Established to operate in sustainable urban mobility plans, accessibility to urban transportation, low-carbon transportation, traffic and transportation, integrated transit systems and smart transportation systems UCLG-MEWA Committee on Urban Mobility organized its second meeting on 22-23 March 2016, in the capital city of Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Amman, and hosted by Amman Metropolitan Municipality.
In the two-day meetings, besides the executive affairs of committee, thematic meetings were also organized. During his opening speech, Mehmet Duman, UCLG-MEWA Secretary General presented brief information about the meeting held on 18 December 2016 in Istanbul together with TRANSIST 2015 Exposition and in cooperation with IETT; and he mentioned the important topics and works concerning urban mobility within the action area of UCLG-MEWA. Mr. Duman said: “The culture of public transportation should be widespread in our region from now on. If the culture of public transportation doesn’t get widespread, it will not only affect us on a local level but also harm the world with environmental pollution. In this sense, I would like to give some examples from our region. We see that taxi is used widely as transportation vehicle in the United Arab Emirates. I think there should be public service advertisements to encourage people to use the public transportation. For instance, Dubai uses rail systems. I think, these kinds of practices should be extended. In Istanbul, 800,000 people use Metrobus every day. I would like to emphasize that this is a huge number. Improvement in transportation facilities and integration between different transportation vehicles will increase this number in densely populated cities.” Touching upon the related topics from other countries in the region, Mr. Duman said: “In one of the countries in the region with high national income, Qatar, the people of Doha don’t feel the need for a public transportation system. Here we see again taxi as the primary transportation vehicle. As you would appreciate, when making urban transportation master plans, we should take not only present but also the future into account. Besides these works, there are serious plans made recently for transportation systems in our region. We all are informed that the facilitative projects of “Marmaray” and “High-Speed Train” were successfully planned and put recently into practice in Turkey. Apart from these examples, many sizable investments are being made in United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia on public transportation. In the thematic meetings that were held within the scope of this meeting, three panels were organized. The first one of these panels was titled “How Do We Attain Sustainable Mobility in MEWA Region, and What Are The Difficulties to Face?”, the second one was titled “LRT & BRT: Planning, Practice and Difficulties”; and lastly a workshop titled “Habitat III and Mobility” was organized. Many panelists and participants from Turkey, Egypt, France, Spain, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon attended to the panels and the workshop.
In the meeting of UCLG-MEWA Urban Mobility Mohamed Sadieh, the President of the Union of Municipalities of Dannieh and Co-President of the Committee started the session by introducing the Committee Presidency Council elected during TRANSIST 2015. Accordingly, Amman Metropolitan Municipality was elected as the President of IETT Committee; and Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality, Union of Municipalities of Dannieh, Malatya Metropolitan Municipality were elected the Co-Presidents of the Committee.
In the meeting, İzmir Metropolitan Municipality and Prof. Dr. Khaled Abbas, the Former Dean of Egypt National Transportation Institute and Dubai Public Transportation Expert demanded for committee membership. Then UCLG-MEWA discussed the action plan and shared some projects with the participants. In addition, it was decided that the 3rd meeting of the committee will be held during TRANSIST 2016 to be organized in December 2016. İzmir Metropolitan Municipality presented an offer to host a meeting next year.
The meeting ended with the closing speech given by Mehmet Duman, UCLG-MEWA Secretary General and Hasan Özçelik, IETT Deputy Director General, after the workshop and panels were completed.
For images of the meeting, please click:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/uclg-mewa/