The following as used in a master class of a course on sustainable development, democracy and society.
For those of us who are not necessarily deeply informed about the unfolding climate/mobility emergency situation — and opportunities — in that part of the world, here is one way to dig in to the situation.
The Green Map of Reykjavík is a joint international project of Nature.is, the Green Map® System, the city of Reykjavík and the University of Iceland. The goal of Green Maps all around the world is to make eco-friendly options in the fields of culture, commerce and travel services more visible and accessible to all. Green maps have been developed in over 600 municipalities, cities and neighborhoods in 55 countries. Iceland is the first country which classifies the whole country according to the Green Map system.
The printed edition Green Map of Reykjavík is the first of its kind here in Iceland and is based on the online version Green Map of Iceland here on www.nature.is which covers the whole country of Iceland with over 3.000 registrations in 100 categories.
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute is an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transportation problems. The VTPI website (http://www.vtpi.org ) has many resources addressing a wide range of transport planning and policy issues. VTPI also provides consulting services.
This primer from the US Department of Transportation is focused on the collaborative and systematic consideration of management and operations during transportation project design and development. This is termed “designing for operations.” Effectively designing for operations involves the development and application of design policies, procedures, and strategies that support transportation management and operations.
The consideration of operations needs during the design process requires transportation design professionals to work closely with those with expertise in transportation operations, intelligent transportation and transportation technology staff, planning, transit, freight, traffic incident management, and other practitioners from multiple agencies to fully identify, prioritize, and incorporate operations needs into the infrastructure design. This primer introduces the concept for designing for operations and describes tools or institutional approaches to assist transportation agencies in considering operations in their design procedures as well as pointing out some specific design considerations for various operations strategies
(Introductory para here to explain, etc.)
Thus far ( 21/07/2019), eventually with direct link and 2-3 lines of comment + Key Contacts
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Checklist of key terms, concepts and references for managing the climate/new mobility transition (1 June 2019. Text to follow here.)
ACTIVE TRANSPORT: * Bicycles * Bike/Transit Integration * Public Bicycle Systems * Telecommuting * Telework * Walk to School * Walking
They actually relate to each other. And if you don’t understand that, then you are in real trouble.
WORLD STREETS is betting its future over the coming two-year transition period on the ability of certain ambitious responsible cities, nations, organizations and citizens in different parts of the world to come together to break the downward pattern of climate stress — and specifically plan and execute highly aggressive near-term initiatives aimed at sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the mobility sector. And doing all this while working with tools, policies and strategies that harness proven, cost-effective, readily available, measures, technologies, operational and management competence. It is our job is to support them as best we can.
If you wish to sort out your thinking on the suddenly popular topic of free public transport, may we propose that you spend a lively half hour listening to an excellent Australian radio program on the topic — and listen to what experts like Judith, Oded, Gregory, Tony, Ansgar and Jarrett have to offer on this subject. A refreshing variety of perspectives and comments — a veritable master class on a topic that responsible cities cannot afford to run away from.
It’s not that our cities need to do it in this or that way. Far from it! But it turns out that it is a mobility option to which we really need to give serious thought — because at the end of the day it is really about transport and budgets, but no less about basic rights and equity in a democracy. And also — as you will hear — about efficiency , economy, environment and quality of life for all. Now let’s listen to the experts:
Greetings:
What you have here is an independent web platform aimed at two somewhat different but related objectives. For starters . . .
In the first place, you have before you here the full content of World Streets as a collaborative independent “journal of record”, since March 2008 reporting on the winding, often tortuous but often too highly rewarding path toward sustainable transport in and around cities .
Mission: Creating and supporting open, generous, international peer networks to improve our city streets and public spaces for all.
To date: Offering as of early Spring 2019 more than two thousand articles and five thousand illustrative photographs, renderings and graphic image)
Contribution: Is World Streets doing its job? (We asked one hundred of our readers for their views.) And one hundred and one responded: CLICK HERE – http://bit.ly/2tmjZOI
Next Steps: Continue publication of World Streets in its current form, but to refocus its central function over the coming decade to the mobility/climate nexus.
– – – > START HERE: World Streets Climate/Action/Plan: http://bit.ly/2SGXWNu
For further information: Project Coordinator and managing 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.)
The World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have partnered to create a GHG Protocol standard for cities known as Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC). (Source:
The GPC provides a robust framework for accounting and reporting city-wide greenhouse gas emissions. It seeks to:
# # # # 20/12/2018 # # DRAFT # # WORK IN PROGRESS # # STAY TUNED # # # #
Below please find a selection of social media sites which have ben developed for this open-ended collaborative project — intended to serve as shared work spaces for people and groups working actively on various aspects of the sustainable transport challenge, as well as researchers, students, the media, activists and concerned citizens.
(This section of the program is still in rapid development. In the event you did not find something important on your first visit. it may be useful to check back here from time to time.)
– by Glenn Lyons. Full report available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/37926
In the 1700s, the French philosopher Voltaire reportedly said “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” The transport sector is becoming increasingly alive to how uncertain the future is. There is significant (or ‘deep’) uncertainty about the extent to which existing trends, relationships, technologies, economic and social forces, preferences and constraints will carry into the future. Uncomfortable though it may be, there is a need in our transport planning and decision making to avoid absurdity and address this. This report reflects the insights gained from a roundtable workshop in London convened to discuss the matter.
Intended as a research aid, checklist and reminder for professionals, students, researchers and others digging into the Five Percent Solutions and related technical and policy challenges. A certain level of familiarity with these concepts is essential. Anyone prepared to work in the field will (should) already have familiarity with 9 out of 10 of the concepts identified here. It concerns the stuff of sustainable transport, sustainable mobility and sustainable cities. (The listing is of course not complete, but it does offer a good start)
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
– William Butler Yeats
World Streets has from the beginning been intended to serve as a journal of record of the difficult world wide transition to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. And as a lively world-wide partner, free resource and multi-faceted toolkit for concerned citizens and decision makers as they try to sort their way through the complexity and contradictions of bringing sustainable transport to our cities and their hard to serve hinterlands. Many of our seven thousand-plus signed-in readers will for the most part keep their eye on the latest articles as they appear.
But there are others — students, educators, researchers, consultants, those working in concerned government agencies, transporters and other suppliers to the sector, city planners, activists, civil society, journalists, citizens looking for international background on specific topics — who need to have quick access to what the site has to offer. Which, it turns out, is quite a lot. Let’s have a look.
Few things are more frustrating in this needful world than to see useful ideas and hard work ending up anonymously cloistered on some distant dusty shelf, real or virtual, and not be accessible to people and groups who could put them to good work, especially at a time of crisis as that we are living through right now. This was one of the challenges we faced at World Streets from the very beginning. How to keep all these good ideas and useful tools alive and available beyond the day on which they were first published and made known to the world.
Few things are more frustrating in this needful world than to see useful ideas and hard work ending up anonymously cloistered on some distant dusty shelf, real or virtual, and not be accessible to people and groups who could put them to good work, especially at a time of crisis as that we are living through right now. This was one of the challenges we faced at World Streets from the very beginning. How to keep all these good ideas and useful tools alive and available beyond the day on which they were first published and made known to the world.
Let me be very clear as to my motives here just so there is no ambiguity on my position. I would like no less than to drive a sharp stake through the dark heart of this egregiously unsustainable transport concept once and for all, so that we can concentrate our limited resources on approaches that are capable of doing the job and meeting the sustainability challenge head on. Which is exactly not the case with monorails. Let’s have a look. Continue reading
Full and open access to key documents and reports necessary for full public, NGO, media and international expert review, questions and commentary on the costs, technical details, analysis and justifications for the RM27-50 billion (it apparently depends on who you ask and when) Penang Transport Master Plan has been seriously inhibited by the State government and their property development consultants and partners (SRS Consortium).
In the face of this resistance an informal citizen alliance and NGO task force has emerged and started to assemble and make freely available a growing library of key documents. At present there are more than 200 volumes and working papers already assembled in the library at https://goo.gl/xjCRT9.
Dear friends, we have a wonderful resource here with Whatsapp Sustainable Penang in the form of a searchable database of all of our exchanges since the generous creation of this great collaborative tool by no less than the formidable Engineer Lim Thean Heng all the way back there on December 14, 2015.
Just in case you didn’t notice it the transcript of all of these conversations which I have collected and inspected in searchable form run for more than half a million words of what . . . Not just idle chat, but rather the exchanges of a conserved citizenry about the sustainability challenges of Penang in all its dimensions, including of course the running battle of the Penang Transport Master Plan .
This carefully compiled seasonal report from Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute is a fine tool and up to date source guide for researchers and policy makers worldwide. We are pleased to present it in its entirety here, together with references you will find handy to take these entries further.
WORLD STREETS __ A New Mobility Action Plan for 2022 