Op-ed. Successful Fare-free Public Transport never comes alone

“Those that fail to learn the lessons of history, are doomed to repeat them.” 
– Attributed to Winston Churchill (and others)

Discussions of free public transport are often presented by the media and too often even in expert discussions as if it were a new concept that has no history.  To make wise policy decisions we need to be aware of this history.

To this end, this broad historic  overview and critical expert commentary on the international evolution of Fare Free Public Transport  (FTP here) covering the last half century was prepared by Dr. Michel van Hulten (see below) and submitted as a working paper in support of the international conference organized in Tallinn under the title: “Free public transport for all. Dream or reality”   In this working paper the author looks at the issues of the ‘why, how, when, where to pay for public transport’ (FFPT) – issues and questions that need to be at the heart  of our discussions and in time our decisions and actions.  

Required reading!

_____________ MOBILITY, DEATH AND INJURY _____________ 2018 New Mobility Master Class Session 3. (Draft for comment)

Paris, 22 Feb. 2018.

This draft posting is intended for informal peer review and critique in the context of a new international collaborative program of New Mobility Master Classes being planned for 2018-2020. The core text that follows is taken verbatim from Chapter 3 of John Whitelegg’s well-received 2015 book Mobility A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future. The remainder of the text for this session  (below) is still in process. It will shortly be completed with an introduction to the 2018  program by the editor who is serving as course leader, along with a short list of recommended reading (3-5 online references), the usefulness of machine translations, and a closing discussion and commentary by participants and visiting colleagues)

Contents (working draft)

1. General introduction (2 parts)
2. MOBILITY: DEATH AND INJURY (Chapter 3)
3. Conclusions
4. Selected references
5. About the authors
6. How to obtain the book
7. Translation
8. Facebook
9. Reader comments
10. Last words

Efficiency, equity, education, democracy, environment, accomplishment, modesty and fresh ideas . . . You’d be singing too

Part I: A Flashmob in Helsinki

A flashmob choral intrusion that took place on one more winter day in the main train station of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. But what are they singling about?

(A flash mob (just to recall and in case you were out shopping at the time) is an unannounced event involving, by all appearance,s an unrelated group of people who suddenly emerge from the shadows and assemble in a public place, perform an unusual and unexplained act for a brief time, then quickly disperse and continue on their ways.  As you can just see here.)

Part II. A Finnish story: Introduction

A bit of context in case you your Finnish history needs a reminder. Here you have a brief  introductory text (quickly translate, apologies) to an excellent  one hour documentary that has just appeared on Arte, the French/German public television. (Sadly not yet available in English, so you can test your French, German, Finnish and the striking images which tell a story of their own.)

A century ago, December 6, 1917, Finland proclaimed its independence. Blending archives and testimonies, this enlightening documentary retraces the great events that have marked the history of this young European nation. Attached from the thirteenth century to the Kingdom of Sweden, then swallowed in the early nineteenth by Tsar Alexander I, Finland, the fifth largest territory of the European Union, manages to find its own way after the October Revolution, negotiating their sovereignty with Lenin.

Traumatized since  independence by a deadly civil war, then ravaged during the Second World War by the fighting between the armies of Stalin and those of Hitler,  Finland paid a terrible price during its first half-century of existence.

After WW2 Finland, finding its place in the concert of nations, was the host of the Olympic Games in 1952 before hosting, in 1975, the representatives of the thirty-five signatory states of the Helsinki Accords, which still govern their peaceful cooperation. Begun after the war, the development of his industry has brought the country , with its telecom champion Nokia, in the big leagues of globalization.

Subordination and tragedies

It was in the 16th century, with the first translation of the Bible into Finnish, that the foundation stone of the Finnish “national novel” was laid. Going back in time, Olivier Horn, the film’s director, recounts the centuries of foreign domination and tragedies that Finland traversed before and after their common conquest of independence. Historians, journalists, politicians – including former President of the Republic Tarja Halonen (2000-2012) , novelists (Roman Schatz, Kjell Westö, Sirpa Kähkönen), but also ordinary citizens shed light on the most important events in history of the still  young nation.

Drawing heavily on the archives, the documentary also recalls Finland’s persistent progressive aspirations. The first in Europe to establish women’s right to vote and to be elected to public office in 1906, Finland (5.5 million inhabitants) continues to make youth education the keystone of its success. Relieved by the end of the Cold War, then by the collapse of the USSR of which it was a privileged trading partner, Finland is continuing to make its own way.

 

Part III: You’d be singing too.

# # #

About the 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.)

View complete profile

 

DEMOCRACY CAME LATE TO OUR STREETS (Or, Drivers as Victims)

* Wanted: Curators and contributors for World Streets “Drivers As Victims” Department. Contact eric.britton@ecoplan.org

Drivers as Victims

After a century of fearless and uncontested domination, peace and pandering, car/owner drivers around the planet suddenly find themselves in the midst of a raging process of transition to a very different world of privilege and limitation, laws and enforcement, economics and free rides. And unsurprisingly in their own yes they see themselves as victims: having their territory limited step by step to ever-growing parts of the cityscape where they have long been uncontested kings and queens.

Taiwan East/West New Mobility Innovation Challenge 2017. Events: Getting ready for Taiwan 2017 Collaborative Mission

 

This year’s program combines site visits, brainstorming sessions, conferences, presentations and vigorous questioning, looking, listening and co-learning with my esteemed long time Taiwanese friends and colleagues.from 22 September to 4 October. Among the main events and presentations:

Post Velo-City 2017 Op-Ed: On the need to re-connect cycling discourses with its core values

 –  Esther Anaya-Boig,  Doctoral researcher at Imperial College London

I have just returned from the latest Velo-city Global Cycling Summit organized this year in Arnhem-Nijmegen, The Netherlands. The best part of the conference experience for me was that it gave me an opportunity to catch up with so many old friends and making new ones who share my deep interest in cycling as a mobility form and as a social act.

I appreciate the hard work and good intentions of the many many people who have contributed and made this event possible. However upon considerable reflection on what I saw and heard during the three days of the conference and associated events, I would now like to share some views and reactions, with all due respect of course.

SLOW CITY TRANSITION: NOTES FOR A THINKING EXERCISE _________ “We are the inventors of a new world , my Sir “ ____

The idea of slowing top speeds on traffic in the city to reduce accidents and achieve other important systemic benefits would seem like a pretty sensible, straightforward and affordable thing to do. For a lot of reasons.  Let’s have a look.

Mobilien: Better, Faster, Cheaper. . . than BRT (for Penang)

While Penang is thinking once again about its transportation arrangements, we are hearing a lot of late about BRT and tramways — and rightfully. Both a huge improvement over earlier proposals for a mad spaghetti mix of intrusive monorails, elevated LRT/LRV systems,  Sky Cabs hanging uselessly in the horizon, over-built road infrastructure projects  to serve and encourage yet  more car traffic, and a backbreaking  proposal for a sea tunnel that would bring yet more traffic into the island and in the process extend and multiply today’s traffic mess and associated inconveniencies

But before we make up our minds let’s also give a thought to another less well known mobility option, the Mobilien.  It may be just what you were looking for.

Mobilien is the Paris version of what we know as a bus rapid transit system or a surface mass transport network. Paris has been doing its own version of “bus rapid transit” for decades, and after years of on-street operation and continuous fine-tuning they have now developed a system which they call the “Mobilien” – French for MOBI-lity plus “LIEN” which means link. Linking mobility.

The first Mobilien services hit the street in in Paris 2005, after a careful program  of  analysis and planning which involved taking a fresh look at and coordinating parking policies, delivery practices, treatment of intersections, priority traffic signals, and an increase in service frequencies between important traffic nodes and hubs. . . coordinating all these parts into a unified smart system offering much higher levels of service for their clients. A real competitor for taking your car. Better, and faster, and cheaper too.

Unlike the BRTs that many cities around the world are increasingly  looking at, the Mobilien solution adapts to different city contexts (i.e. street width and specific neighborhood dynamics). Mobilien doesn’t aim at producing high top speeds but making steady progress through the traffic stream. An important goal is to render the services more reliable and on time. To make the project possible, Paris’ officials eliminated much on-street parking to create dedicated bus lanes that are shared with bicycles, taxis and emergency vehicles.

Let’s have a look.

Taiwan Mission Recommendations: 23–30 January 2014 (Draft for Peer Review and Commentary)

 A morning like all others in Taipei traffic

Lyon, 3 February 2015

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It had been a year and a half since I last worked in Taiwan, the longest separation since I started collaborating with colleagues there in 2009. During much of this interval, in addition to my teaching, editorial responsibilities, and advisory work, I have been working on a most challenging new book under the title “General Theory of Transport in Cities”. The book aims to set out what I believe to be a much needed, consistent base for planning, policy and investment decisions in this important and fast changing field where ad hoc decision-making by unprepared politicians and ambitious interest groups has all too often prevailed.

This last year has been a period of deep reflection on my accumulated experience in the transport and sustainable development fields in cities around the world over more than four decades. As a result of this ongoing process, I find myself this time looking at the issues in Taiwan from this broader international perspective. My keynote address to the International Forum on Livable City & Eco-Mobility in Hsinchu on 29 January was the first in a series of international “road tests”, which are giving me a precious opportunity to present some of the main arguments from the book before expert audiences to test them and seek their critical comments and views.  The lively discussions that took place in Hsinchu during the forum and my four days there proved to be most valuable.

The Psychopathology of the Everyday Driver

Sometimes life is simple:

Question: How fast will car drivers speed on any given stretch of road or street, in or out of the city?

Answer: As fast as they can.

Qualification: And if that is not true for every driver on the road (for example you or maybe me), it is true for enough of them such that if road safety is the goal, then this brutal, uncompromising reality must be taken into serious consideration.

Question 2: Now if this is indeed the case (and it most definitely  is!) what if anything can we do about it?

Obligatory National Cycling License (A Modest Proposal)

World Streets, together with a number of our readers and supporters, including city cyclists and others  working in the sector, have decided to take a public position on obligatory National Cycling Licenses.  And that around the world the appropriate agencies and legislative groups, city by city and country by country, will  step forward one at a time and when they are ready to pass into their law a requirement that certain road users must take and pass a rigorous National Cycling License examination.

Getting away with Murder

 In memoriam 2013

Streetsblog: Doing its job year after year in New York City.

Each year our friends over at Streetsblog in New York City publish a heart-rending testimonial to the mayhem that automobiles have wrought over the year on their city’s streets and the cost in terms of lives lost by innocent pedestrians and cyclists. Putting names, faces and human tragedy to what otherwise takes the form of dry numbers, faceless hence quickly forgettable statistics is an important task. We can only encourage responsible citizens and activists in every city on the planet to do the same thing, holding those public officials (and let’s not forget, “public servants”) responsible for what goes on under their direct control.

Who is doing this job in your city?

Weekend musing: Cycling your mind

One of the main strategic underpinnings of New Mobility Agenda, and certainly of everything that appears here in World Streets, is that if we are ever to reinvent transportation in our cities, as we so badly need to do, we must in the process free ourselves from our old ways of seeing, thinking and doing things. For example, when you think “bicycle” . . .

Speeding to a standstill

This is an interesting and useful article. The topic is timely and important. The approach and methodology are interesting.  And in it  you will find a certain number of points  which I regard as timely, important and very much worth saying again and again. In a couple of instances I find their conclusions and interpretations a bit puzzling, but let me keep them to myself for now and avoid getting between you and the authors. It’s time to step aside and let them speak for themselves.

Demand Nirbhaya—Fearless—Cities

– Anumita Roychowdhury, Dehli.  6 Mar, 2013

Catalysing safe design for public spaces should be among the top priorities to make cities safe for women, children and elderly

I first let this pass without comment—the Rs 1,000 crore Nirbhaya fund for women’s safety proposed in the Union Bdget.  Many have glossed over this with a reverent salute to quickly move on to the hard numbers of this stark accounting document. Others are angry, outraged, and dismissive of this fund as tokenism and populism with no clarity of mandate. But I read that paragraph in the budget speech once again.

My attention was riveted to this observation: “As more women enter public spaces—for education or work or access to services or leisure—there are more reports of violence against them.” The operative word here is “public spaces”.  Of course, Chidambaram has used this literally to state the obvious. But if we were to join the dots to write the terms of reference for the ministry of women and child development and other ministries to define the scope and structure of the ‘Nirbhaya fund’, then catalysing safe design for “public spaces” would be among the top priorities.

Transports of delight: Brave New Email World

The trick about sustainable transportation is that it does not stop with your spiffy new Lexus or that surely much-deserved jet trip to vacation in Mexico. It gets us even as you and I sit in our chairs and gravely ponder what to do next to make a difference in this largely unsustained planet. But what about this one small choice to be a bit more carbon-lite in our day to day lives?

Poland has new, more cycle-friendly Highway Code

* * * Click here for full text of this excellent, exemplary message from Poland

Ten reasons I really hate bicycles (and cyclists) in cities.

The following in this morning from an unidentified but  apparently pretty  disgruntled motorist who asked that we make his grievances widely known in the pages of World Streets.  So in the spirit of equal time and with no more ado, we turn over the bully pulpit to him. Sir?

1. Well, first of all, they were all supposed to be out of here by now. It is extremely  irritating that after all we have spent and done to make our cities safe for cars that they are still out there clogging  the streets. This is not right.
   

2011 World Streets Bright Award: City of Basel New Mobility Ticket

We have often said that new mobility is a strategy which is ultimately made up of a very large number of often very small things. And so it is just in this spirit that we have decided to launch a new series in which you are invited to participate. It is the 2011 World Streets Bright Awards, celebrating “great small ideas that can be multiplied by thousands and make a difference”. It’s simple and works like this.

Sustainable Transport and the Importance of Pattern Recognition

In order to turn around a very big boat that is moving in the wrong direction – think global warming or any of the other wrong-way trips that we are currently  locked into when it comes to transport in cities – it helps to be smart, studious and work very hard. But it is if anything even more important to have a feel for what is really going on. And this is where the fine art of pattern recognition comes in.  Pattern recognition: all too often the empty chair when it comes to understanding and decision making in the field of transport policy and practice.  No wonder we are doing so poorly.