[sustran] RV: New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal forDiscussion

[Carlos F. Pardo SUTP]

This post below was sent to sustran but rejected due to file size. I have
edited it and sent it again.   Carlos F. Pardo
________________________________________
De: Carlos F. Pardo SUTP [mailto:carlos.pardo at sutp.org] 
Enviado el: Domingo, 23 de Abril de 2006 11:42 a.m.
Para: 'Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport';
Asunto: RE: [sustran] New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal
forDiscussion

The idea is cool, and the first step could be to see if some cities already
have some data (in order to answer Eric’s question about “what has been
done”). A local (non-governmental) survey called Bogotá Como Vamos has
interesting info, including the attitudes towards some aspects of mobility
(in Spanish, however). The complete results are available from
http://www.bogotacomovamos.org/bogotacv/scripts/ComoVa.php?men=5&con=18 

In Bogotá there are also results from the Urban Mobility Observatory and the
National Census, which I do not have here with me. But I guess we could wait
and see if other cities have this information readily available. I know that
Lima also did focus groups towards bicycle use (available from
www.fonamperu.org ) and I helped develop focus groups for Mexico- but I
never new if they were implemented by CTS-Embarq. Any other information like
this would be very useful (I’ve described this briefly in the chapter on
“knowing the population” in the module about public awareness from
www.sutp.org/download/ which is being expanded in the training course in
Spanish).

The answers to the typical questions (such as the ones attached) could help
to have an overview of what the population thinks about one or another topic
in transport, and continue by doing interventions such as the one described
by Walter.

Best regards,

Carlos F. Pardo 
________________________________________
De: sustran-discuss-bounces+carlos.pardo=sutp.org at list.jca.apc.org
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+carlos.pardo=sutp.org at list.jca.apc.org] En
nombre de Eric Britton
Enviado el: Domingo, 23 de Abril de 2006 11:34 a.m.
Para: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; Sustran Resource Centre
CC: CarFreeCafe at yahoogroups.com
Asunto: [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
•