The Annual International Transport Forum Summit will take place on May 21-23 2014, in Leipzig, Germany. The theme for the 2014 ITF Summit is“Transportation in a Changing World”. The sustainable transport community will be well represented through side events and pleanaries at the summit. For a list of side events organized by SLoCaT members, please click here.
The SLoCaT Partnership representatives will blog live from the International Transport Forum on sustainable transport related discussions.
So far we have three people confirmed that they will blog: Armin Wagner (Senior Advisor, Sustainable Mobility, Section “Energy and Transport”, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH), Cornie Huizenga (Secretary General of SLoCaT Partnership), Rob McInerney (Chief Executive Officer of International Road Assessment Program)
Armin Wagner Cornie Huizenga Rob McInerney
German Partnership for Sustainable Mobility helds first kick-off events at ITF 2014–Armin Wagner, Friday, 23 May 2014
With more than 80 participants, the GPSM side-event on “Enabling Change: The German Partnership for Sustainable Mobility” kicked off with a fruitful discussion on its purpose, objectives and further steps. Initiated by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, the side-event reflected experiences from businesses, academia and society and explored the role of knowledge exchange and effective international collaboration for sustainable mobility and logistics. Presenting and later on discussing the implementation of the GPSM Falk Heinen (BMUB), Franz B. Marré (BMZ), Rehana Moosajee (former mayoral committee member for transport in Johannesburg/South Africa), Oliver Lah (Wuppertal Institut), Sebastian Schlebusch (nextbike) and Michael Gruber (KfW) created a fruitful panel. Moderated by Prof. Ahrens (TU Dresden), the session ended with answering questions directly from the Plenum, such as how to participate in the GPSM, which further steps and what instruments are promising.
How international financing for development in the area of international transport works was the leading question of the second event of the brand new initiative: GPSM meets finance. The informal side-event provided a platform for exchange between international financing experts and GPSM members on global challenges, current priorities and instruments. Ko Sakamoto (ADB), Ahmed al Qabany (IsDB) and Michael Gruber (KfW) were discussing, facilitated by Cornie Huizenga (Slocat) on global challenges, current prorities and instruments for effective collaboration for sustainable mobility.
Find here more information on the German Partnership for Sustainable Mobility www.german-sustainable-mobility.de
Vote for Road Safety in MyWorld2015.org-Rob McInerney, Friday, 23 May 2014
100,000,000 people [≈ population of Philippines, nation] will avoid death and serious injury from road transport crashes by 2030 if the UN sets and the world achieves a target to halve deaths and serious injuries by 2030 as part of the UN Post-2015 agenda. Make sure better transport and roads is a priority at www.myworld2015.org and suggest road safety as a priority.
City of Milan wins prestigious transport award- Cornie Huizenga, Tuesday, 20 May 2014
The Municipality of Milan in Italy is the winner of the 2014 Transport Achievement Award for its ‘Area C’ urban road pricing scheme.
The Transport Achievement Award is awarded annually by the International Transport Forum at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation for the transport sector with 54 member countries.
The award will be presented on 21 May in the presence of ministers from around the world during the opening plenary of their global transport summit organised by the International Transport Forum. Read more…
Financing Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport – an uncompleted, but critical, agenda to realize sustainable development– Cornie Huizenga, Thursday, May 15
The sustainable transport community got a boost on 4-5 May at the Ascent Meeting in Abu Dhabi, which was an important staging post for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit on 23 September in New York. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has decided to engage directly on climate change to help ensure that the new climate change agreement that is to be agreed in December 2015 in Paris, France will be sufficiently ambitious.
6 Transport related initiatives were presented in Abu Dhabi divided over 4 impact areas: transportation; cities; energy; and short-lived climate pollutants. The 6 initiatives reflect well the growing consensus that effective action on transport needs to combine an expansion of transport infrastructure and services with a reduction of the negative externalities of transport including greenhouse gas emissions. If success fully implemented these Ascent transportation initiatives will result in an expansion of railways that at the same time will be more energy efficient; wider use of public transport through amongst other Bus Rapid Transit systems; accelerated introduction of electric vehicles in urban areas; improved fuel efficiency of new light duty car fleets; and greater action on the greening of freight and logistics. Read More…