[sustran] Re: Transport in cities: Why are we doing so poorly?

[Zvi Leve]

Eric.Britton wrote:

  There is not a single meaningful point made about what brings all of us
here together: the fundamentals of how people get around and access what
they need in cities.

...

This reminds me of the TRB exhibition hall where every year I meet the same
two representatives of certain US federal agencies, one representing the
"road safety" point of view, and another from the "pedestrian safety" point
of view. There they are, seated side by side, both passionately discussing
safety issues, yet the idea that pedestrian and road safety might be
intertwined is never addressed. They literally have parallel literature:
intersection safety - safety devices for vehicle turning movements (ie
various protected lanes and smart signals), and smart markings for
pedestrian crossings (which never show any cars around)....



Is this characterization altogether incorrect? Unfair? Useless as an
observation?

Unfortunately, abstracting everything into it's component parts and then
improving the "efficiency of the system" is much easier than dealing with
messy reality where things don't exactly follow predictable relationships
and correspond to our expectations.



I guess that is why we try to call it "New Mobility" and not "transportation
".  We are trying to draw a clear line between these two markedly different
worlds of policy and practice. Otherwise . . .



And this is why I think that transportation issues cannot be seperated from
land-use/urban form. There is no point in talking about "new mobility" if we
don't address the reasons why people need to get around in the first place!
There does seem to be a bit of movement in this direction (ie recognition of
the importance of the transportation-land use connection and trying to
"deal" with this within models) within the transportation community of late.

Best regards,

Zvi
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