Op-Ed Archives: Danijel Rebolj on The Cultures of Mobility

The Cultures of Mobility

What message could a private citizen, an engineer no less, from a small city of a country with barely two million inhabitants send to the Secretary of Transportation of the United States of America? Happily, there is more to transport and social policy than mere size. So if you decide to continue reading, I may have a modest message for you after all.

This evening, 6 February 2009, an interesting event will take place in my city. A thematic event has been organized, dedicated to the “Culture of Mobility”. In this we want to show (again) at the culture of mobility and the culture of the city are one and the same.

Maribor, my beautiful city, the second-largest in Slovenia, is to become the cultural capital of Europe in 2012. Today’s event will start with a documentary film to open up the perspectives of transportation decision-makers in the city of New York, “Contested Streets: a Mobility Tour of Four Great World Cities”. “Contested” takes its point of departure the old habit of automatically building new infrastructure for cars every time a traffic problem arose. The world-famous and world-practiced “forecast and build” culture

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