15 leading transport and tech companies have signed the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, released last year at the ICLEI EcoMobility World Festival
New technologies are changing the way people move in and around cities, and rapid innovations in the transport sector present new opportunities and risks. At the same time, the status quo of fossil fuel intensive transport is no longer viable in building a low carbon future. Transportation is responsible for around 23 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, and urban transport accounts for over half of this figure.
Fifteen leading transport and technology companies agreed to take on this challenge when they signed the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities at the start of February. The companies included: BlaBlaCar, Citymapper, Didi, Keolis, LimeBike, Lyft, Mobike, Motivate, Ofo, Ola, Scoot Networks, Transit, Uber, Via and Zipcar. Combined, these companies account for 77 million passenger trips daily and influence the travel decisions of 10 million people on any given day.
Signing this pledge signals their commitment to prioritize people over vehicles, lower greenhouse gas emissions, promote equity and encourage data sharing, among other goals. This move signals strong support from the most influential transport companies for sustainable methods for on how people live, work and play moving in and around cities across the world.
The Shared Mobility Principles offer a vision for the future of cities and aim to align city governments, private companies and non-governmental organizations working to make them more livable.
Robin Chase, Zipcar co-founder, led the consortium of leading city and transport organizations, which includes ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Natural Resources Defense Council, Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT), Transportation for America (T4America), Rocky Mountain Institute, Shared-Use Mobility Center and the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.
The Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities were announced at the closing plenary of the EcoMobility World Congress last November, and constitute the basis for the Kaohsiung Strategies for the Future of Urban Mobility.
The Kaohsiung Strategies were later presented at COP23, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, this past November, developed by ICLEI as the defining guide to implementing sustainable urban mobility as an important contribution to global climate goals. The Kaohsiung Strategies commit the signatories to develop a roadmap for local governments to implement these principles in their communities and turn theory into practice.
Source: News ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, 05.02.2018