Go to the back of the bus

This is a photograph of Mrs. Rosa Parks, a brave pioneer for equity in transport. On December 1, 1955 Mrs. Parks boarded a bus in the southern city of Montgomery Alabama after a long day of work and took a seat in the back of the bus that was marked for use by both white and blacks.

Whenever I hear the word revolver . . . I reach for my culture.

We have long-held a theory at the New Mobility Agenda that you can never tell where the next good idea is going to come from. So you really do have to keep your eyes, ears and minds wide open, and learn where you can, where you can, from whom you can. For example, Volkswagen in the New Mobility Agenda? Well, what not? Let’s show you one great idea that you may not have seen the first time around and that we have just this morning plucked out from our archives.

La femme est l’avenir de l’homme

* Click to enlarge

The French poet Louis Aragon told us some two generations ago that “Woman is the future of man”. And if we had any doubts about that as we enter into 2012, we have today before our eyes this exceptional, moving photograph of a street demonstration yesterday in which several thousand brave women marched through central Cairo in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking female demonstrators in Tahrir Square.

Cycles of Change: Pedaling to Empowerment in Dhaka

Bangladeshi women face significant barriers from family, neighbors and society in getting on a bike a riding around town in bright daylight. Freedom of mobility is seriously curtailed in Dhaka if women don’t feel safe to travel independently in their own city. Over 35% of female commuters in Dhaka depend on a cycle rickshaw and as more major roads ban these rickshaws, daily mobility for women is threatened furthermore. Arohi’s tagline: “Pedaling the way to empowerment” summarizes the links that we plan to draw between cycles, mobility and empowerment.

Streets are for people.

Roads are for vehicles. Streets are for people.

These are people who are reclaiming their streets.

– Cairo Street scene. January 2011

No man is an island.

World Streets

Street Talk: Ivan Illich on Sharing in Transport

“The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport*. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role. Addicted to being carried along, he has lost control over the physical, social, and psychic powers that reside in man’s feet. The passenger has come to identify territory with the untouchable landscape through which he is rushed. He has become impotent to establish his domain, mark it with his imprint, and assert his sovereignty over it. He has lost confidence in his power to admit  others into his presence and to share space consciously with them. He can no longer face the remote by himself. Left on his own, he feels immobile.”

Ivan Illich in Energy and Equity (Chapter: Speed-stunned imagination)

"In the slums of Nairobi" What do you do when you are losing a war?

If it is your assumption that we are at present losing the war for sustainable transport and sustainable lives — and that is very definitely our position here at World Streets — and if it is your firm intention not to lose it — as it is ours! — then what do you do when the going gets tough? Well you look around and put to work every potentially promising tool you can lay your hands on. Now we make a pretty consistent effort in these pages to bring to your attention creative media that illustrates, renders more understandable and supports our noble cause. But we need more: so what about doing more along these lines taken from today’s edition of the International Herald Tribune?

International Women's Day . . . and World Streets

Today is the ninety-ninth anniversary of the first International Women’s Day, a day well worth celebrating. And while we are at it a perfect occasion to remind ourselves of what we need to be thinking about and trying to do over the next twelve months to make sure that when 2011 and that important 100th anniversary roll around, we have made our own best effort for a better and brighter future for all. Because. . . women hold the key to the future of not only sustainable transportation but also to a sustainable and just world. It’s that simple.

Profile: Robin Carlisle in South Africa. "A helluva lot of people don’t have cars. I have to look after them"

To move from the unfair and hopelessly inefficient deadlock that is old mobility toward sustainable transport and sustainable cities, we need concepts, dialogues, demonstrations, projects and programs. But none of this is going to happen if we don’t have the people: the warm, surely fallible but somehow thoughtful, daring and courageous human beings who are needed to bring all this about.We need more heroes, wouldn’t you agree? Our Profiles here on World Streets are intended to remind the world that whenever something good happens, it is because there are real live people behind it. Let’s take Robin Carlisle who is working for change in Capetown South Africa for example.

In The Headlights: Street-fighting man

– Profile by Gail Jennings, Editor, Mobility Magazine, Cape Town

In-between drags of his cigarette and stories about bicycle-commuting, Robin Carlisle, MEC for Transport and Public Works in the Western Cape Provincial Government, talks to Gail Jennings about his plans to get the province moving.

MEC Robin Carlisle states his position upfront: he doesn’t intend to change the world. That, he says, belongs in the realms of consultants’ fantasies; he merely intends to change direction, reverse our local trends in transport and re-align them with international trends. This, of course, will change for the better the personal worlds of multitudes of people in the Western Cape.

Current trends in South Africa are more roads, more cars, more congestion; decreasing air quality and increasing road fatalities (particularly pedestrians and passengers); and ‘magic fairy’ solutions appearing in provinces to the north. International trends are moving toward a re-definition of the problem: for as long as we regard long commutes, gridlock and spatial segregation and isolation as transport-problems, we’ll look for transport-related solutions…

The Western Cape, with MEC Carlisle in the driver’s seat, will be somewhere in-between, a damn-sight better place to be than where we are right now. Which is stuck in the traffic, losing time, losing money, and losing opportunities for economic growth and wealth.

Carlisle knows, and supports, the arguments for better spatial planning and densification of Cape Town in particular, which would bring people and work closer together. He admires the work of Jeremy Cronin, Deputy Minister of Transport and outspoken advocate of better land-use planning.

But his mission, his mandate, is to bring people to their places of work, no matter how far away these might be – easily, cheaply, quickly, in greater comfort and with greater dignity. And there’s something ‘Penalosa’ – another transport philosopher he admires – about the way in which he’ll do it, without excessive concern for ensuring his re-election.

‘We’ve set modest targets for modal shifts, but most importantly these signal a change in direction,’ he says. ‘Public transport will become more widespread, more accessible, and there will be a detailed, step-by-step scheme, within the next six months.’ This scheme, he says, ‘will be irreversible by 2014, around the time in which I retire!’

What will we see on the roads?

The nitty-gritty of the Western Cape’s transport plan, and its implementation strategy, has not yet been designed. But the overall philosophy is there: ‘What have I got? What can I add to it? And what can I take away later?’

‘Public transport is like a drowning person,’ says Carlisle. ‘You can’t just pull out a leg or an arm – you have to pull out the whole person. It’s a package, and is best developed sectorally.’

The key to Carlisle and his team’s system is connectivity, and it involves a combination of trunk routes, feeder services – reported in the local press as Bus Rapid Transit – and increased rail services. Funding will arise from the redirection of spend from road-building to public transport.

‘BRTs do have an important role – that of overcoming road-based congestion – but they’re not the magic solution. We don’t need to go and build new BRT roads; we simply need to take road space from private cars. This will come within about four years, you won’t be able to bludgeon your way into the rapid lanes unless you own a tank.’ Carlise leans back, takes out another cigarette and considers his retirement once more…

The formula is this: rail, trunk operators (‘probably buses’) and feeders (‘I see no reason why these can’t be modestly converted Quantums, running to a schedule and enjoying some sort of subsidy.’) ‘Licensed taxi operators don’t have to come into the system if they don’t want to,’ he points out. ‘There’s been no transport master plan so far because no-one wants to bite the bullet that is the taxi industry…’

And this is a bullet that Carlisle has already bitten: ‘These front teeth – I got these replaced after my first collision, on my bicycle on Wynberg Hill. My left shoulder, that was another close encounter …’ (Carlisle commuted by bicycle for more than 17 years, undeterred.)

‘I’m not afraid of the taxi industry, and I’m not going to prescribe to anyone. I need about 50% of the current licensed taxi industry to get the system going, and the smart guys will see the value in it – congestion has already cut some taxi mileage by up to 30%.’

How is it going to happen?

‘Funding and good managers: that’s what makes any project sustainable, and that’s what we’re going to get. It all starts with National Treasury, the sole conduit for 98% of revenue. This is where you have to contest for funding, and this is where I need to win the funding fight over the R300, for example. That will give us enough money, and if I give 50% to PRASA, this will fix our rail problems…’ The planned extensions to the R300, from Melkbosstrand in the north and to Ladies’ Mile Road on the M3 in the south, will cost an estimated R14-billion, which would be better spent on developing public transport infrastructure, says Carlisle.

‘We need to open up the conversation nationally, about how we spend our mobility funds. SANRAL builds good roads, and gives good value for money, but what is the aim? What are we building roads for? Roads, especially periphery roads, are not my priority. A helluva lot of people don’t have cars. I have to look after them.’

In the Western Cape 35% of commuters use rail, suggests Carlisle’s research. ‘Rail knows how to move many people, which is what we need to do. And we do it well: the Fish Hoek to Cape Town line is one of the few in the world that is close to break-even. With a good feeder service, better park-and-ride facilities, and increased hours, this would be a quick way to ease congestion in one area alone.

‘It bothers me that you can’t put a bicycle on a train, even off-peak,’ he says. ‘And yes, we’ll get this done …’ But he cautions the bicycle-activist in me: ‘I’m prepared to look into a package of measures for bicycle commuters [his years of riding were made more pleasant by showers and safe parking at his office], but it’s not a raging priority. In the Central Karoo, with rural roads, bicycles make more sense, but in the city, bicycles are not yet aspirational.’

Carlisle’s focus on Cape Town is because 90% of the actual commu
ter population of the Western Cape is based here, he explains. Already in Cape Town and surrounds – Stellenbosch, Paarl, Wellington/Drakenstein – ‘all the key elements for better public transport are there; we simply we need the investment.’

George’s mobility strategy, on the other hand, is a ‘test to see if, in one of the few areas outside Cape Town where we have a mass mobility problem, we can find a solution.’ [See Mobility issue 6]. ‘We’re almost ready to kick off – it’s been a slow process of gaining trust,’ he says. ‘Our job is to work with the towns, not put in transport schemes: it’s about community ownership.’

The Western Cape’s ‘modest’ targets
• Increase public transport use to 40% over the next four years
• Improve rail transport
• Provide rapid trunk routes for existing public transport
• Formalise the taxi industry
• Shift 10% of road freight to the rail network by 2014
• Reduce maintenance backlogs by 16% by 2014
• Reduce road accident fatalities by 50% over the next three years
• Continue to support bicycle transport (Shova Kalula) in rural areas

# # #

About the author:
Gail Jennings, Mobility Magazine, Cape Town, South Africa. Gail writes about issues such as social and environmental justice, energy and climate change, community-based projects, non-motorised transport, and edit Mobility Magazine (a quarterly transport publication for the southern African public sector).

"Boys will be boys." And why it is important to change this now

Editorial: In the triple nexus that is the defining concern of World Streets – namely, mobility, land use and climate – we have to be ready to take stock and face up to the reality that most of the problems we face today in each of these areas are the result of the domination of an “old order”, a certain way of seeing and doing things. What have we got wrong? What can we do about it? And what might this mean to COP15 and beyond?

Wanted: Crowd-Sourced Transportation Analysis (An open thread for collaborative tool building)

This is the second of a two-part article by Charles Komanoff, activist, energy-economist and policy analyst, looking at goals and tools for finding the right strategy for implementing some form of congesting charging measures in New York City’s crowded streets. He invites comment on his proposed “Balance Transportation Analyzer” tool.

Wanted: Crowd-Sourced Transportation Analysis

– by Charles Komanoff. Reprinted from NYC Streetsblog with the author’s permission

My recent post refuting David Owen’s attack on congestion pricing ignited a long, rich thread. Here’s one comment, from “Jonathan,” that struck a nerve:

[A] cordon-pricing plan … which doesn’t charge center-city residents could result in an increase in those residents’ automobile use. If the streets are free of outer-borough traffic, more of my Manhattan neighbors might drive to work, or simply make extra automobile trips within the cordon that without CP [congestion pricing], they would have made by subway or taxi.

Jonathan’s right: Any Manhattan cordon-pricing scheme will lead to an uptick in car trips that start and end within the charging zone. It’s one of those “rebound effects” that congestion-price modeling needs to account for, and which I’ve taken pains to incorporate in my Balanced Transportation Analyzer pricing model.

Indeed, I daresay that the BTA handles just about every issue ever raised on this blog about congestion pricing. How many transit users will switch to cabs? Will variable tolls really flatten rush-hour peaks? Won’t faster roads lure back the trips killed off by the toll (Owen’s conundrum)? And many more.

Technically, the BTA is a spreadsheet. But I think of it as a vast mansion, whose 46 interlinked “rooms” (worksheets) are stocked with precious data and ingenious algorithms for cracking open questions like these:

* How does congestion on weekends compare with weekdays?

* How sharply do traffic speeds rise as volumes fall?

* Which boroughs and counties stand to pay the most with congestion pricing?

* Will a cordon toll lead to more bicycling, and will that improve public health?

* Can decommissioning vehicle lanes increase congestion pricing’s benefits?

* Which will boost transit use more: lower fares or better service?

* How many fares does a cabbie get in a ten-hour taxi shift, with and without pricing?

Multiply that list a hundredfold and you get a sense of the BTA’s hidden treasures.

I say “hidden” because, except for a few mavens like “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, who calls it “the best [modeling] tool that I have seen in my nearly 40 years,” the Balanced Transportation Analyzer remains largely untapped by advocates. To me, it’s as if we’re all starving while this rich storehouse next door goes to waste.

Which prompts me to ask:

1. Why is the BTA so underused?
2. Is our community missing out on a valuable tool?
3. What should we do about it?

Let’s make this an open thread, with emphasis on what can we do together to make the BTA more accessible and useful to New York’s livable streets community. (The model is adaptable to other cities, so those of you not from NYC are also invited.)

As for Jonathan’s question: the BTA shows that over the course of a typical weekday, 72 percent of all vehicle miles traveled inside the Manhattan Central Business District are by cars, trucks and buses that have crossed into the CBD, either at 60th Street or across the Hudson or East Rivers, and thus would pay the congestion toll. The remaining 28 percent of VMT is mostly by medallion taxicabs (22 percent). Cars and trucks that stayed within the cordon zone and couldn’t be tolled accounted for just 6 percent of all CBD traffic. (All this is derived and shown in the table at the bottom of the BTA’s “Cordon” worksheet.)

This tells us that: 1) Even if “intrazonal” traffic rises sharply, as Jonathan fears, it will add relatively little VMT because it’s such a small share of overall cordon traffic to begin with; and 2) rather than fret over the free pass for intrazonal trips (which are impractical to toll with current technology), congestion pricing needs a strategy to stop a surge in taxicab use from filling the newly freed road space.

The plan currently advocated by Ted Kheel and myself does just that. It combines a 33 percent surcharge on all three taxi-fare components — mileage, waiting time, and the “drop” — with time-variable car tolls of $3/$6/$9 on weekdays and $2/$3/$4 on weekends (trucks pay double, reflecting their greater bulk, while medallion cabs are exempt from the toll but pay the surcharge). Under this Kheel-Komanoff Plan, intrazonal VMT is predicted to rise by approximately 120,000 miles a day — 40,000 by cars and trucks, 80,000 by taxicabs. But cordon VMT by vehicles coming from outside, and thus tolled, falls far more, by 450,000. This yields a net drop in cordon travel of 330,000 VMT, an 8 percent decline that, the model predicts, will boost average travel speeds within the CBD by around 20 percent.

The point of this post isn’t to advocate for a particular plan, however. It’s to show that rebound effects and other asserted congestion-toll pitfalls can be modeled and, with the right plan, accommodated.

The figures are based on 2007 traffic levels. Current volumes are probably slightly less. While a decrease in “baseline” traffic cuts into the benefits of congestion pricing, both the saved time and new transit revenue predicted for Kheel-Komanoff are still striking. And, yes, if you want to test our pricing plan (or your own) with reduced baseline traffic, the BTA even has a switch to adjust the volume.

# # #

* Click here to read comments and reader contributions on Streetsblog

* Click here to read the original posting in Streetsblog

The author:
Charles Komanoff “re-founded” NYC’s bike-advocacy group Transportation Alternatives in the 1980s, helped found the Tri-State Transportation Campaign in the 1990s, and co-founded the Carbon Tax Center in 2007. Charles’s writings include books, articles, and landmark reports such as Subsidies for Traffic, Killed By Automobile, and the Kheel Report on financing free transit in New York City. Charles lives with his wife and two sons in lower Manhattan

Outreach – Local Actors & Implementation Partners

Too often when it comes to new transport initiatives, the practice is to concentrate on laying the base for the project in close working relationships with people and groups who a priori are favorably disposed to your idea, basically your choir. Leaving the potential “trouble makers” aside for another day. Experience shows that’s a big mistake.

A Big House/Open Door Approach
Concerned local/regional government agencies, transporters, business groups, local employers and others should be brought early on into discussions, planning, implementation, and follow-up. It is vital to bring to the table as wide a range of groups and interests as possible, from the city and in the surrounding region in each case, including those whose views may be negative about any of the kinds of major shift in today’s transportation arrangements. Nobody likes change out of the blue, especially those “imposed” on us by people who are indifferent to our problems and priorities It is natural to block these unwelcome proposals.

The key to success is to take a big house/open doors approach. Make sure that you bring in all those groups, interests, people who are going to be impacted, positively or possibly negatively. Better to have them inside the tent and from the beginning.

One of the richest and most exciting phases of the preparatory projects from the outset is that of taking contact with all these groups in order to discover what they are already doing to advance the sustainability agenda in your city. And what they are ready and able to do if they get the right kind of support.

Below you have our generic checklist of possible local collaborators, partners, and interested parties. As you look through it from the perspectives of your own community, you will see that there are gaps here. But this at least can get you started.

Local/regional government agencies

1. City hall(s)
2. Communications, public information specialists
3. Community development programs
4. Energy, conservation
5. Environmental services (including monitoring stations and services)
6. Fire department
7. Fiscal and economic policies
8. Mayors (personal commitment)
9. Ombudsman
10. Other towns and municipalities in region
11. Parking policy and administrating
12. Police and traffic authorities (local and regional)
13. Public health
14. Public space management
15. Related incentive programs
16. School system
17. Social services
18. Special event management
19. Street vendors, kiosks, etc.
20. Taxes and charges
21. Transport and traffic planners
22. Urban development/master planners
23. Other concerned agencies, services?

Mobility purveyors, representatives

1. Ambulance and hospital transport
2. Carshare operators
3. Carpool/ride-share operations
4. Church, etc. buses, ridesharing
5. Cycling groups
6. Emergency transporters and services
7. Fleet managers
8. “Ghost” or black/illegal taxis and carriers
9. Goods/Freight delivery
10. Jitneys
11. Message/courier services
12. Package delivery
13. Paratransit providers
14. Parking providers (public and private)
15. Pedestrian associations and action groups
16. Postal buses (mainly in rural areas)
17. Public transit operators (rail and road)
18. Rental cars, vehicles
19. Rideshare and hitch-hiking services
20. School and other special buses
21. Taxis, limo and chauffeur services
22. Transport services for elderly, handicapped
23. Transport shelters
24. Walk/Bike to School groups
25. Other?

Movement substitutes, Demand Management

1. Activity clustering
2. Carfree housing
3. E-meeting technologies (videoconferencing, voice conferencing, other)
4. Land use planning
5. Teleshopping (and delivery)
6. Telework, telecommuting programs
7. Travel diaries, logs
8. Trip chaining
9. xWork (new ways of organizing distance work)

Other key and potential actors, Supporters, Opponents

1. Board of Trade and other industry groups (including infrastructure)
2. Automobile associations and related industry groups (get them on board early)
3. Chambers of commerce, Business groupings, Downtown associations
4. City boosters
5. Colleges and universities
6. Clubs, churches, synagogues, mosques
7. Consultants, university/research groups working in these areas
8. Developers, real estate agencies,
9. Employers
10. Financial community, banks, insurance companies
11. Foundations, individuals and others able to provide financial support or backing
12. Fundraisers
13. Green Maps (Toronto has a fine one)
14. Groups or people interested or involved in earlier Car Free Days or similar car free projects or demos in region
15. Hospitals and health agencies (including public health)
16. Including eventual sponsors and sources of active participation and support
17. International, national, regional environment, mobility, etc. agencies and associations
18. Local and regional media (old and new)
19. Local merchants, chambers of commerce, downtown associations
20. Media: traditional and new
21. NGOs, Public interest groups, associations
– Environmental, ecological, public health, clean air groups
– Non-motorized transport: Pedestrian, cycling, skating, running groups
– Associations concerned with elderly, handicapped and poor
22. Out of town commercial centers
23. Polling organizations
24. Red Cross, emergency services and public information programs
25. Schools and educational institutions
26. Specialized consultancies, working in these areas
27. Street performers, musicians
28. Transport user groups
29. Urban development, public spaces,
30. Women’s groups
31. Youth, sports and recreation groups

# # #
Comments and suggestions for improvement of this rough listing are more than welcome.

If you think that transport policy and investment decisions are best taken in smoke-filled rooms peopled exclusively by your transportation experts, perhaps accompanied by some of your principal suppliers, then the New Mobility Agenda approach to outreach and broad public consultation and direct involvement is probably not for you.

Mayors, city councils and local government have a lot more their plate than the transportation-related issues of their community. And there are just 24 hours a day. However to the extent in which local leaders are ready to reach out into the community deeply and often, they are going to find that there are resources and skills out there which need to be drawn on. 21st-century governance is based on the continuous reaching out for the skills and inputs of active citizens. Getting this right requires both considerable thought and careful use of state-of-the-art communication systems.

We have long maintained that mayors and local politicians who get this right will probably be able to stay in office as long as they choose to.

The editor