Car Sharing ‘Last Nail In Coffin Of Old Mobility’
So says Eric Britton, international man of mystery, and one of the world’s leading sustainable practices innovators. He often talks about the New Mobility Agenda. We often see Eric in the Velib videos that continue to pour out of Paris.
The e2 series (’E-squared’) is a PBS series, now in its third season, documenting sustainable practices around the world. You can see the full episodes that have already shown on TV by going to the e2 series website and clicking on the ‘webcasts’ button at top, and the website offers short web-exclusive video trailers of each episode - the one about Velib is below:
I thought it was interesting to hear Eric say that car-sharing, a la Zipcar and Hertz, is the ‘last nail in the coffin of old mobility’. Here in San Francisco, of course, we have decent car-sharing — now we need the bike-sharing.
I also like how Eric talks about bike-sharing being part of a process that “inevitably leads to car-sharing as a necessary path for the city.”
Nice. We’ve talked a bit about ‘the inevitable argument‘. Not to suggest that this is just rhetorical flair - I just happen to like that it comes across, to me at least, as being very convincing. It’s as if to say, we really have no choice in the matter, we’re just a drop of water flowing with the river, and at some point we will reach the mouth of the river — the new mobility is coming, we’re moving closer to it all the time.
Another interesting fact I’ve heard mentioned before is that the introduction of Velib not only had new people participating in riding bikes for transportation, but people who already rode their bikes now ride twice as much. That’s pretty intense.
Another interesting impression that Eric mentions during the video is that the bike riding, in a very subtle way, helps people to think about things in a much different way - even without them knowing it is happening to them. This is what I refer to as the ’shrinking’ effect - or, the Seinfeldian ’shrinkage’ if you prefer - and it’s one of the reasons cycling is so darn awesome. :) This thought process happened to me when I started riding regularly, and it was mostly about how to live locally, but there are other ways it can affect you. For instance, you start to think about things like the desirability - or not - of building housing on top of large hills. When you have to get yourself up there without a motor, a house on top of a hill becomes a lot less appealing.
Bike dealers were skeptical, but business has never been better for them.
The cold doesn’t make Parisians hesitate to bike, but the rain does.
Floating repair barge? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m already a Paris fanboy. This is getting ridiculous.
New ‘hub’ areas will have train, bus, taxi, bike, and other mobility options to provide maximum flexibility.
The bike station as pickup spot? And its a place that has enabled Parisians to communicate with each other more - to be more….human. Parisians are now helping each other more, it seems.
There are some shots of the Friday Night Fever (Pari Roller) - the 5-mile rollerblading event through the streets of Paris that has attracted upwards of 35,000 people - at the same time, on one night. Awesome.
Paris gas? About $10 USD per gallon.
The main Velib program is narrated by Brad Pitt.
Grist interview with Eric here.
The main sponsor of this particular show seems to be AutoDesk (wiki) - headquartered in San Rafael, in North Bay.
The e-squared, e2, probably stands for ‘the economies of being environmentally conscious.’
Portland is up next. Expect me to bash BRT when the episode is online. 
…Not sure how I missed it, but AutoLib is mentioned. Car-sharing is going global quickly, it seems.
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