[sustran] [World Streets] Transport in Cities: Plan A is Not Working (1)

[Eric Britton]

Source:
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/05/transport-in-cities-plan-is-no
t-working.html 


The goal of today's column is provide an opening statement and then to
invite short contributions (200 words or less) from our international
colleagues
<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kbTo-M_pSuw/ShEvpYOsjwI/AAAAAAAAAu8/kmkgYoFiSLo/s
1600-h/plan+A.JPG> around the world as to why "Plan A" is not working in the
transport sector of our cities worldwide". 

Why is this? The response almost always given is that there is not enough
money for doing it right. For my part I have serious doubts about this.

We would like to see if by putting our heads together on this we can
together usefully pinpoint and question some of the broadly shared
preconditions of policy and practice in the sector, not in order to
criticize or cast blame but rather to see if through our collective efforts
we can help come up with some positive ideas for near-term improvement.
A bit of first background to get us started:

Any fair-minded person who looks around the streets of our cities as things
stand here halfway through 2009 has to be struck by the fact that our
transportation arrangements are in very rough shape in almost all cities
worldwide . 

This is not to say that there are not many people, programs, groups and
institutions out there trying very hard to do better. It is just that the
bottom line, whether functional, economic, environmental, or social, is
highly problematic and actually crumbling in almost all cases. This is
highly troubling, especially because there are in fact many things that we
can do in order to improve performance in many places and at many levels.

What can we do to work our way out of this situation? Well what about
starting by taking a few steps back (yes, that is right, back!) in order to
see if we can spot some basic patterns here, the idea being that once we
have this in view we may be able to put our fingers on a couple of key
pressure points that may permit us to reverse some of these downward trends.


Primary building blocks of Plan A dysfunctionality: The first is surely the
fact that we are so busy trying to put details after detail right that we do
not recognize that there is de facto something like "Plan A" going on at all
-- which, if we did get this message, would almost automatically lead us to
start to think about something else . . . Call it "Plan B".

Plan A is in almost all cases a pure example of "in the box"
"problem-solving". To the innocent-eyed outsider it appears to be a clear
case of surrender to the trends and the conditions which create them. Here
are couple things which strike this observer about Plan A:

It is overwhelmingly inertial, i.e. in most areas it excepts trends and
constraints constraints rather than challenging them directly
Focuses largely on infrastructure
Treats supply as if that were the key
Broadly accepts existing institutional arrangements
Consistently ignorant of, or alternatively fails to give full scope to, the
critical externalities
More concerned with products than services
Weak on people in all their varieties of conditionsw and needs
Offers abundant excellent explanations as to why anything more far-reaching,
radical, and eventually powerful is not possible.

In a next article in this series I propose to get these issues in more
detail. But for now let me be leave the word to you and invite your comments
and suggestions.


--
Posted By The Editor to World
<http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/05/transport-in-cities-plan-is-n
ot-working.html>  Streets at 5/18/2009 11:27:00 AM

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