For an idea of where “Sustainable Penang” is being read in Malaysia (in all four languages), have a look at the following map which records the location of readers across Malaysia who have signed into the site in the last three days.

From an international perspective the world reader map looks like this:

“Sustainable Penang” now available in Malay (but most read in KL?)

For the Malay translated edition of this program, go to the left sliding menu (the + sign up top) and click under Translate. the link to Malay version. (You will also see there links to the Chinese and Tamil translations.)
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Sustainable Penang in Malay, Chinese and Tamil

As of today Sustainable Penang is available in quick translations in Malay, Chinese and Tamil. If you click the left menu (plus sign up top) you will see the translation links in the sliding menu. Our hope is that this will facilitate even wider circulation, discussion and use of these ideas across all of Malaysia.

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New Look for Phase II: Watching Brief

Sustainable Penang: Toward a New Mobility Agenda, The Phase Two Watching Brief is just getting underway, so we are taking this opportunity to carry out a major overhaul of the website and related social media sites, as you will now see in these pages. The site is already fast-growing with new postings, comments and graphics coming in steadily. So as you can well imagine it can be pretty easy to get lost in such a mass. Fortunately we have taken advantage of a quite handy nest of Search functions which you will find explained here

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“Every day is a great day to take a few cars off the street and think about it”

Who, where in the world is looking at World Dar Free Days at http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ this morning.?

(Last 80 visitors to the site)

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An idea for Penang? Paris to limit speeds to 30 km/hr over entire city

The just-elected new Mayor of Paris, Madame Anne Hidalgo, has prepared a revolutionary sustainable mobility project whereby virtually all of the streets of the city will be subject to a maximum speed limit of 30 km/hr.

The only exceptions in the plan are a relatively small number of major axes into the city and along the two banks of the Seine, where the speed limit will be 50 km/hr, and the city’s hard pressed ring road (périphérique) where the top permissible speed has recently been reduced from 80 to 70 km/hr. At the other end of the slowth spectrum are a certain number of “meeting zones” (zones de rencontre) spotted around the city in which pedestrians and cyclists have priority but mix with cars which are limited to a top speed of 20 km/hr. A veritable révolution à la française.

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Traffic in Penang: Opening statement of Penang Transport Council

In an article entitled Traffic Congestion in Penang, published by the Penang Transport Council on 31 March 2010, we can get an idea of the level of awareness shown by State government of traffic congestion issues and eventual solutions at the time. One important missing piece of the puzzle in their overview is the lack of consideration of land use and related urban planning issues and measures. Something which is very much in the hands of local government. Many of these points come up again in the 2013 Transport Master Plan Strategy for the State of Penang. And as of the date of this posting (13 May 2014) are still very much unresolved.

Let’s have a closer look at the composition, contributions and independence of the Penang
Transport Council in the weeks ahead. There may be some interesting lessons there.