Tuesday, 10 July 2008
To: The Mayor, City Council, City Manager (and candidates for any of above posts)
cc: Supporting senior staff, local NGOs, consultants, concerned citizens/groups
Subject: Transport innovations: Tapping the leading edge for your city
Dear City Leaders and Concerned Citizens,
Most people, many experts included, may not have grasped this yet, but the simple truth is that we have arrived at a point of major discontinuity in our daily transport arrangements, in our cities and in our lives. Few are more aware of this than you. And it is now time for our leaders and concerned citizens to act.
Look out the window this morning and what do you see -- despite all the work you have done and hard earned taxpayer money you are spending on the sector? Increasing traffic congestion. Lost time. Mounting pollution and public health problems. Less safe streets. More accidents. Poorly served groups and areas. Swelling subsidy costs. City centers in duress. And now before we ever guessed $100+++ oil, resource shortfalls, global warming and suddenly the chilling prospect of energy blackmail are staring us in the face.
The old, basically no-choice car-only system may once have worked (for some), but today it is clearly no longer doing its job. And in case you haven't noticed it, the voters are starting to. Sustainability and sustainable transportation are now emerging as major election issues. And so too is economics, as we are sure you have noticed.
| Reinventing Transport in Cities |
Fortunately, not all the news is bad. Quietly, a new era is taking shape and has already made sufficient progress so that it can be seen and learned from in the places where it is doing the job -- offering real-world, on-street and in-pocketbook improvements, many of which can be put to work in your city or community. And by contrast with traditional practices, these new approaches can generate visible results within an extremely short period of time -- and at far lower levels of cost.
What's the difference between the old transport model and the one that is quietly taking its place at the leading edge? Well, the one that is winding down, often with considerable pain, is the hugely costly "all car/no choice" system which has de facto dominated public policy and private practice for more than half a century. The ultimately paralyzing problem with the old system is similar to that of any kind of dominant monoculture: it simply lacks the variety and flexibility, and hence the resilience and adaptability, that is needed to ensure long-term survival in a changing world.
What is starting to replace the old model in enough places and with enough success to mark the clear dawning of a new era is the New Mobility Agenda: a wide-based, collaborative, international move to a more varied, complex, robust and synergistic transportation polyculture, offering a rich bouquet of alternative ways of getting around in cities.
What is striking about this is that the main driver for this transition lies not in fears of environmental catastrophe or oil shut-down, and not even in our collective good sense or ethics, but rather in the fact that enough successful new practices and models are starting to show results in enough places that we now, finally, start to understand that we have real choices. Simply put, you now are in a position to build on their successes.
| New Mobility Fast-Track, 2008 - 2012 |
A great deal of excellent work has been done in leading-edge cities, many of which in Europe, but in other places and projects as well, that provide strong examples for cities on the lookout for transformative ideas. But the information both on these projects and the techniques and strategies that make them work are hard to come by.
For this reason, we have decided with the help of our long standing international networks to create a first rate source of information, background and references on both the specific low-carbon high-amenity measures that constitute the operational core of the New Mobility Agenda, together with a collection of articles and contributions which also go into some of the most important strategic and implementation issues.
The first version of this authoritative international compilation is to appear as a Special Edition of the Journal of World Transport Policy & Practice in the autumn of 2008, and will be available through our site at no cost to anyone who needs it. And in the first half of 2009, an edited and expanded version of the Special Report will be published in book form, as well as being available electronically at low cost. (For further information on this collaborative project click here.)
| The New Mobility Dialogues |
Against this rich background the New Mobility Dialogues program is intended to help create a lively bridge between the successful innovators and others who are in the need of strong examples and new ideas.
The cooperative project has been scoped out here to show you how a combined presentation and cooperative outreach program, taking anywhere from a few days to a week or so as your team wishes, can be carried out at low cost and in a, we think, highly creative manner -- both to tap our long standing international networks, findings and expertise, and at the same time to reach down into the brains and energies of your community to provide a living bridge to the leading edge of experience and practice in the areas that interest them most. If you click here, you will call up a short (5 minute) invitation to talk about how this information and these materials can be put to work in your city or for your agency or program.
You will certainly have questions about this, and if so by clicking here you will find all contact deals needed to initiate a dialogue. We hope to hear from you and explore with you how these materials and insights can be put to work for your city. With all due respect, it's about time.
Yours sincerely,
Eric Britton
Convener, The New Mobility Agenda
Chair, Sustainable Cities/New Mobility Dialogues
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