1. As an activist international source of innovative ideas, information and contacts.

2. As a wide-open multi-function communications center and tool kit to support and internationalize your activities, inputs and impacts

3. As a fully independent, non-official, non-bureaucratic, non-aligned source of views and critical opinion.

4. As an interactive forum which has set out to incite and support the very widest range of views and approaches - in the knowledge that there are no easy answers to these problems, and that the best responses are going to be those that are hammered together as a result of exchanges and conflict resolution among those most directly involved.

5. As a handy place to announce, test and get critical feedback on your ideas and plans - whether set out in the form of informal working notes, brainstorming pieces, essays, reports, or multimedia materials.

6. As a means for quickly accessing information and materials on these matters that may be taking place in language groups to which you do not have easy access (via the machine translation capabilities that exist both in simplified public version in the site itself, as well as back in The Commons in a much more sophisticated and powerful variant. Thus if, for instance, you have a newsletter or other occasional publication which presently exists only in French, Spanish, Italian, German or Portuguese, we can possibly run a machine translation for you and present the results in handy two column form so that they run as a reading aid for those who do not master that language.)

7. As a conference or event support system with which you may want to consider working if you are planning something along these lines and are interested in making use of the tools and approach that is set out here.

8. As a means for getting support for a project or an idea, including international partners to help in the organization of events, pilot projects or proposals (such as for the various specialized programs of the European Commission which are open to international teams).

9. A source of information and help for students and researchers -- as well as a place to post their results (as an expression of their thanks for the collaboration of the group).

10. Peer reviews of programs and projects - can be organized through the consortium

You may have some ideas about this yourself. We hope that you will share them with the group. There may be others who can profit from your creative thinking, insights and information.

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Eight things you can do to contribute

1. Join the Consortium Discussion Forum, listen to what people have to say, contribute usefully and modestly yourself, suggest and contact others who should be adding their ideas and weight to these discussions and the issues behind them.

2. Suggest and help put us into contact with groups and programs who share these interests and concerns.

3. Send in information and links to leading articles, reports and media materials which can be placed in the Public Library and Links/Media section for others to conveniently access and work with. (If you have any questions about how to do that once you have checked the rather good guidelines on that page, please get in touch.)

4. Challenge and critique the reports and working papers that are being developed and posted here.

5. Post your coming events, conferences, demonstrations, etc.

6. Invite us and others who are active in the field to participate in workshops, public meetings, conferences, etc., where we can present these ideas to critical audiences and profit from their reactions, discussions, and views (especially where they are not in agreement with us or, better yet, way ahead of us in their thinking and actual practices).

7. Help us locate publishers in different languages for the books and media products we are trying to generate through our cooperative action.

8. Provide financial support and technical assistance for this Web site and the work program behind it.

AND TELL US WHAT you don't like, or think we should be trying to do or do better. This is being run as a cooperative group project. So, if you have critical remarks, ideas or suggestions for us, this is the place to turn.

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Who are we trying to engage?

The people and groups that can make a difference. Among them:

• The European Commission, and in particular the new Office of the President of the Commission, the Forward Studies Unit, and the many programs of the various units, DG's and off-shoots -- all of whom are exceptionally well placed to put some fire to the sustainable transport debate and to lay the base for far more experimentation and better exchanges across Europe of information on successful, alternative experiences and approaches around the world.

• The European Parliament, whose approach thus far has been one of rather sleepy periodic interest and debate, with little concrete accomplishment. But whose potential to emerge as a major force not only at the Europe level but on the world stage is very great indeed.

• The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris -- despite the fact that they have consistently and insistently remained within the box on the work issues which, by definition, require out-of-box thinking. The OECD could develop into an important carrier of the new messages, but it must first of course come to understand them (and to practice them, themselves).

• National governments and their institutions with a variety of mandates (transportation, communications, infrastructure, technology, education, quality of life, economic and regional development, etc.), and in particular those who are willing to reach out for new approaches

• Regional and local government who, in our book, are among the most likely to emerge as champions of innovative projects and implementations.

• Foundations, as sources of financial support, counsel, contacts and guidance to make sure that we are putting our energies into directions which are going to be concretely useful to real people and places.

• Industry and business-- which needs help in better identifying these new product and service opportunities in a transport world that is undergoing rapid change.

• The academic and research community which has bgun to braanch out into these less traditional areas, but only at the leading edge. There are many opporutnies for them here to be of real public service, and to provide new kinds of learnng opportunities and growth environments for their own students and faculty.

• The cooperative and volunteer movement, who now have an opportunity to come out of the wings and on to center stage.

• Public interest groups and associations (including those who are concerned with poverty and exclusion)

• And, of course, you!