Reinventing Transport

The newly resurrected Transport Blog has an interesting riff on taxis  around the world. The post is an entertaining read, full of pithy observations (and quite a lot of speculation I suspect). Yet it cleverly sneaks in some important points on the dry dry topic of taxi regulation. Which is great because improving taxi industry arrangements is an important but sadly neglected element of urban transport policy. Hanoi's taxis feature prominently - hence the intriguing title " How to spook a Vietnamese taxi driver ". You have to read to the end to understand the reference. There are brief comments on taxi service and its regulation all over the world. If author Michael Jennings is to be believed, taxis in Bulgaria and Buenos Aires are to be avoided if humanly possible. Hanoi taxis in their natural habitat (a sea of motorcycles!) Singapore's get a little nod too. Which reminds me that a few years ago I wrote something about Singapore's taxi arrangements . Si...

Imagine a future where most of us have easy access to cars whenever we want but few people have a car of their own. Does that sound horrifying or wonderful to you? Chris Bradshaw is an imaginative thinker about urban transport. A retired planner form Ottawa in Canada, he has long been an advocate for pedestrian rights. More recently, he has made car-sharing a passion. Bradshaw's vision for the role of carsharing is ambitious and striking. He envisages a future in which having a car of your own becomes the exception. The normal way to get access to a car would be through what he calls MASC, or 'metered access to shared cars' . This would make car-sharing, taxis and car-rental much more central to urban transport policy making than they are now. [Note: Carsharing enterprises are sometimes called car-clubs or car co-ops but don't confuse carsharing with ride-sharing or car-pooling.] He explains his ideas in a paper entitled, 'How Carsharing Can Reduce the ''D...