Pain Today, Pain Tomorrow

Pain Today, Pain Tomorrow [1]

It’s amazing how pain today trumps pain tomorrow. Every time.

Let’s take a look at one burning example: gas prices at the pump versus the on-going planetary ecological collapse. There may be a lesson or two to be learned there.

Here we are, it’s 2008 and the message that our planet is in true danger of catastrophic and irreversible change is now pretty much universally understood. But somehow, that seems to be that. “Bad news” in a kind of parenthesis that separates it in some way from the real world in which we live and have to make our decisions every day. Pain tomorrow, if you will.

At the other end of the pain spectrum, I was speaking to friends from my part of the state of Mississippi where I was born, then and now a poor rural area in the poorest state in America, who gave to me a sense of real urgency to which I as a supposed strategic planner had little to offer.

Their message was that the well-being of large numbers of low income people in the rural areas are seriously threatened by the fact that the price of gas at the pump is getting on to four dollars, and that in a state in which for years dollar gas was already considered to be far too dear.

So move over global warming, and move over the theory that the demand for gasoline is inelastic. At one point it turns out that prices have teeth. At least for the poorer people who live in this part of the state where the original small town structure, which permitted people to get around and live their lives without having to own a car, has forever been smashed by decades of car culture?

So what lessons can we learn from this?

On the one hand, the lesson of pain today. To me that’s not just a fact of life but also a lesson. Surely there is something important to be learned from this that we can apply in other policy areas as well.

On the other hand, does it not strike you as odd that no contingency plan has been prepared, either by the federal government, nor by the states of this almost for sure eventuality of a huge rise of petrol at the pump?

Who is minding the store?

"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today." "It must come sometimes to jam today," Alice objected. "No it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: today isn't any other day, you know."

- Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass

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[1] Eric Britton, EcoPlan International and the New Mobility Agenda, Paris and Los Angeles. Eric.britton@newmobility.org

Slouching toward Bethlehem: A Handy Collaborator’s Guide

None of us likes change. Not at least when it comes to the ways in which we organize our daily lives. And yet there are times when we must shake off our normal lethargy and rise to the challenges that define us. Today, Victory in Europe Day. --or as it is known here in Paris, Fete de la Victoire --is the kind of day that gets one to thinking about how we deal, or not, with the big challenges that will not wait. Let’s have a look.

* Click here for full article: http://ecoplan.org/library/Slouching-to-Bethlehem.pdf

Do city bikes reduce cars in cities?

Our colleague Sebastian Bührmann writes on Wednesday 5 March: Can anyone help with data regarding the following two questions? 1) Do public bicycle programs have had a noticeable effect on the use of cars in urban areas? 2) What is their impact on public transit use (do they hurt public transport operators or do they help)?

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These are excellent questions and considerably more delicate than they might at first appear to be. Let’s have a look.

The matter of car substitution, just like that of CO2 reductions, is in fact not something that lends itself well to short-term measurement and assessment. And as a matter of fact, this is as true with just about any of the policies or initiatives of the New Mobility Agenda as it is with a new city bike project.

This is not to say that a properly designed and implemented city bike project will not get cars off the street or CO2 out of the air, including in the short-term. However for various reasons this is very difficult to judge in a meaningful manner -- and in any event the crux of the entire matter lies in what happens not so much now all but rather over a period of adaptation spanning months and even a year or two or three. A city bike project is above all a process, an organic process of discovery, adaptation, and change on the part of a large number of individual citizens acting on their own and for reasons of their own.

It helps to stand back a bit and visualize the process that actually unfolds once you start to get a couple thousand bicycles out on the street of your city, and people begin using them to connect their lives on a day-to-day basis. It starts first as a matter of simple curiosity, then experimentation and adaptation, and eventually for some begins to take the form of a habit. It is this last that is the most important contribution of the city bike: people changing their lives in some fundamental ways, based on their own personal choices that make a difference to them, and which in time to relate to make differences on the city and the environment.

How do you measure this? Here is a good procedure for getting a specific number for this, but believe me a number of not much use. Suppose for example this morning you walked out onto the street and asked 20 or 20,000 people parking one of their city bikes in a station in Paris, Lyon, or Barcelona: how would you have made this trip if you did not have a city bike available in order to do it? More often than not you'll find the answers range broadly, from: Might not have made the trip at all. Used it instead of walking, Might have taken a bus or other public transport if I could've found one, or -- -- and this is something you're sure to hear far less often -- Oh yes, I used it instead of taking my car (or even less often a taxi).

So if you're in a rush to consider that this first round of responses is all you need to come to your determination about what is going on, there you have it: city bikes just don't seem to be substituting for car trips. At most a couple of percent. And if they're not substituting one for one and immediately for car trips, they're also not having any particular climate impacts. So that's it for city bikes!

But that's not the whole picture dear friends, and it is in fact right here where the true greatness of the city bike concept begins to kick in. Let's walk through this process briefly together.

After you as a new user have gone through the necessary early stages and made your peace with the system that you have in your city, these bikes began to help you move rather subtly over into a new pattern of moving about, where you go, and even what you do. Just as we saw over the last decades of the 20th century that when people have "free" access to cars they almost automatically expand the distances which they travel in their daily lives, and in parallel with that land-use patterns stretch as well. This is exactly how the dominance of the car culture led to the destruction of the city center in far too many places.

But as the city bike user, there will be days when the weather is just too rotten for you at least to take your bike... so what do you do then? Well the odds are that if your city has a half decent public transportation system you are likely to opt for it. Because even if it lacks the flexibility of a great city bike, a good bus system can have advantages of its own. Not only that, if the designers of the system to their job the entire ticketing and fare system support the concept of inter-mobility. And thus at least some of us in the process move from being Mono-Modal Men (the majority of those car captives) to Multi-Modal People. A definite improvement in terms of environment, economics, fairness, and simple sociability.

So what happens is that once you get your first class city bike project in place and enough people start to use it, you begin to get a new metric for your city which places increased value on proximity and in the process by the way favors local businesses and suppliers of goods and services in the area served.

Now all of a sudden you begin to have the makings of a new ballgame. Not for everybody at all at once, but gradually for certain portion of them, that second car begins to be less needed. For others living in the center, and once first-class car sharing services also become available to complete the multimodal chain of new mobility (we sometimes call car sharing "the last nail in the coffin of old mobility"), the idea of hanging on to their own car at high cost and often high peripheral discomfort becomes a part of their past.

A pattern break has gotten underway and all of a sudden a relationship with our own cars begins to move into a new dimension.

In the process old mobility falls away, slowly, slowly, like autumn leaves falling off the trees.

And that is the real power of the city bike and the New Mobility Agenda.

Velib - A cool view from Paris

Check this one out. It gives a bit of the flavor of what this project is all about. (Click title just above for link. You'll see.)

A Transit-Free Day in Paris France

One terrific learning opportunity that we all seem to rush by is

what happens when parts of the system go down.

- Eric Britton, EcoPlan, Paris. (on a lark. . . of sorts)

"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste"

I have always thought so too, and in the field in which I do much of my work – i.e., the ways that people get around in their day to day lives – it has consistently struck me that one terrific learning opportunity that we all seem to rush by is what happens when parts of the system go down. Or are taken down as they are in a strike, as for example one such as we are living these days in Paris.

So true to form for a guy like me who thinks he can learn more from observing, talking to people and learning from the street than he can stuck in a chair in most international conferences (which you have to CO2 fly to in order to sit in that chair), I grabbed my camera, jumped onto my bike, and went out into the street yesterday morning to see where the action was.

Weird! It was by all signs a great day for getting around in Paris. Lots of bikes of course (the close to 1:1 Vélib’/non-Vélib’ split that Ken Coughlin pointed out is standing up pretty well), a fair number of skaters and no metros (but you can’t see them anyway). And a few buses. But what struck me was that at most intersections the cars were moving, if anything even more smoothly than on a normal working day. Unexpectedly too, much of the time there were lots of empty taxis waiting at stands around the city. Paris inter-muros and on the street was looking pretty slick yesterday as this pretty big transit strike unfolded, and all that in a perfect sunny Autumn day.

So, what did we, what did I, learn from this great learning day? (In this particular case perhaps to be thought of as a “Transit-Free Day.”. A couple of things I would like to share with you this morning before we both get back to work:

1. Bikes, skating and yes walking have shown once again that they are great ways to get around in a compact city like Paris. If you could manage that you had a good day.

2. The Vélib’s (Paris’s 20,000 new free city bikes) helped a lot. And the fact that there were so many bikes out on the street certainly made the cycling a lot safer. (It always does!)

3. There was quite a bit of action reported by the ride-sharing programs.

4. And, apparently, a fair amount of hitchhiking (not really a French habit).

5. And, oh yes, lots of people stayed home and gave it a miss.

6. Also, the dynamic maps and reports of the RATP (transit company – www.ratp.fr), the SNCF (rail company at sncf.fr) and the street traffic map (http://www.sytadin.tm.fr/0, http://infotrafic.com/route.php?region=IDF, and http://eng.cityvox.fr/trafic_paris/CirculationParis) are very useful sources for the wary, connected traveler. (I have not made use of the information that is available via mobile phones, and I really should. To follow.)

But the people who were paying the price, though, were the ones I could not see on the street. Those who live outside of Paris and have to come into the city to work were waiting for metros and trains for very long times, having to walk at times quite long distances even to get to the rail station, and often for trains that never came.

And what has to be said is that most of these people are not among the wealthiest; they are for the most part hard working people with very modest incomes and no choice but to live out in the low rent districts. These were the sort of people who were paying the price for this labor action. (Makes you kind of ponder, eh?)

So if I were mayor, minister or transportation czar, what would I do next?

Well, broadly three things.

1. First, I would keep doing what is already going on in this innovating city, but even more of it. That is putting even more thought, time and resources into the process of reinventing its transportation system (and of which you can get some first glimmers at http://www.paris.newmobility.org).

Everything they are doing under their many programs and projects is going to help to provide a more effective, cleaner and easier transport system, with more options and conveniences than the old binary (private car/public transport) system that is no longer serving well. (You can see a list of many of these tools and measures in the section 1.4 “Paris’ New Mobility toolbox: Building blocks for a sustainable city”

2. Second, I would make a major effort to improve, expand and make more widely available the information/communications interface, fixed and mobile. Information on the street, in the vehicles, and at the stops. Including on the mobile phones since (a) just about everyone here already has one (regardless of income levels (since hey if you don’t have one you can either steal one or get one on the street for a knock-off price . . . a kind of democracy in action, even if through the back door if you will).

The other side of the new mobility coin is the information systems that pull the whole thing together --and if we can’t make full use of the capabilities that technology has to offer us in 2007 then we are a pretty miserable lot indeed.

3. Third, I think I would really get to business on 3 (ride-sharing, carpooling, etc) and 4 (organized hitchhiking), but not only for strikes. But because that’s really the right thing to do anyway. For both planetary climate reasons and for the more immediate reasons of more sustainable cities and better, softer, healthier lives for all, we need to find ways to make massive reductions in the number of cars on the roads in our cites and the most effective way to do this (other than shooting every other driver as one of my more virile colleagues has suggested) is to find agreeable ways to turn private cars into shared, pubic even, transport.

Hey, don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s 2007 and we have a lot of new tools available that can help us do the job. (And that is not to say that ride-sharing is either a new thing or that it had not had both successful (relatively few in the past but now fast gaining) and less successful programs and outcomes, but rather that with the new IT interface this changes everything. And if you are looking for a phrase to describe it, try “digital hitchhiking”. (Remember? You use your mobile phone when you’re ready to hit the road to find the mobility mate who is just right for you. Nothin’ to it!)

So here are the three lessons I for one have learned from this great and unexpected open university course on the streets of the City of Light. And if you have comments, corrections, expansions, well may I suggest that you aim them at the New Mobility Idea Factory, the mail address of which is NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com.

Eric Britton

PS. And BTW, if you are looking for a mayor, minister or transportation czar, my phone number is just below.

Reinventing Transportation in Cities - at http://www.invent.newmobility.org/

The Greening of Transport in Paris – http://www.paris.newmobility.org/

Vélib’ City Bike – Policy Brief – http://www.velib.newmobility.org/

Europe: 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France. T: +331 4326 1323

USA: 9440 Readcrest Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90210. T: +1 310 601-8468

E. eric.britton@ecoplan.org. E2. fekbritton@gmail.com Skype: newmobility

Become a Green Driver and love it

You've got to ac-centuate the positive

- Eric Britton, EcoPlan, Paris. (on a lark. . . of sorts)

Unlike most of you, I have to admit that I have never had an original idea in my life. Most of what I come up with is usually either borrowed, more or less innocently purloined , or has already been put forward on numerous occasions without my knowing it by hundreds of other people and places that have had that idea or better many years ago. Yet, dear friends, I persist.

Today’s “latest new and great idea from Paris” that I would like to put before you has to do with a proposal for what I suggest we call Green Driving (or would “Green Cars”[1] perhaps be better?) My idea this morning is to share this as a bit of a social-technical policy virus in the hope that some of you will chime in and help us make it into a better and more effective package. Or better yet, put it to work in your city.

The Context for Green Driving

The context is no more no less than the New Mobility Agenda put to work. Now as you doubtless know, the New Mobility Agenda (call it “sustainable transportation”, “give me a break”, or whatever you like) has two critical central pillars which between them condition pretty much all the rest:

Step (1) Demand : Our first step has to be to get a very very large proportion of all motor vehicles off the road (namely cars and above all cars with only a single person in them). [2]

Step (2) Supply: And in parallel with this squeeze on “old mobility”, we need to provide everybody with first class new mobility service – and with the technologies and organizational skills we have at hand today, there is no reason why, in cities at least ,we should not be able to offer new mobility options which compete favorably or even better than driving your own car there (old mobility style).

But what about all those good people, those voting citizens who today are driving their own cars? And even it is costing them a bundle and they are losing huge amounts of time in traffic still would prefer to keep on rolling in their cars. The devil they know, etc. etc.

No problem. Let’s see if we can work that into our formula as well. Which brings us to Green Driving:, the car owner/operators best friend in 21^st century cities.

The goals behind Green Driving (The missing link)

You've got to ac-centuate the positive

E-liminate the negative

L-atch on to the affirmative

And don't mess with Mister In-Between

-- Lyrics by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, circa 1944 

The idea is a bit guileful (but if we are not just a bit clever then we will never get the job done). It looks at people, you and me at the wheel for instance, both from a human and strategic behavior.

So we ask ourselves: is there some way to roll al these much needed measures, reforms and actions into a single coherent package, which is not only good for the environment and for our cities and all those who live and work there -- but also is something that has a positive ring to it so that people will welcome it as a great thing to do. Rather than scrape, gripe, grumble and at the end of the day resist (and maybe successfully at that). Which is almost always the case given the prevalent policy mindset du jour.

So as the song tells us, let’s try something that accentuates the positive, eliminates the negative, and works or could work something like this.

The central idea behind Green Driving as the till-now missing soldier of our strategy is to treat car owner/drivers, not as the villains of the piece, but as our customers. We want to bring all these good citizens into that world of new mobility with a smile. So, how can we best serve our good customers? That is the question.

The idea is that as a Green Driver, you have a better, more comfortable and more economic life style. (And oh yes, you are also cool and have more friends!)

Behind all this new mode of behavior is the fact that our cities are changing because they must before the increasingly urgent climate challenge, -- but also for many other immediate local reasons.[3]

But now, you are able to use your car AND be a good citizen and neighbor at the same time.

To achieve this leap, as a new Green Driver you now have at your disposal a rich panoply of technologies, partners and organizational devices which permit you to be palpably better off than you were under the old mobility arrangements which our cities are increasingly leaving behind it. You are, for sure, a car owner/driver, but as a Green Driver you are not stuck in traffic, you are not spending a bundle, and what is more, in addition to your own much loved car, now a lot more effective than it was in the old days, you also have access to a whole range of the new and improved mobility options which you can use as and when you wish to. (“Look Ma, no compulsion!”)

Now while this single, simple, understandable, positive proposal encompasses goals usually seen as “negative” – traffic reduction, less congestion, lower speeds, fewer places to park, less energy consumed, greenhouse gas reductions, resource savings, and the long list goes on – we can, I am confident, achieve these important objectives, but this time with Green Driving putting the whole thing in a positive frame for an important part of our voting and vocal public.

This is not to say that this approach will succeed in keeping absolutely everyone from screaming, you will always have the screamers (as Enrique Peñalosa put it so well), but it will by its very nature keep that number down considerably.

Also, it is positive and at the same time can be shown to lead to numerous other advantages, including offering improved transportation options and services to many people who simply would not have them if you had not put “green driving’ into practice in your city.

Green Driving: Down from the mountain with Ten Commandments

Of course it’s a package and different cities will handle it indifferent ways. It will in each case bring together a dynamic set of integrated, synergistic policies, measures and technologies -- and while this is not the place for me to roll out the full carpet, here in shorthand is a first think list of some of the good things that you might want to consider folding into your program:

1. +3 HOV access: Privileged access to HOV lanes and conveniences if you can figure out how to get more than three people in the car;

2. Ride-sharing: This is how you get those people into your car, helping to share your costs and gaining you in the process that privileged access to the scarce road resources.

3. Digital hitchhiking: This twenty-first century fillip for ride-sharing (car and van pools) keys on the dynamic use of mobile phones as the central organizing device.

4. HOV parking: Proportional and significant parking reductions as an HOV

5. Zip Right In” parking: New “Zip Right In” parking technologies and packages which permit you to reserve your parking slot by mobile phone or internet before you set off on your trip, so that you can zip straight into your reserved slot without driving all over the place to find one;

6. Carsharing: There when you need it ,but someone else’s problem the rest of the time.

7. Shed a car” programs: Vehicle Buy Back incentive programs and packages;

8. Eco-driving training: This is well charted terrain as a quick Google visit will make clear.

9. Mixed-mode driver training: Driver training programs for new mixed-mode travel patterns to reduce accidents

10. Drive-a-Bike: True automobility for shorter city trips

There’s a lot more that can be folded into such a package, but you get the idea! And I hope you will share your ideas about how to fill out this list. [4]

New Mobility must bring with it a strong positive message – otherwise it is just one more self-righteous well-meaning phrase. Thus Green Driving can be carried out in parallel with high profile new mobility projects such as the Paris Free Bikes (Vélib’), the best of BRT, group taxis, all-mode fare cards, seamless transport, public space projects, etc. which everyone sees as positive and which not only offer options and complements to own-car travel, but also and far more subtly work on people’s minds and attitudes (which at the end of the day what this is supposed to be all about).

Now it’s your turn.

This is a dynamic group concept-in-process to which you are invited to contribute. Please send your comments and suggestions to the New Mobility Agenda “idea factory, addressing your mail to NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com. I also invite you to share this note with other people and lists who you think might find it useful or better yet wish to join in to make it better.

Or best of all, you will go out and create your own Green Driving program in your city and let the world know.

Lead by example!

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[1] If you call up “Green Cars” in Google you will see more than seven hundred thousand entries. I checked out the firs hundred or so, and none, none was even close to what we are talking about here. Still, I wound not mind if we stole their name, and stole their thunder. I like our Green Cars a lot more.

[2] Now, if this makes you uncomfortable, that’s good. You should be! But let share this with you: (a) it can be done (as you will see); (b) it will lead to better lives and a better world (as you will see); and (c) it can help us in this one area of our daily lives to avoid destroying much of nature (which I very much hope you will not see).

[3] You remember? Congestion, accidents, injuries, foul air, noise, high costs, destruction of urban form, lost time in traffic, car-boxes as obesity traps, loss of neighborliness, etc. etc.

[4] It is probably worth noting that contrary to what happens when you lay down yards of passive concrete, all of these measures have very hot feedback loops. This is terrificly useful and means of course that they can be continuously fine-tuned and improved – because you now know what you are doing each step of the way, replete with hot clues as to how to do better. Hey, that’s what new mobility is all about.

The Greening of Paris:

Paris’s New Mobility Model

You can access this PowerPoint presentation by clicking the above title link or right here.

http://www.ecoplan.org/library/paris-draft.ppt.

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Introduction from full Greening Paris report:

The city of Paris has over the years created for itself a mobility system that works and that in recent years has been innovating at a world level in many areas, and this despite the fact that many car users are complaining about increasing congestion and lost time in traffic. In many ways it is the envy of the world.

But to put this into context, the point has to be made that there are in fact two “Paris’s”, a highly compact central city of some two million inhabitants , served by one of the world’s densest public transport systems of a quality that that most cities can only dream of. With 317 city and suburban bus lines, 16 metro lines, 3 regional/urban rail (RER) lines, and a web of regional rail services for commuters and others to chose from, all of which maintained and operated at the highest levels of professionalism, France’s capital is already well equipped to face the future.

The real problems in terms of less well-working transport systems and the CO2 that inevitably goes with them occurs in the Région Parisienne ("Paris Region") or Ile de France area (as it is officially known today), in which some eight million people are spread out over a much larger area (12,011 sq km), with densities in the most lightly settled outlying area (Seine et Marne) approximately one hundred times less than that of the capital. Moreover, while the population of the central area is growing only slowly, that of the outlying areas is on the order of close to 5% on average.

It is hardly surprising that the role of the private car strongly contrasts between the two. Fewer that 15% of all trips in Paris are made by car, while the corresponding figure for the greater region is close to five times that. Two very different worlds.

We thus have in the case of Paris two very different transportation paradigms, one that is among the world leaders in quality of service and innovation -- and the second and much larger area one in which the leaders and the people are asking themselves many of the same questions that suburban sprawl communities around the world are trying to deal with.

As will be seen, in terms of transport systems effectively the central area has some important things to show us about how to make what by world standards has to be called a very good system, better. And then in a final section of this report we can go on to reflect about what this wave of invitations might have to offer the region as a whole. And to other parts of the world that are more like them than the City of Light.

Commentary: “Toward green mobility: the evolution of transport”,

Commentary: “Toward green mobility: the evolution of transport”, Jesse H. Ausubel, Cesare Marchetti and Perrin Meyer. European Review in May 1998, published by Cambridge University Press (UK) for the Academia Europaea.

I have just completed reading an excessively idiotic article on the future of transportation written by three highly intelligent, certainly well-meaning and otherwise well-informed authors, to which I would like to recommend your attention. The title of the piece is "Toward green mobility: the evolution of transport" and the identifying info on the authors and their references will be found at http://phe.rockefeller.edu/green_mobility/. I regret to put my point so harshly, but to my mind this once again provides evidence that high intelligence is no guarantee against idiocy.

Amid a certain number of pretty cogent observations taken from the transportation literature of the time (that is mainly the 80s and first half of the 90s) the authors do a good job in setting the stage for their long-term analysis, but then seem to lose their way in a most appalling manner. There they are, it's the mid-90s and they have set out to peer into a very long term future for sector. Technology and technological solutions? No problem, abundantly manifest. You will find in their pages all the usual drivel on fuel cells and Maglev and hypersonic transport that is the stuff of many technology heads wildest dreams. But what is missing from this groaning table of plenty? Here's a clue or two for you: CO2 -- no mentions. GHD -- none. Greenhouse gases -- none. Climate -- none. Warming -- none. Planet -- none. Ecology -- none.

Now why do I draw this sad misinformed disingenuous mess—and happily out dated -- to your attention this morning? First of all as a friendly challenge to any of you who find that my observations might be ungenerous or misinformed. (I'm always pleased to learn through my own mistakes.) But this kind of analysis, which given today's screamingly immediate problems (and hey! They were also evident a decade ago, so no excuses), takes a most unfortunate step away from the crush of reality when it takes out after a fifty year time horizon without any feel at all for the full state of play. It’s as if they take off for a long hike in the woods, but forget their shoes.

What is tragic in this --under the circumstances this and a lot of other things out there on the radar screen that are looking so complacently over the long term and assuring us that technology will save the day, is that it lulls us to sleep. Okay, one can (kind of) understand it when the miscreants are part of the groups that will profit each day from our diminished sense of urgency. But folks like IIASA and the Rockefeller Foundation. . . isn’t that a bit of a problem?

To conclude, I think it is really a useful drill to take the few minutes that are needed to read their dozen pages of text and three pages of references, if nothing else as a reminder of how far off many of us have been thinking about these issues in the past. As Hannah Arendt put it, the banality of . . . well if not quite evil, but what about a certain kind of hubris?

Reactions?

Eric Britton

Roads Are Too Important to Be Left to Governments

Editor's note: In the spirit of equal time.
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Gabriel Roth, September 26, 2006

Billions of dollars and an overwhelming amount of time are wasted every year in traffic congestion. Might there be relief in sight? Earlier this year, former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced a federal initiative to relieve transportation congestion, largely with the help of private fees and tolls. “Congestion is not a fact of life,” rightly declared Mr. Mineta, “We need a new approach, and we need it now.” One such approach would be to enable the market economy, on which we depend for most other goods and services, to also provide roads. Toll roads were privately supplied two hundred years ago on a large scale in both the U.S. and the UK. Their private provision today is even more practical because modern technology enables customers to pay for road use without tollbooths, and even without vehicles having to stop.

Services such as electricity, telecommunications and water supply are provided commercially in many parts of the country in response to demand from consumers; most of whom pay the costs associated with their choices, and expect to get what they pay for. In the past decade, the private sector has begun to develop express toll lanes in many parts of the country. In fact, ten years ago, the California Private Transportation Company provided, in the median of California’s State Route 91, the first “Express Toll Lanes” with variable tolls, electronically collected, designed to ensure congestion-free travel at all times.

California’s pioneering Express Toll Lanes have since been replicated on portions of publicly owned roads such as California’s Interstate 15, Minnesota’s Interstate 394, and Denver’s Interstate 25. They give consumers the choice of paying for faster travel on less congested roadways that reliably and predictably get them to their destinations on time. This holds true whether the journey involves picking up a child from day care on time or supplying a business with just-in-time materials delivery. The use of these toll lanes is increasing, especially by women.

The pace of privatization has quickened in recent years:

• A private consortium led by CINTRA/Macquarie has paid the city of Chicago $1.83 billion to allow it to receive the Chicago Skyway tolls for 99 years, and is buying the State of Indiana’s toll road for $3.85 billion.

• To relieve congestion on the Washington Beltway, the Virginia Department of Transportation has approved a proposal from Fluor Enterprises to add four HOT (High-Occupancy or Toll) lanes to a 14-mile segment of the Beltway at a cost of nearly a billion dollars. These lanes are to be financed by electronically collected tolls, varied to ensure congestion-free travel at all times.

• The biggest private road investment proposed to date is $7.2 billion for the first major project of the Trans-Texas Corridor from north of Dallas to south of San Antonio.

The cities of London and Stockholm, under the control of socialist administrations, have drastically reduced traffic congestion in their centers by the use of modern tolling methods, and are dedicating surplus revenues to improve public transportation.

The diversion of surplus road use revenues to non-road purposes is not confined to socialist administrations. It is also taken for granted in the U.S. For example, in 2005 Congress voted to finance, out of monies paid for road use, Virginia’s proposed $4 billion 23-mile rail connection to Dulles International Airport, even if that project were not to meet the relevant federal standards, and even though superior service with express buses could be provided at a third of the cost. Virginia’s financial contribution to this wasteful project is to come from increased tolls on the parallel Dulles Toll Road, which was built to serve, and continues to serve, non-airport traffic.

Road funding has been mismanaged by politicians long enough. The inadequacies of politically inspired projects such as Boston’s $14.6 billion “Big Dig” are now apparent to all. Roads are too important to be left to the vicissitudes of politics. The time has come to unleash the power of the private sector to deliver to road users the innovation, cost savings, quality and choice we take for granted in telecommunications and other services.

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Gabriel Roth is a transport and privatization consultant and a research fellow at the Independent Institute. He is the editor of the new book, Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads.

A Ladder of Citizen Participation

Editor’s note: Thanks to Chris Bradshaw for his timely heads-up on this, which relates closely to the thinking behind our New Mobility Ladder, one of many tools we think we should be able to put to work in the context of our eventual collaboration with the Clinton Climate Initiative. Stay tuned.

- Sherry R Arnstein

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1. Citizen participation is citizen power

1.1. Empty Refusal Versus Benefit

2. Types of participation and "nonparticipation"

2.1. Limitations of the Typology

3. Characteristics and illustrations

3.1. Manipulation

3.2. Therapy

3.3. Informing

3.4. Consultation

3.5. Placation

3.6. Partnership

3.7. Delegated Power