[sustran] Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia and the Pacific (the SUSTRAN Network).

[Eric Britton]

Paris, Wednesday, June 03, 2009

 

Dear Sustran Friends,

 

This forum has been so very useful since the day in October 1999 -- almost
ten years ago already? --  that I signed in to join  Paul Barter as the
first enthusiastic participant in this great collaborative adventure. But
after years of vitality, we appear  to have lost steam, So with your
permission I would like to swap a few ideas with you all - after all there
are 133 of us - about ways in which we can now be more useful to each other.
And above all to be able to make much needed contributions to the reform to
sustainable  transport in the Sustran region.  Here are my best thoughts on
this today:

 

1.      Expand membership: We need to recruit new members, bring in new
blood, energy and ideas.  What if each of us reaches out at least to one
respected colleague to bring them into this group dialogue?  More than one,
great!



2.      Extend regional coverage: And certainly if we can stretch our wings
in China, Korea and other parts of the region who until now have been
notably absent in the exchanges. We need to hear from them about projects,
initiatives and ideas in and from their countries - including very bad ideas
and policies, awareness of which is surely part of our job. We just do not
thus far have a sufficiently wide reach within our region.



3.      Gender parity: And we do need to bring more women into this great
forum. More than 90% of our group are X- chromosome deficient. Not only
that, we know that transport policy and investment have in the past - i.e.,
the mess in which we find ourselves today - have been the exclusive domain
of males. We need not only to bring in women leaders and participants in the
new mobility movement to ensure transport that is not only equitable but
also efficient and well matched to the needs of all. Strong female
participation at the top is about the only way that I can think of to bring
this about.



4.      World Streets inputs: I have tried to juice things up here in
Sustran on two occasions by plugging us into the World Streets stream, but
to my mind this is too aggressive and too generalist to be appropriate to
our concerns here. Thus I will cut off this automatic feed tomorrow and
instead share with you all more selectively. 



5.      Of course we want to have you signing into World Streets on a
regular basis - www.worldstreets.org.  It is after all - or at least this is
the way I see it and am trying to execute - a natural complement and
extension to Sustran. 

 

So here we are in what is truly an age of and time for new mobility, and if
anyone needed a wake-up call they now have it with the sudden shrinkage of
the hard core of the old mobility age, the end really of GM and Chrysler as
we knew them.  We need to be here to take up the relay. This is our
opportunity.

 

Let's put Sustran and World Streets in the front row.  

 

Warm regards from Paris dear colleagues,

 

Eric Britton 

 

 

                       World Streets (Plan B)

cid:image001.jpg at 01C8DAF3.F7EBC130 

               Technology transforms time and space

                                             . . . and our minds

 

  New Mobility Partnerships  - http://www.newmobility.org
<http://www.newmobility.org/>  

       & check out World Streets -- www.Worldstreets.org
<http://www.worldstreets.org/>  

      Europe:   8/10 rue Joseph Bara,     75006 Paris,  France    

        T:  +331 4326 1323  or  +339 7044 4179   Skype: ericbritton

 

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