The Camden Town tube station, one of the busiest in the London underground system. Photo by zer0_pt.

TheCityFix discovered what quite possibly could be the world’s coolest transport-related master’s thesis project-recap video.

The recent debut of the BRT in Action Newsletter, published by Santiago, Chile’s Centre of Excellence for Bus Rapid Transit, included a link to Jay Gordon’s ambitious visualization of data gathered on commuter transit patterns by bus and rail in the course of one day in greater London. The map is color coded so that blue represents passengers at home or at their starting point; green indicates they are traveling in the system; and red means they are transferring or in between trips. Check it out:

Gordon explains:

This visualization merges all 16 million daily transactions made on London’s Oyster card [metro pass] with vehicle-location data from the city’s 8,500 buses to infer the travel histories of that day’s 3.1 million Oyster users. After inferring the times and locations of each bus boarding and alighting, bus and rail transactions are combined to reconstruct each cardholder’s daily travel history…By matching Oyster transaction records to data from the iBus vehicle-location system, buses are shown to traverse the street network at their observed speeds, and their brightness reflects the number of passengers on board.

Making transport planning a participatory and engaging process can result in sustainable transport and offer better quality of life. Photo by rogiro.

Two guides on urban mobility planning prepared by EMBARQ are now open for review. Two more guides will be released later today. The revised versions will then be released in March as part of a UN-Habitat-EMBARQ partnership.

The recommendations from the draft quick guides are:

Successful Urban Mobility Planning should be:

• A holistic, people-centered approach;
• Participatory at all steps of the process; and
• A long-term process allowing for revisions to the plan along the way.

A Multi-Stakeholder Forum requires:

• Thinking about the forum as a process, not as an event;
• Strong political leadership; and
• Openness to involvement from all types of stakeholders.

Next steps and how you can get involved:

The two draft reports Establishing a Multi-Stakeholder Forum for Urban Mobility and Urban Mobility Plans are open for review from February 1, 2013 to February 15, 2013 noon GMT. Comments should be emailed to Dr. Robin King Director, Urban Development and Accessibility, EMBARQ at robin.king@wri.org.

We can't promise you recess or toy cars, but the e-learning course on sustainable urban mobility is bound to give you a new vision for the future. Photo by sarflondondunc.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in partnership with the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ) will run a new session of online courses on sustainable urban mobility in developing countries. The course will run from November 14, 2011 to March 2, 2012 and is intended primarily for decision makers and organizations working on sustainable transport systems.

“The rapid and often unplanned and uncoordinated growth of cities has seriously compromised existing transportation systems and significantly increased the challenge of creating future transportation systems especially in developing countries,” explains UNITAR. “It is indeed in developing countries that the greatest growth in motor vehicles has been seen in the past few years and is expected in the future, primarily in urban areas.” This increase in private motor vehicles, UNITAR adds, will have significant environmental and social impacts, which will directly affect the quality of life. Among the consequences of increased motor vehicles, congestion, energy consumption, air pollution and traffic crashes are only a fraction of the concerns. “Thus,” UNITAR continues, “urban transportation issues are of foremost importance to support the mobility requirements in these growing cities and require new approaches.”

The mission of the course is to enhance the capacity of local decision makers, as well as urban and transportation planners, to formulate and implement policies that contribute to the sustainability of urban transport in developing nations. The course will become a platform on which to analyze the issues of demand management, improved public and non-motorized transport, environmental protection, road safety and gender in the broad field of transportation. Furthermore, the course will provide decision makers with answers, solutions and alternative approaches in urban transport planning that achieve sustainable transport systems.

The course will follow six modules, each one designed to explore a smaller element under sustainable transport:

• Module 1 – Urban growth and strategies for sustainable development
• Module 2 – Municipal mobility management
• Module 3 – Public transport services
• Module 4 – Management, financing and institutions
• Module 5 – Energy and environment
• Module 6 – Safety and social issues

To learn more or register for the e-learning course, “Sustainable Urban Mobility In Developing Countries,” click here.

Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India. Photo courtesy of Swiss Dots Ltd.

Urbanized, a film exploring urban design in more than 40 cities, will premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow night, Friday, September 9, 2011. Urbanized is the final documentary in Gary Hustwit’s trilogy of design films. Hustwit’s previous films, Helvetica and Objectified, looked at type design and industrial design, respectively.

In anticipation of the world premiere of Urbanized, we spoke with Gary Hustwit to learn more about the topics he will uncover in his upcoming film.

Can you give us a short introduction to Urbanized?

It’s about the design of cities. It’s about who shapes our cities, how they do it and how the design of our cities affects our lives. Basically, the film looks at different projects and different issues affecting cities in countries all over the world, and it starts a discussion around those universal issues that affect every city. The film also looks at a handful of people doing interesting projects and the creativity and philosophy behind it. Obviously, you can’t do a comprehensive film about the design of cities because it’s just too big and there’s just too much happening and it’s constantly evolving. So it’s really just a snapshot of a tiny percentage of the kind of work and thinking that’s going on around the world.

What did you notice in particular about transportation while researching urban design?

We looked at the bus rapid transit system in Bogota and range of transportation projects, and how automobiles have affected the design of cities. We looked at a high speed rail project that’s probably one of the wrong ways to go about high speed rail projects, which is the Stuttgart 21 project in Germany. So, we see transportation from both sides: what I think are the mistakes that were made and how the government approached it, and how the railway approached it. There is a pretty wide range. Housing, public space, mobility, citizen engagement—all of those things are on the table and part of the discussion. The film is really that: a conversation. We filmed in 40 different cities all over the world in the past two and a half years. It’s a portrait of city life and urban design right now.

An interesting element in your previous work was the juxtaposition between classically trained and self-taught professionals. How does that work with cities?

We are all self-taught professionals. It’s a much wider spectrum than the other two films. For one thing, there are many more “ordinary citizens” that participate in changing cities. Politicians, policy makers, developers are people that I wouldn’t classify as design professionals but who have a huge impact. In a way, we’re all experts on cities in some form. We all know a lot about at least one city, or we’ve at least spent some time in a big city. Everybody has some level of knowledge of what they think works or doesn’t, or, they like a certain city or they don’t like a certain city. There is a lot more citizen involvement in this film than any of the past films. In Helvetica or Objectified, we didn’t really talk to the users, but in Urbanized, it’s all about the users because they’re really the ones who ultimately make a city work or not work depending on how they live.

Are there any urban design elements that are popular across cities?

The generic retail developments seem to look the same in a lot of different cities. And in almost every city, especially in developing countries, automobile traffic is just ridiculous. In Mumbai or Sao Paolo, or any of these other cities, it’s just crippling. That’s probably one of the bigger challenges. Every city we went to had some form of informal area and some obviously bigger than others. How cities deal with that informality is definitely universal, and some do it better than others. Khayelitsha, the VPUU program outside of Capetown, and Alejandro Aravena’s work in Santiago, Chile are examples of what I think is a better way to deal with informal conditions.

Kayelitsha township. Photo courtesy of Swiss Dots Ltd.

What’s common about design in general? Did you notice any common themes among your three films?

Really obsessive people. You got to have a level of obsession with the challenge and that ability to try to look at a situation differently and not just accept the things the way they are. That is one common thread for designers across all spectrums. It’s that idea of incremental improvements or incremental refinements or adjusting to evolving conditions.

Is there a core message you hope to reveal in the film?

There is no core message in any of my films. They are explorations into subjects I’m interested in and, in a sense, the audience gets to follow along in that exploration. If there is any take away from Urbanized, it’s that citizens need to be more involved in the shaping of the city otherwise other people are going to do it for them and not particularly to their liking.

You’ve interviewed some of the leading thinkers on urban design. What are some of the most memorable lessons they shared with you?

I’m not an architect, I’m not a designer, I’m not an urban planner, I’m not a policy maker, so I was learning something from every person I spoke to. In a way, over the two and a half years that it took to make the film, with each interview I learned a little bit more, which informed the next interview and shaped the direction of the film. I’m not going in there with an agenda or a thesis or anything like that. The film is dictated by what the subjects want to talk about, and then we craft the narrative of the film through those conversations.

Anything else you would like to tell us about Urbanized or your work in general?

It’s been a really interesting six years of doing the three films. I guess we didn’t start out to make a trilogy of design films, but there was so much to talk about, so much innovative thinking going on and creativity behind the scenes. Most of us take that for granted. This could be the width of a sidewalk or the font somebody chose for an advertisement. Those are the things I’m interested in and hopefully other people are interested in them, too.

Beijing, China. Photo courtesy of Swiss Dots Ltd.

"Collaboration is key," says Volvo, in tackling the challenges of mobility. Photo by Ram Joshi.

The Sustainable Mobility Award by Volvo Buses supports progressive and practical steps in creating positively engaging sustainable transport solutions to improve quality of life. The award is an effort to engage all stakeholders in public transportation by encouraging a dialogue and creating opportunities to learn.

Volvo Buses believes that “collaboration is key” in seeking change in the public transport industry. The company also believes that a final solution lies in a common shared vision among all authorities, operators, public groups and manufacturers.

Interested groups and individuals must send in their nomination forms by September 2, 2011. The last date for submission of entries is September 10, 2011. Visit Volvo’s website for nomination and entry forms.

The award will be presented on November 14, 2011 as part of the Sweden-India Novel Memorial Week celebrations in Bengaluru, India. Follow the week’s events here.

The Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) industry was valued at $48 billion in 2009 with an estimated 41 percent increase by 2015. Photo by Daniel Sade.

According to a new study released by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), cities and states with reduced budgets are turning to technology solutions to maximize the use of existing transport infrastructure and resources. The study reports that the intelligent transportation sector was valued at $48 billion in 2009, with a projected 41 percent end-use revenue increase by 2015.

The term “intelligent transport systems” refers to the use of electronics, communications, and information processing technology to improve safety, mobility and the environment of the surface transport system. Such applications of ITS can have a positive impact on transportation system efficiency and sustainability, safety, the environment, congestion, and traveler mobility and convenience.

The United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) commissioned the two-phase study in April 2009 in order to develop an accurate and comprehensive estimate of the ITS market in North America. The study is based on a survey of private sector companies and extensive econometric modeling, and it predicts the dollar value contribution of each company. The result is a detailed estimate of the size of the U.S. and North American ITS markets and their employment potential, but as is with any modeling exercise, the precision of predicted values is subject to model assumptions, accuracy of survey responses and the sample size.

The survey targeted 3,000 companies with expertise in traffic management, traveler information, public transportation, emergency management, maintenance and construction operations, archived data management, commercial vehicle operations, vehicle safety, and other crosscutting areas of ITS. “With almost 300 ITS companies responding to the survey and 3,000 ITS companies identified, we expect that the model will be valuable in forecasting future industry growth and impact on the economy,” the study says.

The report divides the ITS field into nine market sectors, one of which is public transport, and includes products like transit travel information systems, advanced fare collection/electronic payment systems and demand-responsive transit.

Prior to this study, the ITS industry, and particularly the private sector portion, had never been extensively characterized.

“I firmly believe that with this effort we have a solid foundation for a fact-based understanding of the economic impact of the diverse and expanding ITS industry and its potential to improve transportation safety and the livability and sustainability of our communities,” said Scott F. Belcher, president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.

Download the full study here.