the field was going to be constrained by the problem of language. For if in countries in which English is not a main working language there are always a certain number of people who are comfortable dealing with text in English, this is not the case for the greater number of those who work at the local level with the issues. So we knew we were going to need another approach to reach these people. Our first test case to show how it is possible to work competently in another language was Italy, leading to a global/local partnership and the creation of a new journal covering sustainable transport in Italian: Nuova Mobilità.

Summary: Working with machine translations:

How to use, limitations, work-arounds: To make the contents of World Streets more broadly accessible to friends and colleagues who work primarily in other language groups, we have linked the site to the increasingly well-performing Google machine translation engines that you will now find here. In each case all you have to do is click the language in which you wish to see the rough translation, and it will quickly appear on your monitor.

If you read the translation in parallel with the English-language original in front of you, you will in almost all cases be able to arrive at a pretty fair understanding of the thrust and main content of that particular article or announcement. The result is not literature; it is a rough and ready working tool for someone who needs to know. It works better in some languages than others. In any event it is not a substitute for a professional translation, but by contrast it can be in your hands in seconds, and can be extremely helpful for those who are ready to make an effort to use it with judgment. Some people will use it when they need it, others will complain and set it aside. That is for you to choose. (We use it and use it every day. And always with caution.)

Start here: What’s wrong with English for World Streets?
Actually working in English gives us a great start — various statistics indicate that it is the first language of going on to four hundred million people, and if you include second language speakers the number moves up to something on the order of half a billion. That is five hundred million people who can, one would hope, pick up and read daily articles in World Streets with ease. That is a big number.

On the other hand it leaves out on the order of six billion people organize their daily lives around other languages, and since it is our chosen mission to create and reinforce networks of people at various levels of government and participation in public life around the world in matters of sustainable transport, we would be remiss in our function if we neglected this important fact. With this in mind, we have from the beginning of publication continuously brainstormed with anyone who cared to join us on the matter of how to get the contents of World Streets, and with it the leading edge of worldwide developments and thinking in the field of sustainable transportation, into the hands of the people who are working in countries in cities around the world where working language is other than English.

As a result of these exchanges we decided not to continue to chat and plan, but rather to start with full scale real time public demonstration showing how it is possible to create an Italian-language edition carefully adapted to the needs and interests of Italian readers working with or following developments in this area. It took more than three months to plan, but by 1 July 2009 the first issue of Nuova Mobilità was ready to go on line on.

What happened? “Executive summary in two quick images”:
Thinking that your time might be short today, let’s start at the end, showing you what happened in one country, Italy, when we developed a collaborative version of World Streets with skilled and committed local partners. Two pictures will serve for a thousand words.

The first of these is a map from our files showing the last eighty people to come into World Streets in late June, a few days before we started publication of the first number of Nuova Mobilità. You will note that despite the impressive worldwide coverage (extending to more than seventy countries on all continents), there were on that day zero entries coming in from Italian cities. Zero!

Before: World Streets reader map of 26 June 2009:

And now, half a year after start-up if we next look at the map showing the last eighty entries into Nuova Mobilità in the last 24 hours, an entirely different picture emerges.

After: Nuova Mobilità reader map of 13 February 2009:

Listing of Italian cities checking in
This listing of cities will be of more interest to our Italian readers than most of us surely, but what may interest them about it is that these 74 cities are listed in the order of the frequency with which readers have some into N/M.

Rome, Milan, Turin, Palermo, Cocquio Trevisago, Molfetta, Bologna, Verona, Padova, Azzano Decimo, Crotone, Ferrara, Potenza, Bergamo, Brescia, Torino, Pesaro, Genoa, Naples, Cagliari, Trieste, Novara, Catania, Piacenza, Treviso, Caserta, San Vero Milis, Manduria, Parma, Modena, San Martino Siccomario, Corato, Teramo, Favaro Veneto, Monserrato, Grùmolo, San Cesario Di Lecce, Giugliano In Campania, Montichiari, Solaro, Bresso, Ciserano, Lecce, Bari, Florence, Quartucciu, Castelnuovo, Rosarno, Brivio, Pisa, Santeramo In Colle, Pontinia, Cormano, Pescara, Catanzaro, Sannicandro Di Bari, San Donato Milanese, Trebaseleghe, San Severino Marche, Abano Terme, Nocera Inferiore, Medole, Varese, Galliera Veneta, Quartu Sant’elena, Leghorn, Limbiate, Capodrise, Turriaco, Cesena, Origgio, Incisa, Monza, Stezzano.

What is the expression: build it and they will come? Apparently this holds for more than building more roads. We need to do more of this kind of building.

Implications for other countries and other language editions
The lessons of this successful joint are perfectly clear. What we have seen works in a country like Italy can also be at least tested and most probably would, with the right kind of collaboration, work in other parts of the world as well. In fact we think this is extremely important and intend to make this one of the strong collaborative development pushes of World Streets over 2010.

We are at this time in early discussion with colleagues in a handful of countries with a view to examining this template and seeing how it might be put to work to provide high-quality coverage in other countries and language groups. Here are our priority targets:

* Chinese
* French
* Spanish
* Portuguese
* Arabic
* German
* Turkish

We have yet to define a working agreement and operations plan with any of these eventual future partners, but as soon as we do please be sure that our readers will be the first to be informed. If you wish to have a more detailed idea as to the process and the reasoning behind these collaborative projects, we invite you to read on to see how all this was handled in the case of Italy and” Nuova Mobilità – Il Diario Italiano del Trasporto Sostenibile”.

Building Nuova Mobilità.
The reasons for giving this collaborative Italian project early priority were three-fold:

(a) Potential: Its potential to fill a gap as a trusted neutral Italian language source with one-click links to information and perspective on the full range of leading new mobility developments worldwide.

(b) Partners: Our good fortune in finding an Italian team willing to work with us on a volunteer basis for the half year or so it is going to take to get it off the ground.

(c) Prof of concept: And finally the way in which we hoped that, in time and with work, the Italian project would develop into a first-cut technical and organizational template ready to aid other language/country versions to follow in 2010 and beyond.

1. “New Mobility” for Italian readers

Italy provides an interesting and in many ways quite typical example of how the diverse strands that we call sustainable transport or new mobility are (or are not) being woven together to create better transport and better cities within a country or language area. Now as you can see in the pages of N/M, the new mobility concept is in fact gradually taking hold in Italy, but it is still very much in a minority position, and when implemented for the most part occurs on a project by project basis — and only here and there with a broader unifying strategy. On this last score there is still plenty of room for progress. (But to be perfectly frank, there are few places in the world which have thus far really started to put all the pieces together.)

Italy had a strong claim for immediate treatment on the grounds that we had the good fortune to have already collaborated there successfully with Italian colleagues led by Enrico Bonfatti who showed up fully bilingual, understanding the underlying concepts and ready to get to work on them. Over the two months-plus we have worked with them day by day to lay a base for our collaborative project, we communicated by phone, email, Skype and videoconference on almost a daily basis, and often multiple times each day. (And this was certainly a low-carbon approach since at no time did any of us actually get on a plane or train to get the job done. Today’s technologies were and are fully up to the job. And we suggest that this lesson can also usefully inform future collaborative projects.

The first World Streets’ spin-off, Nuova Mobilità, which you can now visit, work with and profit from is online at http://nuovamobilita.org/

2. Nuova Mobilità has two functions within Italy:

Window on sustainable transport in the world:
First, to provide a window on the world of new mobility for those Italian readers who are more comfortable working in their own language. To do this, the editorial team selects daily articles from World Streets and other sources which they feel will be of particular interest to the Italian reader. They then both translate and adapt them for the Italian context, with adjustments and contextual information to make them more informative for the Italian reader in search of new ideas, leads and approaches.

Window on sustainable transport in Italy:
But Nuova Mobilità also has an important “internal” function within Italy as well, namely that of providing a central information and exchange point for outstanding projects and programs, and problems and barriers inhibiting change, that are going on in various cities and parts of the peninsula. There are a number of programs and web sites already active in the sector in various places, but most of these focus on a specific problem or approach — for example cycling, public transport, carsharing, school transport, climate issues, environmental concerns more generally, for specific cities, etc.– Nuova Mobilità can serve as a valuable clearing house function, with its global/local orientation.

Editorial independence:
Like World Streets, Nuova Mobilità retains complete independence in terms of editorial content and the views expressed. Moreover, the program is informed by a consistent set of guiding principles which you will find spelled out in the Mission Statement.

3. Nuova Mobilità: Template for future country/language editions:

One of the main potential contributions of Nuova Mobilità is that it is put before you not as a plan or a promise, but as an operational working entity already in place and there to serve as a pioneer and concrete example for other country/language editions. Of course it can be improved in many ways, including technically, and that is part of the task of both the Italian team and the collaborators at World Streets. But Nuova Mobilità exists, it is there, it works, and it is already in place to perform valuable functions.

It is our view that despite the enormous reach of the internet and the availability of ever-better (and free) machine translation services, native language coverage is needed by many people in many places. The reality is that it is not all that easy reading every day in a second or third language. Most of us do best working in our mother tongue. The task of full and rapid comprehension of a fair body of materials that come in day after day, already difficult enough for most topics, becomes even more challenging in a new area such as this which continuously brings in many new, less familiar concepts, and along with them a new and fast-evolving vocabulary, thus adding yet another level of complexity to the challenge of understanding what is really going on.

Thus it is our firm intention to find other language/country partners to work with them to build on the Italian example which can be exported in its entirety to serve as a sort of first-stage template for future language/country editions.

To this end, we are already in preliminary discussion with eventual Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French and German language partners the possibility of building on this example with new dedicated websites and supporting programs in the months ahead. But the list of countries and languages of course need not end there. Nor should it.

# # #

Working with machine translations: How to use, limitations, work-arounds
To make the contents of World Streets more broadly accessible to friends and colleagues who work primarily in other language groups, we have linked the site to the increasingly well-performing Google machine translation engines that you will now find here. In each case all you have to do is click the language in which you wish to see the rough translation, and it will quickly appear on your monitor.

If you read the translation in parallel with the English-language original in front of you, you will in almost all cases be able to arrive at a pretty fair understanding of the thrust and main content of that particular article or announcement. It is of course not a substitute for a professional translation, but it can be extremely helpful for those who are ready to make an effort to use it with judgment.

# # #

For more information on Nuova Mobilità:

Contact: Enrico Bonfatti, Editor. editore@nuovamobilita.org
Nuova Mobilità is at http://nuovamobilita.org
Skype: nuova.mobilita
Click here to read Nuova Mobilità in English (machine translation)

AUGURI (Season’s Greetings from Italy and France)

What better way to announce a short break than to quote word for word from today’s posting of our Italian friends over at Nuova Mobilità, announcing that they’ll be back in the saddle on the 4th of January. A well deserved rest after six months of daily publication, five days a week. (Sound familiar?) Now let’s give the word to them:
Questo post solo per comunicarvi che dopo 6 mesi di quotidiano e pervicace monitoraggio sui temi della Nuova Mobilità abbiamo bisogno di qualche giorno di riposo. Ritorneremo on line il 4 gennaio 2010.

Buon Natale e buon anno a tutti.

I am sure you got that, but just in case: “This post is just to inform you that after 6 months of daily monitoring and stubborn publication on the New Mobility scene, we are taking a few days of rest. Back on line January 4, 2010.”

Read Nuova Mobilità at http://nuovamobilita.org

And if it’s not clear, clich http://tinyurl.com/nm-english for a pretty fair machine translation into English.

Cheer up! On your way back from Copenhagen, swing through Bologna for a clue to a sustainable planet

Okay. COP15 has been pretty discouraging thus far. But this is no time to give up. To the contrary let’s start this next phase by energetically expanding our horizons, finding more common ground with people, cities and groups around the world who wish to act. Here as one example of something you can see every day in your own city. The great neglected overarching transportation mode that is the alpha and omega for every trip we take, is getting a close look in an exhibit in Bologna starting tomorrow.

Cars like cigarettes? NoAuto calls for immediate limitations on car advertising in Italy

World Streets is by no means an anti-car paper. However if you follow us you may have noticed that we have some pretty developed ideas as to fewer cars, slower cars, and, when we have them on the road, with more people in each of them. But above all, more choices for all. At the same time we keep an eye on friends like NoAuto in Italy, who are pushing for tighter controls on automobile advertisements. (And who in their right mind can argue with that?)

The following text represents a loose translation of the introduction to an article which appeared in our sister publication, Nuova Mobilità – http://nuovamobilita.org – on Tuesday. After this short introduction you will be able to click to the original posting in Italian or to a machine translation in English.

From NoAuto:

Over the years we have become accustomed to seeing television and other public advertisements showing cars in situations that are at least improbable, often dangerous, and certainly not appropriate for a sane and responsible society.

But can advertising policy and practices be redefined so as not to be misleading and frankly dangerous?

Yes it can. There are already limitations on advertising for other unsafe products such as cigarettes, dictated by the importance of protecting public health. Why not introduce similar limitations for publicity for cars?

Certainly when it comes to talking publicly and commercially about what is perceived as the most “common” means of transport, at least in the minds of many people in the Western world, we will do well to learn some of the lessons from the various campaign around the world which over the last decade have created significant constraints on advertising for (and public use of) cigarettes and other noxious tobacco products.

The benefits resulting in a decrease in cigarette consumption are widely recognized and now after years of work on the part of medical and public health interests accepted –while those arising from a change of travel behavior are in the collective imagination, at least thus far, counterbalanced by an alleged decline in the quality of life. This of course is sheer nonsense.

For this reason the non-profit Italian public interest group NoAuto, Association for Alternative Urban Mobility, is announcing a campaign to introduce specific limits on car advertising . It is hope that this could at the same time to boost publicity and reflection on more responsible products, services and strategies relating to the field of New Mobility.

The following is the statement of NoAuto’s call for creation of a firm public policy concerning responsible advertising of cars.

* For the original Italian text, please click to http://nuovamobilita.blogspot.com/2009/11/lauto-come-le-sigarette.html

* For a quick machine translation into English – http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnuovamobilita.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F11%2Flauto-come-le-sigarette.html&sl=it&tl=en&history_state0=

# # #

NoAuto is an Italian public interest association promoting a system of mobility alternatives to the car: MORE public transport, safety for walking and cycling, decreased congestion and pollution, reconquest of urban space, healthier lives, are among the objectives. Their weekly paper hosts a regular feature of the association.

Read: www.noauto.org
Write: info@noauto.org

Letter from Italy: New Mobility for a New Economy? More cash for clunkers foolishness

Cash for clunkers is a worldwide virus often presented as a medicine for a very sick patient. (See World Streets ‘Cash for Clunkers‘, 12 Aug. 09, ). This dispatch just in from Enrico Bonfatti, editor of our sister publication, Nuova Mobilità, translates an article posted in N/M in Italian last Friday. Apparently the Italian political establishment is no better at this than any of the dozen or so governments who are desperately scrambling to hold on to an irredeemable past. At high cost to taxpayers and to the future.

Following the World Streets 12 August post on the funds and impacts of the US program for scrapping old cars for new– (Mr. Meter on America’s “Cash for Clunkers” — we invite you to read the analysis from an Italian perspective as presented by Italy’s “NoAuto” association in response to the Minister of Economic Development Claudio Scajola’s proposal to relaunch of the 2010 program of incentives for the purchase of “green cars” in support of the country’s ailing car industry, the estimated cost of which is in the area of € 400-500 millions. What will we get for our money?

Rome. 8 October 2009.

Yes for new mobility — no to incentives for the car

In these days the media are back to talking about actions in support of the automobile. The association NoAuto believes that a new round of incentives to subsidize new car purchases would be a grave error in both industrial and transport policies.

1. Because such incentives produce only temporary effects.
The European car market is saturated, and the only markets expected to grow are those of the large emerging countries (China, India, Brazil, etc.). However these are and will be served by local production. It is therefore economically wrong and socially irresponsible to continue to support an industry in a permanent structural decline. What is needed instead is a vast program of industrial reconstruction and reshaping for the future.

2. Because the car-oriented mobility system is in the midst of a permanent crisis.
The historic promises of the car (speed, flexibility, comfort) are now a mirage. Our cities are gripped by congestion and made unhealthy and unsafe by pollution, noise and accidents: all the direct result of growing figures in car flows, which in recent years has been repeatedly supported by incentives to purchase newer and “greener” car. Thus supporting the purchase of more cars at the public’s expense is wrong from the transport policy’s point of view too.

3. A European solution
For these reasons, NoAuto believes that we would do better to scrap these costly and ultimately ineffective stop-gap measures, and instead design and launch an innovative multi-partner, public-private reconstruction plan for improved new mobility, to be applied primarily to the urban and local scale .

NoAuto believes that such a plan should created and promoted not only nationally, but could be developed into a powerful and timely European policy, that could include budget improvements for the Action Plan for Urban Mobility that the European Commission has just issued on September, 30th.

In brief, the extraordinary plan for new mobility in and around our cities should rely on two main lines of action:

1. Creation of a National (or European) Fund for New Mobility . . .
to support local authorities’ plans to improve public transport, walking, cycling and innovative transport modes (carsharing, city logistics, etc.). At the regional level funds should not be aimed to support single modes of transport, but rather should be strategically integrated into overall policy reforms plans and policies (packages of measures), and looking beyond the city centers to deal with the problems of the surrounding lower density areas as well.

At the national level the legislative framework of “Piani Urbani della Mobilità” (Urban Mobility Plans) which was introduced many years ago, should now be brought up to date and modified to meet new needs (not so much new, as uncovered) and – most of all – to find the necessary funds as will be required to support the transition process over the ten to fifteen years directly ahead. This funding of first rate new mobility programs for our cities and the country can easily come out of savings that can result from the rationalization of the much larger amounts which traditionally get spent on big transportation infrastructure projects, which themselves support inefficient use of resources. It is time to put “old mobility” (the no-choice, car-based system) behind us and move up to efficient mobility.

At the European level the New Mobility Plan should be dealt with in a separate section within the European funding schemes for local or regional transportation networks.

2. A European plan to convert the car industry, . . .
which accompanies the transition to the new urban mobility system. A plan built on three pillars:

a) The strategic use of unemployment wages and other kinds of “social bumpers” and professional training to avoid “social butchery” among workers in the sector, while at the same time facilitating the transition to a New Mobility Agenda and the jobs that will go with it;

b) Placement of extraordinary orders by administrations and public companies for the development of green transport modes and products (trains, metro, tram , buses, vans, taxis, bicycles, including by grouping purchases to drive down unit costs);

c) Funding to support to integration of producers of components, services and systems for the new urban mobility: research centers, local authorities, partners of credit, specialized consultants, public interest groups working in the field, media projects, etc.

Also in this case an action at the European level is required because it will help us to attain the critical mass needed to ensure such actions. Among other things, a joint European Union position could overcome any possible objection on “State aid” \.

For these reasons NoAuto now calls for a political initiative as broad-based as possible, involving the many experiences of mobilization against unsustainable transportation plans and projects, and, more importantly, finally starting a confrontation with the car sector workers that abroad is already being performed.

A good starting point could be to resume and revive the ideas and proposals that have been launched in recent months – for example by workers of the FIAT plant in Pomigliano d’Arco.

This is no time for closed government. The important thing is to begin to open up the debate to all the players, let the best ideas compete, and mobilize for another mobility. If not now, when?

# # #

NoAuto is an Italian public interest association promoting a system of mobility alternatives to the car: MORE public transport, safety for walking and cycling, decreased congestion and pollution, reconquest of urban space, healthier lives, are among the objectives. The weekly magazine ‘Carta’ (www.carta.org) hosts a regular feature of the association.

For more:
Read: www.noauto.org
Contact: info@noauto.org

———————–

And now, a glance at Europe’s ‘cash-for-clunkers’ programs

By The Associated Press (AP) – 8 Aug. 2009

The popular “cash-for-clunkers” program that has encouraged consumers in Europe and the U.S. to trade in their old cars for newer and more efficient models was born in December 2008 when French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled a Euro 26 billion ($37.36 billion) stimulus plan to help the country ward off a recession.

To date, 11 countries in Europe offer similar plans.

* Germany offers Euro 2,500 to buyers of new or almost new cars who own cars that are nine years or older.

* France offers Euro 1,000 to scrap an older car that’s at least 10 years old.

* Italy offers Euro 1,500 for a car and Euro 2,500 for a light commercial vehicle for buyers who agree to scrap a car that is at least 10 years old.

* Spain offers Euro 2,000 on a purchase price of up to Euro 30,000; old car must be at least 10 years old.

* Portugal offers Euro 1,250 for scrapping a car that is 8 to 12 years old, or Euro 1,500 for a car that is older than 12 years.

* The Netherlands pays between Euro 750 to Euro 1,750 to scrap a car that is 9, 13 or 19-years-old.

* Austria offers Euro 1,500; car must be at least 12 years old.

* Romania offers Euro 900 to scrap a car that is at least 10 years old but limited the program to just 60,000 units.

* Slovakia offers Euro 1,100 toward a purchase price of up to Euro 18,800.

* Serbia offers Euro 1,000 on any new locally built Fiat Punto if a buyer trades in a 9-year-old car.

Source: Various governments, IHS Global Insight. – http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOxyXvhSiYz–vOseImAnJ5Nl4xwD99U99I81

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

# # #

The very high cost of these programs:

It’s not the shameless draining of the taxpayer coffers that is the true cost of this folly. It is the fact that each time a high profile public “effort” is announced and grabs the headlines, it has the impact of giving a false sense of security that “something is being done” to counter the fundamental problems that underlie all this. This in turn generates either a sense of complacency, or in cases like this where the foolishness is so very apparent, discourages many from coming to grips with the real issues and choices. So CfC is a real step backward.

Walking to School – Italian style

“Piedibus” — “Walking Bus” in Italian — is the first article posted from our newly-born sister publication, Nuova Mobilità. And to open up our minds to the big and varied world out there, here it is in the original Italian — with a convenient one click link to a workable if not perfect machine translation into English. If you want to know, you will know. Buon appetito.

– Enrico Bonfatti reporting from Bergamo, Italy

* Click here to read the Italian original. (In own window)

* Here for the rough English machine translation:

* And here for our article of 22 July introducing and explaining plans for the Nuova Mobilità sustainable transport daily in Italy.

Editor’s note:

This is the category — children, schools — which is very important as a new mobility tool on a number of grounds and is therefore one to which we shall be getting considerable attention in the months and years ahead.

This first posting on Piedibus in Italy will shortly be followed by reports from “Walk to School”, “Safe Routes to School” and similar national programs in Europe and North America, and, to the extent to which we can find them, in other parts of the world as well.

It is truly impossible to get too much of this great idea. So thank you Enrico Bonfatti from Nuova Mobilità and to you Massimo Vassallo from Piedibus were taking be time and trouble to report to us on these developments in Italy.

Some handy international references:

* International Walk to School program- www.iwalktoschool.org/
* UK “Walk to School” initiative — www.walktoschool.org.uk/
* International Walk to School in the USA — www.walktoschool-usa.org/
* Safe Routes to School – http://www.activetrans.org/walkandroll
* Safe Routes to School (Canada) – http://www.saferoutestoschool.ca/
* Feet First Walk to School (New Zealand) – http://www.feetfirst.govt.nz/
* To search all our Key Links & Sources for related sites – here

W/S August Dialogue: Italy and Nuova Mobilità

The idea of taking a central theme for an entire month of focused collaborative dialogue is working out quite nicely with the choice of carsharing as our July topic showing the way. With not quite two weeks left to “complete” this first series of exchanges, we are now gearing up for the rest of the year. Next stop on World Streets 2009: Italy and Nuova Mobilità. Benvenuti a tutti.

Here is the provisional list of topics to which we propose to give particular attention in the monthly focus sessions over the remainder of this year – subject to your feedback and advisory comments.

1. New mobility in Italy (August)
2. Sustainable transport in Africa: What next? (Sept.)
3. Public Bicycle Systems: World developments and planning (October)
4. Climate emergency: The role sustainable transport (November)
5. Women in Transport: Necessary pattern breaks (Dec.)

Other topics waiting in the wings for 2010: quite a long list at the top of which, again subject to your ideas and feedback, are: China, Green shared taxis, BRT, planning for the urban poor, and new mobility strategies for rural and suburban areas.

World Streets will of course be publishing day after day interesting and useful articles on all these topics and many others as outstanding projects and topics are brought to our attention by our Sentinels and other international collaborators. None of us can afford to wait; the climate emergency demands immediate and sharp action. Which requires information and then knowledge. And that is where World Streets comes in.

Next stop on World Streets: Italy and Nuova Mobilità.

The reasons for giving this collaborative Italian project early priority are three-fold: (a) Its usefulness to fill a gap as a trusted neutral Italian language source with one-click links to information and perspective on the full range of leading new mobility developments worldwide. (b) Our good fortune in finding an Italian team willing to work with us on a volunteer basis for the half-year or so it is going to take to get it off the ground. And finally (c) the way in which we hope that, in time and with work, the Italian project will develop into a first-cut technical and organizational template ready to aid other language/country versions to follow in the year ahead.

1. New Mobility for Italian readers

Italy provides an interesting and in many ways quite typical example of how the diverse strands that we call sustainable transport or new mobility are (or are not) being woven together to create better transport and better cities within a country or language area. Now as you will be seeing, the new mobility concept is in fact gradually taking hold in Italy, but it is still very much in a minority position and when implemented for the most part occurs on a project by project basis — and only here and there with a broader unifying strategy. On this last score there is still plenty of room for progress. (But to be perfectly frank, there are few places in the world which have thus far really started to put all the pieces together.)

Italy has a strong claim for immediate treatment on the grounds that we have had the good fortune to collaborate there with Italian colleagues lead by Enrico Bonfatti who showed up fully bilingual, understanding the underlying concepts and ready to get to work on them. Over the last two months we have worked with them day by day to lay a base for the first World Streets’ spin-off, Nuova Mobilità, which you can now visit, work with and profit from at http://nuovamobilita.blogspot.com/

Nuova Mobilità has two functions within Italy:

Window on sustainable transport in the world:
First, to provide a window on the world of new mobility for those Italian readers who are more comfortable working in their own language. To do this, the editorial team selects daily articles from World Streets and other sources which they feel will be of particular interest to the Italian reader. They then both translate and adapt them for the Italian context, with adjustments and contextual information to make them more informative for the Italian reader in search of new ideas, leads and approaches.

Window on sustainable transport in Italy:
But Nuova Mobilità also has an important “internal” function within Italy as well, namely that of providing a central information and exchange point for outstanding projects and programs, and problems and barriers inhibiting change, that are going on in various cities and parts of the peninsula. There are a number of programs and web sites already active in the sector in various places, but most of these focus on a specific problem or approach — for example cycling, public transport, carsharing, school transport, climate issues, environmental concerns more generally, for specific cities, etc.– Nuova Mobilità can serve as a valuable clearing house function, with its global/local orientation.

Editorial independence:
Like World Streets, Nuova Mobilità retains complete independence in terms of editorial content and the views expressed. Moreover, the program is informed by a consistent set of guiding principles which you will find spelled out in the Mission Statement here.

2. Nuova Mobilità: Template for future country/language editions:

One of the main potential contributions of Nuova Mobilità is that it is put before you not as a plan or a promise, but as an operational working entity already in place and there to serve as a pioneer and concrete example for other country/language editions. Of course it can be improved in many ways, including technically, and that is part of the task of both the Italian team and the collaborators at World Streets. But Nuova Mobilità exists, it is there, it works, and it is already in place to perform valuable functions.

It is our view that despite the enormous reach of the internet and the availability of ever-better (and free) machine translation services, native language coverage is needed by many people in many places. The reality is that it is not all that easy reading every day in a second or third language. Most of us do best working in our mother tongue. The task of full and rapid comprehension of a fair body of materials that come in day after day, already difficult enough for most topics, becomes even more challenging in a new area such as this which continuously brings in many new, less familiar concepts, and along with them a new and fast-evolving vocabulary, thus adding yet another level of complexity to the challenge of understanding what is really going on.

Thus it is our firm intention to find other language/country partners to work with them to build on the Italian example which can be exported in its entirety to serve as a sort of first-stage template for future language/country editions.

To this end, we are already in preliminary discussion with eventual Spanish, French and German language partners the possibility of building on this example with new dedicated websites and supporting programs in the months ahead. But the list of countries and languages of course need not end there. Nor should it.

# # #

For more information on Nuova Mobilità:
Contact: Enrico Bonfatti, editor@nuovamobilita.org
http://nuovamobilita.org
Skype: nouva.mobilita
Mission statement: http://nuovamobilita.blogspot.com/2009/06/nuova-mobilita-mission.html

To read Nuova Mobilità in bare bones but pretty workable machine translation into English: http://tinyurl.com/ws-nm-english

# # #

Now all that remains is for us to hear from you on these and possibly other candidate topics. For that you may wish to click the Comment link just below.

Update: Public bike developments in Italy

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

1. Terni, with 5 workstations,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo showing the “La BiGi” service in Bergamo.

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

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

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