[sustran] World Citizen City Mobility Audit - Proposal and first stage brainstorm

[eric.britton at free.fr]

Dear for the most part sustainable friends, spotted so widely around this
heating-up planet,

 

What if a number of us were to put our heads together in the weeks directly
ahead and see what we can do to come up with a  simple, quickly done,
collaborative toolkit to take the temperature of transport and mobility, new
and old, in a fair cross-section of cities in various places around the
world.?

 

May I suggest that we have a quick look at this idea?

 

1.      Summary:

 

KISS: The core idea is to ask, say, three powerful, basic, quickly answered
questions to a sample of ten people selected on a semi-random basis in your
city -- to see if in this way you can take the temperature of just how good
a job (or other) your city and those responsible for it are doing as far as
its mobility arrangements are concerned. 

 

The first cut proposal you find here is that each of the three questions
should be laid out with three possible responses, in part (a) so that this
can be done by you and your colleagues in a couple of hours and (b) so that
the various city results can then be summed in some interesting ways to get
a broader overall picture of what is going on in our cities around the
world. 

 

If you think this could be made (with your help I would hope) into a good
and useful resource, and in the hope that you all will find some use in the
open collaboration that is the soul of our work under the New Mobility
Agenda, I would be very pleased if you might agree to pitch in to make this
work.

 

Once you have made your way through the background materials and first-cut
suggestions that follow, it would be good if you would take a few minutes to
give me your response to  the following three short questions in a return
mail.

 

1.	Do you consider that this idea of an open collaborative city survey
project worth pursuing?
2.	Would you be willing to pitch in and cover your city with at least
the very short 10 x 3/3 questionnaire?
3.	And if not for whatever reason, would you agree to pass this on to
someone else in your city or elsewhere who you think might find this useful,
and possibly even be willing to run the questionnaire and report back to our
open group.

 

Now on to my first cut proposal as to how this might be attacked and put to
work.

 

*	Note: We propose that these discussions take place on the "Idea
Factory" of the New Mobility Agenda. Again the website is at
www.newmobility.org <http://www.newmobility.org/> , and to post to the list:
NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com 

 

2.      First thoughts on organization:

 

An opening word on what I think this might become. First of all a free
universal resource, with a broad range of possible uses

 

Beyond this, it could be turned into a kind of "how are we doing" check-list
in which your or my city could get a feel for how it stacks up. And perhaps
some clues as to what could be done to do better in the future.

 

It would be good to have a least one qualified investigator per city, and
the goal would be to get a collection of ten reactions to the three
questions. 

 

And it would be important that our collaborators have balanced views on our
complex topic. So if you hate cars and drivers per se, or if you are an
aggressive cyclist who consider that everyone out there should bend to your
needs and preferences, etc. etc. perhaps you will do well to give this a
miss. We need balance if this is to mean anything. As our friends over at
the Wikipedia put it so well: NPD - Neutral Point of View. 

 

This is intended not to be a "back"-breaking PhD-like survey of surveys but
something that our volunteer colleagues can take care of in a couple of well
spent (and I am sure for them very interesting) hours.  

 

The important thing is that it be fair, non-political and good humored
(though it may be hard for your respondents if they are stuck in traffic or
being crushed in a sweltering rail car to be altogether smiling and easy
about their answers - but that comes with the territory, eh?)

 

Geographic/ coverage: The broader our coverage the more useful the final
results. I would like to see cities on all continents and at various income
levels.

 

City sizes:  From mega-cities to small towns. 

 

Quick Identifying information on city: Collaborators in each case would
provide a short list of identifies covering these key defining points, which
will then be useful as various of us go to work to parse the results and see
what this all means. 

 

Collaborator notes on the details of the process and commentaries will also
be most useful. (And they need not be long.)

 

Future updates: which perhaps someone with the resources and know-how might
even wish to undertake to maintain. Certainly, it would be interesting and I
think useful if we were to have the results of these simple surveys in our
cities over some years. At least over the critical 2007-2012 period that now
lies ahead of us.

 

Web version: Might also be an idea to have this on the web in some form. So
that others can come in and give us either (a) their personal  views about
the present state of play in their cities on these 3/3 questions or perhaps
also (b) provide answers to the larger questionnaire (if one is created).
Obviously we will need clear identifying information on anyone signing in on
this.

 

 

3.      The Questionnaire (proposal for comments):

 

I propose we ask only three questions, each of which offering three response
options . This is the on-the run version, and indeed the one that I think
needs to be in the middle of this collaborative effort.  The exact
wording???

 

1. Is your city presently delivering high quality transport services for you
and your family in your daily lives?

*	No, not really (Further comment and levels of satisfaction/otherwise
can be placed in the annexed comments section that all will be invited to
speak to in crisp language.)
*	Some good things yes, but still a huge amount to do in order to pull
the whole thing together
*	By and large, yes they are doing a good job - and it seems to me
that they have a game plan to continue to improve and expand

 

2.  What are the 3 best things that your city team has already achieved to
date (or are seriously working on)?

 

1.      ______________________________________________________

2.      ______________________________________________________

3.      ______________________________________________________

 

 

3.  What are the 3 biggest "black holes" of mobility for all in our city?

1.      ______________________________________________________

2.      ______________________________________________________

3.      ______________________________________________________

 

What kind of clues might we offer them for answering these questions?  And
here I have to ask  for your counsel:

 

*	On the one hand, we want to hear what they have to say and certainly
not put words into their moths.
*	But then if this exercise is to find its full usefulness, we need a
format for the responses that can be tabulated in a straight forward way so
that we can at the same time get a broader picture, both of, say, how we
here in our city stack up with the rest - but also how things look if we
parse the responses according to certain key groups (M/F, age, economic
status, car owners, etc.)

 

Note: I propose that we also see if we can think through and possibly
develop a uniform and somewhat longer questionnaire (perhaps ten questions,
with more room for their short comments and suggestions. Bearing in mind
that at the end of the day what we are aiming for is a clear view of not
only how people look at transport and governance in our city, and then in
the entire sample. 

 

4.       Sample Organization:

 

The proposal is for you to walk out onto the street of your city one morning
in the next weeks and talk in a structured manner to a small sample people
on the street, some in cars (getting in or out probably best), on or waiting
for a bus, walking, cycling, or perhaps selling something on the street.
Maybe one street person?. 

 

It would be great of course if our sample could include a couple of people
who are for one reason or another not able to use the city's mobility
systems easily, but I can't this morning figure out how to bring them into
the sample. One idea would be to seek out someone in a wheel chair and ask
them our three questions.

 

My first thought is that ten will be just fine as a semi-random sample in
each city.  More and it starts to take a lot of your time, and I feel that
if we get our questionnaire and sample technique right, this will just be
fine to do the job.

 

Obviously half the respondents should be women, at least half people who own
or at least make use of a car (and lots who don't), a fair age split,
something on economic status (maybe, job, student, unemployed, retired . .
.) and what else might you suggest . . .?

 

*          *          *

 

That's about the best I can do to get the ball rolling on this. I look
forward with real interest to hearing from your views and suggestions. Also,
if anyone wishes to take this over and run with it, be my guest. But I do
want to make it simple and fast. We have already lost enough time in
reinventing transport in our cities.

 

Eric Britton