Discussion, Comments & Feedback

Discussion, Comments, Feedback

Kyoto Cities

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To get in touch:

The menu to your left provides links to a handful of international discussion groups which serve specific interest groups exchanging ideas and information in areas closely related to the concerns of this program. The top set are specific to the Kyoto Cities Challenge, while the rest are of a more general nature. You may wish to check into these and eventually participate as your time and taste allow.

20/20 Working Groups (Open by invitation)

This private forum has been created to provide a handy communications pipeline and message storage facility in support of the emerging Kyoto Cities working groups/clusters. This is where we get together to brainstorm and exchange ideas and views on our topic. While participation is by invitation only, the list is lightly moderated just to make sure that the exchanges are indeed in line with our time-pressed colleagues' interests.

Click here for full information.

Kyoto Cities Blog

An informal, partial, ad hoc collection of some of the most interesting and challenging news, communications, excerpts and working notes generated via projects and exchanges taking place here. Critical discussions of 20/20 welcomed, as are proposals for alternative approaches to compliance. You are invited to share your comments and views on any points, pieces or articles posted here that strike your interest. And to submit your own items. Click here to go to the Kyoto Cities Blog. And here for hints on how to post your own comments and contributions.

Open Wiki brainstorm ("MotherCity Transport")

Click here to enter wiki brainstorm space:

A Wiki or wiki is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. The name was based on the Hawaiian term wiki wiki, meaning "quick" or "super-fast". What you can click to and use here is a page from the Global Villages Wiki, an investigatorium of the Minciu Sodas Laboratory Network.

This is a wide open disucussion as you will see. To use the wiki to make your entries click the WikiHelp link at the base of the page.

New Mobility Agenda Discussions

This forum goes back more than a decade, and at present serves more than five hundred transportation experts, activists and policy makers world wide. It is a "strictly business" one-way announcement list, with the more conversational exchanges and discussions taking place in the .. .

offers a free, public, flexible discussion space for people and groups who feel that our transport systems need to be, and can be made to be, more sustainable and more just -- and who wish to freely exchange ideas and information about it.

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The Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia & the Pacific -- an email discussion list devoted to people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South'). "Sustran-Discuss has become the main discussion forum on urban transport in developing countries." Discussions are well focused, expert-based and of very high quality.

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Universities' Transport Study Group. Well organized expert discussions of sustainable mobility issues and approaches, with notices on events and academic openings, mainly in Britain. Run by the Institute for Transport Studies of Leeds University.

But how are we ever going to pay for all this? Check out our very busy Land Cafe if you are on the lookout for new thinking on this critical topic.

This is the discussion group of a community of practice that began with a program on mainstreaming Gender into the World Bank's Transport Sector. It is open to all those who are interested in issues relating to improving mobility and access for poor women and men in developing countries.

A pot pourri of several thousand discussions and messages relating to our topic and coming from many places, presented here in chronological order.

Free flow chat sessions on how to achieve "car free city solutions to the vexing problem of urban automobiles." Includes discussion of transport and energy issues. Intended for discussion of personal experiences as they relate to the larger issues. Moderated by Carfree.com.

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300 list members discuss and explore issues related to eliminating or reducing one's reliance on automotive transport. Celebrates non-polluting forms of transportation such as walking and bicycling while encouraging the use of mass transit as well as other life style changes providing an alternative to auto-centric perspectives. Very personal, laid back approach.

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) was set up in 1985, to promote environmentally sustainable and equitable transportation policies and projects worldwide.

NYC-area non-profit citizens group working for better bicycling, walking and public transit, and fewer cars. We work for safer, calmer neighborhood streets and car-free parks

The Transportation Communications Newsletter is a free daily e-mail publication which provides news and information related to all aspects of communications in the transportation field. This includes a wide variety of topics such as: public and community relations, ITS, traveler information, outreach, and transportation operations. All modes of transport are included.

Selected Commentaries

10 March 2005: In this new section we shall be transcribing here on a selection of the comments and observations that come in and which we feel will be of particular interest to the group.

We also suggest that you occasoinally have a look at the dedicated discussion groups listed to your left here, in which suggestions and comments are also being made on the program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brendan Finn [mailto:etts@indigo.ie] Sent: Friday, March 04
Subject: Kyoto Challenge and DRT (A missing link)

. . . I like the grouping you are shaping, although the test is what actually happens as a result. I guess it's like a big jigsaw where each of us has at least one piece to bring, and some of the experienced experts already have quite a few pieces already assembled and proven. Do we know the picture, or are we working blind ? Either way, working together helps to solve the puzzle. To extend the analogy, isn't the sky always the hardest bit of the jigsaw ?

As usual, I'm working on quite a few areas, including regulatory frameworks for urban transport, and intelligent systems for public transport. However, the area which might have the most to contribute to your work is demand-responsive transport (DRT). Until very recently, this has been more or less ignored as minibuses for the elderly and the villages, where nothing else would work. Recent advances with ITS, organisational approaches and business models are changing that.

But what happens if we bring true demand responsive transport into cities at a serious level? European and North American transportation planners can't really think it through because they're not familiar with large scale collective transit based on small to medium sized vehicles. By contrast, cities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Brazil and many other countries are familiar with it. For example, even in St. Petersburg the route-taxis have 14% of the public transport market share, slightly less than the tram and more than the trolleybus. Of course, in those countries the quality is often poor, and there are frequently criminal elements involved.

But that's not the point. If these resources can be mobilised in a better way in places like Russia and China, and if these forms of transport can be introduced to North American and European cities, then we have an additional mode that can go head-to-head with the car for the car passenger market and the second-car market. The key is knowing where and when people want to travel, and matching the mobility resources with the demand at affordable prices. To be very clear, these are seen as complementary to the larger forms of public transport, not as replacements.

To come back to the jigsaw analogy, DRT is a piece. It has better value when it's linked to other pieces, and of course has best value when it's in the right place.

With best wishes, Brendan.