Re: WorldTransport Forum "Old Mobility = mechanical solutions to biological problems. "
- related to this point is an article that discusses bike sharing systems in the context of digitally enabled solutions:I will say that it challenged my own thinking about some of these issues, because while I am an internet user and blogger, I am not a user of social media including Facebook and I don't have a great mobile phone (neither Apple nor Android).I had just read an interview in _Mass Transit_ magazine where the outgoing exec. director of Tri-Met in Portland, OR stated that rather than have fixed displays in transit stations stating arrival times, they will shift to Internet-only media...Still, the point about "Old Mobility" and even the thread on the underused bus service in New Zealand(?), is also about using the right type of hierarchically based frameworks for the provision of public/mass transit services.Appropriate "responses" depend on the intent/service profile for the type of service provided.Also see a presentation I did about this a few months ago at the U of Delaware:RL
I like this and while by itself it may not move the earth I would like to invite your comments and suggestions on this image which, self evident though it may seem, some of us at least may find of use from time to time(at least I would like to think that).
In a conversation yesterday with Katherine Freund of ITNAmerica, during which we were discussing her possible volunteer participation in the forthcoming World Share/Transport Forum in Kaohsiung next month, the conversation rolled around as to the reasons why the narrow binomial choices which seem inevitably to frame the transport policy issues/choices in most places – i.e., either spend money to help cars or public transit as the two main options – are destined to fail. And in the process we eventually worked our way around to the phrase . . .
· Old Mobility = Tries to fashion basically mechanical solutions to deal with what are in fact biological or organic problems. *
I like it because I feel that it gives us in a nutshell an explanation for why we are failing so badly in the sector.
Without wishing to be disrespectful to anyone in particular (we are all in any event prisoners of our pasts), is it reasonable to say this? The older generations of experts, institutions, and problems solvers are locked into mainly mechanistic approaches and ways of thinking: i.e., here is the problem we face, here is how we are going to fix it, and off we go. Solve problem, and then go fishing.
But when and if we shift over to new mobility thinking, what we have come to understand is that we are not going to "fix" the problem or problems, because it is not their nature nor that of complex interactive systems to be "fixed" in this sense. Rather we are ready to work with them over time within a more complex strategic frame, try this or that here of there, use 21st century feedback systems and logistics to get a flow of information about actual performance and impacts, and then tweak as infinitum. If it sounds like nurturing a child, it is no coincidence.