What do driverless vehicles, Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) and the World Bank have in common? The answer: all were part of ECF Secretary General Bernhard Ensink’s recent visit to Washington DC, to represent the ECF and its members at various functions.

The Transport Research Board Conference

The trip began with the Transport Research Board conference, which was organized from the bottom up but still managed to include around 12000 participants. One session that stood out in particular which has great relevance was “Automated and Connected Vehicles: Silver Bullet for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety.” One of the key things that was noticed in this session was that for many, the discussion has already moved onto HOW these vehicles should function and be programmed, than IF and WHERE they should ride in areas where we ride and cycle. This raises an interesting moral and ethical question regarding the programming: in cases where a crash is imminent, how should the vehicle decide between hitting a pedestrian (probably fatal for the pedestrian) and hitting a tree (risk for the occupants in the vehicle). Given that driverless cars are becoming a prominent issue – particularly with the Netherlands EU Presidency – we have to catch up with the current discussions on how and where automated vehicles should be allowed, for the wellbeing of all people.

More on the TRB and cycling:

http://www.trb.org/PedestriansandBicyclists/PedestriansandBicyclists2.aspx

At a meeting of the Bicycle Transportation Committee Bernhard introduced to the participants the recently published book ‘Cycling Futures – From research into Practice’ (ed. by Regine Gerike and John Parkin – in collaboration with ECF’s Network Scientists for Cycling) and handed a copy over to chairman Ralph Buehler.

The SLoCaT 2016 annual meeting

At the Annual Meeting of SLoCaT, where Bernhard was representing the ECF and WCA, the members  celebrated the success of last year’s shared efforts to promote Transport on the global agenda. The success was clear: there is now far more attention on sustainable transport as a key issues for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and Climate Action. However, the work is just beginning, as now countries have to keep the promises they made at the Paris COP21 talks, and implement the plans they included in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Bernhard was positive though, saying that he sees it “as an opportunity for our advocacy for cycling on EU and national level that cycling can deliver more than the countries show up to now in their plans.”

http://www.slocat.net/event/1626

The UN Technical Working Group

Bernhard also represented the ECF and WCA in the UN Technical Working Group on Sustainable Transport, which was meeting to contribute to a High Level Advisory Group (HLAG) to the UN Secretary General, which has been tasked to produce recommendations on how to promote sustainable transport systems, and how to integrate them into development strategies and policies, including climate action. The results of this HLAG will be a Global Transport Outlook Report and a global conference on Sustainable Transport.

More on the HLAG-ST:

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/sustainabletransport/highleveladvisorygroup

The World Bank conference

Finally, Bernhard attended the annual World Bank Group & World Research Institute conference ‘Transforming Transportation’. “It was good to see that two important allies for good cycling policies in Europe were invited to deliver keynotes at the conference: Copenhagen’s Mayor for a.o. Environment Morten Kabell (“Copenhagen is a rich city because we invested in cycling!”) and Luxembourg’s Minister for a.o. Infrastructure Bausch (“In Road Safety the only possible goal is ‘Vision Zero’!”).  Bernhard presented in the session on “New initiatives for Clean Mobility’, where he showed an overview of useful EU projects, introduce WCF & WCA’s transport initiative document ‘Cycling Delivers on the Global Goals’ and the main results of the study ‘A High Shift Cycling Scenario’.

http://www.transformingtransportation.org/agenda