Saving Cities from Themselves

This article describes the Global Alliance for EcoMobility, an international organization that aims to reduce people’s dependency on private cars, especially in urban mobility, and raise the profile of “eco-mobility,” notably self-propelled forms of transport like walking, cycling, and skating, combined with the use of public transport. The Global Alliance has a pilot project called SHIFT, which helps cities put a system in place to make the change to eco-mobility, to measure the effectiveness of the change, and to compare their achievements with other cities. The SHIRT project is co-funded by the European Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (EACI) as part of its Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) program. The authors share their perspective on the draft of the SHIFT project. Topics include a definition of sustainable mobility, modal splits (between private and public transport), the eco-mobility assessment framework, enablers, products and services, mobility management (also called Travel Demand Management), the use of private vehicles, and the anticipated results and impacts of the SHIFT project.