John Whitelegg, Editor of World Transport Policy and Practice, offers up a lead editorial in the latest edition of the Journal which was published today and is freely available here. His proposal makes particular economic sense at a time of great economic uncertainty, and of course not only in the UK. His core 
recommendation: (a) Cancel systematically all public investments that do not pass the sustainability test. What goes? (b) £10 billion for unnecessary road building. (c) £32 billion for uncalled for high speed rail. And (d) elimination of all but a handful of domestic aviation subsidies and investments. And with those frugal savings, the new government team can really go to work to guarantee the sustainable transport agenda.
A beginners guide to sorting out fiscal, social, economic and health problems through transport measures
- John Whitelegg, Editor, World Transport Policy and Practice
On Thursday 13th May 2010 a new government in Britain began making its first decisions. Amongst these decisions was the abandonment of a 3rd runway at Heathrow Airport and the cancellation of any new runways at Gatwick and Stansted. The fact that the new government is the first coalition government since the second world war has excited fear and uncertainty as well as hope for a “new politics” but we shall see.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition labelled somewhat unkindly as the “Con-dem” coalition by the Labour Party has enormous potential to get things right so here are a few tips in the best tradition of World Transport Policy and Practice and its 15 years of efforts to inform policy:
1. Cancel the complete road building programme and motorway widening programme and use the (approx) £10 billion to reduce public expenditure and/or reallocate to highway maintenance so that road conditions improve.
2. Cancel the complete high speed rail programme. 1% of all trips in the UK are longer than 100 miles and there is no satisfactory rationale for spending £32 billion of public money to encourage rich people to travel faster and more often to and from London.
3. Implement full internalisation of external cost on domestic aviation through emission charging and implement strict noise and air quality regulations around airports to protect local residents from health damaging environments.
4. Announce that it is the view of the new coalition government to eliminate domestic aviation apart from those services connecting remote Scottish Islands and similar communities elsewhere in the UK.
5. Implement system-wide reform in all UK urban areas to deliver a “202020” vision for cycling - 20% of all trips in all urban areas will be by bicycle by 2020. System- wide reform means general 30kph/20mph speed limits, road closures to reduce rat running and highly connected public services and destinations. All UK cities can be like Freiburg, Basle and Copenhagen. The missing ingredient is political will.
6. De-commission 50% of car parking spaces in urban areas and reallocate the released land for high quality, car free, affordable housing.
7. Implement a serious road user hierarchy so that every junction and every highway link delivers absolute consideration for pedestrians and cyclists and puts car users at the bottom of the list. The road user hierarchy is illustrated and described in the Department for Transport Manual for Streets (DfT, 2007).
8. Introduce land value taxation to produce funds for new public transport infrastructure.
9. Require a year on year increase in accessibility by foot, bike and public transport to all health, education, employment and recreational facilities.
10. Set a target of achieving the rule of one third for urban areas: all efforts will be made to deliver a modal split in urban areas of one third of trips walk/cycle, one third public transport and one third by car.
11. Set high standards of public transport provision for rural public transport and establish the position that the car is not the default option for rural areas. In case of doubt please will Ministers visit Dornach and Gempen near Basle in Switzerland to see what is meant by “high standards”.
This list has been sent to the new Minister of Transport of the new UK government. We await his answer with great anticipation.
DfT (2007) Manual for Streets (para 3.6.8)
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/pdfmanforstreets.pdf
Note to the reader from the author:
"Let's invite comment, rebuttal, ask for other ideas out there. Why not do some role playing along the lines "OK so its the morning after the night before and you are the new Minister of Transport and you have the support of your prime minister and all the cabinet. What are you going to do to sort out our long term transport problems and the way they interact with a wide range of health, social and economic problems? The time for dithering is over. You must act! What will you do?"
# # #
World Transport Policy and Practice. Volume 16. Number 1 May 2010
A free copy of this latest volume is available here.
Abstracts & Keywords
Cycling in New York: Innovative Policies at the Urban Frontierf
John Pucher, Lewis Thorwaldson, Ralph Buehler, and Nicholas Klein
New York has made impressive progress at improving cycling conditions and raising cycling levels in recent years, especially in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The number of bike trips has almost doubled since 2000, thanks to vastly expanded cycling infrastructure, including innovative treatments such as cycle tracks, buffered bike lanes, special bike signals, bike boxes at intersections, and bright green lane markings.
Cycling safety has improved, with steady or declining numbers of cyclist injuries and fatalities in spite of rapidly rising cycling volumes. Some serious deficiencies remain, however. Integration of bicycling with public transport is almost nonexistent. There is not nearly enough bike parking, and virtually no secure bike parking at all. Moreover, the police and courts in New York have failed to enforce the many traffic laws intended to protect cyclists.
Comprehensive traffic calming is needed in New York’s residential neighbourhoods to reduce travel speeds and thus encourage more cycling, in particular, by children, seniors, and women. Cycling has come a long way in New York, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes a mainstream way to get around.
Keywords: bicycling, cycle paths, infrastructure, cycling safety, policy, New York City, gender, bike parking, sustainable transport
Youth transport, mobility and security in sub-Saharan Africa: the gendered journey to school
- Gina Porter, Kate Hampshire, Albert Abane, Alister Munthali, Elsbeth Robson, Mac Mashiri and Augustine Tanle
This paper draws on empirical data from a three-country study (Ghana, Malawi, South Africa) of young people’s mobility to explore the gendered nature of children’s journeys to school in sub- Saharan Africa. Gender differences in school enrolment and attendance in Africa are well established: education statistics in many countries indicate that girls’ participation in formal education is often substantially lower than boys’, especially at secondary school level.
Transport and mobility issues commonly form an important component of this story, though the precise patterning of the transportation and mobility constraints experienced by girl schoolchildren, and the ways in which transport factors interact with other constraints, varies from region to region. In some contexts the journey to school represents a particularly hazardous enterprise for girls because they face a serious threat of rape. In other cases girls’ journeys to school and school attendance are hampered by Africa’s transport gap and cultural conventions which require females to take on this burden (by pedestrian head loading) before leaving for (or instead of attending) school.
Our evidence comes from a diverse range of sources but, for reasons of space, we draw principally here on a survey questionnaire conducted in each country with approximately 1000 children aged 7-18 years across 8 sites. We aim to draw attention to the diversity of gendered travel experiences across geographical locations (paying attention to associated patterns of transport provision), to explore the implications of these findings for access to education, and to suggest areas where policy intervention could be beneficial.
Keywords: children’s journey to school, sub-Saharan Africa, gender, threat, transport, mobility, cultural conventions, education, policy
# # #
John Whitelegg is visiting Professor of Sustainable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University and Professor of Sustainable Development at University of York's Stockholm Environment Institute, and is founder and editor of the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice. John is a local councillor in Lancaster.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
New Politics, New Economics and New Mobility :
Frugal Transport comes of age in Britain?
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Bottom line: Roads are for vehicles. Streets are for people.
(No matter where you are in the world.)
Your editor was on automatic pilot this early morning, reading with half an eye the 
International Herald Tribune/New York Times as is his habit, and behold there in the Letters to the Editor column were a series of words which at first glance he thought he had written himself. (More coffee clearly needed.) Wrong, it was Lee Schipper commenting on an earlier Times piece on "Building Cambodia’s roads". I quote:
Building Cambodia’s roads
Regarding the article “Cambodia’s routes to riches” (Jan. 19): While rural roads connecting major population centers are important for development, Cambodians rely mostly on bicycles, small motorbikes and their feet for transportation. This majority of travelers is usually the first sacrificed for cars and trucks. New roads tend to cut through smaller villages and lead to the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists, who are rarely considered by the road-building authorities.
Striking a balance between development, auto-mobility for the minority of Cambodians with cars, and the livelihoods of the majority, ought to be more important than opening tourist centers. Is this the only way for Cambodia to develop?
Lee Schipper, Ph.D. - schipper@wri.org
Project Scientist, Global Metropolitan Studies, UC Berkeley
Senior Research Engineer, Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford Univ.
# # #
Most of us who have managed to make our way to the right side of these issues have for some time made the vital distinction between roads and streets, for which the Executive Summary is: (a) roads are for vehicles and (b) streets are for people. And once you have figured that out, all kinds of good things can follow. (And you can find quite a bit more on this here by clicking http://tinyurl.com/ws-street
Thanks Lee for reminding us once again -- and as we gear up to make our collective voice heard in Haiti this is one of the key points we need to make, make early, and make in a way that our voices get heard.
Eric Britton
Editor
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Plan A for Sustainable Transport :
The New Mobility Agenda and the Politics of Transportation
Plan Zero - also known as "old mobility" - with its stress on supply, 
more vehicles and more infrastructure as the knee-jerk answer to our mobility problems, has been the favored path for decision-making and investment in the sector over the last 70 years. It is well-known and easy to see where it is leading. Responsible for something like 1/5 of all greenhouse gas emissions, costing us a bundle, draining the world's petroleum reserves, and delviering poor quality tranpsort for the majority . . . Plan Zero is a clear failure. Time for Plan A: The New Mobility Agenda.
World Streets is not exactly what one would call a neutral source. We have a very definite position on transport policy, planning and investment, the result of long experience of working with and observing the sector in its daily operation in cities around the world. It would not be true to claim that these views are unique to us; indeed they have been distilled over the years as result of contacts and work in collaboration with farsighted colleagues and policymakers in many places. They are shared, at least in good part, by many of our most distinguished colleagues.
It is only appropriate that I clearly state the underlying philosophy of this new sustainability journal in no uncertain terms right here at the outset. Our position on this is clear: namely, that we face a major planetary emergency that requires immediate high priority action at the very core of public policy, and that we have the means available to make the difference. But until now we are not addressing the issues at the level of intensity required. We need a plan of action. So let's have a look.
The New Mobility Agenda in brief
The main reference point for all that you will read in these pages is the long-term program, the New Mobility Agenda, an international collaborative effort focusing entirely on transportation in and around cities. It has been in operation since 1988 with continuous interactive presence on the internet as one of the pillars of the collaborative knowledge-building process that is behind it. And this is what we have concluded:
Virtually all of the necessary preconditions are now in place for far-reaching, rapid, low cost improvements in the ways that people get around in our cites. The needs are there, they are increasingly understood -- and we now know what to do and how to get the job done. The challenge is to find the vision, political will, and leadership to get the job done, step by deliberate step.
But we have to have an explicit, coherent, ethical, checkable, overarching strategy. Without it we are destined to play at the edges of the problems, and while we may be able to announce a success or improvement here or there, the overall impact that your city needs to break the old patterns will not be there. We really need that clear, consistent, omnipresent, systemic strategy.
The Agenda provides a free public platform for new thinking and open collaborative group problem solving, bringing together more than a thousand leading thinkers and actors in the field from more than fifty counties worldwide, sharing information and considering together the full range of problems and eventual solution paths that constitute the global challenge of sustainable transport in cities.
Managing the transition: Basic principles
And it must be understood that the shift from old to new mobility is not one that turns its back on the importance of high quality mobility for the economy and for quality of life. It's just that given the technologies that we now have at our fingertips, and in the labs, it is possible for us to redraw our transportation systems so that there is less inefficient movement (the idea of one person sitting in traffic in a big car with the engine idling is one example, an empty bus another) and more high-efficiency, high-quality, low-carbon transportation that offers many more mobility choices than in the past, including the one that environmentalists and many others find most appealing: namely, getting what you want without having to venture out into traffic at all. Now that's an interesting new mobility strategy, too.
Here you have in twelve summaries the high points of the basic strategic policy frame as we see it: principles that we and our colleagues around the world have diligently pieced together over the years of work, observation and close contact with projects and programs in leading cities on all continents under the New Mobility Agenda. (If you click here you can see in a short video (four minute draft) a synopsis of the basic five-point core strategy that the city of Paris has announced and adhered to over the last seven years. With significant results.)
1. Climate-driven: The on-going climate emergency sets the base timetable for action in our sector, which accounts for some 20% of greenhouse gasses. At the same time GHG reduction works as a strong surrogate for just about everything else to which we need to be giving priority attention in our cities, chief among them the need to cut traffic. Fewer vehicles on the road means reduced energy consumption, less pollution in all forms, fewer accidents, reduced bills for infrastructure construction and maintenance, quieter and safer cities, and the long list goes on. What is so particularly interesting about the mobility sector is that there is really a great deal we can do in a relatively little time. And at relatively low cost. Beyond this, there is an important joker which also needs to be brought into the picture from the very beginning, and that is that these reductions can be achieved not only without harming the economy or quality of life for the vast majority of all people. To the contrary sustainable transport reform can be part of a 21st century economic revival which places increased emphasis on services and not products.
2. Tighten time frame for action: Select and gear all actions to achieve visible results within 2-4 year time frame. Spend at least 50%, preferably 80% of all your transportation budget on measures and projects that are going to yield visible results within this time frame. Set firm targets for all to see and judge the results. No-excuse transport policy.
3. Reduce traffic radically. The critical, incontrovertible policy core of the Agenda -is BIG percentage cuts in vehicle miles traveled. If we don't achieve this, we will have a situation in which all the key indicators will continue to move in the wrong direction. But we can cut traffic and at the same time improve mobility. And the economy. That's our new mobility strategy.
4. Extend the range, quality and degree of integration of new mobility services available to all: A whole range of exciting and practical new service modes is needed if we are to keep our cities viable. And they need to COMBINE to offer better, faster and cheaper mobility than the old car-intensive arrangements or deficit-financed, heavy, old-technology, traditional public transit. We need to open up our minds on this last score and understand that rather than being stuck in the past with a 19th century version of how "common people" best get about, it is important to move over to a new paradigm of a great variety of ways of providing shared transport mediated in good part by 21st-century information communications technologies.
5. Packages of Measures: As distinguished from the old ways of planning and making investments what is required in most places today are carefully interlinked "packages" of numerous small as well as larger projects and initiatives. Involving many more actors and participants. One of the challenges of an effective new mobility policy will be to find ways to see these various measures as interactive synergistic and mutually supporting projects within a unified greater whole. A significant challenge to our planners at all levels
6. Design for women: Our old mobility system was designed by, and ultimately for, a certain type of person (think about it!). And so too should the new mobility system: but this time around it should be designed to accommodate specifically women, of all ages and conditions. Do that and we will serve everybody far better. And for that to happen we need to have a major leadership shift toward women and, as part of that, to move toward full gender parity in all bodies involved in the decision process. It's that simple.
7. The shifting role of the car: State-of-the-art technology can be put to work hand in hand with the changing role of the private car in the city in order to create situations in which even car use can be integrated with a far softer edge into the overall mobility strategy . These advantages need to be widely broadcast so as to increase acceptance of the new pattern of urban mobility. The new mobility environment must also be able to accommodate people in cars, since that is an incontrovertible reality which will not go away simply because it would seem like an ideal solution. We are going to have plenty of small and medium-sized four-wheel, rubber tired, driver-operated vehicles running around on the streets of our cities and the surrounding regions, so the challenge of planners and policymakers is to ensure that this occurs in a way which is increasingly harmonious to the broader social, economic and environmental objectives set out here.
8. Full speed ahead with new technology: New mobility is at its core heavily driven by the aggressive application of state of the art logistics, communications and information technology across the full spectrum of service types. The transport system of the future is above all an interactive information system, with the wheels and the feet at the end of this chain. These are the seven-league boots of new mobility
9. Play the "infrastructure joker": The transport infrastructures of our cities have been vastly overbuilt. And they are unable to deliver the goods. That's just great, since it means that we can now take over substantial portions of the street network for far more efficient modes.
10. Frugal economics: We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% of the transport related budgets and use it to address projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years.
11. Partnerships: This approach, because it is new and unfamiliar to most people, is unlike to be understood the first few times around. Hence a major education, consultation and outreach effort is needed in each place to make it work. Old mobility was the terrain in which decisions were made by transport experts working within their assigned zones of competence. New mobility is based on wide-based collaborative problem solving, outreach and harnessing the great strengths of the informed and educated populations of our cities. Public/private/citizen partnerships.
12. Pick winners: New approaches demand success. There is no margin of error. So choose policies and services with track records of success and build on their experience. (And there are plenty of them out there if you are prepared to look and learn.)
13. Lead by Example: If you are mayor or other elected official. If you are engaged as a professional in public policy areas that relate to the sustainability agenda . . . you don't have a choice really, you must lead by personal example. This means getting to work by bike, walking, public transport or some form of carsharing/ridesharing at least two days a week. Every week. By doing this, you will have hands-on knowledge of what works and what does not in your city. You become Eyes on the Street. You will be authentic and credible. You will be the kind of leader we need to identify and guide the reforms, policies and projects that must now be put in place. And if you do not do this, if you stay in the back seat of your limo, you won't get my vote.
Where to from here?
To move ahead in time to save the planet and improve life quality of the majority of the people who live in our cities -- no, they are not all happy car owner/drivers; get out there and count them; you'll see -- we need to have a fair, unified, coherent, and memorable strategy.
There may be other ways, better ways one would hope, of facing this emergency. If so we are ready to learn, let us hear from you. This is the challenge to which World Streets and the New Mobility Agenda are addressed.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Resource: Planning for Sustainable Travel - Tools for better integration between land use & transport planning
The UK Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) announce "a powerful new tool for 
planning practitioners, local authority officers and Councillors for better integration between land use and transport planning". Planning for Sustainable Travel is a web-based resource with a summary practice guide, identifying the 11 key land use levers that planners and transport planners can use to help achieve lower trip rates, shorter travel distances and greater use of sustainable travel modes.
"The guidance makes two key recommendations: 1. Much more attention should be given at an early stage to analysing locational options for major development - selecting places likely to generate low trip rates and the greatest potential to offer a competitive alternative to car use.
It is intended that the guidance acts as a resource bringing together current sometimes disparate advise under one website and guide."
2. New developments should be planned to achieve levels of car distance travelled per head that are lower than the average for the transport authority area and that are good practice benchmarks
# # #
* For a short intro to the report - http://www.cfit.gov.uk/pn/091023/index.htm
* For project website - www.plan4sustainabletravel.org.
* Full guidance is available at www.plan4sustainabletravel.org.
* Planning for sustainable travel (summary guide)
* Planning for sustainable travel (leaflet)
* Planning for sustainable travel (background and technical analysis)
* For background on the CfIT - http://www.cfit.gov.uk
Contact: Daniel Parker-Klein
Transport Planning Policy Officer
Commission for Integrated Transport
55 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0EU
t +44 020 7348 1970
f +44 020 7348 1989
m +44 07894 620655
e daniel.parker-klein@ciltuk.org.uk
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Why transport planners need to think small
No matter how big or small all movements have their heresies and orthodoxies. In
the domain of transport policy, questioning the primacy of motorized public transport over cycling and walking is like suggesting that the world may not be flat after all. The mercury rose and emails flew on the Sustainable Transport Sustran online discussion group earlier this week when Beijing’s announcement to make the city ‘a public transport city’ by 2015 hit the wire. One contributor questioned Beijing’s strategy, which was based solely on raising levels of rail and bus ridership to 45%. Once the mainstay of China’s urban transport system, the bicycle, didn’t even get a mention.
From where I'm sitting in Delhi I added that there is a tendency to see 'motorized, mass public transport', through rose tinted glasses as if it is 'the' solution to growing automobile use. A huge amount of emphasis is put on the Metro and now BRT as ways to solve congestion (never mind about all the other externalities). Bicycles and legs are ignored despite holding a huge modal share, over half of all trips in Delhi.
I think it was the Indian economist Dasgupta who showed that you could make public transport free in the UK and still only effect a very small shift to it from the car (6%). The fact is that cars are damn convenient and people will use them unless they are literally prized away from doing so. The vast majority of people use public transport in London and NY because they have to. It’s well nigh impossible to park your car and it will cost you big time if you do! I hope that Beijing's approach will witness parking restraint and pricing as a lynchpin of its policy, otherwise it will be a funding drain and a white elephant.
The rose tinted spectacles also ignore the role of cycling as faster and more convenient than the bus over short to medium distances. Why swap a more convenient form of transport for a less convenient one? The only other thing that can compete with the car over these distances is the motorcycle, which should also be deterred for safety reasons and its high emissions of Nitrogen Dioxide.
Presently people don’t ride, or use cycle taxis because motorised vehicles make them less safe. They need an ‘image makeover’. And planners continue to ignore rider comforts like tree cover and vendor zones in hot countries air pollution all over.
Cheap interventions like prioritising access for cycles and pedestrians across high speed vehicle canyons should be a priority. These interventions save lives, make cycling and walking practical, and come in cheap - kilometre for kilometre a cycle track in London would cost less than 1/400th the amount of the Jubilee Line extension.
In terms of our greatest challenge, global warming I am perturbed. Where you have quality bus systems (with good timetables in the off peak and feeder services) they consume amounts of per capita energy rivalling that of the car. Quoting London, the average actual CO2 emissions of a bus is 40% that of a car, PM10 emissions are 3 times and SO2 emissions 25 times greater - that's not much of an improvement and certainly not enough to stabilise carbon emissions at 450ppmv. In Taipei, taking account of door to door emissions, the Metro actually consumes more energy than a car!
The counter argument to all this is that Asia is not London and you can’t compare ridership levels in London with Asian cities. True for now, but planners need to think about the future. What people put up with now is not what they will put up with as they get richer and have choices. Delhi does not yet have a public transport network that those with a choice of private, motorized transport would opt to use. The figures that we quote on fuel efficiency for buses in Asia NOW are not those that will exist with the kind of network needed to get wealthier citizens on the bus. And by the way I’m not talking about rich citizens, I’m talking about ones who can afford motorcycles that run on less than 1 rupee a kilometre.
To get motorcyclists and car users to switch in future, or at least stay on the bus, even WITH very strong demand management measures and low fares, we'll need to increase frequency, add A/C in some cases, bring down the 'crush factor' and widen geographical scope, all of which will inevitably result in more energy consumed per passenger. It's hard to disagree with this line of thinking without adopting a line of ‘one standard of public transport comfort for 'the West' and one for the developing world’.
This should not be construed as an argument AGAINST public transport, particularly buses, after all the more of us that use them the better, and there will always be a need for those who cannot cycle or walk, but it IS an argument for Beijing to re-discover leg power, put greater emphasis on travel demand management, and control urban sprawl. If the world is to face its greatest challenge, that of averting catastrophic climate change, we have no choice.
The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.-Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1974
- Simon Bishop is working as a transport and environment consultant in Delhi, where he lives with his family. In India he has worked on bus and cycling projects like the Delhi BRT and helped set up the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership. Before coming to India two years ago Simon worked in London as a planner on demand management and travel marketing schemes, receiving an award from the Mayor for "London's Most Innovative Transport Project". He authored 'The Sky's the Limit' - Policies for Sustainable Aviation' while working as a policy adviser in the Institute for Public Policy Research.
--> Read on:
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Why "Dysfunctional Transportation" is major public health threat
And what we can do about it:
There can be little doubt that the best way of gauging the seriousness of the mounting problems of our present dysfunctional transportation arrangements - and hence the need for fast and effective remedies and adjustments -- is not so much from the usual purely transportation lens, or public works, or energy, nor even that of "environment" or land use - though all these are of course critical components of the challenges we need to resolve. Rather, above all we should be prepared to look at this from a public health perspective. It is only from this vantage that we can begin to appreciate the full range and degrees of severity of the problems that we are, in fact, resolutely refusing to face.
Public health Impacts: Public health broadly defined - as it must be - is heavily impacted by the dysfunctional parts of our transportation arrangements in every city in the world. Here are a rough dozen broad areas in which these impacts are being felt, and which therefore should make it clear why this is a challenge that needs to be addressed immediately as a very high priority for the city and its region.
Let us start here with those that are most commonly associated with the 'public health' rubric, and then go on to list briefly yet others which in fact belong here as well.
1. Traffic Deaths and Injuries: We need to achieve major reductions in traffic deaths and injuries, most of which occur in or because of cars. We can do this if we chose to (and if you need a real world example check out the results of the several striking European examples of the past decade or so which have been sensational and entirely a function of political will and commitment from many levels of society).
2. Air pollution: Clean air must be a priority for the health of our citizens and their children. Driving a car is the most polluting act an average citizen commits. Adverse air quality can kill many organisms including humans. Air pollution can cause respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, throat inflammation, chest pain, and congestion.
3. Other forms of toxicity and pollution: Pollution from the transport sector takes other forms as well which also threaten public health significantly. Among them leakage of fuels and oils in normal operations or road traffic accidents, threats to underground water quality, various residues from vehicles, and others.
4. Traffic noise is a significant and increasingly targeted public health problem too. And while we are at it there are also such intrusions as odors and light pollution, each of which eat away at the health of those who are directly inflicted.
5. Destruction of urban form and quality of life: Roads and traffic are the life blood of a city -- but too much of both threatens the city's livability in many ways.
6. Life Styles: We increasingly need to promote healthier, more active life style. And in the process cut back on obesity for children and adults
7. Time Pollution: This is the first thing we all see and feel. As a result of our dysfunctional transportation arrangements, we are all spending far too much time stuck in traffic. This is taking away from the time we should be spending with our families, with our own personal development, on our neighbors, doing important work. The stress that is related to this significant time-deprivation does little to improve our health or that of our families.
8. Personal economics: We are spending significantly more on our transportation habit as individuals than we need to. All of us, car owners and others, can get around better, faster and more safely -- and for less money than most of us currently are putting out. And this too is a public health problem.
9. Total system costs, including subsidies, hidden and visible: Indeed if we add up the annual cost to society of these, let us call them "transport dysfunctonalities", we have a very very large number indeed in most of our cities, which at the very least should get our fullest attention. Overall we need to find ways to get a lot more bang per buck for the huge amount of money we spend on transport (so that we can free it for more important uses such as education, health, culture and more)
10. Medical resources: Our dysfunctional transport arrangements are present unnecessary pressure on our hospitals and public health programs - crowding them with patients and problems who really should not be there, and taking scarce resources that are much needed for other uses).
11. Passive citizenry: The present transportation paradigm defines the citizens of a city as passive agents, whose choices are largely made by "experts" and others who shape the system. But 21st century democracy requires an active civil society. For this to happen in the realm of mobility, a new paradigm of governance and action is required.
12. Climate modification. .. and finally back to Kyoto II: Everybody needs to do their bit to cut back on global warming. Rather than decreasing emissions by grams each year to get us back to 1990 levels - itself a proposal so timid as to warrant deep soul searching, -- our cities, all of them, are steadily doing worse every year when you look at the bottom line (e.g. CO2 emissions resulting from increased traffic volumes). Moreover there is no end in sight. If we cannot somehow come up with something that is consequential and will get these basic trends back in line, it will just continue to get worse year after year and the planet, your city and your country and more will all passively go to hell in a handbasket.
Putting this checklist to work for decision and investment purposes
This gives us an interesting checklist to ponder the difference between, say, Policy A and Policy B.
Let's take as "A" a proposal to invest hard-earned taxpayer dollars into an expanded roadway so as to be able to accommodate more private car traffic. And "B", say, as a proposal for a similar amount but this time to improve mobility for a vast majority of citizens through the introduction of a package of strategic car traffic reduction together with an integrated range of improved mobility services, combining traditional public transport but this time with privileged access to reserved portions of the road network, ride sharing, carsharing, new shared taxi and other shared small vehicle services, improved conditions for cyclist and pedestrians. Both for, say, the same amount of money.
Then run down the checklist, calculate the impacts as best possible so that we can to put dollar or other values to the changes brought about by A and B, and see what the bottom line looks like.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Reminder: Road Diets (Plenty of fat left)
There are hundreds of things, known by thousands of names, that you can do with a little careful preparation and technical competence to move your city and its streets in a few months toward greater sustainability, without having to wait for good news and great gobs of taxpayer money from the capital. And they are not all brand new innovations just out of someone’s high priced laboratory (or still stuck inside). 
One of these is an approach known in many places as “road diets”, also referred to variously and with variations as lane diets, street narrowing, road space reallocation, and eventually merging into broader approaches including complete streets, traffic calming, livable streets, etc.
A road diet is commonly defined as: a studied reduction of a roadway’s width or lanes, intended to change traffic patterns while improving safety and livability. If you get it right -- and that is both a technical and a communications task -- it brings local economic and even real estate value advantages along with the rest.
Ten years ago, March 1999, Dan Burden and Peter Lagerwey of the Walkable Communities project collaborated on a short (17 page) illustrated report under the title Road Diets: Losing width and gaining respect in which the authors ask: "Can our nation's roads gain efficiency, mode share and safety by getting leaner? Many are doing just that".
That was a full decade ago. In the meantime . . .
Back in 1999 Burden and Lagerwey explained to us that:
"Roadway conversions discussed here may be just the ticket to start remaking unhealthy, unsafe city neighborhoods or commercial districts and turn them into more robust, vital, economically sound places. Road conversion may be undertaken to create safer, more efficient ways to provide access and mobility for pedestrians, bicycle riders and transit users, as well as motorists. They improve livability and quality of life for residents and shoppers. Just as with human diets, road diets without doctors’ (transportation planners and engineers) analyses and prescriptions, might be foolhardy."
If it sounds like a nice idea but one destined to go nowhere fast, have a look at the following from the US:
First step the latest Wikipedia entry on road diets right here to get a running jump
“There are perhaps over 20,000 road diets in the United States, with another 500-1,000 being conducted each year. The city in North America with the greatest number of road diets (29) is San Francisco. The city with the greatest number of road diets, per capita, is Hartford, Connecticut (12). One or two new road diets are added to each of these cities annually. Retail merchants in Seattle are now some of the strongest proponents for these projects, since reduced travel speeds allow for easier and safer parking, improve store access and boost overall walking and livability conditions in neighborhoods ... all of which leads to improved commerce.”
A nice presentation by Jennifer A. Rosales, under the title Road Diet Handbook (February 2008) provides a good summary of the state of the art in the United States.
You might also want to check out(and possibly contribute) the Livable Streets Network StreetsWiki entry on road diets.
Next steps here: Three options. You are invited to comment just below. Alternatively, we can rewrite the entry together. Or best yet, crank up a road diet project in your city or neighborhood. Let us know.
The Editor
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
New Mobility/The Mission
Plan Zero - also known as "old mobility" - with its stress on supply, more vehicles 
and more infrastructure as the knee-jerk answer to our mobility problems, has been the favored path for decision-making and investment in the sector over the last 70 years. It is well-known and easy to see where it is leading. Aggressing the planet, costing us a bundle, draining the world's petroleum reserves, and delivering poor service for the majority . . . Plan Zero is a clear failure. It's time for Plan A : The fifteen steady steps to sustainable transport and a sustainable city.
Summary: The Fifteen Step Conversion Strategy
Each of these necessary strategic steps is developed in further detail below, but let us open this section by simply listing them for you here by way of introduction. 1. Climate emergency leading the way (Read on.):
And again as you will see, it is not a matter of selecting one or several of them, but the successful strategy is going to have to include every one of them. No exceptions. (Hmm. Sounds like hard work.)
2. Tighten timetable for action:
3. Reduce traffic radically:
4. Radically increase new mobility services:
5. Design for women:
6. Work with what you have:
7. Frugal economics:
8. Packages of measures:
9. Integrate the car into the new mobility pattern:
10. Full speed ahead with new technology:
11. Technology agnostics:
12. The "infrastructure joker":
13. Outreach and Partnerships:
14. Lead by Example:
15. But above all . . . pick winners! Note: The following involved complex, fundamental issues each of which need considerably more than a short paragraph or two of Summary introductory statement of the sort that follows directly here. The immediate objective is to put before you, if only briefly at this point, a first-round the basic information concerning what makes World Streets the New Mobility Agenda tick. But have patience, each of these will be the subject of numerous articles, presentations, comments, and arguments as this collaborative project moves ahead. Naturally, we invite your comments and suggestions from the outset, which you can do either here at the end of this article or by writing the editor at editor@Worldstreets.org.
The New Mobility Agenda in brief
World Streets is not exactly what one would call a neutral source. We have a very definite position on transport policy, planning and investment, the result of long experience of working with and observing the sector in its daily operation in cities around the world. It would not be true to claim that these views are unique to us; indeed they have been distilled over the years as result of contacts and work in collaboration with farsighted colleagues and policymakers in many places. They are shared, at least in good part, by many of our most distinguished colleagues.
The main reference point for all that you will read in these pages is the long-term program behind World Streets, namely the New Mobility Agenda, an international collaborative effort focusing entirely on transportation in and around cities. It has been in operation since 1988 with continuous interactive presence on the internet as one of the pillars of the collaborative knowledge-building process that is behind it. And this is what we have concluded:
Ready for change: Virtually all of the necessary preconditions are now in place for achieving far-reaching, rapid, low cost improvements in the ways that people get around in our cites. The needs are there, they are increasingly understood -- and we now know what to do and how to get the job done. The challenge is to find the vision, political will, and leadership to get the job done, step by deliberate step.
But to get there we have to have an explicit, coherent, ethical, checkable, overarching strategy. Without it we are destined to continue play at the edges of the problems, and while we may be able to announce a success or improvement here or there, the overall impact that our cities need to break the old patterns will not be there. We really must have that clear, consistent, cross-cutting, systemic strategy.The Agenda provides a free public platform for new thinking and open collaborative group problem solving, bringing together more than a thousand leading thinkers and actors in the field from more than seventy counties worldwide, sharing information and considering together the full range of problems and eventual solution paths that constitute the global challenge of sustainable transport in cities.
Managing the transition: The fifteen basic principles and strategies that make up the New Mobility Agenda
And it must be understood that the shift from old to new mobility is not one that turns its back on the importance of high quality mobility for the economy and for quality of life. It's just that given the technologies that we now have at our fingertips, and in the labs, it is possible for us to redraw our transportation systems so that there is less inefficient movement (the idea of one person sitting in traffic in a big car with the engine idling is one example, an empty bus another) and more high-efficiency, high-quality, low-carbon transportation that offers many more mobility choices than in the past, including the one that environmentalists and many others find most appealing: namely, getting what you want without having to venture out into traffic at all. Now that's an interesting new mobility strategy, too.
Here you have in twelve summaries the high points of the basic strategic policy frame as we see it: principles that we and our colleagues around the world have diligently pieced together over the years of work, observation and close contact with projects and programs in leading cities on all continents under the New Mobility Agenda. (If you click here you can see in a short video (four minute draft) a synopsis of the basic five-point core strategy that the city of Paris has announced and adhered to over the last seven years. With significant results.)
Strategy 1. Climate leading the way:
No reason to be impressed or scared off by the post-COP15 sally of the climate-skeptics, it is still the most important single challenge (and opportunity) before us. The on-going climate emergency sets the base timetable for action in our sector, which accounts for some 20% of greenhouse gasses. Getting the carbon out of the sector is an important goal in any event. But there is far more to it than that.
At the same time GHG reduction works as a strong surrogate for just about everything else to which we need to be giving priority attention in our cities, chief among them the need to cut traffic. Fewer vehicles on the road means reduced energy consumption, less pollution in all forms, fewer accidents, reduced bills for infrastructure construction and maintenance, quieter and safer cities, and the long list goes on.
What is so particularly interesting about the mobility sector is that there is really a great deal we can do in a relatively little time. And at relatively low cost. Beyond this, there is an important joker which also needs to be brought into the picture from the very beginning, and that is that these reductions can be achieved not only without harming the economy or quality of life for the vast majority of all people. To the contrary sustainable transport reform can be part of a 21st century economic revival which places increased emphasis on services and not products.
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Strategy 2. Tighten time frame for action:
Select and gear all actions to achieve visible results within a two to four year time frame. Spend at least 50%, preferably more, of all your transportation budget on measures and projects that are going to yield visible results within this time frame. Set firm targets for all to see and judge the results. No-excuse results-oriented transport policy.
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Strategy 3. Reduce traffic radically.
The critical, incontrovertible policy core of the Agenda -is BIG percentage cuts in vehicle miles traveled. If we don't achieve this, we will have a situation in which all the key indicators will continue to move in the wrong direction. But we can cut traffic and at the same time improve mobility. And the economy. That's our new mobility strategy.
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Strategy 4. Extend the range, quality and degree of integration of new mobility services available to all:
A whole range of exciting and practical new service modes is needed if we are to keep our cities viable. And they need to COMBINE to offer better, faster and cheaper mobility than the old car-intensive arrangements or deficit-financed, heavy, old-technology, traditional public transit. We need to open up our minds on this last score and understand that rather than being stuck in the past with a 19th century version of how "common people" best get about, it is important to move over to a new paradigm of a great variety of ways of providing shared transport mediated in good part by 21st-century information communications technologies.
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Strategy 5. Design for women:
Our old mobility system was designed by, and ultimately for, a certain type of person (think about it!). And so too should the new mobility system: but this time around it should be designed to accommodate specifically women, of all ages and conditions. Do that and we will serve everybody far better. And for that to happen we need to have a major leadership shift toward women and, as part of that, to move toward full gender parity in all bodies involved in the decision process. It's that simple.
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Strategy 6. Work with what you have:
For many transportation planners and experts schooled in the college, this will be one of the least evident of the strategic building blocks behind the New Mobility Agenda. In the first place, because many of these systems or services turn out to be almost invisible to policymakers working in the transport sector. These can range from various kinds of taxis and community or specialized transport services, all the way to the kind of chaotic, streets-clogging or almost invisible modes, often dangerous (dangerous, because that is the way we treat them) services such as small private buses, shared taxis, pedicabs, informal Carsharing, informal ride sharing, and a range of illegal or arrangements which I can or not they to work for lots of people in many places, but which in most cases and despite their present drawbacks probably need not to be suppressed but rather to be better understood, negotiated, improved in consort with the suppliers, and integrated into the multilevel range of transportation options that are really what is best suited for cities in all parts of the world.
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Strategy 7. Frugal economics:
We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% of the transport related budgets and use it to address projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years.
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Strategy 8. Design and deploy packages of measures:
As distinguished from the old ways of planning and making investments what is required in most places today are carefully interlinked "packages" of numerous small as well as larger projects and initiatives. Involving many more actors and participants. One of the challenges of an effective new mobility policy will be to find ways to see these various measures as interactive synergistic and mutually supporting projects within a unified greater whole. A significant challenge to our planners at all levels
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Strategy 9. Integrate the car into the new mobility pattern:
State-of-the-art technology can be put to work hand in hand with the changing role of the private car in the city in order to create situations in which even car use can be integrated with a far softer edge into the overall mobility strategy . These advantages need to be widely broadcast so as to increase acceptance of the new pattern of urban mobility. The new mobility environment must also be able to accommodate people in cars, since that is an incontrovertible reality which will not go away simply because it would seem like an ideal solution. We are going to have plenty of small and medium-sized four-wheel, rubber tired, driver-operated vehicles running around on the streets of our cities and the surrounding regions, so the challenge of planners and policymakers is to ensure that this occurs in a way which is increasingly harmonious to the broader social, economic and environmental objectives set out here.
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Strategy 10. Full speed ahead with new technology:
New mobility is at its core heavily driven by the aggressive application of state of the art logistics, communications and information technology across the full spectrum of service types. The transport system of the future is above all an interactive information system, with the wheels and the feet at the end of this chain. These are the seven-league boots of new mobility
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Strategy 11. Technology agnostics/Performance advocates:
Please note: We do not care, nor should we care, what is the technology to be used or favored at any point in the system. It is not the role of inevitably under-informed, naive, and ever-hopeful policymakers to make determinations about which technology is going to be the best to build into the system. This is way past their level of competence, and is not in any event even necessary in order to create the preconditions of a better transportation system. But what our policymakers can do, and what they should do, is to specify not technology but performance. There many ways in which this can be done, two of which include two performance standards and emissions standards. But there are more.
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Strategy 12. Play the "infrastructure joker":
The transport infrastructures of our cities have been vastly overbuilt. And they are unable to deliver the goods. That's just great, since it means that we can now take over substantial portions of the street network for far more efficient modes.
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Strategy 13. Outreach and Partnerships:
This approach, because it is new and unfamiliar to most people, is unlike to be understood the first few times around. Hence a major education, consultation and outreach effort is needed in each place to make it work. Old mobility was the terrain in which decisions were made by transport experts working within their assigned zones of competence. New mobility is based on wide-based collaborative problem solving, outreach and harnessing the great strengths of the informed and educated populations of our cities. Public/private/citizen partnerships.
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Strategy 14. Lead by Example:
If you are mayor or other elected official. If you are engaged as a professional in public policy areas that relate to the sustainability agenda . . . you don't have a choice really, you must lead by personal example. This means getting to work by bike, walking, public transport or some form of carsharing/ridesharing at least two days a week. Every week. By doing this, you will have hands-on knowledge of what works and what does not in your city. You become Eyes on the Street. You will be authentic and credible. You will be the kind of leader we need to identify and guide the reforms, policies and projects that must now be put in place. And if you do not do this, if you stay in the back seat of your limo, you won't get my vote.
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Strategy 15. But above all . . . pick winners!
There is no reason for policymakers to take chances. New approaches demand success. When it comes to transport innovation in the second decade of the 21st century there is no margin of error. Moreover, the track record of the kinds of approaches that are needed to create a new system is rich and well documented. Meaning that we can choose policies and services with track records of success and build on all this accumulated experience. (And there are plenty of them out there if you are prepared to look and learn.)
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Not for negotiation:
The above fifteen principles are not negotiable. They are not details from which we can pick and choose. They are fundamantel, they are integral. Every intended or hoped-for policy, project, investment, program, should be made to jump through these fifteen sustainability-defining hoops before being selected by public policy makers for investment and implementation. There is not one that can be set aside or ignored. Ever. It is that simple
Where to from here?
To move ahead in time to save the planet and improve life quality of the majority of the people who live in our cities -- no, they are not all happy car owner/drivers; get out there and count them; you'll see -- we need to have a fair, unified, coherent, and memorable strategy.
There may be other ways, better ways one would hope, of facing this emergency. If so we are ready to learn, let us hear from you. This is the challenge to which World Streets and the New Mobility Agenda are addressed.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Op-Ed: David Alpert on TDM recommendations
Leading edge TDM strategies showing the way
When any new building appears in the city, its residents, office workers and/or shoppers have to travel to and from the building. The traditional planning approach is to require enough parking so that all of the users could drive there. But that's not the ideal outcome, since our roads can't handle more traffic. Instead, many cities now push for other elements that make it easier for people to travel by other modes. These elements are called Transportation Demand Management strategies.
At the Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing for the Whitman-Walker project at 14th and S, DDOT planner Chris Ziemann proposed several TDM strategies, including bicycle parking, car sharing spaces, free initial Zipcar or SmartBike memberships, and free SmarTrip cards for new residents. These come from a September DDOT memo on TDM which I was able to obtain.
These are the TDM strategies DDOT considers when looking at a new project:
* Bicycle parking: One space for each 20 car spaces, locked bicycle storage, and shower facilities for workers. That can include facilities for workers at residential buildings as well as office workers.
* Carpools: Reserved spaces in good locations for carpools and vanpools, and discounts against parking rates in pay garages.
* Parking costs: Ensure that the garage charges market rates for parking. If employees or residents get free parking, allow them to take a payment ("cash-out") for the market value of their space instead.
* Car sharing: Free parking spaces(s) for carsharing vehicles, accessible 24-7 to the public. Also, cover the initiation fee and first year membership fees for initial residents.
* Bike sharing: Allocate space for a SmartBike station, or possibly fund the station entirely.
* SmarTrip: Give new residents and building employees complimentary SmarTrip cards. DDOT suggests $20 for residential tenants and $60 for employees of residential buildings.
* Information: Put links on buildings' Web site to CommuterConnections.com and goDCgo.com. Include signs or brochures in lobby kiosks, information in welcome packets, or bulletin boards with information on transportation options.
* Technology: Have a business center in residential buildings with a copier, fax, and Internet access. This makes it easier for people to telecommute.
Keep in mind that this is just a menu of possibilities, not rules. DDOT can decide which are most appropriate for each project. The developers can voluntarily agree to implement some, and if not, BZA or Zoning Commission ultimately decides whether to impose any as conditions of approvals. Some, like bicycle parking, are also part of draft future zoning rules, but these may go beyond the absolute requirements of zoning.
- David Alpert, http://greatergreaterwashington.org
Washington DC
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