Pollution Free Cities: Sharing Transportation and Mobility

Friday, October 8, 2010

Sharing Transportation and Mobility

: Image via Wikipedia

Sharing: Strategy for a Small Planet (World Streets, Sept. 27, 2010)

Also discussed here: World Share/Transport Forum: Kaohsiung 2010 - The Third Way of Getting Around in Cities (Kaohsiung. 16 - 19 September 2010)

The article in focus today is the introductory speech by well known mobility expert and commentator, Eric Britton, to the recent first international Share/Transport Conference in Kaohsiung, China. He points to the growth of mobility in general as well as the damaging impacts of motorized transport and to the mind-boggling estimate of the total world-wide trips made by people each year – five trillion! Most importantly, he highlights the direction that this is taking us toward: sharing, and away from: individual use of vehicles.

Key Quotes:

“Americans (or French or or . . . ) love their cars and that they are too individualistic to share”

“twenty percent..relative importance of the transport or mobility sector in this greater whole..the sector’s share of GHG emissions, fossil fuel consumption. overall resource take, investment requirements.”

“the amount of activity in our sector is expanding at sharply growing rates. The number of cars. The number of kilometers driven. Lost time in traffic. Increasing costs. Health impacts”

“the number of major trips that are made by individual citizens each year – think of a work trip, medical visit, trip to find and carry water and firewood, soccer mom’s taking the kids to their next organized sport session, and the like. There are more than five trillion of these taking place each year”

“Share/transport..low-carbon, high-impact, available-now mobility options .. between the long dominant poles of “private transport” (albeit on public roads) and “mass transport” (scheduled, fixed-route, usually deficit-financed public services) at the two extremes.”