"Principal Voices"- Sustainable Transportation as a Third Voice

Principal Voices 2005: A proposal

Sustainable Transportation as a Third Voice: A proposal

The immediate objective of this cooperative sustainability initiative is to see what we can do through a cooperative contact program via the New Mobility Agenda and its extensions to create and make heard a much-needed balancing "Voice" for the transportation component of the potentially important media project, Principal Voices , over 2005 though the participation of an 'invisible college' of knowledgeable, independent, world level proponents of sustainable transport in all its many aspects (or New Mobility if you like).

By way of quick reminder, here is what the sponsors say about themselves: "Principal Voices is an international project aimed at provoking discussion on some of the more compelling challenges confronting our world today. Over the next 12 months TIME, FORTUNE and CNN, in association with Shell, will be presenting a series of videos, articles and round-table discussions. Themes covered will include the environment, business innovation, economic development and transport."

The Three-Voice Proposal: We are proposing to work with this international forum to articulate the debate in what we believe to be a most appropriate and dynamic manner, and add a Third Voice in the year-long discussions, balancing in our view . . .

Transportation Voice 1: The long established defining Voice of transportation expertise in design, engineering, construction, operation, finance, etc., that has essentially dominated and defined the transportation systems of the 20th century and still remains the main operational paradigm in most places (and in any event a critical central component of the next generation transportation paradigm that must be able to call in these skills and experience). This Voice is at present most ably represented by Mr. Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan one of India's greatest civil engineers, the architect of the supposedly unbuildable Konkan Railway linking Mumbai and Mangalore, and, more recently, designer of the Delhi Metro system (See http://www.principalvoices.com/voices/elattuvalapil-sreedharan-bio.html for more)
Second Voice 2? No conversation concerning the future of the transportation sector would be complete without the vigorous participation of this important second voice. A parallel but in many ways separate but very powerful in its own right financial, institutional, political, and industrial lobby "Voice", a good example of whose thinking can be seen with the recent WBCSD's "Meeting the Challenges to Sustainability" report (see http://www.ecoplan.org/wtpp/general/wbcsd.htm for report and some context) that has been actively supported by this currently formidable element of the transportation establishment.
The Third Voice? These are the growing number of international experts and groups who are working together to open up and define what we call the Sustainable Transportation or New Mobility Agenda. This approach to understanding and deciding about mobility matters is altogether on another plane from the older supply-oriented, specific, circumscribed problem-solving approach that has long been the dominant mode of thinking, policy and investment in the past, a time incidentally when the 'problematique' of transportation was vastly different from that which we face today (See Todd Litman's recent "The Future Isn't What It Used To Be" at for a good overview on this). This new and far broader, more inclusive approach to planning, decision making and even on down to implementation and operation is the next step in a cumulative long run process of intellectual, economic, social, environmental and political evolution. It is, no more no less, the world transport policy and practice paradigm of the 21st century.
It is our view that a lively, open, high profile public dialogue between these three contrasting Voices could be a major accomplishment of the sponsors. And while we have some thoughts as to how the second Voice participation might be organized, this is of course not our domain, though we do offer a few of these in the final section of this brainstorming note below.
The Third Voice? What we are proposing here is to put in place a mechanism that will serve to open up the debate and thereby ensure that the many competent people and groups working on this agenda in many parts of the world (including many highly respected NGOs) can make their voices heard. The proposed mechanism for doing this: an interactive process mediated by the web and several other low cost, widely available SOA conferencing and dialogue technologies.