I would be very grateful if people could distribute this email to any potentially interested parties (with apologies for cross-posting!).
2nd Call for Papers - Inaugural Free Public
Transport Conference
The
national Campaign for Free Public Transport (after a a few false
starts!) has now set a date and booked a venue for our inaugural
conference. Taking a somewhat broader approach than has been outlined in
previous communications, we now wish to invite any and all academic
speakers who wish to debate the merits of Free Public Transport
specifically, but also issues around transport and society more broadly.
Core themes are as follows:
*Evaluating Public Transport in the UK
*Transport Economics
*Transport
and Social Inclusion
*Transport and Climate Change
*Evaluating
the merits of public transport subsidies
*Campaigning on Transport
Issues
I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to those
researchers who responded to our first call for presentations for the
changing of dates, but I'm sure many of you will appreciate the
difficulties of assembling a campaign with a truly national scope (we
now have members or affiliates in Glasgow, Manchester, Norwich, The Isle
of Wight, Bristol, London and many other places as well as ties to international free public transport campaigners - for instance the ambitious plan to finance free public transport in New York City by Charles Komanoff has recently featured in
Wired magazine
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_komanoff_traffic/all/1 ) and in ensuring the
representation of a broad range of organisations, activist groups,
political parties and independents (support ranges from former independent MP Dai Davis to Guardian Journalist Lynsey Hanley to two of Britain's largest Trades Unions, Unite and PCS). Now the national campaign has had
some time to coalesce we are ready to work towards this inaugural
conference where we will debate the transport issues facing Britain and
the wider world today, present various arguments for free public
transport, and move forward by voting on issues of policy.
Presentations should last no more than 10-15 minutes and all efforts
should be taken to make papers accessible to a lay audience. Abstracts
can be sent to
[log in to unmask] and the
conference team will endeavour to notify speakers promptly. Please also
get in touch if you have any further queries or would like to know how
you can become more involved with the campaign and its national
executive.
Your sincerely,
Bob
--
Bob Jeffery
Research Coordinator
Free Public Transport