[sustran] Partnership call for emergency program to show World Cities how to become "Kyoto Compliant"

[EcoPlan, Paris]

Wednesday, February 16, 2005, Paris, France, Europe

 

Dear Sustran Friends,

 

It is only fitting that we make this first international announcement and
partnership call to our dear friends and Sustran, certainly the group to
which I feel the greatest affinity and affection.

 

Let me make a long story short on this, with the most efficient being for me
to refer you directly to the web site that sets out a complete set of
background and working materials - at http://newmobilitypartners.org
<http://newmobilitypartners.org%20/> .  You will see.

 

To get you going on this, I attach below a text version of the Letter of
Transmittal that you will find when you open the site, replete with a
careful set of supporting links which you will see when you get there.

 

To close this out for now, let me repeat the core of the "What can you do to
help/join?) section that closes out the main letter.  

 

1.	Associate your group, program: Let the world know that you think
these issues require high visibility and attention. Add you name and link to
our listing here.

 

2.	Comment on the draft materials & program:   Intensive group
discussions are going to be a big help in firming up this program, and in
setting the stage for the specific pioneering city projects that now need to
follow. 

 

3.	Identify cities, allies:  You may  already have some ideas about
next steps, cities, projects, allies -- and we very much hope that you will
share these with the groups, since any specific initiatives that you might
take will serve to encourage others to get actively involved on their side. 

 

4.	Pass on the message: Please pass on this letter and related
materials to your colleagues, contacts and discussion groups working in
these areas. We are going to need to get the news out to many thousands of
our colleagues and connections world wide if this is to gain the necessary
momentum and support. 

 

5.	Get the media involved: And let the print and electronic media know
as well about what we are trying to do and where to come for more. High
international visibility is part of the toolkit we need to put in place to
make this work. (Click here for latest
<http://ecoplan.org/wtpp/challenge/media.htm>  Media Release).

 

I very much hope that you will join us in this international campaign for a
more sustainable planet, and that you will find that it also provides a good
way to support and gain attention for your own programs and work.

 

With warm wishes from a sunny and clear Paris. (And may we keep it that
way.)

 

Eric Britton

 

 

 

 

 

Subject: Partnership call to help create an emergency  program to show World
Cities how to become "Kyoto Compliant"

 

Wednesday, 16 February 2005 

 

Subject: Partnership call to help create an emergency  program to show World
Cities how to become "Kyoto Compliant"

 

Dear World Transport Colleagues,

 

Today, after the better part of a decade of very hard work on many sides,
the Kyoto Treaty finally enters into effect and with it the obligation of
some 140 nations on this beleaguered planet to do something about their
emissions.  For the advanced industrial economies, the 1990 targets are
going to be very hard to meet: but at least there is now a process in place
which is starting to point the way.  In some parts of the economy.

 

However when it comes to transport in cities, there can be no grounds for
optimism. To the contrary, despite the many useful point improvements  made
by the leading edge cities in recent years, the trend overall  is harshly
moving in the wrong direction: in each we are seeing year after year more
traffic, more pollution, more accidents, more lost time, more unnecessary
deficits, and more urban amenity and quality of life washed away by our
aimless short-sighted policies. 

 

The challenge in brief 

 

Against this background, this is an open invitation to an independent, open,
world-wide  partnership, collaboration and exchange in the area of
sustainable mobility.  And specifically to put before you a working outline
of a proposed innovative public policy action program  in the field of city
transportation improvement still in its very early stages of development,
which has we sincerely believe real potential in the until now hopelessly
unequal struggle to move our cites toward something much closer to
sustainable mobility -- or, let us say, "Kyoto Compliance". 

 

What is useful about this concept is that it is at once short term results
oriented, far-reaching, affordable and realistic. No less important, it
targets highly ambitious near term efficiency and visible environmental
improvements without requiring massive injections of hard earned taxpayer
money.  It also, with the right kind of preparatory work and support, can
offer a very powerful political tool for mayors and city counsels who wish
to offer a better, safer, cleaner and more affordable city to their
electorate.

 

Since you are experts in all this I do not need to waste your time in trying
to convince or educate you on all these details. You know them as well or
better than I. But what I can draw to your attention is a reminder that we
now, in fact, have over all these years of piecemeal improvements and
innovations arrived at a point where we can in fact face this challenge and
do something about it.  If indeed we chose to.  Which is what this letter
and challenge is all about.  

 

So, under these conditions what better can those of us who care do than to
put our heads together and see how we might begin to shape an action agenda
and by our combined skills, contacts and resources carry out the following
three step problem-solving process?

 

*	Clarify in no uncertain terms the crisis before us
*	Develop an action plan that will give visible short term results
*	And place all this firmly in a long term strategic framework that is
going to move us, move our cities to the underlying goals of sustainable
development and social justice.

 

How to achieve this? Here is the core of the strategy that we now propose
for your consideration,  comment, and action:

 

1.	Set out clear, explicit, understandable, ambitious but safely
meetable performance targets in the participating city. 
2.	Make sure you have total commitment of local leaders from the top --
at least to take this through the first Blueprint Go/No-Go phase. 
3.	And a very broad base of public support and participation. 
4.	Highly committed local implementation partners with the technical
virtuosity needed to get the fine detail planned carefully, executed and
then consistently fine-tuned -- and the open community spirit and
orientation needed to get the job done.

 

We are confident that once a leading group of pioneer cities show the way,
this approach will catch the attention of many others and will spread like
wild fire.  Why? Well, because it will have very high public visibility and
because too over these last several decades we have built up our shared
knowledge and competence at the leading edge to make it work.  All that is
needed now is a this first set of high visibility, high impact programs: the
rest will follow.

 

All that of course is still entirely abstract. Let's see if we can be more
focused and useful on this. 

 

Next steps

 

 We today, with this letter and the website behind it at
http://newmobilitypartners.org, invite you and the more than one thousand
international figures with whom we have been in contact on these matters
over the years, to consider how you might get involved in or support the
Kyoto New Mobility Challenge Program. Specifically, we invite you to go
through your files and contacts to see if there is some city or existing
program that you know well that might be brought into the challenge as set
out here.  You will find fairly copious background information on how this
works in the Challenge site, starting with the Execut8ive Summary that
directly follows this letter of invitation. 

 

The idea behind this Call is to see what we can now get together to create a
voluntary international program to encourage and support cities world wide
to take major and massive focused programs to reduce traffic and air
pollution in their area in a very short period of time.  The proposal
involves a two step process.

 

The immediate first step, once we have organized ourselves and got our base
materials and arguments fully in order, will be to find a certain number of
cities and teams ready to show the way by preparing intensive local reviews
to determine what can be done across the transportation sector and in the
surrounding areas to achieve in the city  major targeted reductions (we have
chosen the target of 20% for examination in each case) within a very short
(20 month?) period (after all this is an emergency).  We feel that with
strong local support at all levels and the necessary know-how, each city
team will be able to come up with a strong local program that is going to
succeed in showing the way.  Step 2 is the actual program, which will take
place within the twenty month (or whatever you decide) target period.

 

What you can do to help

 

Why are we contacting you on this today? Well, because we know from years of
international experience that programs such as this require highly
qualified, energetic, well placed local partners who know the issues and the
trade-offs well and have the technical capacities and networks to tailor and
make this approach work in their city.   

At the end of the day this approach is as much political as it is technical,
and its pioneering nature makes it rather more than just one more
transportation project. And it is for this reason that we have set out to
look for partners capable of facing these challenges in a first handful of
cities ready to move ahead to prove these ideas for themselves and as
pioneers showing the way to sustainable mobility when it is needed (i.e.,
now!). 

 

If you are one of our informed international colleagues or someone who knows
these issues and the problems behind them, you can quite possibly do a great
deal.  And while you will of course have your own ideas on all this, here is
a very short list to get you going: 

 

6.	Associate your group, program: Let the world know that you think
these issues require high visibility and attention. Add you name and link to
our listing here.

 

7.	Comment on the draft materials & program:   Intensive group
discussions are going to be a big help in firming up this program, and in
setting the stage for the specific pioneering city projects that now need to
follow. 

 

8.	Identify cities, allies:  You may  already have some ideas about
next steps, cities, projects, allies -- and we very much hope that you will
share these with the groups, since any specific initiatives that you might
take will serve to encourage others to get actively involved on their side. 

 

9.	Pass on the message: Please pass on this letter and related
materials to your colleagues, contacts and discussion groups working in
these areas. We are going to need to get the news out to many thousands of
our colleagues and connections world wide if this is to gain the necessary
momentum and support. 

 

10.	Get the media involved: And let the print and electronic media know
as well about what we are trying to do and where to come for more. High
international visibility is part of the toolkit we need to put in place to
make this work. (Click here for latest
<http://ecoplan.org/wtpp/challenge/media.htm>  Media Release).

 

There are many ways now for you to get in touch, including one Click for
direct browser contact <http://ericbritton.sightspeed.com/>  which will link
you directly via your browser to our offices here.  Try it.  Or come to
Paris and let's talk about it.  Click here
<http://ecoplan.org/general/contact.htm>   for details on organizing your
trip and stay here.  Even without leaving the city we can show you some of
the interesting things that are going on here . . . including not least the
results of our mayor's commitment to cut private car use in the city by a
steady 3% per year. Come and have a look at how this is working.  It may
give you some ideas. 

 

With all good wishes and kindest thanks for your collaboration,

 

Eric Britton

New Mobility Agenda <http://newmobility.org/> 

 

 

Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara          75006 Paris, France

E: postmaster at newmobility.org          T: +331 4326 1323  

 

 

 

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