ESF 4, mobility management and uniting the people

So, my trip to England was very successful on lots for fronts. I found Maureen (who you will remember as my host in Norwich) and we spent a couple very pleasant days together. We successfully met up with Christian (the youngest Poirier) for the protest on Sunday. We successfully attended the protest Sunday and walked its entire route. I think about 60,000 were at each, the conference and the protest. I didn’t know there were so many... idealists out there. (But I hear the last anti-Bush protest in London was much bigger.) These protests always crack me up because they seem to be about every issue under the sun: feed the hungry, be nice, stop destroying the environment, no occupying other people’s countries, provide medical services, stop killing innocent people, hurray for peace and freedom.... I can’t help but wonder if we are more likely to get what we want if we provide a more direct and cohesive request.

A while back, I posted a question on the TDM listserv to see about networking with mobility management professionals here in Europe. I received about 25 replies, including one from a gentleman who works for VIPRE (in Holland), the European branch of VPSI (the vanpool company). He runs (or at least set up) several commuter shops in UK, Ireland, and Holland and helps businesses with various aspects of their employees commutes including predicting attrition associated with relocation. So, we met up on Sunday, and he took me for a lovely Italian dinner.

Monday, we met up again so that he could show me their commuter shops. We took the fast train to Heathrow airport (15 minutes and 15 GBP) and then his car for another half an hour to the Oracle headquarters where he runs a little commuter shop. The shop included bicycle equipment for sale, “talking books” to borrow (for carpoolers), lots of printed literature, ridematching, guarantted ride home, etc. They provide other facilities for bicyclists including bicycles to borrow during the lunch break, and the business park is connected to an adjacent park along the Thames with a path they successfully lobbied the city to install. (I won’t give away too many details since I am planning to compile them in a more official document along with other research I haven’t done yet.) We also visit a commuter store, which Mike described as following the Central Perk (Friends) model, where people can come, enjoy a coffee and read a newspaper at the same location where they receive their commuter services (in a suburban shopping mall surrounded by office parks).

In UK, the government encourages companies to implement agressive environmental programs (including commuter transportion), which they are then given points for when bidding on public contracts. In the case of the shopping center retail commuter center, the developer promised to do it for their building permit, but Mike said that many developers don’t bother and their is no recourse against them if they do not do what their promised for the permit.

The weekend was particularly throught provoking considering that I spent most of it espousing against capitalism, and the other part discussing and examining commuter programs provided by big business in auto-oriented suburban locations. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Maya at the Carfree Conference in July. I said something to the effect of “the people united will never be defeated.” She said “yeah, but do you think there is any chance of uniting the people?”