25/12. Principal Voices sustainability initiative - Interim report and invitation for comment

Source/Program: New Mobility Agenda

Dear Brendan, Carlos, Craig, Dave, Eric, Kirk, Mikel, Peter, Preston, Sujit, Todd, Vittal and others of you who were so kind as to get in touch with your ideas and reactions:

Thanks for those excellent words and suggestions of yours. They have struck home and have my full attention (as I hope you will see here). In the meantime, here is my next-stage though still provisional working “short” list for the proposed Principal Voices “Sustainable Transportation Invisible College” (yes, I know, awful phrase and I shall have to do better). A few quick words of introduction before we get to the list itself:

“Principal Voices”- Sustainable Transportation as a Third Voice

Who are these people? No more no less than the hundred or so individuals on this planet who in my experience are among the leading Voices of the kind of transportation that is the most important of all for out planet and our times, sustainable transportation. This approach to understanding and deciding about transportation is altogether on another plane from the older supply-oriented approach that has long been the dominant mode of thinking, policy and investment in the past, at a time when the ‘problematique’ of transportation was vastly different from that which we face today. It is the next step in a cumulative long run process of intellectual, economic, social, environmental and political maturity: the world transport policy and practice paradigm of the 21st century. If I had to turn the leading edge of transportation policy and decision making over to anyone, it would be to these people and their international colleagues, collaborators and networks in turn.

Principal Voices 2005: The immediate objective at this time is to see what we can do to create a much-needed balancing “Voice” for the transportation component of the potentially important Principal Voices project over 2005 (www.PrincipalVoices.com): thereby forming up a sort of ‘invisible college’ of knowledgeable, independent, world level proponents of sustainable transport in all its many aspects (or New Mobility if you like).

Here’s the latest cut of my working list for your comment and suggestions (see blow for further background and suggestions concerning the further development of this important list).

· A. Ables, Bangkok, Thailand
· Alan AtKisson, Stockholm, Sweden
· Ayad Altaai, Baghdad, Iraq
· Oscar Aguilar Juárez, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico
· Paul A. Barter, Singapore
· Denis Baupin, Paris, France
· Margaret Bell, Leeds, UK
· Reinie Biesenbach, Pretoria, South Africa
· Donald Brackenbush, Los Angeles, CA
· Christ Bradshaw, Ottawa, Canada
· Eric Bruun, Philadelphia, PA
· Enrique Calderon, Barcelona, Spain
· Sally Campbell, Eveleigh, Australia
· Carl Cederschiold, Stockholm, Sweden
· Robert Cervero, Berkeley, CA
· Phil Charles, Brisbane, Australia
· Robin Chase, Boston, MA
· Carlos Cordero Velásquez, Lima, Peru
· Al Cormier, Mississauga, Canada
· Wendell Cox, St. Louis, Mo.
· Philippe Crist, Saint Germain en Laye, France
· Ranjith de Silva, Colombo, Ceylon
· Carlos Dora, Rome, Italy
· Bernard Fautrier, Monaco
· Anwar Fazal, Kuala Lumpur, Maylasia
· Maria Josefina Figueroa, Roskilde, Denmark
· Duarte de Souza Rosa Filho, Porto Alegre, Brazil
· Brendan Finn, Singapore
· Priyanthi Fernando, Executive Secretary, International Forum for Rural Transport Development (IFRTD).
· Karl Fjellstrom, Surabaya, Indonesia
· Rossella Forenza, Potenza, Italy
· Jan Gehl, Copenhagen, Denmark
· Michael Glotz-Richter, Bremen, Germany
· Phil Goodwin, Exeter, UK
· Ingibjorg Guolaugsdottir, Reykjavik, Iceland
· Peter Hall, Berkeley, USA
· Sylvia Harms, Dubendorf, Switzerland
· Roger Higman, Friends of the Earth, London, UK
· John. Holtzclaw, Sierra Club, San Francisco, CA
· Walter Hook, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, New York
· Nguyen Trong Thong, Hanoi, Viet Nam
· Ursula Huws, Analytica, UK
· Taiichi Inoue, Tokyo, Japan
· Virgil Ioanid, Bucarest, Romania
· Jane Jacobs, Toronto, Canada
· Jiri Jiracek, Prague, Czech Republic
· Dave Holladay, Glasgow, Scotland
· Per Homann Jespersen, Roskilde, Denmark
Sharif A Kafi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
· Richard Katzev, Portland
· Isam Kaysi, Beirut
· Fred Kent, Partners for Public Spaces, NYC
· Jeff Kenworthy, Perth, Australia
· Gadi Kfir, Tel Aviv, Israel
· Adam Kowalewski, Warsaw, Poland
· Charles Kunaka, Harare
· Stefan Langeveld, Amsterdam, Netherlands
· Agnes Lehuen, Le Vesinet, France
· Corinne Lepage, Paris, France
· Graham Lightfoot, Scariff, Ireland
· Todd Litman, Victoria, Canada
· Stefan Lorentzson, Gothenburg. Sweden
· Harun al-Rasyid Sorah Lubis, Bandung, Indonesia
· Kenneth Orski, Washington, DC
· Dojie Manahan, Quezon City, Philippines
· Naoko Matsumoto, Kanagawa, Japan　
· Suzanne May, London, UK
· Segundo Medína Hernández, Havana, Cuba
Kisan Mehta, Bombay, India
· Michael Meyer, Atlanta, GA
· Nobuo Mishima, Kyoto, Japan
· Dinesh Mohan, New Delhi, India
· Mikel Murga, Bilbao, Spain
· Peter Newman, Sydney, Australia
· Simon Norton, Cambridge, UK
· Margaret O'Mahony, Dublin, Ireland
· Richard Ongjerth, Budapest, Hungary
· Carlos F. Pardo, Bogota, Colombia
· Sujit Patwardhan, Pune, India
· Enrique Peñalosa, Bogota, Colombia
· Maria Elvira Perez, Colombia
· Rudolf Petersen, Wuppertal, Germany
· Stephen Plowden, London, UK
· Robert Poole, Los Angeles, CA
· Danijel Rebolj , Maribor, Slovenia
· Ernst Reichenbach, GTZ, Katmandu
· Michael A. Replogle, New York
· Gabriel Roth, Chevy Chase
· Preston Schiller, Bellingham, WA
· Lee Schipper, EMBARQ/World Resources Institute
· Bodo Schwieger, Berlin, Germany
· Derek Scrafton, Adelaide, Australia
· Dimitris Sermpis, Athens, Greece
· Leena Silfverberg, Helsinki, Finland
· Robert Smith, Dorset, UK
· Ivan Stanic, Ljubljana, Slovenia
· Linda Steg, Groningen, Netherlands
· Martin Strid, Borlange, Sweden
· Craig Townsend, Montréal, Canada
· Robert Stussi, Lisbon, Portugal
· Robert Thaler, Vienna, Austria
· Geetam Tiwari, New Delhi, India
· Tony Verelst, Zonhoven, Belgium
· Vukan Vuchic, Philadelphia, PA
· Conrad Wagner, Stans, Switzerland
· Bernie Wagenblast, Cranford, NJ
· Yngve Westerlund, Gothenburg, Sweden
· Dave Wetzel, London, UK
· John Whitelegg, Lancaster, UK
· Johnny Widen, Lulea, Sweden
· Peter Wiederkehr, Hamburg
· Roelof Wittink, Utrecht
· Kerry Wood, Wellington, New Zealand
· Guiping Xiao, Beijing. China
· Muhammad Younus, Karachi, Pakistan
· Christopher Zegras, Cambridge, MA
· Sue Zielinski, Toronto, Canada

Note: And by the way, I do not as yet have permissions to use most of these names.
· So if you are on the list and agree to participate in principal, please send me a quick note with your full title, contact information, etc. so that the sponsors can see just how distinguished this group is.
· Participation, by the way, being always a matter of your personal convenience with no requirements other than to indicate your interest to look in from time to time and if the circumstances move you to pitch in with comments and suggestions.
· Key question: Can we, together, handle such a large list and still get a meaningful “Voice”? Answer: We have managed to do so on a number of occasions in the past with no great problems. I am confident that we can to it now.

Do you have a nomination for another highly qualified authority/networker suitable and ready to help round out this fine list? I feel that despite the enormous quality of the group as it stands we are still a bit uncreatively short in the following areas: females, young people, people with mobility impediments, youth and school programs, and people struggling with genius and resolve with rural transport, in particular in the poorest parts of the world. We also could use more “point expertise” in the following areas: local government, land use planning, road pricing and economic instruments, human powered transport, local government and decision making, public space management, access for people with mobility impediments, techniques of low cost infrastructure modification, transport/environment interface, electronic substitutes for physical movement, behavioral psychology, public administration, economics, sociology, social work, law enforcement and policing, new techniques of micro-modeling, public outreach, genuinely participatory planning, much more emphasis on the interface with mobile telephony, taxis and paratransit, new media, and the list goes on.

How is this going to work? (Draft notes)

Quick Background:
· By way of quick reminder, here is what Principal Voices say about themselves: www.principalvoices.com - is an international project aimed at provoking discussion on some of the more compelling challenges confronting our world today. Over the next 12 months TIME, FORTUNE and CNN, in association with Shell, will be presenting a series of videos, articles and round-table discussions. Themes covered will include the environment, business innovation, economic development and transport.
· Further background on our proposed collective contribution to this potentially important project is being drafted and will be available shortly. (Draft notes follow below which are intended shortly to provide a fuller view of what we have in mind here.)
Notes on the Panel/Nominations:
· This panel does however, at least I hope, have a very definite common orientating – which is to sustainable development and social justice. And sustainable development, just to be sure that we are very clear on this, is not something that we can put on the back burner and wait for another day. It requires immediate, priority attention.
· Each of these people is a considerable personality in her/his own right, highly respected, known for the quality and independence of their views, and their brains, energy, accomplishments, long term commitment and ethics.
· They have very different backgrounds, experience, areas of expertise, and at times even visions of their sector and the future. To this extent they complement and enhance each other by their very differentness.
· These people understand that the task of making their voices heard in a world in which old ideas and practices often continue to hold the stage is not an easy one, and that success depends on their ability to deal with the challenges. They are accustomed to arguing their case in the face of considerable opposition and indifference, but they also are for the most part world level experts in listening (not always a strong point in a sector long dominated by people who had decided what was going to be best for the others).
· Each fully understands the full remit and complexity of the sector, and the fact that policies there must stretch far beyond the usual transport remit.
· They provide between them coverage of and sensitivity to the full reach of the complex interface between transport and its greater context. Important since well more than half the decisions and actions that need to be motivated to move toward a better transportation system come in fact from outside the traditional transport nexus.
· Tone of the exchanges: Informed, exploratory, caring, disputatious, and respectful (even when it hurts)
· Here by way of quick example are some of the fields they bring into the decision nexus, in addition to the more conventional transportation, engineering, planning, etc. skills: Land use planning, electronic substitutes for physical movement, human powered transport, local government and decision making, public space management, access for E&H, transport/environment interface, behavioral psychology, public administration, economics, law, policing, new techniques of micro-modeling, public outreach, genuinely participatory planning, much more emphasis on the interface with mobile telephony, new media, and the list goes on.
· The international coverage of the group is exemplary.
· We are making a special effort to secure a much higher proportion of female members than normally encountered in transport circles (notoriously male dominated... and that is a good part of their problem). As of end 2004 we were at about 15%. We have to do better.
· There are a fair number of young people – but we can try to do better.
· Another thing they have in common, a word that we do not hear all that often in the traditional transportation decision dialogues, is compassion. Important word.
· In some cases these individuals do have an institutional affiliation, in most cases institutions and groups which are well known for their independence of views. Moreover we have seen in virtually all cases over the years, these particular people have meticulously preserved their independent point of view and are given over to plain speaking and not varnishing or projection of a specific interest or point of view. In short, they are thoroughly ethical.
· In this context, the list is actually considerable longer than what you see here. In the interest of economy and efficiency we have made a practice of naming just one person per group or working cluster, in the knowledge that each will in turn work to ensure the participation of the others in their grouping.

Also:
· At the outset I had been targeting a considerably shorter list, but as a result of the feedback received in the last days from our lists and as the concept of what we perhaps should be targeting to do in this case, I became aware that it was going to be necessary to reach out in order to make sure that the full complexity and variety of the challenges of sustainable transport are properly covered. In the event, I see this as a dynamic, ever evolving group.
· I have decided (unless pushed to the contrary) to omit from this list all people with strong bureaucratic, institutional and economic ties and interests, and specifically proponents of unproven technologies and major infrastructure developments that are not fully and assiduously cross-checked with the full range of sustainability criteria).
· I intend to suggest that they invite the WBCSD “Sustainable Mobility’ team – or possibly some kind of composite voice which brings together the usually well orchestrated performances of such important entrenched forces such as the automotive and energy industry, and such generally concordant groups as the IEA, ECMT, IAA, and the various well placed lobbies -- to come in as the third major voice/vision of the sector. This means they can cover the interests of the auto and transportation industry, very long term stuff, big expensive infrastructure projects, the lurch toward things such as the hydrogen economy, and their list goes on.

Draft notes to be incorporated into final piece:


This will be a controlled debate and sometimes our chair (that’s me until we find someone better… which should not be hard) will cut off speakers, presenters who in his humble views are taking up too much of our valuable time and wondering a bit too far afield from our bottom line.

Why not include organizations such as the various concerned units of the EC, UITP, APTA, World Bank, UN and the list goes on and on as well as our outstanding individuals – well because of the kinds of divided minds and responsibilities that inevitably occur when anyone has to keep weighing their personal/professional views on the one hand and what the mother organization might have in mind or have to worry about. So we are sticking to individuals in this college.

Out: anything that can be covered by WBCSAD, unproven systems that require large investments and extensive, expensive and inevitably slow new infrastructure development

All have extensive international experience – especially US and UK, Sweden, Germany and a few others in which there are more than one person cited.

You may wish to note Geographic coverage to date: Here is a first indication by city name (roughly 90 thus far): Adelaide, Athens, Atlanta, Bangkok, Barcelona, Beijing, Beirut, Belleville, Berkeley, Berlin, Bilbao, Bogota, Borlange, Boston, Bremen, Brisbane, Bucharest, Budapest, Cambridge, Chevy Chase, Colombia, Colombo, Copenhagen, Dorset, Dubendorf, Dublin, Eveleigh, Exeter, Gothenburg, Groningen, Hanoi, Harare, Havana, Helsinki, Kanagawa　, Karachi, Katmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Kyoto, Lancaster, Le Vesinet, Leeds, Lima, Lisbonne, Ljubljana, London, Los Angeles, Lulea, Maribor, Mississauga, Monaco, Montréal, New Delhi, New York, Hamburg, Ottawa, Paramus, Paris, Perth, Philadelphia, Portland, Porto Alegre, Potenza, Prague, Pretoria, Pune, Quezon City, Reykjavik, Rome, Roskilde, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Scariff, Singapore, Stans, Stockholm, Surabaya, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Toronto, Utrecht, Victoria, Vienna, Warsaw, Washington D.C., Wellington, Wuppertal, Zapopan/Jalisco, Zonhoven