NationMaster - Encyclopedia: New Mobility Agenda

The New Mobility Agenda -- a term and an approach to transportation planning. policy and practice that has gained considerable force over the last two decades -- provides a leading-edge alternative to earlier (20th century) methods of looking at and providing mobility for people and goods in cities. Like the sustainable transportation movement to which it is closely related, it differs from previous methods (which in fact still dominate planning, policy, investment and operations in most parts of the world) in that it takes a global or broad systemic approach to the challenges of how to get around in cities, and is especially sensitive not only to pure transport efficiency (which traditionally is interpreted in pure engineering terms as speed and volume of vehicle throughput) but equally to matters of sustainable development, pollution and environmental impacts -- including the reduction of Greenhouse gases, resource efficiency, energy conservation, public health, both personal and public economics, overall time savings, public spaces, and quality of life in communities, including relations between people in public spaces – with particular attention to social justice and the unmet needs of women, children, and others with mobility or economic or health disadvantages which are not being properly served in our present mainly car-based systems and thinking, in which other forms of transport, including public transport, play only residual roles. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Sustainable development is a process of developing (land, cities, business, communities, etc) that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs according to the Brundtland Report, a 1987 report from the United Nations. ... Water pollution Environmental pollution is the release of environmental contaminants, generally resulting from human activity. ... Top: Increasing atmospheric CO2 levels as measured in the atmosphere and ice cores. ... Natural gas stoves are more energy-efficient than electric models. ... Public health is concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis. ... Public art in a public space in Lille, France One definition of public space or a public place is a place where anyone has a right to come without being excluded because economic or social conditions (fees, paying an entrance, being poor, ...). Malls are examples of private space with the... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Social Justice is a concept that has fascinated philosophers ever since Plato rebuked the young Sophist, Thrasymachus, for asserting that justice was whatever the strongest decided it would be. ... Skytrain Bangkok. ...

New Mobility vs. Sustainable Transportation: These two are closely related but not identical concepts. The term “sustainable transportation” had it origins in the mid-nineties and has developed over time and for the most part with particular emphasis on informing transport and environmental policy, with support from a number of university programs, NGOs and from some international and government organizations. By contrast the term “New Mobility Agenda” takes the issues of sustainable transportation the other way around: by emphasizing the supply side -- and specifically targets projects and programs which demonstrate and achieve the basic principles behind sustainable transportation. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Targeted near-term improvements: A distinguishing aspect of the new mobility approach is its emphasis on the importance of targeted near-term improvements. It does not give up at all on long term thinking, but in response to what are increasingly understood to be unacceptable levels of pressure coming from current transportation arrangements, and the speed with which this degradation is taking place, there is a growing consensus that projects and measures should be targeting substantial improvements within a period of two or four years. In most places this also coincides with the electoral terms of those in office, thus giving those elected an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to more sustainable transportation arrangements.

In Brief

The New Mobility Agenda looks for and coordinates a complex bouquet of overlapping mobility arrangements in an attempt to offer a high quality alternative – or complement – to the older purely (or mostly) car-based transport system of the city. Services most often incorporated into this multi-level alterative transport system include: Bus lane, Congestion charging, HOV, Intelligent transportation system, LOV, Low-Occupancy Vehicle, Shared space, Park and ride, Parking, SOV, Single Occupancy Vehicle, Toll roads, Traffic Calming, Transportation Demand Management, Bus rapid transit, Car Free Days, Car rental , Car Free Days, Carpooling, Carsharing, Cycling, utility cycling, e-work, flexible working, flextime, Hitch-hiking, Human-powered_transport, Jitney, Midi-bus, Mini-bus, Pedestrianization, Public space management, Public transport, Ride sharing, road pricing, Roller skating, Self-Organizing Collaborative Networks, Share taxis, Taxicab, Telecommuting, Telework, Vanpooling, Walking. A Bus (only) lane is a lane on a road restricted to buses, and possibly high occupancy vehicles, bicycles, emergency vehicles or taxicabs. ... Road pricing is a generic term for charging for the use of roads using direct methods, charging the users of a specific section of the road network for its use. ... A permanent, separated high-occupancy vehicle lane on I-91 in Connecticut A high occupancy vehicle (or HOV) is any vehicle with a driver and one or more (or sometimes two or more, or three or more) passengers. ... The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program is a worldwide initiative to add information technology to transport infrastructure and vehicles. ... LOV may stand for: with especial reference to the drop-down/pop-up lists in combo boxes in graphical-user-interface computer applications: list of values in traffic configuration and control: low-occupancy vehicle This is a disambiguation page â€” a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the... A single-occupant vehicle (SOV) is a privately operated vehicle whose only occupant is the driver. ... Shared space a traffic engineering philosophy pioneered by the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. ... a park-and-ride bus in Oxford Park and ride terminals are public transport stations that allow commuters to drive short distances in their personal automobiles to catch a ride on a bus or railroad system (usually classified as light rail or the heavier commuter rail). ... Underground parking garage at the University of Minnesota. ... SOV is an acronym for several terms: SOV is used in linguistic typology, and stands for Subject Object Verb. ... A toll road, turnpike or tollpike is a road on which a toll authority collects a fee for use. ... Image:Street narrowing. ... Transportation Demand Management or TDM is changing or reducing demand for car use by encouraging the behavioural change of household choices of travel. ... Silver Line in Boston Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a broad term given to a variety of different transportation systems which attempt to use buses to provide a quality service through a set of various improvements to the bus line. ... A Car Free Day is an event organized in different places in different ways, but with the common goal of taking a fair number of cars off the streets of a city or some target area or neighborhood for all or part of a day, in order to give the... Rental cars are leased to people who dont have access to their own cars, such as when traveling. ... A Car Free Day is an event organized in different places in different ways, but with the common goal of taking a fair number of cars off the streets of a city or some target area or neighborhood for all or part of a day, in order to give the... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... Carsharing is a system where a fleet of cars (or other vehicles) is owned and operated/overseen by a company, public agency, cooperative, ad hoc grouping, or even a single individual, and made available for use by members of the carshare group in a wide variety of ways. ... Cycling is a recreation, a sport, and a means of transport across land. ... Utility cycling encompasses any cycling not done primarily for fitness, recreation such as bicycle touring, or sport such as bicycle racing, but simply as a means of transport. ... E-Work is a term extensively used in Europe, an amplification the original 1980s and 90s concepts of Telework or Telecommuting: working at a distance using information and communications technology, The concept of ework extends the purely physical aspects of the old European Telework and US Telecommuting concepts to include... Flextime plan is a general term to describe a variable work schedule in contrast to traditional work arrangements between employer and employee requiring a rigid number of hours worked per day or week. ... Hitchhiking (also called lifting or thumbing) is a form of transport, in which the traveller tries to get a lift (ride) from another traveller, usually a car or truck driver. ... Human-powered transport is the movement of people (locomotion) and goods through their own power, or the power of other humans. ... A jitney is a livery vehicle intermediate between a taxi and a bus. ... A minibus is a motor vehicle that is designed to less persons than a bus. ... Car-free zones are also known as auto-free zones and pedestrianised zones. ... Public art in a public space in Lille, France One definition of public space or a public place is a place where anyone has a right to come without being excluded because economic or social conditions (fees, paying an entrance, being poor, ...). Malls are examples of private space with the... Skytrain Bangkok. ... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... Road pricing is a generic term for charging for the use of roads using direct methods, charging the users of a specific section of the road network for its use. ... Inline roller skater on a slalom course Roller skating is travelling on smooth terrain with roller skates. ... In many countries (especialy developing countries) the main system for public transport involves share taxis. ... A taxicab (sometimes called taxi, cab, or hack) is a vehicle for hire which conveys passengers between locations of their choice. ... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... Sheep walking along a road Walk redirects here. ...

The individual components of ‘new mobility’, transportation modes and policies including those listed just above, are in generally broadly well understood and defined. But what makes the whole an “agenda” stems from the fact that new mobility policies are based on the development and orchestration of extensive packages of measures which need to be brought on line over time and as experience and demonstrated competence with these new approaches develops. Hence the totality is referred to as an “agenda”

Continental Europe is leading the way in understanding and implementing the New Mobility Agenda, and the increasingly higher quality of their transportation systems performance and their life quality and environmental impacts are immediately visible to both visitors and those who live there. German, Swiss, Dutch, Austrian, Danish, and increasingly the cities of France, Belgium, Northern Italy, and the rest of Scandinavia are joining in the new mobility/quality of life sweepstakes, driven as much by pride and strong local leadership as by purely negative factors (those these are many and important movers as well). A process has been engaged in Europe which other parts of the world are looking at and starting to emulate: cities increasingly looking at themselves and each other scanning for good ideas that they can take home and adapt for their communities This is thus an example of a virtuous spiral. The European Commission has played an important supporting role in this process. The European Commission (formally the Commission of the European Communities) is the executive body of the European Union. ...

Terminology

To appreciate fully what "new mobility" means, it is useful to see how it differs from "Old Mobility" (often defined as being stuck in traffic, waiting in the rain for a bus that may never come, or paying large amounts of taxpayer dollars for "improvements" that ultimately find us still late for work or waiting for that bus. (See the multi-media presentation of [A Day In The Life of New Mobility] for one characterization of how it might look in day to day life in one city.) New mobility: In a first instance not old mobility, i. ...

What we now call "old mobility’ thinking and practice is in effect the dominant paradigm of 20th century visions and practices. It is/was essentially oriented to the search for engineering, technological and infrastructural solutions for increasing speed and throughput capacity in specific links and at key points (including bottlenecks). The old mobility paradigm was one that has been characterized as “forecast (growth) and build”. Old mobility solutions more often than not cost a lot of money, and created a broadly shared mind-set in which the main limit to providing for yet further capacity increases within the system was constrained only by funding limitations from public sources. The old system was and is essentially hierarchical and “expert oriented and controlled”. It is still dominant in many cities and parts of the world today.

(Since this entry is still in progress, here is an attempt to characterize the present arrangements and constraints that form it very broadly. By understanding these – if (a) true and (b) really a problem – we have a base for fine-tuning our proposed new solutions. SO, here is how old mobility looks from the specific vantage of the proponents of the New Mobility Agenda:

The heart of new mobility policy by contrast is [systemic complexity], [diversity], [participation], wide [outreach] and a wide array of [partnerships] and other forms of synergistic interaction and collaboration. It more often involves the orchestration of a large number of measures and policies, many of which often very small in themselves, in order to provide a dispersed modern city encompassing many different types of people and mobility needs – as opposed to the “big solution” approaches often favored in the past (whether major highway or [road building] or extensions, new [Rapid transit] ([metros], [subways] or other expensive [rail systems], massive central parking structures, and the like). The goal of the planners and authorities changes radically with this new paradigm, such that rather than “solving problems” with centrally planned and executed engineering, etc. measures, they start to get more involved in multi-level complex problems-solving, which brings them to such quite different kinds of approaches such as community outreach and orchestration of services and the participation of a much larger number of actors and players.

The New Mobility Agenda addresses the issues on both the supply and demand sides. It thus combines [Transportation Demand Management TDM strategies and measures for containing, channeling and limiting unnecessarily wasteful and encumbering private car traffic in cities, with coordinated support of a wide “bouquet” of alterative transportation arrangements. These include various forms of Human-powered_transport, utility cycling, walking, public space improvement, electronic substitutes for travel (such as telework, telecommuting or e-work) and a variety of shared and public transport strategies, new and old, including HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles), carpooling, ride sharing, car rentals, taxicab, Share_taxi, Jitneys, and the list goes on (see long list of modes and component parts in Internal Links below). TDM is a three-letter acronym that may refer to: Time-division multiplexing, a method for sending multiple digital signals along a single telecommunications transmission path Therapeutic drug monitoring, a branch of clinical chemistry Tucker Death Mix, a cocktail drink In the game Far Cry, Team Death Match, a multiplayer... Human-powered transport is the movement of people (locomotion) and goods through their own power, or the power of other humans. ... Utility cycling encompasses any cycling not done primarily for fitness, recreation such as bicycle touring, or sport such as bicycle racing, but simply as a means of transport. ... Sheep walking along a road Walk redirects here. ... Public art in a public space in Lille, France One definition of public space or a public place is a place where anyone has a right to come without being excluded because economic or social conditions (fees, paying an entrance, being poor, ...). Malls are examples of private space with the... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... E-Work is a term extensively used in Europe, an amplification the original 1980s and 90s concepts of Telework or Telecommuting: working at a distance using information and communications technology, The concept of ework extends the purely physical aspects of the old European Telework and US Telecommuting concepts to include... Skytrain Bangkok. ... A permanent, separated high-occupancy vehicle lane on I-91 in Connecticut A high occupancy vehicle (or HOV) is any vehicle with a driver and one or more (or sometimes two or more, or three or more) passengers. ... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... A taxicab (sometimes called taxi, cab, or hack) is a vehicle for hire which conveys passengers between locations of their choice. ... In many countries (especialy developing countries) the main system for public transport involves share taxis. ... A jitney is a livery vehicle intermediate between a taxi and a bus. ...

History

What is today known as the New Mobility Agenda has had many antecedents and both before and since has proceeded in many places and on many fronts as traffic congestion and more generally the weight and poor performance -- environmental, economic, social, and destruction of urban fabric -- of the old, mainly car-based mobility system has increasingly made itself felt in city after city around the world. Unsurprisingly the worst problems we are seeing today are in the cities of the developing countries, and most of all in their megacities – in most of which the old mobility thinking continues to carry the day in policy and investment circles who are proving slow to adjust. Over the last two decades this movement has steadily gained force to the point where a growing array of programs and authorities are coming together in an attempt to create more balanced transportation systems, better equipped for dealing with the highly diverse mobility needs of people of all social and economic classes in the 21st century. (See references below for some of these.) Traffic jams are common in heavily populated areas. ...

The New Mobility Agenda provides an example of a focused, international Self-Organizing Collaborative Network applied to the challenges of transport in cities. And while its antecedents are as old as the first time anyone got stuck in traffic and wondered about how things might be better organized, the actual "New Mobility Agenda" by that name was formally kicked off in 1996 during the OECD International Conference in Vancouver Canada (24-27 March 1996) under the title Towards Sustainable Transportation. ... The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization of those developed countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and a free market economy. ... Members of Parliament Libby Davies, Ujjal Dosanjh, David Emerson, Hedy Fry, Stephen Owen Members of the Legislative Assembly Gordon Campbell, David Chudnovsky, Adrian Dix, Colin Hansen, Jenny Kwan, Lorne Mayencourt, Wally Oppal, Gregor Robertson, Shane Simpson, Carole Taylor Mayor Sam Sullivan City Manager Judy Rogers Governing Body Vancouver City Council...

In the wake of the 1996 [Towards Sustainable Transportation] conference, two things happened immediately which started to give concrete expression to this new movement.

References

Best Practice Examples

Context

New Mobility is based on a "bouquet" of arrangements and services which in place after place seeks to find the right mix of the following: An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an assessment of the likely human environmental health impact, risk to ecological health, and changes to natures services that a project may have. ... The hierarchy of roads. ... Highway engineering is the process of design and construction of efficient and safe highways and roads. ... The precautionary principle, a phrase first used in English circa 1988, is the idea that if the consequences of an action are unknown, but are judged to have some potential for major or irreversible negative consequences, then it is better to avoid that action. ... Risk is the potential harm that may arise from some present process or from some future event. ... The field of road safety is concerned with reducing the numbers or the consequences of vehicle crashes, by developing and implementing management systems ideally based in a multidisciplinary and holistic approach, with interrelated activities in a number of fields. ... The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a system of incorporating environmental considerations into policies, plans and programmes. ... A street hierarchy is a system of urban design that completely separates through automobile traffic from developed areas. ... Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society. ... Traffic jams are common in heavily populated areas. ... The term traffic engineering is used in more than one sense. ... High density development in Cambridge, Massachusetts stimulated by Alewife subway station (right foreground) and TOD zoning. ... Transport engineering (alternatively transportation engineering) aims to ensure the safe and efficient movement of people and goods. ... Transportation planning is the field involved with the siting of transportation facilities (generally streets and highways and public transport lines). ...

Demand Management

A Bus (only) lane is a lane on a road restricted to buses, and possibly high occupancy vehicles, bicycles, emergency vehicles or taxicabs. ... Road pricing is a generic term for charging for the use of roads using direct methods, charging the users of a specific section of the road network for its use. ... Road pricing is a generic term for charging for the use of roads using direct methods, charging the users of a specific section of the road network for its use. ... A permanent, separated high-occupancy vehicle lane on I-91 in Connecticut A high occupancy vehicle (or HOV) is any vehicle with a driver and one or more (or sometimes two or more, or three or more) passengers. ... The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program is a worldwide initiative to add information technology to transport infrastructure and vehicles. ... LOV may stand for: with especial reference to the drop-down/pop-up lists in combo boxes in graphical-user-interface computer applications: list of values in traffic configuration and control: low-occupancy vehicle This is a disambiguation page â€” a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the... A single-occupant vehicle (SOV) is a privately operated vehicle whose only occupant is the driver. ... Shared space a traffic engineering philosophy pioneered by the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. ... a park-and-ride bus in Oxford Park and ride terminals are public transport stations that allow commuters to drive short distances in their personal automobiles to catch a ride on a bus or railroad system (usually classified as light rail or the heavier commuter rail). ... Underground parking garage at the University of Minnesota. ... SOV is an acronym for several terms: SOV is used in linguistic typology, and stands for Subject Object Verb. ... A toll road, turnpike or tollpike is a road on which a toll authority collects a fee for use. ... Image:Street narrowing. ... TDM is a three-letter acronym that may refer to: Time-division multiplexing, a method for sending multiple digital signals along a single telecommunications transmission path Therapeutic drug monitoring, a branch of clinical chemistry Tucker Death Mix, a cocktail drink In the game Far Cry, Team Death Match, a multiplayer...

Supply (New Mobility Building Blocks)

One point that needs to be made concerning these building blocks, is that in any given city these will involve at least hundreds of coordinated actions, many of which carried out by or requiring the active support of groups outside of the traditional public and transport sector.

Silver Line in Boston Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a broad term given to a variety of different transportation systems which attempt to use buses to provide a quality service through a set of various improvements to the bus line. ... A Car Free Day is an event organized in different places in different ways, but with the common goal of taking a fair number of cars off the streets of a city or some target area or neighborhood for all or part of a day, in order to give the... Rental cars are leased to people who dont have access to their own cars, such as when traveling. ... The Carfree movement is a coalition of people who believe that it is important to reduce both the number of cars in the world, and the usage of them. ... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... Carsharing is a system where a fleet of cars (or other vehicles) is owned and operated/overseen by a company, public agency, cooperative, ad hoc grouping, or even a single individual, and made available for use by members of the carshare group in a wide variety of ways. ... Cycling is a recreation, a sport, and a means of transport across land. ... Utility cycling encompasses any cycling not done primarily for fitness, recreation such as bicycle touring, or sport such as bicycle racing, but simply as a means of transport. ... E-Work is a term extensively used in Europe, an amplification the original 1980s and 90s concepts of Telework or Telecommuting: working at a distance using information and communications technology, The concept of ework extends the purely physical aspects of the old European Telework and US Telecommuting concepts to include... Flextime plan is a general term to describe a variable work schedule in contrast to traditional work arrangements between employer and employee requiring a rigid number of hours worked per day or week. ... Hitchhiking (also called lifting or thumbing) is a form of transport, in which the traveller tries to get a lift (ride) from another traveller, usually a car or truck driver. ... Human-powered transport is the movement of people (locomotion) and goods through their own power, or the power of other humans. ... A jitney is a livery vehicle intermediate between a taxi and a bus. ... A minibus is a motor vehicle that is designed to less persons than a bus. ... A pedestrian at the intersection of Alinga Street and Northbourne Avenue, Canberra, Australia Look up Pedestrian on Wiktionary, the free dictionary A pedestrian is a person travelling on foot, whether walking or running. ... Public art in a public space in Lille, France One definition of public space or a public place is a place where anyone has a right to come without being excluded because economic or social conditions (fees, paying an entrance, being poor, ...). Malls are examples of private space with the... Skytrain Bangkok. ... Carpooling is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. ... Inline roller skater on a slalom course Roller skating is travelling on smooth terrain with roller skates. ... In many countries (especialy developing countries) the main system for public transport involves share taxis. ... A taxicab (sometimes called taxi, cab, or hack) is a vehicle for hire which conveys passengers between locations of their choice. ... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... Telecommuting, telework, or Working From Home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). ... Sheep walking along a road Walk redirects here. ...

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