[sustran] "Vision", "technical assessment" or ???

[Paul Barter]

I think these points from Chris Z and Jonathan R send us in an important new
direction about the proper roles of 'vision' and 'technical assessment
tools' in urban transport decision making. So I am posting this with a new
subject line in order to create a new message thread to make this easier to
find amidst the noise.

MY TWO CENTS:

Some might say 'markets' would be the other corner of the triangle here,
no?  Or rather, for policymakers, the task is to establish the right
frameworks and structures and regulations to make sure that any market
processes work well.

'Vision' at its worst can be a single dictator's idea of the good city. But
at its best I would think of it as a consensus about which values matter
most to the choice at hand. It should emerge from some kind of healthy
deliberative political process.

And technical assessment tools are just one part of technical/rational
approaches to planning/policy.

So, I tend to think of key transport choices (such as the big decisions in
public transport policy) as being made/influenced via a COMBINATION of all
three:
   1.  deliberative political processes,
   2.  technical planning,
   3.  market structuring/regulation.

None of the three stands alone because each influences the others (or
should). So I would agree that thinking we can make such complex choices
with technical planning alone is a folly that has got us into trouble many
times in many places. And as Jonathan points out, it is often a smokescreen
to hide the values assumptions behind the decision and avoid the open
political processes that should reveal values-based choices. Much
mega-project planning in urban transport falls into this trap (whether for
expressways or high-capital public transport systems).

I do think technical tools have their role, but only together with politics
and the careful use/regulation of market processes. But of course, we have
great challenges getting any of the three right, let alone getting the right
balance among them.

Paul

On 5 May 2011 14:21, Jonathan Richmond <richmond at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

>
>
> Zegras comes out with the tired "technology will solve it approach." Do a
> scientific assessment and you will have the answer, he supposes. Alas, this
> does not work. First of all, there is no such thing as a neutral assessment.
> Assumptions must be made and there is no scientific way to choose them: read
> the work of Wachs and Dimitriou on this subject if you have any doubt.
>
> Secondly, technical assessments are rarely of interest to decision makers
> who have generally made up their minds on the basis of other criteria -- in
> fact, such assessments are more often than not made in support of a
> particular viewpoint than in an effort at supposed neutrality.
>
> Thirdly, why should resources be spent on Zegras's imagined "bi-partisan"
> assessment (even were such a thing possible) when there are so many other
> pressing demands in the developing world? How can such an expenditure be
> justified compatred, for example, to a project to assess the potential for
> non-motorized transport in the developing countries of the future? And who
> is supposed to come up with the money for the project?
>
> What Zegras will find is that coming up with a "vision" is dangerous in
> itself. The visual appeal will be taken as a model and the technical results
> count for little. And why do we want a technological vision put forward by
> Western academics anyway? Would it not make more sense to adopt a more
> modest approach and visit cities in question to talk to residents --
> including the poorest ones, not only the ones that might enjoy a high-tech
> marvel -- and develop a vision based on local understandings and needs?
>
>                                   --Jonathan
>
>
>
> On Wed, 4 May 2011, P. Christopher Zegras wrote:
>
>  First, deep thanks to Paul Barter for sending out his kindly diplomatic
>> email reminder
>>
>  of the purposes, audience, rules and etiquette of this great list-serve.
>
>>
>> Hopefully we can dispense with the name-calling. The world needs
>> futurists, the world
>>
>  needs realists, etc. - we need diversity (in all its forms), since from
> diversity comes
>  our only hope of ingenuity and sustainability.
>
>>
>> Personally, and at the risk of violating sustran's rules myself: I find it
>> ironic that
>>
>  someone with a clear commercial interest in a particular technology
> accuses others with
> no explicit commercial interest of being cronies to some industrial
> interest or another.
>
>>
>> I believe that the value of this debate can best be extracted with an
>> honest
>>
>  intellectual collaboration among the two sides.  First, basic empirical
> fact should
>  be determined: the recent article posted for Bangalore ("Will Bangalore
> take a call on
>  POD after Gurgaon experiment?") showed exactly the perpetuation of
> half-truths
> (or outright falsehoods- e.g, we know Heathrow's PRT [all 3.9 km!] is still
> not working;
>  NYC and "many places in US" have PRT! Please show me where, I'd love to go
> for a ride;
>  etc.), which one can only logically conclude comes from the industry
> promoters themselves.
>
>>
>> But, for this forum's purposes, what I believe really needs to be carried
>> out is a
>>
>  serious, "bi-partisan", assessment of this technology's capability to
> provide a
>  near-term solution to the developing world's mobility challenge.  How, in
> practice,
>  could PRT (whatever variant one wants to look at) actually serve the
> complex demands
>  under the complex constraints of a city like Mexico City or Arequipa or
> Bangalore or
>  Shenzen or Abidjan, or wherever): how many nodes, how much infrastructure,
> etc. etc. \  One thing is to lay out a generic vision of ski chair-lift\
> inspired cable PODs running across a city - but, regurgitating\ a place-less
> vision will not convince the doubters. The \vision NEEDS to be grounded with
> an actual simulation (need not be sophisticated\ - show me a convincing
> spreadsheet model) of the application to a\ REAL place, with REAL OD flows,
> with all the REAL constraints\ (physical, cultural, financial). Naturally,
> for the PRT side this \is a challenge due to the dearth of any successful
> real-world applications;
>  but, I believe a sketched vision on actual empirics would go a long way
> towards
> providing some initial answers.
>
>>
>> Until we see such an analysis, it is, for me anyway, difficult to assess
>> the value of PRT technology for the developing world.  And, despite Mr.
>> Oster's calls for others to get out the "slide rules" to "prove" any other
>> modes are better than "real PRT," I believe the burden of proof falls
>> squarely on him.  The other modes are "real;" I'd like to see revolutionary
>> improvements  over the "real" modes, but real improvements are not evidenced
>> in patent filings, web-sites, franchisees and prosaic images of ski lifts
>> across the urban landscapes (oh what a sight it would be - an MRG-inspired
>> single chair spanning Mumbai in the monsoon season!) - but by realistic
>> portraits of practical implementation in real place.
>>
>> Personally, I believe the un-tethered digital, real-time, distributed
>> computing, ad-hoc sensored world of the 21st Century will seriously
>> disadvantage any infrastructure-intensive tethered mobility solutions.  But,
>> that's just a hypothesis; I'd be happy to see it rejected.
>>
>> And, now Mr. Luddite needs to sign off this computer-thingy and get on my
>> 2-wheeled human-pedal-powered contraption for a nice ride home in a Boston
>> Springtime "monsoon"...
>>
>> Kind wishes, Chris Zegras
>>
>>