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Some New Mobility clues

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New Mobility clues

The only thing that this will cost you will be the time and thought you need to invest to engage the issues set out here. What was it that Henry Ford once famously said: "Of all the kinds of work I know, thinking is surely the hardest. Which I guess is why people do so little of it" ;-

Contested Streets: Breaking NYC Gridlock is the result of a creative partnership initiated by the New York based activists Transportation Alternatives and the film-makers Cicala Filmworks, who have collaborated to produce a full length documentary film that explores the rich diversity of New York City street life before the introduction of automobiles -- and then goes on to show how New York can follow the example of other modern cities that have reclaimed their streets as vibrant public spaces.

Our friend and colleague Robert Stussi from Portugal and member of the Advisory Council, was in the Dutch city of Groningen for a meeting in May of this year that was honoring the work of the illustrious and highly innovative traffic planner Hans Monderman (also a member of our New Mobility team) for his outstanding contributions in traffic safety and life quality on city streets -- and he decided to film what he was seeing on the streets of that city. He titles this impromptu street interview, 'A Homage to Hans Monderman". (And in case you think that all this is OK for some poor little Dutch town but not for you, bear in mind that average incomes in Groningen, a city of 180,000, are in excess of $35,000 a year. Got it? Have all the money you need and take a bike? Not a SUV or Hummer? The man is talking about culture here. Culture and quality of life)
Click here to see what the street looks like right now. (Image in own window.)

Walter Hook of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy takes us on a world tour of some of the outstanding transport innovations that are already changing the face of some of our world cities, helping us understand how the North can learns from the lessons of the South. He looks at the exploding BRT scene in which several dozen cities are moving ahead with new projects, public space conversion projects (where street space is reclaimed from overbuilt traffic infrastructure), downtown street closures, the bike and ped revolution, traffic calming implementations, rickshaw modernization (and job preservation), congestion charging, and other projects in cities around the world that are, in his words, 'going that extra mile'.

Manual for Streets.
The purpose of this UK publication is to consolidate the necessary components for effective street design into a single integrated source of information and guidance that will facilitate professional communication and understanding. The manual recognises the full range of design criteria necessary for the delivery of multi-functional streets and ensure that practitioners have the most up to date information available on the considerations relevant to those criteria, including quantitative thresholds where appropriate.

Make them pay .
Full title of this 2006 report of Environmental Defense handily stated as: No More Just Throwing Money Out the Window: Using Road Tolls to Cut Congestion, Protect the Environment, and Boost Access for All.
You may also wish to consult their Website for further background, powerpoint talks related to PPPs and tolling. There is also an article in the Washington Post.

A charming view that catches the spirit of its time, Canadian style. This is the Canadian Moving the Economy's multi-media presentation of A Day In The Life of New Mobility premiered at the New Mobility Industry Forum in Toronto as a narrated PowerPoint presentation.