The following in the context of our long standing xTransit interests and work (http://www.xtransit.org).  Eric Britton

 

We extensively use the automated radio dispatch system in Glasgow which has revolutionised taxi use The reduction in dead miles, better estimating of waiting time, pre-booking, multi fare consolidation etc all stem from this.

 

We also use Traintaxi to local a local operator to book for the arrival time of our train in real time – so you arrive knowing that your cab is waiting as you step from the train.

 

Then there is the use of a taxi with the bicycle, only in Denmark I think is this a legal requirement. (anyone offer to post chapter & verse?).  We also use the taxi as a workhorse to collect goods and deliver these locally and thus reduce van-miles – taxis have delivered a flat-worth of laminate flooring, a flat pack kitchen, and many other purchases for which many would consider the private car the only way to deliver. To this end the London cab has much to commend it in its current TX-2 design, as an urban workhorse.

 

An interesting comment here is that taxis specifically built as utility vehicles are rarely stolen…..just like buses, and Kopenhavn City Bikes.

 

Finally with access legislation driving the specification of vehicles which can be licensed, we are seeing in the UK, vehicles which can be used both as cargo carriers and ambulances, which gives a useful tool in the emergency planning folder.  If all the local cab fleet is specified as capable of taking a wheelchair, or stretcher with simple changes to the interior arrangements, then a fleet of ambulances, or the backbone of a supply chain, is available embedded in the local community, and along with buses (proven in London’s major bomb attack as the means to move walking wounded to hospital swiftly*) have great flexibility in a public emergency.  Such an ability to requisition the cab & driver if the need arises can be written in to the licensing (as the Danish Bike rule).  (We sadly observed that a local tragedy in childbirth could have been avoided if those involved had had the presence of mind to simply call a cab and pay the fare when there were delays in getting an ambulance (free) for the journey to the hospital – ambulance controllers might consider this as a fall-back option when resources are overstretched)

 

*A hint here for our local planners is to design the reception area for the major emergency hospital to handle the largest buses operating locally (some of ours are so car-oriented they cannot be easily accessed by a full size bus)

 

The following in the context of our long standing xTransit interests and work (http://www.xtransit.org).  Eric Britton

 

Actualités / News 18/10/2006

The taxi, urban mobility solution of the future
September 20-21, 2007, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon

Invitation to submit papers
International colloquium on taxis
and World Taxi Festival

It is part of the imagery of our cities, of the colour of the city, of the traveller's memories. The driver is sometimes the first person you meet when exploring a city, a kind of ambassador. A figure in our day-to-day lives, a character in the movies, the taxi driver plays an essential role both in urban travel and in our representations of the city. In partnership with the city of Lisbon and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the City on the Move Institute is combining the scientific and technical with the festive and cultural in its approach to the taxi. In this way, it hopes to open up and prime the debate on the potential of the taxi as one element in the future solution to urban mobilities.

Invitation to submit papers to the colloquium
Under the scientific supervision of Richard Darbéra, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS / LATTS ) and José Viegas, Professor at the Lisbon Higher Technical Institute.
This colloquium is addressed to professionals, experts in urban transportation, researchers, city officials, elected politicians. Through a resolutely innovative, forward-looking and cross-disciplinary approach, it seeks to foster an exchange of experience and to bring out new ideas for sustainable mobilities that are consistent with lifestyles in the modern city, where the taxi has a key role to play.
The objective of this colloquium is to analyse the factors that inhibit the growth of taxi services, to evaluate the potential of the taxi, and to propose technical, social, organizational and economic solutions...

Three themes
- new demand and new services in urban mobility
- improvements in performance and productivity through new technologies
- integrating the taxi into the city

To find out more about the program, the format of contributions and to submit a proposal directly online before November 15, 2006 :

http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com/uk/index.html
colloque.taxi@...

 

Le taxi, solution d'avenir pour les mobilités urbaines
Les 20 et 21 septembre 2007, Fondation Gulbenkian, Lisbonne

Appel à communication
Colloque international sur les taxis
et fête des taxis du monde

Il fait partie de l'imaginaire de nos villes, de ses couleurs, des souvenirs des voyageurs. Son chauffeur est parfois le premier interlocuteur de celui qui découvre une ville. Acteur de notre vie quotidienne, personnage de cinéma, il joue un rôle essentiel dans les déplacements urbains et dans nos représentations urbaines. En partenariat avec la ville de Lisbonne et la Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, l'Institut pour la ville en mouvement associe une approche scientifique et technique à un regard plus festif et culturel. Il entend ainsi ouvrir et enrichir le débat sur la question du taxi comme solution d'avenir pour les mobilités urbaines.

Appel à communication pour le colloque
Sous la direction scientifique de Richard Darbéra, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS / LATTS ) et José Viegas, professeur à l'Institut supérieur technique de Lisbonne.
Ce colloque s'adresse aux professionnels, aux experts des transports urbains, chercheurs et responsables de villes, élus. Il vise, par le décloisonnement des disciplines et une approche résolument innovante et prospective, à échanger les expériences, faire émerger des idées nouvelles pour promouvoir des mobilités durables et adaptées aux modes de vie dans la ville contemporaine, où le taxi doit trouver toute sa place.
L'objectif est d'analyser les facteurs de blocage du développement des taxis mais aussi leurs potentiels, et, de proposer des pistes techniques, sociales, organisationnelles, économiques...

Trois thèmes
- les nouvelles demandes et les nouveaux services de mobilités urbaines
- le développement des performances et de la productivité grâce aux nouvelles technologies
- l'intégration du taxi dans la ville

Pour en savoir plus sur le programme, le format des contributions et pour envoyer une proposition directement en ligne avant le 15 novembre 2006 :

http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com/taxi/index.html
colloque.taxi@...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the direct information you would best contact what was called the Glasgow Radio Taxi Operators Association, who are a co-operative not for profit company covering around 70% of the cabs operating in the city (last time I checked). http://www.glasgowtaxisltd.co.uk/index.php

 

I came across this when working with the Glasgow group participating in the WHO Healthy Cities Project on Transport & Health.  I was impressed by their recent move to computer assisted dispatch, and this has progressed to a system aware of all the cabs in each sector of the town, a recognition of your incoming call as a regular customer (press 1 for immediate call of a taxi to this address), stored regular bookings automatically made, direct online booking for registered users, phone call when taxi is about to arrive etc.  With this system you could actually remove the need for large taxi ranks at specific locations, and simply have a push call button at the roadside.  

 

One very interesting detail is how the poorer areas with low car ownership actually make greater use of taxis, as the car you pay for only when you need it.  Unfortunately the design of the local supermarkets has been to the standards set by car ownership thinking and the taxis sit over 50 metres from the store with a resulting tangle of shopping trolleys which no one thought to provide for collection of.

 

That leads to another detail which I think is misunderstood.  Most shopping trolleys are not maliciously taken off-site for dumping in canals etc.  People use them in much the same way as they used to use shopping baskets on wheels, but the shopping trolley cannot be carried on to the bus or in to the taxi, or up the front steps and stored in the house, and used for moving not only groceries, but any large items (eg flatpack furniture, coal, garden planting medium, etc).  Rather than try to stop people taking the things find out why they are taking them and make it easier to re-use the trolley for the next shopping trip.

 

My background stems from a long history of interest in transport, logistics and engineering I’ve been a British Rail management trainee, and built cycle routes, as well as studying Travel Demand Management (and practising what I preach)

 

 

 

All this sounds very exciting, almost too good to be true. Glasgow case study might be THE contribution I was waiting for! However I would very much appreciate to read more about it.

Dear Friends,

 

If you follow the discussions here, it may be useful for you to know a bit more about how the New Mobility Agenda websites and focus discussion groups are organized. The following note intends to do that job.

 

We have talked about email overload in the past, and just below you will see our suggestions on how to avoid that unpleasant state of affairs.

 

Eric Britton

 

 

The New Mobility Agenda – Focus programs and peer discussions

 

The New Mobility Agenda has a twenty year track record as a fully independent, open, and diversified world wide collaborative peer program concerned with showing how progress can be made, step by careful step, toward more sustainable communities and lives by creating more human and more efficient transportation arrangements.

 

The Agenda has been organized into a cluster of related but specific focus groups -- each with its own targeted concerns, working style and membership base. For each program (indicated here in large font), there is a corresponding discussion forum and shared library which can be reached directly in all cases via the top menu (where it may be marked as Forum, Café, or Idea Factory). The discussions are lightly but firmly moderated to ensure that they keep on track, produce more light than heat, and generally provide good value for the busy participants.  See the final section of this note for a few use hints.

 

Welcoming Note: Before actually participating actively in any of the groups, we invite you  most energetically to read our Welcoming Note here. Also: There are pretty good internal Search tools in most of the following. These help to turn what are otherwise just ephemeral one-time messages into useful  and in many cases quite substantial databases. Give it a try using your selected keywords.

 

Email overload?: Some busy readers may wish to sign into the Daily Digests, particularly for the New Mobility Idea Factory and the Lots Less Cars Café, both of which can get quite busy from time to time and generate what may to some prove an uncomfortable flow of email and references. No problem.  Click to the forum in question, go to “Edit Membership” on their top menu, click and put yourself down for the Daily Digest, preferably in their quite nice “Fully Featured” version.

The New Mobility Agenda (The Politics of Transportation.) – at http://www.newmobility.org

The New Mobility Idea Factory, opened its virtual doors in 1988 as the Access Café, offering a free, public, flexible discussion space for our international peers, concerned citizens and groups who feel that our transport systems need to be, and can be made to be, more sustainable and more just -- and who wish to freely exchange ideas and information about it.  Unlike most generally similar fora the focus is above all on the Politics of Transportation. The orientation of the exchanges is strategic, informed and generally sober if often quite contentious.

 

Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge:  -- http://www.kyotocities.org

The Kyoto Cities Forum  Since 2004 a reserved area for announcements and discussions in support of Kyoto World Cities Program, Organized around a single question:   "What can you do in your city to reduce traffic and its negative impacts dramatically (say on the order of 20%) in a very short period (we propose 20 months), and within your existing transportation budget."

 

Lots Less Cars in Cities Idea Factory – http://www.lotslesscars.org

Lots Less Cars Forum "What we are looking at here is not quite zero cars (in most places) but, let us say, many fewer cars in our cities, a more tranquil environment, and a lot more safe and happy people." Free flow exchanges & shared information on how to address and achieve "less car" solutions to the challenges of transport in cities. Lots on non-motorized transport and traffic reduction measures. And lots of disagreement. Quite activist, rather informal and laid-back.  

 

New Mobility Advisory/Briefs – at http://newmobilitybriefs.org

The New Mobility Idea Factory  serves as the forum for the Briefs.  Informs and advises local government and concerned agencies about measures and policy options which can get visible results within a time horizon of two to three years. Supported by Accelerated Learning Sessions which tackle key topics in intense three day workshops, the first  being organized in Monaco for European subscribers and other s interested from 29-31 March 2007: The Monaco New Mobility Policy Dialogues: Accelerated Learning for City Managers, Planners and Decision-makers

World Transport Policy & Practice – http://www.wtransport.org

The World Transport Forum goes back more than a decade, and at present serves more than five hundred transportation experts, activists and policy makers world wide. The main business of the forum is to provide support and interactive discussion space for the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice. For exchanges of a more general nature on the transport-environment theme try the New Mobility Agenda and its Idea Factory.

 

Global South Mobility – http://www.globalsouthmobility.org

Global South - Sustran Network : Global South Mobility provides a Collaborative relay station for world-wide information and discussions. The forum is run by Sustran - the Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia & the Pacific -- an email discussion list devoted to people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South'). Sustran: a major discussion forum on urban transport in developing countries." Discussions are well focused, expert-based and of very high quality.

The Gender, Equity and Transport Forum - http://www.gatnet.net/

GATNET - Gender and Transport - This is the discussion group of a community of practice that began with a program on mainstreaming Gender into the World Bank's Transport Sector. It is open to all those who are interested in issues relating to improving mobility and access for poor women, children and men in developing countries.

 

World Carshare Consortium – http://worldcarshare.com

Carshare Café: This free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, world wide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers.

 

World Car Free Days – http://worldcarfreeday.com

The Lots Less Cars in Cities Forum – also serves for Car Free Day exchanges. This program resulted directly from the early work of the New Mobility Agenda, which led to an international call for days without cars in October 1994 in a new mobility congress in Toledo Spain. This wide open program looks at Car Free Day projects around the world and tries to determine if they are working, not working, useful or in need of a real overhaul. Critical discussion with at least half of the members convinced that all this is a good idea. But only half.

xTransit: New ways of getting there - http://www.xtransit.org/

xTransit  Idea Factory for small vehicle transit-  Another joker, this one given over to what we believe to be one of the most important single transport modes for the future, small vehicle systems, usually independently owned and operated, and prime targets for technology and supportive rethinking of legislation and relationships with the rest of the system. Getting people in and around 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 -- and all of that as no less than the only way to offer "car like" mobility in most of our 21st century cities without killing the cities themselves (the good old old mobility way).
 

The Land Cafe: Putting Value Capture to Work – http://www.landcafe.org

The Land Café: But how are we ever going to pay for all this? Check out our very busy Land Cafe if you are on the lookout for new thinking on this critical topic. An informal, shared, public interest, knowledge-building consortium -- supported by The Commons as an independent Open Society project, specifically to serve and bring together people and groups around the world who are concerned to find practical ways for our societies to come to grips with the troubling but important issues of value capture and land tax reform in an age in which important public services remain substantially under-funded.

Children on the Move!: Small Steps to Sustainable Lives – http://ecoplan.org/children

The Small-Steps Forum: If children cannot get around safely and with full independence in our communities, then we are in real trouble. If there is a mine canary to the New Mobility Agenda and the challenges behind it, this is it. You have a framework here you can work with and the next step is to extend the net to bring in a couple of hundred concerned citizens like you (our proven critical mass to get anything done in this fora.)  Dig in. Get involved.  Make the future.

 

 

*     *     *

Videos, audio, media: You will find that many of these programs are supported by a variety other than print media, valuable components of the tool kit needed if we are to move toward more sustainable cities.  You will find this information in the respective sites.

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

This is the final note in this series which is intended to make our fora more useful and easier to use for you and your colleagues.  Nine out of ten of you show that you fully understand all this, but it is I hope a useful reminder for us all. These are not must more “chat sessions� and it really does help if we all keep that in mind.

 

Thanks for being patient and helping in this. We all benefit in the end.

 

Eric Britton

 

Forum use hints & good practices

  Participation

  Message Procedures & Etiquette

  Message Search

  List Monitoring

  Time starved?

Welcome to our shared Communications Center and Library for this specialized program under The Commons. If you intend to participate in the email discussions, or the posting of materials to the Library or Links & Media sections, please to be sure to read this short section carefully.

{I realize that this is a terrible terrible bore. But please give it five minutes; it will make life really much easier and more efficient -- for you and for the others. Think of it as warming up before you launch, full blooded and raring to go, into the sport of your choice. Now, off we go!)

Participation and Email Frequency

Participation makes it easy to access the Public Library, link & Media and other sections of the Forum (Café or Idea Factory) , as well as receiving messages of the list into your own email box, in the manner you prefer. To become a member, you are invited to send an empty email to the postmaster@... indicating which group you wish to join. After a short while you will receive a confirmation, unless there is a technical problem with your address. When you have signed up you can elect to receive feedback from this site in any of four forms:

(a) Individual emails. To receive all individual email messages.
(b) Daily digest: To receive all emails for the day in one message.
(c) Special notices. Only send important update emails from group moderator.
(d) Don't send me email, I'll read the messages on the site at leisure.

If your time is short, we strongly recommend the Daily Digest, and while you are at it opt for the "Fully Featured" version. Very clean and efficient. To accomplish that, all you have to do is check into your forum, where you will see at the top of the YahooGroups page a link, Edit Membership. From there on you will see.

If you wish to leave the list at any time, just send a blank email to

·         (forum-name)-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Message Procedures & Etiquette

In this day of titanic, paralyzing information overload, here are a few small suggestions which I would strongly suggest you bear in mind as you work with our fora and discussion groups. It will make use the whole process more efficient for you and for all those hundreds of time-pressed colleagues who come here.

  1. Stay on focus:
And bear in mind that this is one of a series of more or less focused websites and discussion groups, and we try hard to keep each of them in its chosen focus. To understand this, in case you do not already, I suggest that you click here to our page "Focus programs and peer discussions". You'll see there how all this is intended to work.

  2. Make sure you are replying to the correct party.
When you answer a group message, your answer will in many cases be sent to all the members of the list. If you wish the sender only to receive your answer, please click on the "Forward" button instead of "Respond" and copy the sender's email address into the "To" box. Remember, there is no feeling so "sinking" as when a personal message goes instead to 500 busy, possibly unhappy people. We would ask you to be extremely careful about distinguishing between:

a.       Basically personal messages (such as a thank you note, a specific question or an observation intended for this or that person) which are best addressed to your individual correspondent, and

b.       Communications to the group as a whole.

  3. Exception Information is the rule here:
We are all asked to bear in mind that our colleagues are very busy people and we want to make sure that whatever comes out of this forum (I) they do not receive more than a handful messages a week on average and (ii), more important, that what is distributed to the group is quite literally "exception information", i.e., communications which address issues which are of high common interest. I hate to say it, but when we see people being a bit too casual in their choice of mode, our list administrator actually goes in and picks off what we think to be a bit too personal and indicate this to them as such. This may strike you as a bit priggish on our part and indeed is a bit of a bore to actually do; but we think it's better that than overloading people who have a lot of real work to do and who see this as a useful tool and not one more wasteful Internet chore.
 

  4. "Judicious snipping": Take care to avoid promiscuous copying content of earlier communications
Please do not simply copy and pass on the content of all previous communications. Nobody, nobody likes to wade through this stuff. Moreover, it obscures the point of your message for those whose time is important. Where you need to cite an earlier note for context purposes, please do this in a sparing and structured way ("judicious snipping" we call it). We will all appreciate your thoughtfulness.

  5. Copying email addresses: Please do not copy emails to the list in which you indicate the email addresses of colleagues under the cc. heading. This is a potential disservice to them and can lead to their addresses being picked up and then bombarded by lurkers or hackers, which of course you do not wish to be the cause of.

  6. Retain Subject Headings:
Once a discussion of any given topic has got underway, it really helps for later reference purposes if you kindly retain the original subject heading. (This is because this heading in one of the main ways in which we can recall any given dialogue and exchange around that topic, a process of recall which we believe is extremely important to the extent to which this collective intellectual patrimony is available to be mined for subsequent uses. Likewise, if you note that the subject heading is preceded by a FWD: or Re: in any given case, it's a good idea to delete this so that your message will enter into the correct repertory.)

  7. Long signature lines.
No more than three lines please, all in. Once you have introduced yourself to the group on joining, we all know who you are and don't need all that garble about when, where and why. Screen space and time are scarce commodities, so let's keep an eye on this small courtesy.
 

  8. Message format, fonts and color.
It is a real courtesy if you avoid background colors, large fonts or funky signatures when writing the groups.

  9. How many messages should YOU be posting to the group?
Certainly no more than two or three per week please. In exceptional cases let's get together and figure out a strategy (since there are other options including our several "cafés".) Thank you.

  10. Show respect:
Just like our grandmothers told us. Do not mock others, do not allow your anger to show, do not make ad hominem or personal remarks, do not pontificate and don't be a wise guy. Remember half the people here are smarter and know more about the subject than you (or I) do. Many of them have been at this for years and have made important contributions, They are not newbies by any stretch of the imagination, so be careful when you think you may be telling them something they have not already thought of. The odds are they have. So a bit of modesty and, as we say over here, 'retenue' will make your grandmother proud (always a good objective).

  11. Other guidelines to keep in mind:

·         Please proof-read your submissions. The time you take is magnified 500-fold in time savings by readers in trying to understand your points.

·         Don't send very long messages, papers, or binary files to the list; rather, post a summary in straight text, offering to send to those requesting it the longer or coded document. Such requests should always be OFF-LIST (to the person offering it, not the whole list). Another good alternative is to point people to a website with your material.

·         When referring to research or statements, try to cite them, either a bibliographic or web reference.

·         Cool off: If you feel yourself getting heated about what another has written, consider sending that to only that person, not the entire list. This keeps the recipient from feeling as defensive and possibly escalating the exchange into a conflagration.

·         After joining, don't post for a couple weeks, so that you can get a sense of the style of the list. Your first post might contain a short (one para.) introduction of yourself, but this is not required (when lists first start, introductions are the best way to get things started).

To conclude: I think it's not a bad assumption to hold in mind that at least half the people here are smarter than you are and smarter than me) and know more about the subject. Such a collection of wonderful concerned citizens and colleagues deserve a little time and attention. And hey! they will do the same for you.

Enhanced Message Search

At this point, after more than a decade of exchanges among our world wide colleagues we now have more than ten thousand past communications stored in these sites, a valuable resource if you are trying to get up to speed on all these international reactions and goings on. How to use it? Well, try this

With the advanced Message Search functionality, finding a particular message is not only easier, but much faster. We've updated this by integrating powerful Yahoo! Search algorithms - this results in an accelerated search experience for you. Message Search now comprehensively screens the entire message archive of a group, no matter how many messages have been posted.

What's more, new Message Search includes an "Advanced" search feature. This feature allows you to drill down on a number of fields to make it easier to find that lost message. You can use the options on this page to create a very specific search -- simply refine message search in your group by:

·         Date. You can add a specific point on the calendar and have a search performed before or after that time. Or, search a date range.

·         Author. Include the name of the sender and all messages from that name will be returned. You can also exclude a specific sender name from the search.

·         Subject. Add any words from a subject line and it will be returned. You can also exclude specific words from the subject line too.

·         Message Body. Add any words from the body of a message and the relevant messages will be returned to you in your search results. Again here you can also exclude specific words from your search.

List Monitoring

For better or worse, this is a "monitored" list. We do this, not because we like it, and certainly not because we enjoy playing that role, but in order to protect our subscribers and work partners from various forms of abuse and e-overload. On the one hand, we provide an additional screen to help protect from various forms of spam that occasionally manage to get through the generally pretty good YahooGroups controls. And in addition, we occasionally find ourselves constrained to reject letters that have been penned perhaps a bit too aggressively for our taste, or simply send out a reminder in instances in which someone has either sent to the group a communication that would be better routed to a specific individual, or loaded down his note with unnecessary encumbering copied material. Every once in a while we may unintentionally strike a nerve, but by and large this seems to work so we'll keep on doing it.

Time Starved? (And who isn't?)

1. Go for the Daily Digest (see above).
You do this by going to the forum, and clicking the Edit Membership link toward the top. There you can one click to the Digest. We also recommend that a bit further down on the page you opt for the Fully Featured version. Quite nice really.

2. Faster yet:
This may surprise but it works really very well. What you get for all the fora you wish to follow (and I do this for each of the dozen we work with) is a morning summary of all messages posted within each forum in which you participate and receive email.

Here is what you see on your http://my.yahoo.com/ page when you sign in in the morning. (More on how you do this just below.) This is the summary I found when clicking in on Tuesday 25 July 2006. (What is sweet about this is that on the page you can click directly to the article you wish to read and it brings you into the full content of the entry).

·         London traffic - 11 hours ago
I agree with Roland that economists do not always understand what cities are about, and I also think that in all markets they focus too much on pricing

·         "Moving forward : towards better urban transport" - in the open vide - 18 hours ago
If you go to our in-process New Mobility Video Libraries, you will see three great entries just posted by Paul Barter. The details on this three part entry

·         London traffic - 18 hours ago
Hi I think the statement that public transport SHOULD be provided on a commercial basis is possibly a bit too strong. The economics of cities is a challenging

·         Bus subsidies - 18 hours ago
Buses and trains may have external costs, but extra passengers on them occupying seats that would otherwise be empty don't -- not significant ones, anyway.

·         Urban cyclists looking for a lane of their own - 21 hours ago
I have found the recent stuff about Shared Space/Naked Streets very simulating. And now Chris Bradshaw's CURBBBB suggesting is intriguing (as are many of his

·         [The New Mobility ThinkPad] Ending our mediocrity - A planner's-eye - 22 hours ago
Note from the editor: From Canada here is a very thoughtful 'planner's eye view' of what a good city is supposed to be all about. From our perspective

·         London traffic - 22 hours ago
Public transport should be provided on a commercial basis once cars and planes are properly priced and regulated (regulating car includes bus priorities,

·         Vancouver Map Measures Walkability - 1 day ago
By Jeff Nagel Black Press Jul 19 2006 Downtown Vancouver and New Westminster are by far the biggest, most walkable parts of the region, according to a new

·         Urban cyclists looking for a lane of their own - 2 days ago
I think Chris's idea is innovative and interesting (although in my live-and-let-live vision, cities would be full of shared spaces, with road-users interacting

·         Are bicycles good for the environment? - 2 days ago
Zvi, On 21 Jul 2006, at 16:01, ... I'm not so sure... At least in the UK, I would say that walkers would go to more local

To get on line with this, all you have to do is go to the bottom of the home page of the Forum (Café or Idea Factory) and there you will see an icon marked My Yahoo. Click and take it from there.

 

There is an excellent new video just produced by the produced by Sveriges Television (SVT),  the Swedish public service television company, which looks at the Global Warming debacle and debate with particular acuity and interest. You can pick it up on the main site of The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative at www.ecoplan.org. You’ll see it under “Evidence” (NEW) on the top menu.

 

Since this is part of our push to use the full range of communications tools and media in this important cause, you will see that we have also popped into the page that introduces in addition to the Swedish film some links to a couple other of the videos and films that you will find under the New Mobility Agenda. Lower down on the left menu of The Commons, you will see the beginning of a collection of videos and clips, to which we hope you will chose to add when you have something you think the others might wish to see.  

 

Eric Britton

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Conrad Wagner [mailto:w@...]
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 2:44 PM
To: 'Daniel Zurfluh'; 'Dave Brook'; 'Susan Shaheen'; 'Susan Zielinski'
Cc: eric.britton@...
Subject: WG: [NewMobilityCafe] [The New Mobility ThinkPad] Wireless systems help drivers find a spot to park

 

… parking should get easier in Paris …

Paris should combine parking availability and demand-oriented parking fees to guide drivers more effectively …

Maybe in combination with Public Transit Ticketing (= Intermodal Trip) … real integrated ticketing … (also see P+R, CarPool, CarShare, Collective Taxi, etc.)

Saludos, hasta pronto, Chao, Conrad

 

 

 

[http://iht.com/articles/2006/11/19/business/wireless20.php]

Editor's Note: The following article, which also appears on our New Mobility Thinkpad, taken from the International Herald Tribune of 20 November 2006, is interesting enough in itself, but what strikes me is that it gives us a pointer toward the kinds of "lways on/always there"personal communications that are going to underlie what we here like to refer to as 'xTransit'. The missing link, if you will. Stay tuned. This is only getting started.

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

Wireless systems help drivers find a spot to park

Wireless

PARIS: A service starting in Paris next month is designed to make life somewhat easier for harried drivers by allowing them to find out, in real time, whether there are parking spaces available nearby by using their cellphones or GPS navigation devices.

The system will monitor the status of about 120 public parking garages across the French capital. From their phones, drivers will be able to find out whether a nearby garage is open and has places available.

"At certain times of day, 20 to 25 percent of vehicles are in search of a parking space. With this service, we should be able to improve the traffic flow," said François Le Vert, a representative of the Fédération Nationale des Métiers du Stationnement, an organization of French parking institutions that helped develop the system.

Eight companies are participating in the project: Orange and SFR, the two leading French mobile networks; Canal TP, NavX and V-Traffic, which specialize in travel and navigation software; the consulting firms Setec and Carte Blanche Conseil, and New Technology for Citizens, a grouping of firms that provides travel services.

The project does not have a catchy, dot-com-era name, instead prefering a more factual moniker, which translates as "universal system for information on parking areas." Participating parking garages are linked via Internet to a central server, and when the status of a garage changes - open, closed, full, vacancies - it sends a message to the server, which sends updates to the service providers.

At Orange, customers will be able to consult the parking database for free via the Orange World portal on any compatible cellphone. The only charges will be for downloading the data. Orange can find the caller's approximate position by determining which antenna the phone is connecting to, or the user can simply enter an address.

Alexandre Nepveu, Orange's director of marketing for telematic and automobile applications, said next year the carrier would add a service for cellphones equipped with GPS receivers, which will allow drivers to be guided to the nearest available garage much more precisely.

Nepveu left open the possibility that the service could be made available to customers of foreign networks in the future, but for now, the service will be available only in French and to Orange customers with contracts in France.

Any driver could sign up for the package offered by a Navx, according to Jean Cherbonnier, a co-founder of the company.

Navx's service is compatible with about half of all personal navigation devices on the market now, and Cherbonnier said he expected this to increase to 80 percent within six months. The company also markets a service that tells drivers where speed cameras are located.

Navx has plans to spread the system beyond France. "We're already in touch with parking garages in Germany," Cherbonnier said. "The German project is for February and will include about 800 garages across the country." After Germany, Cherbonnier would like to take aim at Switzerland, Italy, Britain, Austria and Spain.

A Massachusetts company, SpotScout, is taking a different approach. SpotSout is working to create a virtual marketplace for parking spaces in high-demand areas in Boston, New York and San Francisco. Using cellphones and the Internet, customers will be able to provide offers and requests for private parking spaces. Farther in the future, SpotScout hopes to allow users to trade information about the availability of parking spaces on the street.

Andrew Rollert, chief executive of SpotScout, said he had received a lot of inquiries from Europe and Asia.

Might drivers be putting themselves and others in danger by using these services at the wheel?

In Cherbonnier's opinion, the use of cellphones and personal navigation devices is preferable to rummaging through the glove compartment to find the relevant guide book.

"I don't think it's a danger," he said. "It's just a way of replacing books, guides and maps."

--
Posted by ericbritton to The New Mobility ThinkPad at 11/20/2006 10:07:00 AM

Dear Friends,

 

I have just spend much of the last week trying to make our New Mobility Agenda website at http://www.newmobility.org – the mother site, if you will of xTransit as you will see if you drop in --  into a friendlier and more useful place for you and anyone who might come here for help, information or insight. It has been quite hard work, and at one point as you can imagine one actually becomes a bit snow blind and can no longer make out the balance and clarity of all this. Hence this call for help and a bit of independent judgment.

 

It actually is a rather busy site, with anywhere from 30 to 100 people a day dropping in. Over the last two days, for example, we have had guests from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Serbia And Montenegro, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden , Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela.  Which suggests to me that this is probably worth the work.

 

So I wonder if I might ask you to go in, play with it a bit as your time and interest allow, and then let me know via a private note your views -- and above all what you think we need to do here to make this into something more useful and easier to get around in.  Don’t spare me your toughest criticism. That’s just what we need.

 

We are working for you. Work back!  Everybody wins.

 

Kind thanks and I do hope you too find some use in this.

 

Eric Britton

>> Comment from user taunyak@...: I am a transit consultant with a special interest in demand response transportation. I see that there has been no discussion on this list for a long while, but who knows. Looks good anyway. :)<<

 

This question refers to the focus discussion group for xTransit that we created in July 2002 under our program Reinventing Transport in Cities at http://xtransit.newmobility.org/. 

 

·         xTransit, which for the record we define as: “Getting people in and around 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 -- and all of that as no less than the only way to offer "car like" mobility in most of our 21st century cities without killing the cities themselves (the old mobility way).”

 

This is an important question and I hope that those of you who care about how we share ideas and clues for more sustainable cities and better transportation arrangements will take a minute to think about it with us. And possibly share your thoughts and comments.  This you may do either to the xTransit list at xTransit@yahoogroups.com, the new mobility list at NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com, or if you think it best to me off list via Eric.Britton@....  In any event I intend as usual to make some kind of synopsis of the comments and recommendations  that I shall share with the group here once the comments have come in and been digested.

 

Immediate context - knowledge building” :

 

Before digging in on this one, I need to point out that this consciousness of how better to coordinate our work and exchanges is not only a one shot affair – it is very much on my mind these days. The context for this is our “knowledge building” project at http://www.knowledge.newmobility.org. It is, I really think, a useful and timely project, and one of the things that it is predicated on is a belief that when it comes to groups working on new mobility and sustainable development and climate issues, there is still far too much silo-ing going on.  If I may: we are putting ourselves in front of these critical  issues, group by group and program by program. And we are, despite conferences, print and the internet still not getting the kind of 1 + 1 = 3 advantage that deep networking can give us.

 

But on the other hand here I am impetuously accusing these fine people of getting trapped in their own silos, while here at the New Mobility Agenda we have some unresolved problems on this score of our own. For example, we have over the years crated no less than twenty different focus groups (see attached for background)  and while this may help in keeping the exchanges within each forum focused on the specific topic, it nonetheless is a bit simple minded since the one thing we know about transport in cities is that everything touches pretty much everything else. Oops.

 

So I now want to figure out how I should be answering taunyak@.... To encourage him to come on in to the xTransit forum which we will envigor with a new wave of exchanges? Or instead should we be considering bringing the topic back into the main forum of the New Mobility Agenda?

 

Why this is important:

 

The New Mobility strategy has three main building pillars:

 

a.     To reduce VM/KT radically. (You can’t even start to move toward sustainable unless you put this at the top of the agenda. No contest!)

b.    To do it fast: Bearing in mind the excellent heads-up provided by President Clinton just two years ago on the occasion of the established of the Clinton Climate Initiative when he said: “We have to reduce about 80% of our greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 to 15 years." This means that we should be aiming for at least 5% reductions annually – and the only way to achieve this is via those radical VM/KT reductions.

c.     To provide new, better, faster, cheaper means of getting around in the city: But this is going to be doable only if we are able to offer high quality transportation services. And this is the main challenge of the New Mobility Agenda.  

xTransit is one of those building blocks, and unlike approaches such as BRT, cycling improvements, Better-Faster-Cheaper public transport, this is an area which has yet to be explored as a key high profile component of the new system strategy, and developed and demonstrated with clear models. That is the next step.

 

*           *           *

 

What does this mean in the face of taunyak’s query? Should we be continuing to off-stream the xTransit discussions so that we save the time and patience of the thousand or so people who tune into the new mobility forum? Or should we be giving this good idea a good kick and cranking up both our communications and exchanges on this important topic and bringing it into the heart of the new mobility discussions?

 

I have my own ideas on this as you can imagine, but I would be very interested to hear what you have to say on it.

 

Kind thanks,

 

Eric Britton

 

This concept of “shared transport”, as opposed to private vehicles  or traditional public transport, has been around, mainly in earlier and far more artisanal forms, for some decades and is known in different places by many different names.  Here is a list we put before you today for your comments, additions, corrections.

 

Bus pooling

Busstaxi

Carpooling

Carsharing

Colectivos

Demand responsive transport

Dial a ride

Dial a bus

Digital hitchhiking

Dolmus

DRT

Dynamic Carpooling

Dynamic Ridesharing"

Färdtjänst

FlexLinjen

FUT (Flexible Urban Transport)

GoLoco

Hitchhiking

Jeepney

Jitneys

Lift-share

Line Taxi

Maxi-cabs

Maxi-taxi

Minibus-taxi

Paratransit

Para-transit

Pesero

Por Puesto

Publicos,

Regio-Taxis

ReTax

Ride sharing

RufBus

Sammeltaxi

Share Taxi

Slugging

Smart Para-Transit

Teksi

Telebus

Vanpooling

xTransit

 

 

We are working with the Livable Streets Network to combine forces to define and support reach, projects and programs specifically in the area of “Smart ParaTransit” system definition and deployment. I think this is going to be a very exciting and useful collaborative effort and would like to invite you to join the supporting group site being developed for this.

 

This new group is going to substitute for this Yahoo Groups forum, since it is a better way for us to put our heads and competences together. To join, it is a two step process which you will see at http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/smart-para-transit/request-membership

 

We are still working on the site but I think you are going to find it very useful.

 

Hope to see you there.

 

Eric Britton

Dear Simon,

 

A very brief comment on your telling critique of your experience with and views on DRT in the UK, “old mobility” style if I may.

 

IF you turn to the latest report on this from the TRB in the States, "Guidebook for Measuring, Assessing, and Improving Performance of Demand-Response Transportation" at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_124.pdf  you will see a point of view which is in many ways the mirror of your good comments.

 

However when we recast this past-laden vision of this particular sub-set of xTransit, such as we are now setting out to do with the joint project with Livable Streets Network (http://www.livablestreets.com/) you will, I sincerely hope, see a very different version of how this can and should (and will!) work in and about our cities.

 

But the first step, as always, is to allow our minds to break from the constraints of the past. A first step is for me to urge you to check into the new Forum (I promise to moderate it so that it is lean and mean (sorry). This you can do by clicking to http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/smart-para-transit/request-membership. Let me note in passing that this new forum is going to be greatly improved in many ways over the Yahoo Groups fora that we have been using here for more than a decade. There is plenty of room for improvement and I hope you will see that we are taking this challenge head on.

 

I hope very much to see you there Simon. We need your independent thinking to keep us on the crooked and wide.

 

;-)

 

PS. Your suggestion that we do a better job of bringing xTransit into the two main New Mobility fora is well taken and will be respected. Thanks Simon.

 

 

 

 

 

TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY BOARD

21 August 2008

 

Steering Towards Smarter Travel Choices

 

• New research will look at how to make travelling more efficient and cost

effective

• Over £7m to be invested in adapting and developing technology to help

people to make better travel choices

 

The Government is to invest over £7m in new research that will adapt and develop

technology to help us to make smarter personal travel choices.

 

The aim of the research, which will be funded by the Technology Strategy Board, is to

pave the way towards alternative methods of planning travel. By adapting existing

technology, and developing cutting edge innovation, the research will help to find the

best ways for people to access and use reliable, accurate and credible information to

plan their journeys.

 

Commenting today on its Informed Personal Travel research and development funding

opportunity, the Technology Strategy Board’s Chief Executive, Iain Gray, said:

“Travelling smarter means lowering costs, encountering fewer delays – and reducing

frustration. To help achieve all this, we need to develop innovative solutions that will

enable us to plan journeys, and to keep us informed en route. The aim of this research

is to find these solutions whilst creating exciting UK business opportunities at the same

time".

 

The £7m investment will provide partial funding for winning projects that best address

these issues, and which involve businesses working collaboratively with other

businesses or with research organisations and academic institutions.

 

Stephen Hart, who leads the Technology Strategy Board’s work in the area of Intelligent

Transport Systems and Services, added: “We want to develop innovative solutions that

are likely to improve the quality of travel when planning and executing personal journeys.

There is no single technology that will provide the answers, and no single industry sector

– information and communication technology, electronics, photonics, electrical systems

and the creative industries may all have contributions to make.”

 

“We will look at proposals that adapt existing technology, so that it can be used in new

ways” he added. “This might include, for example, the internet, radio and TV, mobile

phone technology and positioning systems. And we will consider proposals that will

develop new applications and technologies. We are really looking forward to seeing

what proposals are made.”

 

Expressions of interest to apply for funding must be submitted between 10 November

and 18 December, and full proposals by 5 March 2009. Successful projects will be

notified by April 2009. Further information about this opportunity, including details of

information days and guidance on how to submit a proposal, can be found at [add link].

 

Notes to Editors

 

1. The Informed Personal Travel research and development funding opportunity is

managed by the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSS) Innovation Platform, which

is a programme of the Technology Strategy Board. The ITSS Innovation Platform

sets out to provide interventions and financial support to overcome barriers in

implementing effective solutions with Intelligent Transport Systems. The primary

aim is to work to overcome issues associated with people travel and traffic related

issues such as traffic network management, congestion, user travel information,

safety, crime and infrastructure and vehicle connectivity. For further information

about the ITSS Innovation Platform please visit:

www.innovateuk.org/ourstrategy/innovationplatforms/intelligenttransport.ashx

 

2. Informed Personal Travel is the third funding initiative managed by the ITSS

Innovation Platform. Previous initiatives were for Future Intelligent Transport

Systems and Time, Distance and Place road pricing. A total of over £13m is

being invested in projects emerging from these initiatives, including contributions

from the Department for Transport and the Engineering and Physical Sciences

Research Council (EPSRC).

 

3. Further financial contributions to the initiative, from the regional development

agencies, are anticipated.

 

4. The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental

public body, established by the government. Its role is to promote and support

research into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for

the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve the

quality of life. It is sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and

Skills (DIUS). For further information please visit www.innovateuk.org.

 

5. To arrange an interview with a technologist at the Technology Strategy Board

please contact the media relations manager; details below.

 

Issued by

Nick Sheppard

Media Relations Manager

Technology Strategy Board

Block B, North Star House

North Star Avenue

Swindon

SN2 1JF

Switch: +44 (0)1793 442700

Direct: +44 (0)1793 442772

Mobile: +44 (0)7824 599644

e-mail: nick.sheppard@...

 

 

Mapflow Launches Avego for Carsharing 2.0

Written by Katie Fehrenbacher

No Comments

Posted September 8th, 2008 at 4:00 am in http://earth2tech.com/2008/09/08/mapflow-launches-sharelift-for-carsharing-20/

What would a commuter carpooling service that actually tapped into the real-time transparency and flexibility of the Internet look like? Well, a lot like high-tech hitch-hiking, and possibly a lot more popular and effective at getting single occupancy vehicles out of morning traffic. At least that’s the idea behind Avego (update: formerly called Sharelift according to the Demo info), a service officially being launched at the DEMO convention in San Diego on Monday.

The service, developed by Cork, Ireland-based company Mapflow, uses a gadget placed in commuter vehicles to pull satellite navigation info and car info via a wireless connection to develop a next-generation public transportation system. Mapflow calls it “shared transport,” but to us it looks a lot like carpooling brought into the always-on Internet age. The service will largely target commuters, but also could be used for taxi and other public transportation systems.

While the obvious benefit of the service (to eco-minded folks like us) may be getting any number of commuters to ditch their cars and cut carbon emissions, Sharelift could help battle the pinch of $4 gas, too. Mapflow estimates that out of an estimated $2 billion per day market of single occupancy vehicle trips, “20 percent are excellent candidates for Shared Transport.”

Mapflow has already developed a business selling consulting and technology solutions for customers interested in location-based services for vehicles in the UK. That includes partnering with municipal and federal groups on several pay-by-the mile toll and insurance programs. The company is backed by a Series A of $5.6 million and a total commitment of $11.7 million from SOSventures.

We have a lot of questions for Mapflow. We’ll be checking out the company’s presentation on Tuesday in San Diego, and will update the story. Particularly we’d like to know more about the business model — who pays for what? And given it’s particularly difficult and expensive to sell hardware as a startup, we’re wondering if that is the best way to start off — why not create a mobile application that taps the GPS and wireless networks of phones to do something similar? (Like California Cleantech Open Finalist Goose Networks, for example.)

Mapflow is no doubt figuring out its plan of attack, but out of a sea of DEMO startups building various technologies to help make life easier, more productive or more fun, we’re glad to see at least one pondering our planet.

 

On Behalf Of Chris Bradshaw

> We would argue that since cars only transport roughly 10-20% of

> travelers, they should only have access to 10-20% of road space, for

> moving and parkingand should respect the rest of users, as well as

> the right to some peace and quiet of all the people working and living next to roads.

 

This is a good point: equity for all travellers.  It applies not just to space for travel and parking, but the various forms of pollution.  Under the right conditions, cars produce, per passenger, less pollution and noise than larger public-transit vehicles.

 

The X-transit discussion here diverges over whether smaller vehicles should be visualized as large cars or small buses.  The latter tends to fail because the driver cost is spread over so few passengers, which government can justify only if it serves very small, needy populations, which in turn makes frequency so poor.  But if seen as the former, the service, mediated by cell-phone matching, means that every driver's empty seats are available, as long as his route coincides enough with the person needing a ride.  Such a scheme relieves the system of driver costs.  But cars are private, so no go.

 

The car fails by being the second-best mode for most trips, rarely the best.

This is because it is used from destination to destination, a tool of mobility _and_ access (only the short walk to its parking space is excepted).  It needs to be driven through walk-first environments because it is privately owned and its owner expects it to be ready-and-willing 'acap'

(as close as possible).

 

> A society in which people fail to respect the rights of others, and in

> which the rich believe they should have special privileges on the

> roads as well as in every other aspect of life, is a society destined

> to fall into crime, selfishness, viciousness, and lack of the

> neighborly friendliness that allows people to live comfortably

> together

 

With cars being private, they too often are occupied by only the owner, leaving the other 4-6 seats empty (except when used for storage for personal 'effects').  The owner, rich or poor, sees this privacy as his right.  The car's footprint is 'amortized' only over one traveler.

 

The relationship to these negative social trends is not just that of car causing them, but reflecting the breakdown. Private cars both cause the breakdown of share vehicle systems, and are the beneficiaries of that breakdown ("I have to have my own car.  Transit is too infrequent, and walking and cycling are too dangerous."

 

We can never share the roads unless we find a way to share all the vehicles used on them.  This is more common in the so-called underdeveloped countries.  While they are trying to copy the developed countries' idea of 'success,' the reverse should be the situation.

 

When people go into the public realm, it should be to mix with others.

Being in a private car is not providing that contact, not producing the humility and tolerance societies need.  All governments, who are dependent on these attitudes, should have a bias in favour of sharing the corridors and the vehicles used on them.

 

Supporting the private-car regime is a form of societal suicide.

 

Chris Bradshaw, Ottawa

 

 

See Http://www.xtransit.newmobility.org for details. This summary is presented here for your information and as work in progress. I invite your comments and suggestions for improvement.

 

Small diagram to illustrate principles here? Your suggestions?

 

xTransit Building Blocks

 

What we call xTransit or paratransit is a series of shared transportation service arrangements  - not private cars, not public transport  - that have cropped up over  the years  in many places in many forms.  If you click here, for example, you will see not far from one hundred  different system types and names.  It is a rich area of transportation practice, innovation and adaptation, though it is also one that is in general poorly defined and understood both in actual practice and in the transport lexicon more generally. In most cases historically  xTransit just happens: it crops up as a make-do seat-of-the-pants solution to people’s felt requirements to find ways to get around.

 

There are seven main “vectors” which shape xTransit systems when you get down to the details:

 

1. Vehicle
2. Ride
3. Access
4. Technology
5. Finance
6. Subsidies
7. Infrastructure

Vehicle: The sharing of the vehicle can be done either simultaneously (think, parallel access ) – such as the case with group ride taxis, car/vanpools, hitchhiking and the like. Or it can be handled temporally (i.e., serial access) – as is the case with carsharing and bike sharing where the vehicle is used and then made available to others in the organized group.

 

Ride: The ride can be shared either by organized closed groups  (carpools and vanpools).  Or can be open: taxi sharing, hitchhiking, slugging.

 

Access:  Pre-arranged: semi fixed (car, van pools).  Dynamic: based on hailing (the various taxi type system, slugging, hitchhiking.  Group access: as with carsharing and bike sharing.

 

Technology:  Historically xTransit and its many varieties had no more technology content beyond that of the vehicle itself. In the late sixties we began to see more technological content for organization, dispatching and routing – but in general and especially in comparison with what is currently available, these were quite rudimentary and did not suffice for either high quality or economically viable services. Smart ParaTransit however takes this into entirely new dimensions, building directly on the two decades of innovative and largely successful operating experience with computerized taxi dispatch systems and high-technology package delivery services such as those offered by Federal Express and DHL, among many others.. .

 

Finance: How the services are paid for?  No payment: casual hitchhiking,  much informal ride-sharing. Agreed hand-to-hand fares, no subsidies (shared taxis in all their varieties). Fixed price/cost sharing (car, vanpools, slugging, traditional taxis). Service packages (as with carsharing and bike sharing programs).  Dynamic, automated: Smart ParaTransit will automatically bill your credit card based on pre-agreed rates.

 

Subsidies: Traditionally  xTransit systems were not subsidized. Starting in the seventies however as they began to serve specific and generally underserved groups, such as the elderly and handicapped, more complex subsidy arrangements started to be developed so as to provide needed survives to these groups at prices they could afford. Looking to the future, there is great scope for improving our understanding of how wise subsidies can be built into these systems

 

Infrastructure: If you look at the history of these systems they were pretty much obliged to get along as “last among equals”, thereby having access to the street system quite as any other private vehicle but with no provision for their special public role and requirements (pick up facilities, parking, etc.) Gradually over the last decade, we are seeing some of the pool services and more recently carsharing and bike sharing as starting to gain more appropriate access given their public functions. And w can anticipate that this is going to be a very important vector of their future success. They are going to need this level of privileged access if they are to play their full role as sustainable transportation.