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| World City Bike Program Associates | |
This section presents brief profiles of the key group of international expert associates who are providing important council, materials and sections of the final report, and who are also available to take support roles in the City Benchmarking exercises and the Accelerated Learning Sessions as they come on line in response to the requests of city teams and agencies concerned to create a firm base for their eventual projects and programs.
* Click here for team profiles > > > .
| New Mobility Agenda | |
Unconstrained by bureaucracy, economic interests or schedules, the New Mobility Agenda was launched in 1988 as a wide open international platform for critical discussion and diverse forms of cross-border collaboration on the challenging, necessarily conflicted topic of "sustainable transportation and social justice". There are no easy answers - but there are answers.
The Agenda is a program with a mission. It is not at all satisfied with the dominant state of thinking, practice and policy in our cities. Judged from a planetary or Kyoto perspective, Or from an individual or public health perspective, or an economic perspective, or ... or ... our present arrangements for transport in cities are seriously damaged. As things stand today in city after city around the world, they threaten well being health in the city and on the planet. They are dangerous. they are costly. They are disruptive. They are thoroughly dysfunctional. And they are howlingly unfair. But there are many things we can do about it. But we have to ge ready to try.
* Click here for more on the New Mobility Agenda > > > .
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| International Advisory Council | |
The International Advisory Council brings together a very broad cross-section of the outstanding leaders, thinkers and activists in the full range of fields involved, representing many countries, disciplines, areas of expertise and points of view
Who are all these people? No less than the Principal Voices of Sustainable Transportation. In a phrase: among the outstanding thinkers, practitioners and leaders in many parts of the world who over the last years have been working on the ground to reshape the transportation agenda, bringing it step by step closer in line with the precepts of sustainable development and social justice.
And why exactly are they here? Because they have each had a good look at the ideas and goals behind the Agenda, and are in this way going on public record to signal their personal support of the urgent call for near term actions. For more on each, you are invited to click the links beside their names. As you will see there is great variety in their views and approaches, as it should be in this changing world of many mixed messages and incomplete visions. This great diversity makes for lively discussions and the policy ideas and measures that emanate from them will be all the more effective
* Click here for more on the International Advisory Council > > > .
| New Mobility Advisory Briefs | |
This program has been created in 2005 to offer mayors and local government, their support staffs, key policy makers, and concerned citizens and groups within their city who care about sustainability and integrity of their transport system - the people who hold the key to bringing on sustainable transport in your city - with . . .
- A set of useful practical tools which can help those who care enough in your city to turn the very general concept of "sustainable transport" into specific on-street, in-lung reality
- In a highly readable format with an introductory Executive Summary that gets to the point quickly and sets out the key recommendations for action.
- Saves countless days and months of research efforts on topics that are in general poorly understood from a practical policy perspective.
- Gives local leaders and their staffs the exception information they need to make more informed decisions.
- And with the key support material needed to promote their own proposals.
- Saves you and your constituents much money and time by avoiding costly errors others have committed
- Provides structured reinforcement for environmental and other groups in the city that are already engaged in the restructuring process.
- All while up some useful doors in case you want to take these new approaches further in your city.
* Click here for more on the New Mobility Advisory Briefs > > > .
| 2008 Work Program and Outlook | |
Our annual State of the Commons Report makes useful background reading for anyone who knows what is behind this project, offering a quick recap of 2007, a look ahead to 2008, and an introspection about the nature of problem-solving in our main areas of competence.
The keys to the year ahead are two: First, to face the music and recognize the full dimensions and urgency of the problems before our cities and our planet. And in parallel with this, to find more effective ways to solve these challenges, through more seamless international networking and collaborative problem solving. There is a great deal of knowledge and good accumulated experience out there, but it needs to be better harnessed and put to work for your city. Many of these wheels have already been invented; so here is no reason to start from zero every time. But how to spot, chose and adapt the best for your unique case? That is the challenge before each city and project team.
All of which is by way of saying that our 2008 work program keys on collaborative problem solving, making effective use of the alliances, materials and knowledge bases that have been built up within the New Mobility Agenda over the last two decades. Key partnership projects for 2008 will key on the Advisory Briefs, which have started with the first World City Bike Planning Brief, and which in the coming months will expand to include Briefs covering experience and lessons learned in the areas of carsharing, economic instruments (such as road pricing and congestion charging), and the new busway projects (BRT et al). But there is more to the Agenda than its pieces.
We see the individual briefs and the projects they set out as specific steps in a process of a much broader rethinking of transport in cities, in your city. Which brings us to our latest program, Reinventing Transport in Cities, a collaborative undertaking which in our view has to start with the mayors and local civic leaders as the keys to the future of their cites. That's the big challenge for 2008
And now click here for the recap and outlook for our on-going programs. Though not without in closing inviting you to share with us your plans, projects and work interests for 2008. Cooperation is a two way street. Let's make it a busy one.
* Click here for more on the 2008 Report > > > .
| Seven steps to reinvent transport in your city | |
Virtually all of the necessary preconditions are now in place for far-reaching improvements in the ways that people get around in our cites. The needs are there, they are increasingly understood -- and we now know what to do and how to get it done. The challenge is to find the vision, political will, and leadership to get the job done, step by deliberate step.
- Demonstrate vision and leadership by breaking with the past and then taking on the real problems of mobility, well-being and economic health your city.
- Build a coherent integrated policy framework that explicitly drives and aligns all goals, measures and actions so that they move together in interactive synergy
- Tighten time frame: Set firm targets for all to see and judge -- gearing all actions to achieve visible results within 2-4 year time frame
- Pick winners: Combine policies and services with strong track records of success.
- Frugal economics: Do not ask for additional large public expenditures to make work
- Focus Projects : Select FIVE locally supported innovations to lead your transformation
- Ownership: Make your New Mobility program a broad-based collaborative enterprise that listens to and engages the whole city.
* Click here for more Reinventing Transport in Your City > > > .
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