[sustran] Re: New Mobility/Year Agenda - Fast 2006 Update

[Walter Hook]

Eric
 
It seems from what I can gather that 'xTransit' is basically a shared
radio taxi.  No?  
 
Certainly there are shared taxis in plenty of locations, like from the
Salt Lake City airport to Park City, and there were functioning as
shared radio taxis in New York during the transit strike.   Shared taxis
are typical in developing countries, though usually without the radio.
I think in a few circumstances, like where there is a carpool rule in
effect or an HOV lane on major access routes to a city center (as was
the case in New York during the transit strike) that private companies
might offer a shared radio taxi service.  
 
Do we really need a very amorphous term like 'xTransit' to describe a
shared radio taxi?  I am not convinced.  Am I missing something? 
 
Walter 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org] On
Behalf Of Eric Britton
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 12:00 PM
To: WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com
Cc: Sustran-discuss at jca.apc.org
Subject: [sustran] New Mobility/Year Agenda - Fast 2006 Update
 
New Mobility/Year  Agenda - Fast 2006 Update
1.      The New Mobility Agenda <http://www.newmobility.org/>  at
http://www.newmobility.org has undergone a major overhaul. You should
find it more informative, transparent and easier to find what you are
looking for once there. Have a look and if it is not good/useful enough
for you, let me know.
2.      Cruising speed:  World Carshare <http://worldcarshare.com/> ,
World Car Free <http://worldcarfreeday.com/>  Days , and the Agenda
<http://www.newmobility.org/>  itself . . . are all on a roll. (As is
The Commons <http://ecoplan.org/> .) Steadily improving and extending
coverage, brining in new members, offering new tools, and doing their
bit for sustainability. If you are following any of these, you will know
about all that. But if not (yet), let us invite you in to have a look.
Who knows, you may stay around for a while.
3.      xTransit <http://www.newmobility.org/> : Yes, again one of our
strange words. But it appears to be needed to pull together all the many
bits and pieces so as to provide a coherent platform for discussions and
exchange on what has to be the hottest transportation topic on the
Agenda:  <http://www.ecoplan.org/general/go-to-xtransit.htm> The "third
way" of getting around.
<http://www.ecoplan.org/general/go-to-xtransit.htm> Getting people
around in cities in road vehicles, smaller than full sized buses, driven
by real human beings, dynamically shared with others, and aided by state
of the art communications technologies as the only way to offer "car
like" mobility in most of our 21st century cities without killing the
cities.  Check it out via http://www.newmobility.org 
4.      Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge <http://www.kyotocities.org/>
: This perhaps most important of our collaborative projects has sat on
the sidelines over these last months while we hammered away with our
limited resources at other parts of The Commons, with the thought that
this work on the concomitant parts of the New Mobility Agenda were going
to be important raw materials for making this policy project zing.
What's missing? The link between our very real collective hands-on
competence in terms of how people can get about in cities, sustainably,
and all those higher visibility programs that are out there are
targeting climate issues, mayors' Kyoto initiatives (but where is the
hard core of their transportation proposals), et al -- but few with the
kind of transportation competence that is needed to make real progress
out there on the city streets.  Can you help us make those links with
these other groups and the cities themselves? So far, we have not been
able to do this job. 
5.      United Nations Car Free Days <http://www.newmobility.org/> :
This one got stuck somewhere in some office in that big building in New
York. Have a look at what we propose on the site and let us know if you
have any ideas for this great cause. It is too important, too good to
end its life there in some drawer.  Pop in and have a look at our
proposal for next steps.
6.      Our Wikipedia New Mobility Projects
<http://www.newmobility.org/> : Promise! There is more to this than you
may at first blush think. Our goal here is to stimulate our informal
international expert consortium to "put our brains together", and in the
process to tap our collective intelligence to build a free,
high-quality, comprehensive on-line encyclopedia and get out the word
that solutions are in sight. For the benefit of all in a world in which
old ideas and old and bad practices die hard. (We want to help them out
the door.)
7.      Self-Organizing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Organizing_Collaborative_Network>
Collaborative Networks:  Sound kind of familiar. Well that in fact is
almost exactly what we are here. And since that is the case, we have set
out to examine this concept more closely and in public. For more on
this, you are invited to turn to the new entry in Wikipedia on this, and
to join in with your ideas and additions.  (It reads quite nicely with
the in-process entry on Knowledge Building
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_building>  and Self Organization
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization>  which I also invite
you to have a go at.  They are all part of what we are dong here, and
since we have between us some years of hands-on experience together in
this, who better than we can help define the meaning of these terms in
the field of policy and practice)
8.      Finance:  Oops. Big problem. Big challenge. Normally I do the
heavy lifting here, paying for all of this out of my consultancy
earnings. But I have been spending too much time with these programs,
and we need to find new ways to pay for it. Now, we are going to keep
all this going one way or anther but it ain't easy. We are not looking
for your money (that would corrupt the whole concept of being 'off the
economy' which is so central to all we do. But it would be good to have
your ideas about possible foundations or other sources of support. Or
your thoughts on how to integrate some parts of all this into some form
of 21st century cash machine (a la Skype, Google, who knows, but no
ads). 

Failing any ideas on that, what you can do is to write me a brief letter
with some kind of "attestation" that all this work is serving some
useful purposes, at least as far as you are concerned. Than if you can
properly sign it so that you are properly and impressively identified, I
can then place that into our eventual applications as we start to shop
around for support.
 
There we have it as this New Year opens up before us, with its
challenges and its opportunities. As you may have noticed we remain
entirely optimistic that we have the means to deal with these problems,
and that the only thing we need to find is a bit of imagination and
solidarity to put all our big brains and even bigger hearts to work.
 
 
Eric Britton
 
The New Mobility Agenda is on line at http://www.newmobility.org 
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara                     75006 Paris, France
Tel:  +331 4326 1323                                        Skype:
ericbritton
E:  <mailto:mobility at ecoplan.org> mobility at ecoplan.org
Backup:  <mailto:fekbritton at gmail.com> fekbritton at gmail.com
 
EcoPlan International                Innovation consultancy/advisory
New Ways to Work in an Information Society:  <http://www.xwork/>
http://www.xWork.org
9440 Readcrest Drive                              Beverly Hills, CA
90210
T. +1 310 601-8468   E:  <mailto:eric.britton at ecoplan.org>
eric.britton at ecoplan.org  Skype: xWork-on-line
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20060103/fd2df8de/attachment.html