[sustran] Introduction

[Ed Hillsman]

Like several others, I’d planned to watch for a while, but I think it’s time
I introduce myself and another point of view.

The introduction: I’m a geographer who has done research on a wide range of
questions involving energy, environment, transportation, technological
change and global change. I joined my present organization last fall after a
reduction in staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. One of my principal
interests is understanding how a city or other organization might go about
managing the demand for transportation, and then developing tools and
conducting analyses to estimate the effects of doing so. I think I take a
very different approach to demand management than most do, and I’ll
illustrate this approach below. Let me preface the discussion by
acknowledging that taking this approach is not "the" answer to the myriad
transportation problems already mentioned on this list. But I think it can
be a useful part of a larger effort.

The point of view: What I’ve been reading in the comments posted here so far
is a concern with preserving personal mobility. This concern implies an
assumption that a trip is going to happen. However, a good deal of
transportation demand is what the economists call "derived" demand, meaning
that these trips are made not because people want to make them but because
they want other things: income from a job, or goods from a store, or service
from a bank, or the company of distant friends or family, or whatever. Some
trips ARE taken for the pleasure of the trip itself, but although the
proportion is in some dispute it seems to be pretty small. And some trips
are taken for reasons that I think do not lend themselves to demand
management. Vacations and visits to family and friends are at the top of
this list. But these facts do not affect the overall argument, they just
limit the potential effect.

What I call the conventional approach to demand management (this is my North
American perspective) has focused on commuting travel, which accounts for
only about one third of total transportation use in the US, and has focused
on getting people out of single-occupant vehicles into carpools, public
transportation, or bicycles. As I said earlier, this assumes the trip will
happen and then tries to change the mode. This approach tries to get people
to change from a preferred behavior (driving) to a less-preferred behavior.
There have been some limited efforts to promote telecommuting , which
eliminates trips. The data on telecommuting are very limited, but it does
appear that much telecommuting occurs not because of transportation planning
but because some employees and employers find it mutually beneficial. A
better way to exchange some employment and compensation services.

It is when we start looking at other direct demands that I think things
start getting really interesting. Let me give two examples with some basis
in east Asia/west Pacific. The first is banking. Much of the reason people
visit banks is to put money in or take money out. It used to be that in the
US you HAD to visit the bank with a physical piece of paper called a
paycheck in order to deposit that money into your accounts. And it used to
be that you pretty much had to visit the bank to get cash. I don’t have the
figures but a high proportion of paychecks are deposited electronically now;
this has eliminated a lot of trips and delivered a higher level of
convenience in customer service. Banks have also developed networks of
automatic teller machines where depositors can withdraw money from their
accounts. Some of these are at banks, but many of them are at shopping and
other locations. A trip may still be required to visit one of these
machines, but it often can be a shorter trip, or it can be part of a
combined shopping-and-banking trip. The effect can be a reduction in travel.
>From what I read about banking in Japan, some of the banks there serve their
customers in their homes. A bank staff member visits to pick up money for
deposit. Again, travel occurs, but it is organized differently than if every
customer visits the bank, and there is great potential for this
reorganization to reduce the total amount of travel involved in delivering
the service. Personal mobility matters less in this case than customer service.

The second involves payment of utility bills. A friend of mine spent a
couple of years in Jakarta. According to him, the postal and telephone
systems were unreliable. A household would have to visit the utility office
to find out the bill and pay it. Households with servants would send a
servant to the office, get the bill, return home, get payment from the
household, return to the utility office, pay the bill, and return home.
Where postal systems are reliable, the bills and payments can move without
the householders or servants. And, again, in the US and probably elsewhere
it is possible to have utility bills deducted and paid automatically from a
bank account. All of these options get the bills paid, but some involve much
less travel and much less need for personal mobility than others.

I’m not suggesting from these examples that "the answer" is to substitute
telecommunications for transportation wherever possible. I am suggesting
that there are lots of ways to deliver some of the goods and services that
people want and that some of these require less travel than others; that
some of the ones that involve less travel are already in place in some
locales, without any overt policy to encourage them for travel-related
reasons; that with very few exceptions we have not looked at this approach
as a resource for dealing with transportation-related problems; and that the
benefits of such an approach are almost certainly worthwhile if coupled with
other measures.

Economists would suggest simply "get the prices right" and this will all
take care of itself. If, as in North America, we are unwilling to "get the
prices right," then we need to look at alternatives, including this one.
And, based on the experience of our electric utilities in managing demand
for electricity, "getting the prices right" alone doesn’t necessarily lead
to the level of change expected on the basis of purely financial
calculations. In regions that have not yet motorized to the extent that we
have, I think it might be worth looking at how to maintain existing service
alternatives, and develop new ones, so that fewer people feel the need to
have a car to obtain those services.

I have published one paper on this topic:

Edward L. Hillsman, "Transportation DSM: Building on electric utility
experience," Utilities Policy, Vol. 5, No. 3/4, July/October, 1995, pp. 237–249

A second, which contains other North American examples, is undergoing peer
review but I will be happy to send a copy in response to individual
requests. And I’m planning a couple more. I welcome examples, discussion on
or off the list, and leads on possible support for reseach on the approach.

Edward L. Hillsman, Geographer
University of Tennessee--Knoxville
Energy, Environment, and Resources Center
10521 Research Drive, Suite 100 
Knoxville, TN 37932 USA
tel 423-974-8386 (direct) OR 423-974-8410 (messages)
fax 423-974-8448
e-mail ehillsman at utk.edu OR Hillsman at pobox.com
(campus mail 3702)
URL http://www.funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~hillsman/