Moving together: The new mobility culture considers not only transit, but also health, education, housing, waste and social needs. No transportation system is an island; it must coordinate all shared systems for maximum effect.

Archetypal cities of the new mobility culture include Bremen (Germany), Bogotö (Colombia) and Curitiba (Brazil). Bremen’s mobility strategy takes its inspiration from a mythical creature known as “die eierlegende Wollmilchsau” (”egglayingwoolmilksow”), which translates roughly as an all-in-one device that’s suitable for everyone. The idea is to develop an intermodal system, involving public transport and car sharing. In Bogotö, just two years since the implementation of Transmilenio, the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system, there have been radical improvements in mobility and overall quality of life: decreases in travel time for users (32%), violent crime citywide (50%), traffic accidents (80%), number of fatalities caused by traffic accidents (30%), noise pollution (30%); and an increase in time spent by mothers and fathers with their children (37%).

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Curitiba is considered one of the best examples of urban planning on the planet. When did you begin participating in the design of its Master Plan?
In the mid-60s, I was part of a group of architects working for the City of Curitiba, advising the mayor at the time (Ivo Arzua Pereira) in every development phase of the Curitiba Preliminary Urban Plan. We later became the Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC), Curitiba Research and Urban Planning Institute. Through IPPUC, I participated in the preparation of the Master Plan to guide the City’s physical, economic and cultural transformation, and was elected mayor of the city in 1971. I remained mayor for three terms (1971-75, 1979-83 and 1989-92).

How can a city be an instrument for change?
A city has to have the political will to change. A city needs a strategy, which works with potentiality, not just needs. And a city needs solidarity, not as rhetoric but as a sincere understanding of the daily life of its citizens. With every problem there needs to be an equation of co-responsibility. When everyone understands what the consequences of certain attitudes are they will more readily cooperate and help bring about change. A city needs to have a daily plan and daily processes that encourage constant learning.

This is why you have designed initiatives where the citizens are involved in such things as tree planting, recycling, and keeping the gardens clean?
Yes, involvement in all aspects of city life. When we started separating garbage in Curitiba, we looked first to the children. For six months, we taught every child the importance of separating organic from inorganic garbage. The children then taught their parents. Since 1989, we’ve had 70% voluntary participation in this initiative. When we had a fuel crisis about 20 years ago, even though we had a very good system of transport in place, everyone knew that they should rethink public transport. Curitiba has more private cars than any Brazilian city except Brasilia (500,000) yet 75% of commuters take the bus and Curitibanos spend only 10% of their income on transport. Why? Because they have a good alternative. (more…)

Personal freedom: The world may not have embraced secular democracy, but it has embraced traffic. The radical success of the car has brought about its failure. As a result, personal mobility projects are underway worldwide to deliver maximum freedom with minimal impact.

RELIEVE CONGESTION: According to Dean Kamen, 43% of our fuel is used while we’re sitting still. With the electrically-powered Segway HT (see below), his dream is to reconfigure dense urban environments and accommodate a cheaper, cleaner and more efficient alternative to the automobile. Photo Courtesy Sara Moss.

• Road traffic injuries are predicted to become the third largest contributor to the global burden of disease by 2020
• Road traffic deaths are predicted to increase by 83% in low-income and middle-income countries, and to decrease by 27% in high-income countries; these figures amount to a predicted global increase of 67% by 2020
• It is estimated that every year, road traffic crashes cost US$518 billion
• The average annual delay per person in the United States has climbed from 11 hours in 1982 to 36 hours in 1999

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The Segway Human Transporter (HT) is efficient where urban driving currently is not. How so?
Cars are perfect machines for a discreet mission. Their performance is optimized at 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. They carry you and your whole family and keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer and move you between cities. It’s fun to do that, it’s efficient to do that. Then you put a car in the middle of a city, with one person in it. That one person is trying to get one mile or two at a speed much less than the distance he or she wants to travel. It’s absurd. Especially since half of all car trips in the U.S. are less than a few miles. With cars creeping along causing congestion and pollution, they are no longer efficient. And with half of the human population now living in cities, there has to be another way to travel short distances. What if you could give the pedestrian, with a Segway HT, the ability to glide along the sidewalk at 8, 9, or 10 miles an hour? You would have given them a safe option that is not only cleaner, but also more efficient. And, by the way, a lot of fun!

Dean, what is it about a Segway HT that makes people smile when they step on it?
When you first climb aboard a Segway HT, you feel like a kid when he stands up for the first time. You’re bewildered. As you think forward, the machine starts to move forward. As you feel yourself wanting to step back, it intuits this and reverses. The experience of being on a Segway HT isn’t really like anything else. It’s like watching yourself learn to acquire the capability to balance.

Seeing that there are no brakes, engine, throttle, gearshift or steering wheel, I assume you would agree with Arthur C. Clarke’s statement, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
I not only agree with that statement, I would say that we work hard to live up to that standard with most of our projects. If a client doesn’t say, “Wow, that’s amazing!” I assume we haven’t succeeded yet. Building the iBOT 3000 Mobility System, an enhanced advance on the wheelchair that uses cutting-edge robotics to allow the disabled to stand up, look their colleagues in the eye and walk up a flight of stairs is one very vivid example. Building medical equipment so that people can dialyze themselves at home instead of living three nights of every week in an iron lung in a hospital room is another. We dedicate ourselves to projects that significantly change people’s lives. (more…)