Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
The following notes were prepared in a firs t instance and on the fly to guide my presentation as the
"closing summary" I was invited to make at the closure of the Strasburg conference. I took it as my task
to sum up a certain number of observations that the formal presentations and the lively exchanges
over the day brought to mind. And then to round them out here with some other findings and
recommendations that I hope will be useful to the carshare community in France. The presentation
itself was in French, but if you turn to Youtube.com you will see an informal presentation in English.
- Eric Britton, World Streets, Paris. 16 May 2011
Speaking notes for closing commentary:
2. 2011-2020: What do the next ten years have in store for us? (What we know for sure.)
a. World population reaches 7 billion (with specter of 10 billion by end of century)
b. So, we had better get a lot better at sharing (Unless we chose to live in a gated world)
c. Our collective aspirations and demand for quality mobility will not go down.
d. Aging, more fragile, less affluent, less able to drive population
e. Oil will be steadily more expensive and steadily harder to come by. (France will not join
OPEC)
f. We will not be saved by technology – and in particular such technologies as electric cars,
new fuels, hybrids, etc. will have no more than marginal impact
g. We will be quite broke in the next several years and thus will have to learn to get lots of
high quality mobility per Euro spent.
h. We will have learn to work with what we have
i. There will be centers of excellence, which will be well worth understanding in depth
j. The New Mobility Agenda for a city will consist of an integrated bouquet of services
differing considerably from city to city, but in virtually all cases there will be a role for
carsharing
3. Reminder: " We have no money gentlemen, so we shall have to think." ( Statement made by the
Nobel Prize winner Professor Ernest Rutherford, on taking over the quite broke Cavendish
Laboratory in 1919, in the wake of the First World War)
7. Slow Down:
a. The creation in steps of a "Code de la rue" is one of the most exciting, important, low cost
and effective building blocks of sustainable mobility.
b. The current referendum in Strasburg to get massive public approval for the creation of a 30
kph policy on a substantial portion of all city streets.
c. For some encouragement on this, have a look at
http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/honey-you-gotta-slow-down/
d. May this excellent example be followed in cities across France and beyond
Thanks for your attention. This ran a bit longer than I had hoped, but this has been a very full two
days and I wanted to be sure that I shared with you all what I have observed and learned from you.
Eric Britton
World Streets, Paris
Some references:
For more on the Rencontres Nationales - http://www.rencontres-autopartage.fr/
World Carshare Forum - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/
World Carshare Consortium – www.worldcarshare.com
World Carshare on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_170174886330276
World Streets on carsharing - http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/sharing/carshare/