<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10 (filtered)"> <style>  </style> </head> <body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=blue> <div class=Section1> <div id=ygrp-mlmsg> <div style='float:left;position:relative;z-index:1' id=ygrp-msg> <div id=ygrp-text> --- As I was making my way through the couple of hundred emails that we have exchanges on this subject here over the last seven years, I ran into this one of 10 April 2000, which I am pleased to forward to you now both by way of quick update and also to note that this topic has been around for some time and has not gotten the level of attention that it deserves. Oops! ---- Further to the numerous and most interesting (and in many ways quite discouraging) communications that we have had on this topic in the last months, I would like to share a few thoughts with the group, in the hope that it might open up a line of discussion and eventual action. The motorcycle side of things is certainly a monster problem area when it comes to making transport in cities sustainable in which the twain most definitely does not meet. And furthermore, it is one to which I think we have not yet seen enough focused attention in policy and practice circles. At least not on this side of the world. Thus, when we go about building up sustainable transportation strategies in cities here in, let's call it, the West, we are of course aware of "two-wheelers" -- but most of this usually takes the form of trying to figure out how we can get better at providing safe mobility for people on bicycles. Indeed our sustainable transportation paradigm in the West calls for more, and hopefully a lot more, people in bikes. That's part of the S/T gospel and entirely unquestioned as a laudable objective. And when we get around to motorized two-wheelers at all in our (relatively) cozy contexts here, it is usually with reference to some specific focused issues of safety (wear helmets, drive better, etc.) and, in a few places, noise. And that's it. But as we read all these reports from our colleagues and media articles from the Asia/Pacific region, I am once again reminded of the huge and critical differences in this respect. And while I have lived and worked in Third World cities, one tends to forget... or at least I do. Of course we are aware that the basic problem set that faces our planners and policy makers in Zurich, San Francisco and Bilbao is very different in many respects from those of KL, Manila or Bangkok. But this fact of mega-dependence on two-wheelers on the one hand -- further compounded by the prodigious rate at which motorcycles are now replacing human powered vehicles all over the place (whoosh!), and shift the whole new universe and scale of transport and environment related problems and issues that it brings in its wake... all makes it painfully clear that problem solving in your cities is going to require a whole new tool kit from that we have managed to build up thus far here in the West. So, here is the reality of the situation we face on April 11th, 2000. On the one hand the leading edge of sustainability thinking and practice until now has been here in Europe (with a bit of help from our friends in North America, though more often in theory than in practice), and while the toolkit is not as yet complete nor altogether 100% adequate for all the challenges we face here on this side of the world, it is nonetheless picking up momentum and beginning to do a pretty good job in a growing number of towns and cities. All that's well and good, but certainly no grounds for complacency or self-congratulation. Then there is the other reality. The problems and scales of the cities of the Third World, which are one or two orders of magnitude more challenging in just about any sense than anything we have had to deal with over here - which leads me to propose that we most probably have to get to work now to development a sustainable transportation philosophy and toolkit that is going to be apt and sufficient in the face of these challenges. Consider the example of our recent car-free day project in February in Bogot�. By many measures, it was quite a success. We managed to take something like 800,000 cars off the street and that, warts and all, accomplishments some truly laudable and useful results (see @World Car-Free at <a href="http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday/">http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday/</a> for details) . But when it came the motorcycles.... well, for them we did nothing. Zero. Now in the case of Bogot�, that represents a real oversight but still one that is not so overwhelming that it would essentially negate the purpose of the whole thing we were trying to do. So I continue to be a real proponent of car free days as a useful tool and stepping stone toward sustainable transport, in certain contexts at least. But if we think of a car-free day in a place like Ho Chi Minh Ville here in the year 2000, what a poor joke it would be there. And that is only one example which I take based on personal experience. If we get the private cars off the streets of cities like this, what would we have accomplished? Not a whole hell of a lot. Ditto for carsharing (terrific tool though it is). Ditto for most of what goes by the name of traffic calming. Ditto for metros. Ditto for ITS. Ditto for letting technology and the market take care of the problem. This is not to say that "Sustainable Transport - Mach 1" as we might call it has no lessons or tools to propose. We have indeed learned a lot in the process and much of this can indeed find useful application in the new and greatly expanded toolkit for Third World cites that now has to be built up and put to work. But what is needed stretches way beyond all that. So, I guess that we have to get back to work on the sustainable transport paradigm, and start to develop a toolkit that is going to make sense and be useful in these other contexts. And what better place to begin to do this, than right here on good old Sustran. Eric Britton ecopl@n ___ technology, economy, society ___ Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France Eric.Britton@... URL www.ecoplan.org � </div> </div> </div> </div> </body>  </html>