Transforming Transportation 2014 attracts largest audience yet
The 11th annual Transforming Transportation conference, co-organized by EMBARQ and the World Bank, attracted the largest audience in the history of the event. Photo by Andreas/Flickr. Cropped.
EMBARQ co-organized the 11th annual Transforming Transportation conference with the World Bank and a team of partner organizations on January 16 and 17, 2014. Hosted at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., this year’s event was the largest in the history of Transforming Transportation.
PHOTOS | PRESENTATIONS | BLOGS
#TTDC14 by the numbers
Over 700 attendees gathered on-site to hear from 90 speakers hailing from four continents, while thousands more watched a live stream online. Of the speakers, 27 represented the private sector – a direct result of year’s theme: “Better Cities, Better Business.” This year’s event also generated a record amount of online participation. A series of live blogs and two opening blog posts co-authored by Holger Dalkmann, Director of EMBARQ, and Jose Luis Irigoyen, Director for the Transport, Water, and Information and Communications Technologies Department in the Sustainable Development Network (SDN) of the World Bank were viewed by 4,000 people across TheCityFix, produced by EMBARQ, WRI Insights, and World Bank Blogs.
In the Twitterverse, the Transforming Transportation 2014 hashtag – #TTDC14 – generated 3,000 tweets with a potential reach of 14 million people. Tweets came from 341 locations across the world, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, and Nigeria – indicating that the conversations sparked at the conference reached far beyond Washington D.C., appropriate given the global nature of the discussion.
The EMBARQ Network at Transforming Transportation 2014
Many experts from across the global network of EMBARQ, the sustainable transport and urban development program of the World Resources Institute (WRI), participated in Transforming Transportation by serving as moderators and panelists during the five plenaries and ten break-out sessions of the event.
Dalkmann helped steer the conference by delivering both opening and closing remarks in concert with Irigoyen. Additionally, he gave an opening presentation during the “Safer by Design: How Traffic Safety is Better for People and Business” plenary, and moderated research presentations by the first recipients of the Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency.
Benoit Lefevre, Director of EMBARQ’s Transport and Climate Program, served as a panelist on the “Climate Financing for Urban Mobility” break-out session on Day 1. On Day 2, Ali Danis, EMBARQ Turkey, and Sanjay Sridhar, EMBARQ India’s Strategy Head for Urban Development and Accessibility, both participated in the “Compact Cities are Good Business” break-out session – Danis as the moderator and Sridhar as a panelist. In a parallel break-out session, “Country Focus: Brazil,” Toni Lindau, Director of EMBARQ Brazil, presented and served as the moderator.
During the final block of parallel breakout sessions on Day 2, EMBARQ India Director Madhav Pai moderated “Small and Medium Enterprises for Mobility,” and Salvador Herrera, Deputy Director of EMBARQ Mexico, was a panelist in a discussion on “Secure Public Transport.” And in perhaps the most innovative session of this year’s conference, EMBARQ research analyst Heshuang Zeng moderated a session featuring PechaKucha style presentations by young researchers titled, “Future Leaders in Sustainable Transport.”
Transforming Transportation leads way to post-2015 framework for global action
Dalkmann and Irigoyen’s opening blogs – “Transforming transportation for more inclusive, prosperous cities,” and “Five opportunities for 21st-century transport” – articulated the unique opportunity presented by this year’s conference to convene experts from the transport, development, and business sectors at the beginning of two critical years that will determine the framework for global action for decades to come. Several major milestones are drawing near, including Climate Summit 2014 hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the definition of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Paris in 2015, and the 20th and 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in Lima in 2014 and Paris in 2015. Transforming Transportation underscored the importance of embedding transport into the heart of global climate change and development commitments in order to ensure higher quality of life for billions of urban residents, access to economic opportunities, and environmental sustainability – particularly in cities.
A new global campaign announced at Transforming Transportation, Transport Delivers, will seek to see this mission through. Spearheaded by the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT), the campaign is calling city and national leaders to better integrate sustainable transport into policy discussions on development and climate change by implementing four proposed voluntary commitments. And while the success of Transport Delivers will be ultimately judged by the means in which transport is included in the post-2015 framework for action, its progress will be assessed next year at the campaign’s half-way mark – Transforming Transportation 2015.
To see the full program of Transforming Transportation 2014, visit the event’s website at www.transformingtransportation.org. For more information about specific sessions, see TheCityFix’s live coverage of the event.