[sustran] Draft proposal to Principal Voices team - For comment

[EcoPlan, Paris]

Tuesday, December 21, 2004, Paris, France, Europe

 

Dear Sustainable World Colleagues,

 

I intend to post the following, or some version of it, tomorrow to the
Principal Voices team -- http://www.principalvoices.com
<http://www.principalvoices.com/>  -- with whom we now appear to have found
an effective communications channel in the person of  Stan Stalnaker of
Fortune. As you will possibly note, it is along the lines of a 'gate crash'
as suggested by the indomitable Dave Wetzel of Transport for London. 

 

If you have any thoughts or suggestions to modify or improve on this, I
would be most grateful to receive them at your first convenience.  I have
tried hard to be a good representative for what I believe to be our shared
philosophy, and as you will note I have put myself further as our 'voice',
which may or my not be the best idea.  I am as always open to better ones.

 

You know, it is my personal philosophy that occasions like this do not pass
twice, so when they come up we must reach out and seize them. And so it is
here.

 

Your call.

 

Salamaat, Shalom, and Merry Christmas,

 

Eric Britton

 

******************************************************

 

Dear Stan,

 

I appreciate your friendly note of Mon 12/20/2004 and in particular your
volunteering to serve as a channel of communication in the event that we
have anything of interest to convey to those people who are making your
program work. Since time is short with your January start-up date barely ten
days away, I should indeed like to get the following comments and
suggestions to your team without delay.

 

1.         Principal Voices Problem - The Transportation dialogue

 

In short and speaking in the name of more than one thousand professionals
from more than fifty countries with a long term interest and true hands-on
experience and competence in matters of transportation policy and practice
internationally, I would like to draw your attention to what we regard as
two significant shortcomings in your important project as currently framed.
I address you here specifically on the matter of your transportation section
and would like to propose a couple of simple fixes, which I might add I have
shared worth our several peer networks just to be sure that there is no
major objection in principle to what follows.

 

First, you need at least one more transportation voice, possibly two, to
have full and competent coverage of the field as it is now defined (we call
this New Mobility, as opposed of course to old mobility, but more on that
just below).  Does this imply that I think there is anything wrong with
having Mr. Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan as leading voice?  Not at all. To the
contrary I think it is most exciting to have him willing to join in here as
a representative of contemporary thinking and expertise on one side of the
sustainable transport debate - after all a truly remarkable man: "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". I think it is fair to say that his
expertise will do honor to the primarily supply oriented, engineering, build
it and they will come perspective of the transportation challenge, but that
is at best only half the story.  The rest of the story is if anything in
this day and age even more important, so in a moment I will get to our
suggestion as to how this might be quickly remedied. 

 

The second shortcoming of the current plan is your utter lack of a true
feedback and open debate forum - this is definitely going to limit the
profile, reach, usefulness and contribution of the final product.  (Not only
that you are going to limit the newsworthiness of the whole thing, which I
imagine is also a factor that need to be brought into the picture,
especially given who you people are.)  True enough Time, Fortune and CNN are
all three at heart basically broadcast media, and true too each is
increasingly interactive - why so? because it's cheap, can get valuable
content, greater variety of views, and via its vigor and lively debate bring
each of you more faithful customers.  But in this case you seem to be pretty
lagged in that department, and what you present thus far is a crystal clear
example of one more of those tiring 'managed debates' of which we have seen
far too many.  We see this all the time in transport and environmental
circles, and if you chose to persist in this in the end you always have a
dead product. which I am sure is not what you folks want. 

 

2.         Background - The missing half of the mobility story

 

While the author of your transport issues paper has made a fair stab at
integrating the more complex sustainability issues in the introduction - and
in particular  is to be commended for his choice of External Links which
really does provide a pretty good coverage of the various and quite
different points of view - the bottom line of your piece is that it is a
plea for (a) more supply, (b) waiting for the right time to do better, and
(c) tempering 'calls for reason' about not doing anything reach that might
render the plight of  the hard-pressed existing suppliers of products and
services any worse. But dear friends, this is only one point of view, and if
you are indeed to live up to your promise of a wide international debate,
you have to reach far broader than that.

 

One starting place to turn for more and better is The New Mobility Agenda
and its extensive international network of practitioners and proponents.
You can find extensive background on the philosophy and accomplishments of
this informal, independent but not ineffective international grouping if you
go to http://newmobility.org <http://newmobility.org/> .  You may also find
good value in the handful of international 'conversations' about and
expertise on these matters which feed into this movement: via our own New
Mobility Cafe at NewMobility at yahoogroups.com, the Sustainable Transport
Action Network for Asia and the Pacific (SUSTRAN Network)at
http://www.geocities.com/sustrannet/, the Universities' Transport Study
Group. at http://www.utsg.net/, and Institute for Transportation and
Development Policy, the http://www.itdp.org/

 

These fora and the individuals and groups behind them offer a clear cut,
leading edge, world level state of the art, 21st century awareness of the
issues and the full range of solutions -- and while there is no aversion on
the part of most of us to building new systems and expanding infrastructure
in specific cases, we tend to be far more reserved and I would like to say
sophisticated, and indeed practical, when it comes to better management of
the infrastructure and systems we already have in place. Moreover, we tend
too to be rather ambitious when it comes to the creative integration of new
communications technologies into the overall systemic infrastructure, and
that too might be one of the more promising avenues of the discussions and
debate.

 

Bottom line: Unless you find a way to factor in not only the points of view
of the people and groups who constitute this new leading edge in transport
thinking and policy, you will end up with a tame kitty.  It's that simple.

 

Now how to get the structure in shape to do this job.  Well there are a
number of possibilities as you may well image, but here you have my no-wait
proposal.

 

3.         Solution proposed

 

The Voices:

 

First and with characteristic modesty, I propose that you add my name as a
'voice'  to your transportation component to ensure that the New Mobility
Agenda approach is also fairly and fully represented.  My thought is that I
can then act as a relay to ensure that our collective voices, principal too,
are heard.  Why me? Well, because I am here, generally competent from this
perspective, pretty much able to work the network that you need to bring in,
and ready to do to work on this because I think it's important.  Also since
time is short, I would save you the beauty contest to find someone better.

Who else?  Well, you have three slots for the Environment and Business
'Conversations' and I think we should have three for our critical
transportation dialogue as well. I know several dozen each of whom could do
a fine job at this, but time is short so I have to work with what comes most
immediately to mind in this specific context.  Here you have two candidates
each of whom with deep qualifications and records of accomplishment, a
strong international reach, with ideas that often diverge from my own, who
might do very well indeed here (maybe better than me in fact but forget I
said that):

o        Walter Hook, who is Executive Director of the Institute for
Transportation and Development Policy, a Non-governmental Organization
dedicated to promoting environmentally sustainable and equitable
transportation policies and projects in developing countries and Central and
Eastern Europe, and whom you can reach at whook at itdp.org; and/or

o        Lee Schipper, who currently is Co-Director, of the EMBARQ project
of the World Resources Institute, and who has done quite a lot with your
Shell sponsors (which might help ease the pain). schipper at wri.org.  Moreover
since the closing transport debate is slated for Mexico City, a place where
Lee works pretty extensively, it might be good to have him there to factor
in his competence and presence for the physical events.  That's
schipper at wri.org

 

The Debate Forum/Discussions:

 

We will be pleased to work with you to set this up in a way that will do the
job. The idea is that it should be wide open, lively, well plugged in to the
full range of expertise and views, and that it be well managed to stay on
topic.  Also since the web technology on all this is moving along quite
smartly, this could be a good occasion for us to work with your best
technical people to find a really strong, readable, appealing way to handle
this.

 

A Final Thought for you: Other Technologies to integrate into this process.

 

*	Have a look at http://newmobilitypartners.org and see if any of the
dialoguing and conferencing options set out there might be put to good use
in this context.  It is worth at least a thought.

 

There you have it Principal Voice friends. We invite you to respond to this
and work with us, because we think it is important.  And because if you
truly believe in sustainable development and social justice, it's just the
right thing to do.

 

Best,

 

Eric Britton

 

Convener, The New Mobility Agenda at http://newmobility.org
<http://newmobility.org/> 

Free video/voice conferencing at http://newmobilitypartners.org
<http://newmobilitypartners.org/>   

 

The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative at http://ecoplan.org
<http://ecoplan.org/>  

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