[sustran] Re: New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A ProposalforDiscussion

[Lee Schipper]

Years ago a good Swedish Transport economist posed the same question. by measuring how much time people spent walking to where
there was green space, he figured out that providing on-street parking rather than more green space and broader sidewalks led to a real 
economic loss. His advice was to provide parking only in private, commercial areas (he also looked at how much off-street parking cost).

One benefit of such an approach * say every other street in NYCity had no parking...just bays for deliveries here and there * front yards would reappaear
and children and families could play in the streets more safely!

>>> whook at itdp.org 4/24/2006 9:44:09 AM >>>
Eric,

 

Paul white and i had a related idea over lunch the other day, and we were
wondering if this has ever been tried.  

 

What if all the property owners and permanent tenants living along a block
of urban street were given the choice by the municipality of whether they
wanted the space in front of their house dedicated to car parking or
sidewalk?  How many residents would vote for car parking?   It might be done
something like this.  The department of transport could determine the needed
road capacity, but the parking units would be a function of ultra local
democracy.  What if as a result, each permanent resident or registered
voter, or even just each property tax payer, on a city block got to
determine the democratic use of the public space in front of their property.
Since it is currently most of the time dedicated to parking, at least in the
US, even if only 10% voted to get rid of the parking, that would be 10% of
the parking units we could reclaim.  On my block i would guess that maybe
50% would opt for a wider sidewalk. Then a block association could be free
to contract an architect to redesign the street with that same number of
units of parking.  

 

I am wondering if there are any successful examples of this sort of ultra
local democracy? 

 

Walter 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org 
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org] On Behalf
Of Eric Britton
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:34 PM
To: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; Sustran Resource Centre
Cc: CarFreeCafe at yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [sustran] New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal
forDiscussion

 

New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal for Discussion

 

When it comes to creating more viable and fairer transport systems, and
behind that our real objective: more agreeable and more sustainable cities,
we have one recurrent problem that we can perhaps deal with if we put our
heads together. 

 

As is well known, whenever any given 'soft transport', "public space" or
some type of "not quite so many cars" initiative is proposed in any given
place, the first and most striking thing that happens is the howls of
protest that immediately emerge from  all those who claim that their
democratic entitlements are being threatened by, as they often like to put
it, some small group of arrogant bike-happy  technocrats and their fellow
eco-travelers. And since the media always likes a good cat fight, these
righteous citizens often dominate the news. For the rest, for you and me and
others like us, hey! we're the Silent Minority.  The absolutely
disenfranchised. 

 

Well, it does not always have to be like that and here is one proposal
concerning which I would like to invite discussions and refinement - all as
a prelude to giving this idea a couple of trial runs in one or more
pioneering cities.

 

The idea is to carry out an annual open citizen survey of attitudes and
preferences concerning transport policy and practice (and the investments
that go with it) in your city.  The results should be made widely available
through old and new media, and brought to the fore of the attention of the
politicians, administrators and policy makers in your city. Here without any
pretense of it being anything other than a grain of sand to get us going is
my draft proposal for content for quick mini-survey that can be administered
by phone, email or on any street corner by volunteers:

 

Note to the reader: In a first instance, before digging into the details, I
would like to ask the members of this fine group: (a) is this an idea that
is worth pursuing; (b) are there some (better)examples that we should be
looking at and learning from. Then once we have a feel for this as a useful
activity, we can then start to see how we might together fine tune a good
questionnaire and routine. 

 

 

 




 

1, Draft Mini-survey (for comment and . . . )  

All questions where appropriate to be answered simply by a 1 (yes), 0 (don't
know), -or -1 (no), which will facilitate aggregation and overview. 

 

1.      Name

2.      City of residence

3.      M/F

4.      Age: <15; 15-30; 30-65; >65

5.      Do you own/drive a car?

6.      My city government has a coherent, announced transportation policy: 

7.      I believe that this is a wise and well executed policy.

8.      We need to spend more money to build more roads and more parking as
a main transport priority. 

9.      We need to give much more attention and spend more money on "soft
transport" and related life quality initiatives (examples: better support of
pedestrians and cyclists, traffic calming,  more public transport, new forms
of shared transport, ITC substitutes for displacement.)

10.  It is possible for people to live here well and easily without having
their own car.

11.  If they want my vote -- all candidates for local public office should
take a firm stand on their transportation policies, and issue as part of
their platform a signed personal statement indicating their support of more
sustainable  transport  projects and programs. 

 

Your eventual brief comments or suggestions: ____________________________

____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

 

 

 




2. How to execute - Thoughts on

 

*         This maybe is pushing it for length. If it can't be administered
in three minutes, it probably will not do the job. Try it out on a couple of
friends and let us know.

*         There is plenty of evidence that people tend to create and
administrate questionnaires that one way or another tend to elicit their
favored response. We should meticulously  avoid doing this, and in our
selection of questions - and people to be queried. If it ain't neutral, it
is not worth a lot. So careful, eh? 

*         The simple mental model I have for this is an excel table with
names in columns, etc. All leading to easy sorting and sub-total

*         To have a real impact, it will best be administered at some fixed
time.
As examples: on Earth Day, in cooperation with any local Car Free Days,
European Moblity Week, etc.)

*         The procedures and information should be fully public so that
there can be no charges of rigging the returns.  (Expect in Belarusia and
Florida in which it is OK.)

*         Also involve schools, various clubs and groups, senior citizens,
handicapped, pedestrian and cyclist naturally but also take it into
hospitals, prisons, old people's homes, jails, and the homeless.

*         Local media partnerships, and even strong involvement by them,
will be most useful.

*         I would propose that the on-street interviews be carried out on
one day - but that an entire week be given over to the entire procedures.

*         The results should be publicly announced.

*         And then all those in local government should be asked to comment
and give their appreciations of what this means. (Note: Our friends in South
Africa with their first Car Free Days last year did a good job of this which
we might usefully consult)

*         We propose that this be an annual exercise.

*         And that to the extent possible and sensible, we might want to
think about questions and formats that are sufficiently parallel to allow us
to aggregate.

*         BTW, is there or has there ever been anything like this in your
city? Neighborhood? That we can learn from?

 




 

3. Parallel in-death Survey

 

It may be a good idea to have a more in depth survey for those people
disposed to spend more time with us on this. 

 

The trick will be to determine who, how, when,  - and how used?

 

Here are a few first thoughts on this to get us going:

 

*         Employment, social status

*         Where live/where work

*         If it were faster and cheaper to get to work or school by some way
other than driving a car (in traffic) would you be willing to consider it?

*         When was the last time you took a bus or rail transit?

*         Used a bike to get to work or school?

*        D you think that it might be a good idea for your city to publish
and maintain a "sustainable transportation webpage" that reports on key
indicators including traffic deaths and incidents (by gravity and type), CO2
or other clean air indicators, parametric indicators of infrastructure and
performance of NMT options, etc.

*        Would you be willing to work, say, 20 hours over a period of one or
two months.  as a volunteer to support better researched specific projects
in your neighborhood.

*        Etc.

*        Etc

*