Car free day

 Last Saturday, 22 September 2012 was the world car-free day. People, communities, cities and countries from around the world organise events to celebrate and promote sustainable mobility.

Gratz, Austria

 While the idea of restricting car access to specific streets or parts of the city even for just a few hours of a single day per year is pretty old, it was back at 1994 that a formal world day started to be organised. In 2000 the European Commission adopted the idea and funded the whole project under the title “In town without my car”. The campaign was a huge success not only in Europe but also in other countries. Since 2002 cities in Europe celebrate the “European Mobility Week” an annual event in September around the "In town without my car!" day. By 2008 more than 2100 local governments from 39 countries participated either in the single day celebration or the whole mobility week.

The first Australian Car Free Day was held in the City of Fremantle on 29 November 2000. Fremantle tried again on 2001 and 2002 organising the “Shed your car day”. Other cities in Australia tried to organise similar events but without coordination amongst them and not much success.

Pedestrians, bicycles, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation are encouraged on these days. People have tolerated too long congestion, air pollution and all other side effects of car traffic in the cities.

As the theme and logo of this year’s European Mobility Week says “Do the right mix”.

At the same time that neoliberal policies and austerity measures deepen the economic crisis in Europe, 

extending it into a social crisis, there are still a few lessons that we can learn from their practices towards a new culture in urban mobility.

Texting while driving. OMG not LOL!

While I was driving to get to a site inspection today I stopped at a  intersection with traffic lights. When I turned my head to my right, I noticed that all three vehicle drivers waiting at the lights at the lane next to me where texting. Heads down looking at their mobile phone which they were all holding with both their hands were clearly typing SMS text messages or using any other keyboard related application. Especially with the new smart phones there is a big number of very popular mobile phone applications like email, internet browsers, facebook, twitter, etch that you can use. 

http://wordproverb.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/texting-while-driving.html

I was puzzled at first that all three drivers were doing the same thing. I thought that it was a rare coincidence and it had to do with the traffic lights. Stopping on a red light may make people thing that they have the time to send a quick message or check if that email they have been waiting has come through. But then when the signals turned to green at least two of them that I managed to follow as we were driving parallel at the same direction kept the mobile phone on their hand and were driving with the other. One of them kept typing and occasionally looking at his phone. 

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/02/michigan-bans-texting-while-driving/

This is outrageous. People buy smart phones but they are not so smart themselves. Texting while driving is not only illegal in Queensland (300$ fine and 3 demerit points) and whole of Australia but is also considered more dangerous than drunk driving. Driver distraction and inattention have a detrimental impact on road safety.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/38509/texting-while-driving-increases-crash-risk-by-23-times-study

And while numerous road safety campaigns focus on this issue, the numbers of drivers texting while driving increase. Even though that last year stories of drivers’crashing while texting messages like "I need to quit texting, because I could die in a car accident" made the news. Different solutions with the help of technology were proposed, such as mobile phone deactivation or voice control texting. 

But the question still remains: Do we need someone else to take care of us? Why can't we just do the right thing and don’t use the mobile phone while we are driving?  Why do we prefer OMG rather than LOL?

Charming cycling? Not in a helmet!

Riding a bicycle is one of the most sustainable mobility choices. Cities and people can greatly benefit, if they can raise the mode share of cycling. Australia in general and Brisbane specifically has a very small bike share even thought the last few years a lot of effort has been put in increasing bicycle use. You can see all the bikeways  and shared paths on Brisbane in the maps that provide information on on-road and off-road bicycle lanes, bike shelters and cyclepods to make your ride or walk safer and more pleasant.

Yesterday there was a very interesting event in Brisbane – which unfortunately I was not able to take part. Brisbane Bike Over Speed. Cyclists in their normal cloths, their work outfit or their best suits cycled through the City and South Bank just to make the point that cycling is not only for the “hardcore - lycra wearing – Tour De France looking” cyclists. See the video of their playful ride:

Some of them were riding CityCycle bikes. CityCycle is a very good initiative that can help raise bicycle use across the city. When I first saw the yellow bikes, similar to those in Paris and in Dublin, I thought: Way to go Brisbane. The next couple of days I subscribed to City Cycle and now I use the yellow bikes regularly. That is, I try to use them every day but it seems that quite a few days I am not able to do so because I can not find a bicycle with a helmet in the bike rack. That is one of the biggest reasons that the overall daily trips of CityCyle remain so low. Dublin Councillor Andrew Montague shares his experience about the bike share system in Dublin and compares it to the one in Melbourne which is so similar to CityCycle in Brisbane. The video is from MikeRubbo artist devoted in promoting "the beauty of the body of the bike".

And then browsing about cycling and the city I found this TEDx video of   Mikael Colville-Andersen, filmmaker, photographer and urban mobility expert from Copenhangen, Denmark explaining with lots of research and data “Why We Shouldn’t Bike with a Helmet”. Interesting comments, especially those concerning Australia.

April Fools’ Day traffic.

Although this is not one of my favourite days of the year I must admit that I found rather funny and amusing the following stories with urban traffic themes.

The first one comes from Philadelphia USA. Watch the Mayor announcing the E-lane initiative where pedestrians can walk and use their mobile at the same time safely.

The second one comes from Vancouver Canada where Vancouver Observer online newspaper announces the province's new mandatory pedestrian helmet law. This one if it was on Brisbane Times it would be more believable since Australia has already the mandatory cyclist law.
 

The first really interesting April fools’ day story about traffic and transportation that made world headlines was the Copenhagen’s new subway. It looked as if one of its cars had an accident, and had broken through and surfaced on the square in front of the town hall.

 

April Fools ’ Day presents a great opportunity to draw peoples attention to sustainable mobility and humour is quite an effective way to reach behavioural change.

Commuting by train Gold Coast to Brisbane. Captain Slow is on the driver’s seat

Having to commute every day from Gold Coast to Brisbane I experience first hand the good and the bad of commuting by train. First let me give you some useful data:

The distance from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane CBD is around 77 kilometres and driving through the M1 motorway or as they call it Pacific motorway will take you less than an hour. That is even in peek hours but not when you run onto a road accident that is quite common in M1 motorway which is very heavy on traffic and is considered one of the most dangerous highways in Australia regarding accidents. In those cases total travel time might be as long as two and a half hours.  Plus if you go by car in Brisbane city centre then you have to pay a small fortune every month for parking.

So this is a great opportunity to develop the  sustainable and environmental friendly solution of train commuting. But unfortunately train is not that popular in South East Queensland. And if this is not the case for the people living here, it certainly is the case for the decision makers. And let me explain this:

The rail line that connects Gold Coast (in general and not Surfers Paradise) with Brisbane City Centre is almost 90 kilometres long making a journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane a total of one hour and a half.

  That is about 20 minutes by car to Nerang Station -where fortunately there is a free commuter parking- and then 70 minutes from there to Central Station in Brisbane. If we consider the rail distance from Nerang Station to Brisbane Central Station is 75,9 kilometres, that makes the average train speed 65 kilometres per hour. Did you say slow? Actually it is slow,  regarding all train standards and not just highspeed rail. 

But I am afraid that is not the only drawback keeping commuters away from the Gold Coast train. The train is not comfortable at all; The seats are like the ones that you expect from a metro train and not from a suburban train not to mention an intercity train. Certainly if you want to catch an early morning snooze or a late afternoon nap then you must do that on a sitting straight position with the fear of banging your head somewhere.

"Ok I can not sleep but can I use this time to work in my laptop?"  Bad luck again. No tables at all and not enough space to have it even on your lap. 

"How about wireless internet connection?" Only a small number of the trains have that and not in every car. And when you are lucky enough to be in one of those then there is a time limit and a limit in what you can access. So, no youtube videos or other streaming media.

But even you are someone that does not care for all this and you just enjoy reading a good book during trip time then you should take care where you board the train. Almost all trains during the peak hours run full so for the most part of the trip there are a lot of standing passengers. Add to that that the trip frequency is not good having only 3 trains from Gold Coast between 7-8 am and only 5 trains between 7-9 am. 

In one of my next posts I will write about what people commuting from Gold Coast to Brisbane do and what they can do with a little help from state government and the two city councils.

Shared Bikes – Way to go Brisbane

Brisbane is the one of two Australian cities with a bike sharing scheme. It is the newest in Australia and the biggest regarding the total number of bikes with 1000 operating and 1000 more soon to be offered. The bicycles in CityCycle look a lot like those of Velib in Paris where the bike sharing scheme is a huge success with more than 20000 bikes on Parisian roads. CityCycle bikes can be found in 104 (soon to become 150) stations in the city centre and the surrounding neighbourhoods. In order to use CityCycle you need to subscribe and then you can ride for free for a period of 30 minutes. As long as the bikes are returned to a station within half-hour intervals the user can ride all day for free. If there is a need for longer usage then there are usage fees.

Bike sharing is a great idea for the cities aiming at providing an alternative to private car use in the city centre, thereby reducing traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution. It is a great practice for cities with parking supply problems. It also aims at supporting the use of public transportation and especially for commuters as it provides the means to the last part of the home to work trip.  Besides the obvious advantages of moving by bike like benefits in health and cleaner urban environment, bike sharing schemes are great for tourists as they provide an easy way to visit more city attractions and reach more city businesses.

There is some criticism about CityCycle especially regarding that is not so successful in attracting users. Major reasons for this are the initially high daily subscription which was 11 $ and the mandatory helmet use. The first issue was recently addressed by setting the daily subscription to 2$ which had an instant effect on rising casual hires. But the mandatory use of helmet is not. Australian bike sharing schemes are the only known bicycle share schemes that operate under a mandatory helmet requirement. But who would carry with him a helmet at all times just to use it on his last part of the daily trip to work? Also who will carry a helmet on the chance that he/she might want to borrow a bike for a quick trip to run an errand? Netherlands and Denmark are the countries with the highest percentage of bicycle use and very low percentage of accidents and no mandatory helmet use. Maybe we can learn from the best.

What is mobility management?

Mobility management is the act of organizing people and resources efficiently and effectively so as to accomplish desired goals and objectives in the field of urban traffic and transportation.

The European Platform in Mobility Management (EPOMM.eu) defines:
Mobility Management (MM) is a concept to promote sustainable transport and manage the demand for car use by changing travellers’ attitudes and behaviour.
At the core of Mobility Management are "soft" measures like information and communication, organising services and coordinating activities of different partners. “Soft” measures most often enhance the effectiveness of "hard" measures within urban transport (e.g., new tram lines, new roads and new bike lanes).
Mobility Management measures (in comparison to "hard" measures) do not necessarily require large financial investments and may have a high benefit-cost ratio.

Mobility management can help cities and people living in cities, regardless of city size to improve everyday traffic conditions in an easy and most of all inexpensive way.