[sustran] Re: USA: The connection between transportation and social justice

[Morten Lange]

Thanks, Todd 

The idea of breaches of several types of  rights of pedestrians, cyclists etc, is something that has popped up in my mind from time to time. 

At Velo-City conferences both Enrique Penalosa, his brother Gil and also Vandana Shiva have talked about human rights violations in conjunctions with how we as societies cater for and spend much more space and money on the destructive force (health, environment, road deaths ) that excessive use of cars are, and which in developing countries "benefit" only a minority. 

But the human rights angle needs more definition and support in form of articles from human rights lawyers, to be a viable  path of argumentation, as I feel it.  

However clearly there are equity and rights issues and clearly 1,2 million are being killed on the roads each year and clearly road safety work is not carried with the view to putting the interests of pedestrians, cyclists, users of public transport first.  Instead of educing speed and reigning in the elephant in the china shop, safety measures take the form of fencing off pedestrians and cyclists.

Is anyone on the list aware of articles/books on these subjects, i.e. rights (possibly trying to establish them as human rights)  and soft modes of transport ? 
I mentioned Penalosas and Shiva. Vandana Shiva talked about human rights at Velo-City Global 2010, so did Gil Penalosa. And Enrique Penalosa at Velo-City 2005.
Additionally I have noticed the following, which are perhaps a bit peripheral :
* "Freedom of movement" article (wikipedia)
* www.bicyclinglife.com/effectiveadvocacy/TheRightToTravel.htm

* http://ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety_library/publications/promising_deliverable_5.pdf  (road safety measures are not recommendable if their restrictive nature towards pedestrians and cyclists is pronounced ) 



--
Regards / Kvedja
Morten Lange, Reykjavík


--- On Sat, 30/10/10, Todd Edelman <edelman at greenidea.eu> wrote:

> From: Todd Edelman <edelman at greenidea.eu>
> Subject: [sustran] USA: The connection between transportation and social justice
> To: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com, "'Sustran List'" <Sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
> Date: Saturday, 30 October, 2010, 21:29
> http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-29-angela-glover-blackwell-talks-about-the-connection-between-trans
> 
> Do the rights thing
> Angela Glover Blackwell talks about the connection between
> 
> transportation and social justice
> by Sarah Goodyear 29 Oct 2010 9:51 AM
> 
> "This issue is too important to be left to transportation 
> professionals," says Angela Glover Blackwell.
> 
> Angela Glover Blackwell would like to remind you that
> transportation is 
> a civil rights issue.
> 
> Blackwell is the founder and chief executive officer of
> PolicyLink, "a 
> national research and action institute advancing economic
> and social 
> equity." Their slogan is "Lifting Up What Works." They
> believe that the 
> people at the grassroots, closest to the nation's problems,
> should be a 
> central part of figuring out solutions.
> 
> Transportation has emerged as a signature issue for
> PolicyLink. The 
> group now chairs the newly formed Equity Caucus, part of
> Transportation 
> for America, calling on federal policymakers to see equity
> and social 
> justice as a key part of transportation planning.
> 
> Blackwell recently was invited to the White House, along
> with many 
> governors, mayors, and other elected officials, to give her
> perspective 
> on President Obama's proposed $50 billion infrastructure
> plan. She was 
> the only public policy advocate to attend.
> 
> She talked to us by phone about how she was able to
> influence the 
> discussion that day, about how public transit cuts are
> devastating to 
> low-income Americans, and about the central role that
> transportation 
> policy has always played in the struggle for civil rights.
> 
> Q. How was it that you came to be invited to sit at that
> table with the 
> president?
> 
> A. I was thrilled to be invited to the table, and I'm quite
> sure that 
> the reason that I was invited is because just the week
> before, 
> PolicyLink and Transportation for America launched the
> Equity Caucus 
> [see their principles here].
> 
> [At] that launch that nearly 200 people attended in the
> Cannon Office 
> Building, Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) talked about
> 
> transportation in a way that just made it so real. There
> were people 
> there who had tears in their eyes, I understand, from
> listening to him 
> talk about what transportation means to elderly people
> trying to get 
> around, to mothers trying to earn a living.
> 
> I think that [we were invited because of] our focus on
> people, our focus 
> on equity, our focus on public transportation, and our
> determination 
> that this issue is too important to be left to
> transportation professionals.
> 
> Q. So there you were. Tell me what you were able to
> contribute.
> 
> A. You probably saw the list of who attended. There were
> governors, 
> mayors, transportation secretaries past and present, labor
> leaders. When 
> the president came in, after greeting people and saying a
> couple of 
> opening remarks, he said, "We're going to start off this
> conversation 
> hearing from Gov. [Ed] Rendell [D-Penn.] and from Angela."
> So I was just 
> so pleased to see the equity perspective frame the
> conversation right at 
> the top.
> 
> After my remarks, several people referred back to them. In
> particular, 
> they picked up on the people focus. I think that those
> people who care 
> about transportation have recognized that it is too often
> an insular 
> conversation, and the people who are impacted most by the
> decisions 
> aren't engaged at all.
> 
> Q. You talk about creating an awareness that there are
> people who are 
> constituents for public transportation. Do you see that
> increasing at 
> the grassroots level?
> 
> A. I am definitely seeing more engagement. We're seeing
> real concern in 
> Chicago, in St. Louis, about the cutbacks in public
> transportation, what 
> that means for people.
> 
> The Transportation Equity Network is organizing all over to
> make sure 
> that grassroots people in communities -- who are concerned
> about their 
> livelihoods and their futures, and how little they're able
> to get out of 
> their monthly incomes -- they're really getting involved. I
> think we're 
> beginning to see the beginning of a movement stirring all
> across the 
> country of people making their voices heard on this issue.
> 
> Q. Could you talk about the importance of public
> transportation to 
> people with lower incomes, working-class people? And how
> that figures 
> into the larger economic picture?
> 
> A. Yes. There are a couple of things I want to point out in
> that regard. 
> One is that the bottom fifth of the nation, the poorest
> fifth of 
> Americans, spend 42 percent of their annual household
> budget on an 
> automobile budget, more than twice the national average. So
> for people 
> who are poor, owning an automobile is a burdensome thing.
> 
> Nearly 25 percent of African-Americans do not have access
> to a car, 
> compared that with 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites. You
> have nearly the 
> same number of Latinos who do not have access to a car. So
> this is huge, 
> this is not an isolated problem. For people who are
> spending too much of 
> their income -- over 40 percent just to own a car --
> clearly this has a 
> devastating impact on the economy in terms of all of the
> things that 
> people cannot do and cannot participate in.
> 
> For people who don't have access to cars and depend on
> public 
> transportation, the current crisis is devastating. More
> than 110 cities 
> have public transit routes that are at risk. Children can't
> get to 
> school; people can't get to work. 80 percent of the
> nation's systems are 
> either considering or have recently enacted fare increases
> or service cuts.
> 
> But here's something else that Americans need to know.
> Spending on 
> transit generates more jobs than spending on highways. If
> our nation's 
> 20 metro areas shifted just 50 percent of their highways
> funds to 
> transit, they would create over 1.1 million new
> transit-related jobs in 
> over 5 years. That's without spending a single dollar
> more.
> 
> Q. It strikes me that something strange has happened in
> this country, 
> that now when people talk about public transit, we get a
> polarized 
> political situation where people sometimes say, "Cars are
> what ordinary 
> folks use. Investing in public transit, that's what this
> urban, 
> sophisticated elite wants."
> 
> A. I have heard that. Part of the reason is because there
> are two things 
> going on in this country at the same time. One is that we
> have 
> continuing, entrenched urban poverty, with the communities
> that have 
> always been left behind continuing to be left behind.
> 
> At the same time that we have that continuing harsh
> reality, we have 
> many enlightened people living in metropolitan areas who
> recognize that 
> for the sake of climate, we need to get out of our cars and
> use more 
> public transportation, we need to live in denser
> communities, we need to 
> connect in communities that are diverse and enjoy the
> cultural 
> activities that reflect this nation. These people are often
> moving into 
> cities -- Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco,
> Manhattan in New 
> York -- and enjoying the fruits of urban life, looking for
> safe, 
> efficient public transit, and wanting to live near transit
> stops so that 
> they can be more efficient in the use of their income.
> 
> Often this is what people see as gentrification, and people
> in poor 
> communities often fear that if a community starts to
> gentrify, they may 
> be pushed out of the communities.
> 
> What we have to remember is that the majority of people who
> use public 
> transportation in this nation are people of color,
> low-income people. 
> That is what keeps our system going. If we are going to
> begin to invest 
> in it, we need to invest in it leading with equity, asking,
> How do we 
> build modern public transportation systems that serve those
> people who 
> have been the backbone of utilizing public transportation?
> Who need it, 
> not because it's the smart thing to do, but it's the only
> thing for them 
> to do in order to stretch their dollars and respond to
> their reality of 
> not having a car? This notion that public transit is [only]
> for the 
> affluent who are looking for a different lifestyle is a
> false notion.
> 
> Q. I've heard you refer to access to transportation as a
> civil rights 
> issue. I would like to hear you speak to that.
> 
> A. It is interesting that transportation, in recent years,
> has not been 
> framed as a civil rights issue, because most of the civil
> rights 
> struggle in this country has centered around
> transportation, in one way 
> or another, starting with Plessy v. Ferguson [in 1896].
> That had to do 
> with access to train cars. Then we have Rosa Parks sitting
> down on a 
> bus. We had the Freedom Riders trying to do something to
> show that black 
> people ought to be able to ride a bus across jurisdictions,
> they ought 
> to be able to ride through the South on a bus without
> having to go to 
> the back of the bus. The whole urban renewal, which people
> often call 
> "black removal," because that's what happens, in the 60s,
> was a fight 
> around highways coming in, going right through communities
> that had been 
> vibrant, often destroying the financial district in an
> African-American 
> community.
> 
> So if you go all the way from Plessy v. Ferguson right up
> to the urban 
> renewal, you will see that the fights have often been
> around 
> transportation, and how transportation decisions have been
> made. Also 
> the interstate highway system, the roads that have been
> built that 
> allowed for the expansion from cities into suburbs, often
> had a 
> devastating impact, as people abandoned city schools, and
> moved to 
> suburban schools, leaving poor people of color in city
> schools, with 
> fewer resources, less political clout, and often abandoning
> the 
> neighborhoods and the infrastructure that made those
> neighborhoods strong.
> 
> I think one of the things that the Equity Caucus is doing
> is bringing in 
> the civil rights movement to once again reclaim the
> fairness issue 
> involved in transportation policy thinking.
> 
> Q. Anticipating what the Congress is going to look like
> after the 
> midterm elections, what do you think the prospects are for
> advancing 
> these arguments?
> 
> A. I have been reading the past week the book Nixonland by
> Rick 
> Perlstein. I'm just in the first quarter of it, and I have
> been struck 
> by how it was not a bright line between Republicans and
> Democrats on 
> some fundamental issues. There were liberal Republicans who
> were proud 
> to be associated with the civil rights acts that were
> getting passed in 
> the '60s. There were liberal Republicans who were real
> advocates for 
> civil rights, even before those civil rights. I'm sure
> there were 
> Republicans and Democrats who always agreed -- without even
> thinking 
> about party lines -- when we were talking about the future
> of the nation 
> and how important its infrastructure was to it.
> Infrastructure used to 
> be one of those issues that did not divide, but pulled
> together.
> 
> It ought to be obvious to anyone looking at the global
> economy that 
> those nations with the infrastructure are the ones that are
> going to do 
> the best. So while it is probably safe to assume that if
> the Congress 
> becomes more Republican that having the support for
> infrastructure 
> investment in public transportation will become a divisive
> issue, it's 
> shocking to me. It shouldn't.
> 
> Q. Well, there is a lot going on that really doesn't make
> any sense.
> 
> A. It's too true.
> 
> ***
> 
> Sarah Goodyear is Grist’s cities editor. You can follow
> her Twitter feed 
> at http://twitter.com/buttermilk1.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Todd Edelman
> Green Idea Factory,
> a member of the OPENbike team
> 
> Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081
> 
> edelman at greenidea.eu
> www.greenidea.eu
> todd at openbike.se
> www.openbike.se
> 
> Skype: toddedelman
> 
> Urbanstr. 45
> 10967 Berlin
> Germany
> 
> ***
> 
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