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Dear Friend of SMART:Welcome to Issue #11 of SMART’s e-NEWS briefs. In this issue we share upcoming events and we'll also catch you up on some of the latest SMART news. To learn more about SMART’s mission and activities and how to get involved, please go to um-SMART.org And we'd like to hear from you. Please send your comments, questions, related research, favorite innovations, case studies, and collaboration ideas to me, Susan Zielinski, Managing Director of SMART at susanz@umich.edu. For past issues of SMART e-NEWS, go to:
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SMART upcoming eventsFebruary 17 – 19 (that’s right now!):Art Center Summit 2009 in Pasadena. It just started but there’s still time to catch some great speakers and events if you’re anywhere near Pasadena. See below.  February 20: Noon - 1:30 p.m:- New Mobility, Integration and Industry Development in India.
University of Michigan BSRB (Bio Science Research Building) Seminar Rooms. 109 Zina Pitcher Place, Ann Arbor. About Raj Cherubal Raj Cherubal is the coordinator for City Connect and Janaagraha in Chennai. Janaagraha is a leading organization in the area of urban governance reform and promotes legislative and social framework to ensure meaningful urban public participation and accountability. City Connect, a platform for industry associations and civic organizations, envisions vibrant Indian cities that deliver world-class quality of life, infrastructure and services for all its citizens-rich and poor. He is interested in improving urban governance, urban quality of life and promoting market-based solutions to poverty. He has written and worked to promote decentralization, good urban governance, promote economic freedom for urban entrepreneurs like street hawkers and others in the informal sector and for their recognition as profit seeking entrepreneurs. He holds a M.S. in Physics from the University of Louisville and a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has worked in the software industry in area like computational physics and visualization, telecom and finance. Other Great EventsMay 26 – 29: Transport for a Global Economy – New Challenges and Opportunities – (along with the new Young Researcher Award of the International Transport Forum)
Leipzig, Germany Efficient Transport is a cornerstone of our global economy. Competitive transport services operated securely and sustainably are essential for growth and development. But now the financial crisis coupled with volatile oil prices poses demanding new challenges for international transport systems. What does the present economic crisis mean for globalization? Transport and globalization – who stands to lose and win? How will the global credit crunch affect transport investment programmes? These questions will be addressed at this forum, hosted annually by the International Transport Forum, which provides an annual platform for Transport Ministers from around the world to meet with researchers and leaders of civil society and examine strategic policy issues facing the sector. The Forum is supported by the Joint Transport Research Center, which is a joint initiative of the International Forum and the OECD. For more information, go to: http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/ In addition, the forum offers a “Young Researcher Award” to a young researcher (or researchers) who submits the best research paper on the 2009 forum theme: “Transport for a Global Economy, New Challenges and Opportunities”. For more information on the Young Researcher Award, go to http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/2009/pdf/Award.pdf June 2 - 3: "Meeting of the Minds"
Manhattan, New York Meeting of the Minds is an invitation-only, no-charge event held in a different city annually. It started in Berkeley, moved to Portland (Oregon) and this June it will take on New York City. The event was designed to bring together leaders from multiple sectors and geographies to share ideas, learn from each other, and shape the agenda for creating more sustainable cities, with a particular focus on transportation and mobility. Those attending in Portland last year included over 200 policy makers, decision makers, opinion makers, rainmakers, and thought leaders from the commercial, nonprofit, and public sectors. The guests included representatives from the environmental, energy, economic development, and urban design communities with a stake in transportation, with many coming from Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, but approximately 20% were national and international participants. SMART has had a presence at each of the "Meeting of the Minds", most
recently when Susan Zielinski presented at the session in Portland
Contributed by Gordon Feller June 15, 16, & 17: International Conference on Efficient, Safe, and Sustainable Truck Transportation Systems for the Future
Michigan League Ballroom, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Building the Policy Options Roadmap: Legislators and transportation policy experts around the world are challenged by rising energy costs, an increasing freight demand and growing concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is conducting an international study of highway freight transportation safety, efficiency and policy with a view to sustainability. The preliminary findings of this study will be discussed at the conference together with the most recent domestic and international highway freight research results with a view to building policy options that support a vibrant economy while protecting environmental and public interests. The conference will include:
• plenary sessions on the future direction of both domestic and international highway freight transportation including international benchmarking of transportation efficiency and safety performance The conference is hosted by UMTRI, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Major sponsors include the United States Department of Transport, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the American Trucking Association, and Conway Freight. Who should attend? Stakeholders in the highway freight transport system, including legislators and their staff, federal and state transport and highway infrastructure officials, shippers, motor carriers, commercial drivers’ representatives, motorists, insurance industry officials, manufacturers, suppliers and researchers. For more information contact Karen Szemak szemak@umich.edu (734-647-8633). Contributed by John Woodrooffe, Research Scientist, UMTRI. June 15 - 17: The National Summit, (Detroit Economic Club) Ford Field, Detroit
Transportation content is anticipated at this Detroit based national conference on the future of America’s economy. For more information, please visit http://www.nationalsummit.org/ June 18 – 19: Sustainable Mobility Symposium: A Practical Applications Approach for Engineers
Next Energy, Detroit Michigan Automotive design or manufacturing engineers have direct involvement with sustainable mobility whether they are aware of it or not. What they need to know is how Sustainable Mobility concepts are translated into product / process design and technical specifications. Participants will discuss how the goals of the 2030 sustainable mobility report can be translated into product specifications that define and design the space. This “practical approaches” symposium will address the concepts of sustainability with the idea that if done correctly engineers can walk away with ideas and practices to take back to integrate into their work environment. OEM and supplier case-studies, industry / government co-operative ventures, panel discussions, and a hands-on exercise will introduce participants to concepts and practices of Sustainable Mobility that can be applied to their job function. Contributed by Marc LeDuc, Technical Program Engineer, Society of Automotive Engineers November. 2009. SMART'S (now annual) Summit - Moving Minds: The Next Transportation Infrastructure.
BSRB Ann Arbor In November 2009, SMART's Sustainable Urban Mobility & Accessibility Summit is back by popular demand at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Moving Minds: The Next Transportation Infrastructure will bring researchers together with business leaders, entrepreneurs, practitioners and policy makers from around the world: This year's summit will give special attention to:
Case study briefsMobility MagazineVisit Mobility Magazine, a new South Africa-based publication. It’s choc full of international case studies, and local (sustainable) transport news and issues, started and run by Gail Jennings of Cape Town’s New Mobility Initiative. http://www.mobilitymagazine.co.za/ Don’t Forget INSPIREMOBILITY, SMART’s OnLine Innovations Library and BlogInspiremobility is a case-based library of innovations related to sustainable transportation. Find the link on SMART’s home page or at www.inspiremobility.blogspot.com. If you’d like to contribute innovations you know about to the blog, please E-mail the URL to inspiremobility@gmail.com and your submission will be posted within 48 hours.
SMART NewsBrief News Clips: Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to know more, support, or get involved with any of the activities below. New Developments in Cape Town, by Claire JanischThe first week in February was a big one for New Mobility in Cape Town, with a very energizing public meeting at the World Cup site, and a very productive meeting of Cape Town New Mobility movers and shakers, including a baton passing and a name change. With the evolution of responsibility for convening New Mobility activity from the Cambridge Program for Industry to IDASA, the NMA (New Mobility Alliance) will now be known as the NMI – the New Mobility Initiative. Many Thanks to the Cambridge Programme for Industry for their key role in initiating (with SMART), convening and coordinating the New Mobiltiy Alliance for the last 2 years. The Public Event: New Mobility for the World Cup and Beyond Once a month the Green Point stadium (one of the venues for Soccer World Cup 2010 in South Africa) hosts an evening presentation on topics related to the 2010 World Cup. These are very popular with the general public and the media, they keep everyone up to date with plans for the event and provide an opportunity to see the progress on the stadium. The Cape Town New Mobility Initiative hosted the February evening presentation on New Mobility for the World Cup and Beyond, with special guests Oscar Diaz of Bogota Columbia (see Bogota’s world-renouned TransMillenio project at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio and link to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy at http://www.itdp.org/) and Eddie Chinnapen, Head of Transport in the City of Cape Town. Jerome Van Rooij and I (Claire Janisch) also presented the latest developments and activities of the Cape Town NMA / NMI (see details below). There was a great response for the evening presentation. Over 160 people attended. Oscar's talk on Integrated Transport was informative and entertaining. Eddie Chinnapen shared valuable information on the City of Cape Town's transport plans for 2010 and beyond. There were a number of requests for him to present again with more time on each topic. The Cape Town NMI will be organising that and will keep you informed. NMI Meeting Action Highlights: Our New Mobility prototype website is on line for NMI members! If you are interested in being involved in Cape Town New Mobility activities and seeing the site, contact Claire Janisch at Claire@geniuslab.co.za or Jerome Van Rooij at jerome.VanRooij@cpi.cam.ac.uk. The site is currently hosted through the University of Michigan SMART site. Thanks to NMI members and especially to designer Kyle Lawson and web developer Eric Winfield for making this a reality. We are also looking for ways for the website to be commercially viable on its own. Gail Jennings of Mobility Magazine will be leading the website focus group. We also made some great progress on mapping the initial pilots of the New Mobility Hub Network. A hub focus group has been formed which will meet to take this forward with an aim for a pilot some time in March of 2010, ready for the world cup. In the long-term this map will also be included as an interactive connectivity map on the website to be used for journey planning and wayfinding. Sue Zielinski of the SMART Project at University of Michigan and key advisor for the Cape Town NMA, reminded us of the strong international network of information and contacts around New Mobility available through SMART. SMART also is developing a network of formal linkages between similar projects in India, Brazil & the USA. Sue was a great resource as we put our heads together on next steps for leveraging the benefits of the NMA to develop our local NM industry while improving quality of life and the environment at the same time. The meeting was very productive and the energy and enthusiasm was inspiring. Update on India, by Raj CherubalPartnership between City Connect (CCC) in Chennai and Bangalore, India and SMART has been the catalyst for New Mobility Hub Network ideas and pilots in both cities. CCC was formed by a group of industry leaders and civil society organisations to help our respective cities become world class, capable of delivering world class infrastructure and services to all its citizens-rich and poor. The reception from the civil society and government officials has been very encouraging. To make these ideas a reality, the strategy has been to pilot short term projects (for quick wins) and promote longer term projects, that involve a network of industry, traffic and transport experts and pertinent agencies of the city and state government. Unlike in developed cities, Chennai and Bangalore, good representatives of other cities in India, suffer from serious systemic and institutional capacity issues. For example, even basic standards and guidelines for pedestrian facilities are non-existent in the city's scope of work. Add to this, the multiplicity of agencies and overlapping functions and responsibilities, the result is extremely poor quality of infrastructure and services. The idea of New Mobility Hub networks suits this situation, while also forcing the idea to think afresh. For each Hub now needs to incorporate even basic features-footpaths, pedestrian crossing, signage, passenger friendly bus stops and bus bays, etc.-that may be taken for granted in more developed cities. But, since the idea of a New Mobility Hub presupposes no particular feature or facility, except seamless, smooth inter-modal transfer, it facilitates more realistic thinking and designs to achieve the goals. New Mobility Hub networks accept reality as it is and facilitates improvements to improve mobility for all. As short term, quick win projects CCC has taken up projects to redesign pedestrian facilities in corridors and junctions and introduce pedestrian standards and guidelines in the city. Another short term project-with the long term objective of converting the Chennai Airport into a Mobility Hub and an integrated part of the transport network-is helping the authority to ease the traffic chaos entering and exiting the airport, streamlining the passenger drop off and pick up lanes, etc. This would include providing parking; ensuring poorer passengers arriving in buses from outside the city, etc. are taken into consideration. Taking our experience thus far, and our learnings from our interaction with SMART and partner organisations, CCC has initiated discussions on a longer term project that involves creating a series of Mobility Hubs along one very important corridor. This would also force improvement of pedestrian facilities, junctions, the introduction of a feeder system to improve access to buses and trains, etc. This would create a model corridor with a series of New Mobility Hubs as part of the corridor network. This idea has generated a lot of enthusiasm among government agencies and civil society organizations so far. Kevin Clemens New Book - The Crooked MileLast year author Kevin Clemens was in Ann Arbor on a Knight-Wallace fellowship, and happily got connected with SMART and its various projects. We're very pleased to share this announcement of the fruits of his labour while here in Michigan. to reach a brighter future
In the coming years we face extraordinary challenges. The Crooked Mile is the first book to look for answers to comprehensive questions that include: • Will your next new car come from China? In The Crooked Mile, award-winning automotive journalist, Kevin Clemens, has rolled up his sleeves and met with the men and women who are working on the front lines in the search for answers to the planet’s most pressing problems. From the cab of a roaring diesel-powered corn combine in Michigan, to the moonscape left behind by mountain top removal coal mining in West Virginia, to standing on top of the reactor vessel of an operating nuclear reactor in Minnesota, Clemens reports on a path through the challenges we face. Some of the people he encountered have names found in the front-page headlines—others have toiled for years in the relative obscurity of their laboratories. Each has a story to tell, and in The Crooked Mile, Clemens weaves together their experiences into a compelling narrative. Surprisingly, given the potential for gloom and despair, The Crooked Mile manages to find optimism that could eventually lead to a brighter future. About the Author Kevin Clemens, engineer, journalist, author, and adventurer, has driven north of the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter, across the searing deserts of China in the heat of summer, through the perils of the republics of the former Soviet Union, over treacherous roads in the Andes Mountains, in forty-eight countries and fifty states. RELEASE DATE: February 2009 The Crooked Mile Published by: Demontreville Press, Inc., www.demontrevillepress.com Price: $17.95 USD Other SMART News:SMART Distinguished Speaker Visit and Meeting Focused on Detroit RegionOn January 30, SMART Distinguished Speaker Gordon Feller joined us for a scintillating presentation on Planning, Energy, and Transportation from a Systems perspective. For a summary of his talk click here. SMART Research CollaborativeKrista Gullo (kgullo@umich.edu) has been busy working on developing the SMART research collaborative. This project brings together international academic and business research partners from India, South Africa, and the U.K. with U.S. partners including the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Georgia Institute of Technology (and more). Its purpose is to formalize an ongoing inter-disciplinary research collaborative that supports and accelerates implementation of sustainable urban mobility and accessibility in selected urban regions. Anticipated outcomes include studies, peer-reviewed articles, books, workshops, and pilot projects. Related to this, Jonathan Levine, Moira Zellner, Krista Gullo, Yoram Shiftan and Sue Zielinski have been working with international partners on a number of exciting research project proposals. Dateline Washington DC: Infrastructure Committee of the Center for the Study of the Presidency meeting, Transportation Research Board, and T4 America.Sue Zielinski was in Washington DC in January to attend a meeting of the Infrastructure Committee of the Center for the Study of the Presidency’s project to advise the incoming Presidential transition (see http://www.thepresidency.org/) and then again to give a presentation at the Transportation Research Board Annual Conference (in a workshop organized by Susan Shaheen of Berkeley’s Transportation Center). Also at TRB, SMART member institute UMTRI held its annual lively reception. Sue and SMART also continue to provide advisory support to ongoing T4America efforts (see http://www.t4america.org/). Beyond D.C., since last e-News Sue has been to Cape Town South Africa for project meetings there (see Claire Janisch article above) and to London England to explore additional international partnerships. She is attending the Art Center College of Design Summit in Pasadena this week, where she’ll be working with conference hosts on developing networks for design and New Mobility, along with supporting SMART’s New Mobility Research Collaborative and Industry Network.
About SMARTVisit um-smart.org to learn about SMART.
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Improving mobility and integration of existing and future transport networks in the developing world is crucial. This talk will center on the realities -- good and bad -- at the ground level and progress in pilots being conducted in Chennai and Bangalore, India. There is a lot of enthusiasm and support from all quarters of society -- government, industry, NGOs and citizens as everyone recognizes the importance of mobility to urban development, poverty alleviation and quality of urban life. But to achieve our objectives, we need a better understanding of the urban governance realities in the developing world along with sound strategy to leverage the capabilities of the growing urban transportation industry. 
Americans love their automobiles. More than a mode of transportation, cars provide us with freedom, social equality, and entertainment. The price we pay for our infatuation with four wheels is high. Air pollution, global climate change, energy insecurity, injury and death, and urban sprawl are fair charges against the automobile. Some critics suggest we abandon the automobile. This is not likely.