Some days ago, our new homepage was launched, of course under the old address: t2m.org. Thanks to Esther Kochte, Jamey Wetmore, Sonja Beekers, Sjoerd van der Wal and many others, we now have a webpage which underlines the status, competence, importance, and international distribution of our field and association. Please go on a virtual walk through the T2M -landscape and discover old and new activities of T2M. Some areas are still “under construction” and need informations from your desk. Please send in information on conferences, museums, university programs, books and journals in the history of transport, travel and mobility to our homepage coordinator Jamey Wetmore (Jameson.Wetmore@asu.edu). Corrections, misspellings, new e-mail adresses etc. should be sent directly to the web administrator Esther Kochte (studio@himbeergeist.net).
During the last meeting of the Executive Committee in Lucernce on April 22nd, we had a tough discussion on the advantages of our old and the suggested new logo and finally decided to keep the old logo, accepting the argument that the aesthetic appearance of successful organisations should change in an evolutionary not revolutionary way. The aesthetic “French Revolution” underlined the close relation of mobility and modernity (the logo looks a bit like Fritz Lang‟s Metropolis), while our old logo emphasizes the exponential catalytic power of mutual fertilization of transport, traffic and mobility research. In any case, the discussion was most fruitful and shaped our identity building. Thanks for every contribution.
In four and a half months we will meet in Lucerne for our 7th annual conference. Our conference title this year is “Energy and Innovation” and thus combines two global challenges of our time: climate change and the economic crisis. The number of proposals increases year-on-year and it was difficult for the program committee to decide which papers should be accepted or turned down. The strategic decision not to have more than five parallel sessions and to leave enough time for plenary sessions, round table discussions, informal interactions and excursions, made it necessary to keep the number of accepted papers below 100. There are exiting new approaches and topics. You will find the preliminary program on the web soon.
Our conference hotel “Grand Hotel Europe” belongs to the hotel type I like most: built in the 19th Century, old splendour (personally I like a little morbid charm and w-lan), a breath-taking view, and walking distance to the conference location. Hurry to book the last lake-view rooms with a substancial conference discount. In order to save money, you can decide to book a room with double occupancy for half price and to come back from Lucerne with a new personal contact.
In the last weeks, plans for T2M‟s 2010 conference at the National Railway Museum in New Delhi, India, were fixed. I am excited to see T2M going to South Asia to one of the fast growing economies, the world‟s largest democracy and the country with the biggest railway company: almost 1.5 Million employees and growing, whilst making a profit. We will see New Delhi with a new metro system and many other new infrastructures which are currently under construction for the Commonwealth Games (which will take place four weeks before our conference).
The delay of the last issue of our affiliated Journal of Transport History was a sad experience. The editors of the journal are working hard to come back to a dispatch of the next issues on time. However, the spring issue will be postponed too. Good news comes for the T2M Yearbook, which will be sent to the publisher soon.
Hans-Liudger Dienel, 18 June 2009
