Tag Archives: Policy
COP15 2009: CLIMATE IS THE PORTAL TO NEW MOBILITY (Letter to the organizers)
Message from World Streets to the Copenhagen Summit: The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference
Letter from the Editor: ON THE RUN-UP TO COPENHAGEN AND COP15
EcoPlan International
8 rue Joseph Bara
75006 Paris France
27 September 2009
Dear Colleagues,
The climate agenda is getting high political and media attention worldwide, and there are many important events scheduled for the months immediately ahead. That is good. But in our view the agenda for sustainable transport system reform at all levels is timid, incoherent and in large part irrelevant given the real priorities. Well, what is relevant then? How can we get the level of innovation and reform that is going to be critical in the years immediately ahead?
Dear Penang Friends from half the planet over,
Penang civil society led by Penang Forum have protested against the state government’s plans.
If you are looking on another independent point of view for all that relates to the Penang Transport Master Plan and its various add-ons, derivatives and unwelcome surprises, from an international perspective, I have a small handful of references points which I hope you may find useful:
- “TO AN EMERGENCY CLIMATE/MOBILITY ACTION PLAN FOR PENANG” – at http://bit.ly/2PJyWEV
- “STRATEGY FOR A CLIMATE/SPATIAL/MOBILITY ACTION/PLAN FOR PENANG: 2019-2020” – Facebook at http://bit.ly/2ZThVg8
- GOOGLE ON “CLIMATE EMERGENCY” PENANG MALAYSIA” – at http://bit.ly/2WjN0ao
Transport, environment and public policy in hard times (Archives 2011 perspectives)
– By Eric Britton, World Streets/New Mobility Agenda, February 2011
Scottish Transport Review, Issue 50. ISSN 1462-8708 http://stsg.org/str/str50.pdf
A Mental Architecture problem
“When it is dark you can see the stars”
Perhaps the main reason we are doing so poorly these days in transport is that we are making three fundamental errors in what we are looking at, the manner in which we are looking at it, and what we are doing with it:
Comment: Have we learned any of these lessons in the last eight years? Or are we still turning over our motors in traffic? Your call!
THE 2020 FIVE PERCENT EMERGENCY CHALLENGE: (Cross-cutting issues, measures, sources & startup strategies)
Executive Summary:
QUESTION: Is it going to be possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions resulting from day to day transport in your city by five percent next year?
RESPONSE: Yes *
___________________________________
* But you have to be very smart
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Attributed to A. Einstein)
THE FIVE PERCENT CHALLENGE (continued)
* * Very rough first draft. Requiring careful rewrite for content and clarity. * *
CLIMATE/NEW MOBILITY 2019-2020 EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Attributed to A. Einstein)
Working Notes: Building Blocks:
The sources, references and links that follow here – we call them building blocks or parts of the much larger puzzle – are presented here in first working draft form and are intended to be useful to inform and guide students, researchers, concerned citizens and others interested in getting up to speed on the wide range of challenging topics that need to be brought in to the analysis and eventual work plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the local transport sector by a radical target and in a single year . These references include a considerable variety of issues, hints and developments (examples, free public transport, economic levers, value capture, full gender parity, etc., etc.) which have important roles to play in this wholesale reconstruction of the new mobility ecosystem.
WORLD CLIMATE EMERGENCY
COP15 2009: CLIMATE IS THE PORTAL TO NEW MOBILITY (Letter to the organizers)
Message from World Streets to the Copenhagen Summit: The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference
Letter from the Editor: ON THE RUN-UP TO COPENHAGEN AND COP15
EcoPlan International
8 rue Joseph Bara
75006 Paris France
27 September 2009
Dear Colleagues,
The climate agenda is getting high political and media attention worldwide, and there are many important events scheduled for the months immediately ahead. That is good. But in our view the agenda for sustainable transport system reform at all levels is timid, incoherent and in large part irrelevant given the real priorities. Well, what is relevant then? How can we get the level of innovation and reform that is going to be critical in the years immediately ahead?
COSTS, BENEFITS AND HIATUS OF THE ORIGINAL PENANG TRANSPORT MASTER PLAN
Credit: Simphewe Nkwali (Eco-Mobiliy Johannesburg
* * * COLLABORATIVE THINKING EXERCISE (DRAFT 1) * * *
– Government of the people, by the people, for the people
Please have a look and, if interested, may we have your thoughts about these and other impact areas that in your view need to be taken into consideration in order to have a full and shared understanding of these impacts of the proposed and latest SDS Penang Transport Master Plan.
We need to be clear about this. The objective here is not to criticize or belittle the State’s efforts at improving the short-comings and potential of today’s transportation arrangements in Penang. Rather the goal is to provide open citizen feedback to their proposals to all levels of government, civil society and the public at large. As President Abraham Lincoln put it at a hard moment for history in America: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Your responses are welcome here or to penang@ecoplan.org. Thank you.
ON A SCALE OF 0-10: please show us your views concerning how the proposals, measures and their potential set out in the SDS PTMP do in the following legitimate areas of citizen interest and concern. Some of these are quite specialized as you will see as your work your way down the list, but don’t let that bother you. Just share your views with the items that strike your attention. With a careful eye to both long and short term impacts (say in the coming three years, 2018-2020).
* * * For latest version of SDS MP : http://pgmasterplan.penang.gov.my — See below the listing of the principal infrastructure projects proposed by the plan.
SAFE CITY STRATEGIES : MANAGING THE TRANSITION. (Working notes for a 2020 Thinking Exercise)
Safe City Strategies for bringing sustainable transport to your city .
The Seven Pillars
MANAGING THE SAFE CITY TRANSITION: . . . . . Notes for a Thinking Exercise . . . . .
CONGESTION AS POLICY. (You have seen worse.)
Whether or not congestion is “good” is one thing. But what is for sure is that one way or another congestion is policy, or at the very least a policy option. And in some cases quite possibly a wise one.
Now this has been said many times by many people in many places, yet despite its incontrovertible wisdom the message continues to get lost on policy makers. So in cases like this, we have to take a page out of the book of good people who sell us iPhones and cars, and keep repeating our message.
Today let’s hand over the podium to Kent Strumpell from Los Angeles and see what he had to say on our subject in LA Streetsblog back in early 2008. To this reader it has lost none of relevance over almost a decade. Read on. Continue reading
Toward a new paradigm for transport in cities: Let’s see what Carlos Pardo has to say
The construction of a well-defined, broadly accepted agenda for New Mobility until the present time has been sadly lacking. But what we and a numb er of our international colleagues have managed to develop over the last two decades is a certain number of agreed basic principles spanning many different areas and kinds of operational situations, but somehow until now we have failed to put them all together into a well-defined, convincing operational and policy package. We think of this as the move toward a new paradigm for transport in cities – and it all starts with . . . slowing down.
Today I would like to extract and comment on some of the graphics and thoughts developed by our colleague Carlosfelipe Pardo in a presentation which he entitled “The psychology of urban mobility”. I have extracted from his presentation three sets of images which I would now like to present you and comment briefly. (For the full original presentation please click here.)
MANAGING THE SAFE CITY TRANSITION: Notes for a Thinking Exercise
Transport Planning, Policy and Competence in Penang
CREDENTIALS AND EXPERIENCE OF MAJOR ACTORS (IN BRIEF)
– Statement of Eric Britton to the WhatsApp forum,
STORIES OF NEW MOBILITY INITIATIVES IN AFRICA : Successes, Failures and Work in Progress
Dear African friends and colleagues,
I’m in the process of trying to gather my thoughts on a book bringing together a collection of lively real world stories of attempted new mobility — what I like to think of as “pattern break”) – projects that have been carried out in cities and areas in a dozen or so African countries. I want to emphasize here the choice of the word “stories” as opposed to when we hear more often in the literature, titles such as “case studies” or “best practices”. I think it is important to try to reach in and understand (Anyway, I do not believe in the concept of “best practices”, and tend to prefer the less blatant wording of better practices.)
World Transport Policy & Practice. Vol. 22 No.4. Feb. 2017
22/4 Summary
In this issue, we return to some key themes in sustainable transport. The article by Wendy 
Sarkissian and Lori Mooren reflects on the death in a road crash of Wendy’s husband and puts this dreadful experience in a wider context of how we should deal with eliminating death and injury on the roads and how we should improve our ability to react to tragedies of this kind. At a time when 3 cyclists this year (January and February 2017) have been killed in London (see reference list) we are even more acutely aware than ever that these horrific tragedies are not interrogated systematically and thoroughly and not translated into immediate action to get the chances of death and serious injury as near to zero as we can.
This is the point of Vision Zero, the Swedish road safety policy that says “a mistake in the road traffic environment must not attract the death penalty”.
Planning and Policy Objectives for a Real Strategic Transport Plan for Penang
Again and again and again, when it comes to “transport master planning” in Penang, it seems as if we always end up circling to the same old structurally wrong thing. And in the process allowing the undertrained proponents of the Big Bang “solution” of the present government package, to occupy the center of the debate. This is a huge mistake.
It is my position that the starting place for responsible and effective transport planning and policy in Penang is NOT to link it to land deals — but to look at the challenge in and of itself. From a well defined, explicit strategic perspective.
Some will say that they do not have enough money to accomplish their objectives — which quickly become wild, pharaonic, costly and not related to the real problems and priorities at hand. Remember, transport for people and not for cars (infrastructure included)
Here is the simple question that the policy makers need to ask and resolve.
(a) What is it that they can accomplish for the people of Penang,
(b) working with available resources in order to
(c) alleviate the day-to-day mobility problems of the people of Penang – with
(d) especial attention to the needs of the poorer half of society and the vulnerable populations (elderly, handicapped, poor, isolated, non-car owners, and
(e) above all women of all ages and stations of life, and in
(f) in the coming four years, i.e., 2017-2020.
How hard is that? And why is no one minding this store?
Please someone, tell me why this is not being done?
# # #
About the author:
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.)
World Transport Policy & Practice. Vol. 21 No.4. Feb. 2016
This issue of WTPP reminds us that India has been in the news a lot in recent months mainly for its poor air quality, deaths and injuries on the roads and the serious damage this does to quality of life, family life and the economy. In the 23 years of World Transport Policy & Practice (WTPP) we have not carried enough material by Indian authors and want to use this editorial to encourage more submissions from that country.
We would like to explore the underlying factors that have produced such a large loss of life and decline in quality of life and also to explore the links between transport and poverty alleviation. We know that Kolkata has one of the world’s oldest tram systems, a metro, an urban railway and river ferries but we hear very little about how these assets are being put to use to encourage higher levels of use and lower level of car use. We hear about the abolition of diesel fuelled vehicles and car rationing by odd/even number systems in Delhi but we don’t know how effective these have been. We also hear very little about pedestrian and cyclist facilities in Indian cities and the contribution they can make to air quality, reducing congestion and alleviating poverty. So please contact us!
But there is more to Vol 21, No. 4 than that. Let’s have a look . . .
Behind transport policy and choices lurks the 800 pound gorilla of economics.
Which, if you have not noticed, does not seem to be working particularly well when it comes to guiding us (decision makers but also the voters behind them) toward better policy choices, even in matters purely “economic” (money, prices, interest rates, income distribution, taxation, regulation, growth, etc.).
With this harsh truth in mind, we try to keep up on matters economic, and several of our collaborative programs have this as their aim. One, EXERNOMICS, you can follow on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Exernomics/552738241538438 . Or directly via http://exernomics.ecoplan.org
Have a look and share your thoughts with us on this
