[sustran] First Partnership Call for New Mobility 20/20 Target Initiative for Your City

[EcoPlan, Paris]

Friday, October 22, 2004, Paris, France, Europe
 
Reference: First Partnership Call for New Mobility 20/20 Target
Initiative for Your City 
 
Immediate Objective:  To co-organize with you and/or your best local
partner candidate a phased city-wide collaborative program to achieve a
20% area-wide reduction in traffic and associated public health impacts
(CO2, accidents, etc.) in a target period of 20 months
 
Introduction: This note is to put before you as an invitation to
participate in an innovative public policy initiative still in its early
stages of development, but which we believe has real potential in the
until now hopelessly unequal struggle to move our cites toward something
much closer to sustainable mobility.   What is useful about this concept
is that it is at once far-reaching, affordable and realistic. No less
important, it targets highly ambitious near term efficiency and visible
environmental improvements without requiring massive injections of hard
earned taxpayer money.  It also, with the right kind of preparatory work
and support, can offer a very powerful political tool for mayors and
city counsels who want to offer a better, safer, cleaner and more
affordable city to their electorate.
 
Why you? Why are we contacting you on this today? Well, because we know
from past international experience that projects such as this require
highly qualified, energetic, well placed local partners who know the
issues and the trade-offs well and have the technical capacities and
networks to tailor and make this approach work in their city.  We are
looking for such partners in a first handful of cities to move ahead to
prove these ideas. Might that be you?
 
In brief: The 20/20 policy consists of a coordinated, quite sizeable
complex of time-phased 'carrots and sticks', all of which are geared to
making more efficient use of the existing transport infrastructure of
the city. In a sophisticated city like Toronto (and surely yours) we
have seen that many of these measures are well known, but not all of
them. It is the combination of packages of new measures, new ways of
applying and coordinating known ones, and the creation of an overall
coordinating framework with strong and extensive public commitment and
corresponding technical competence that lies at the heart of this
approach.
 
Hmm.  At first glance this sounds a bit unlikely, at least for our city
("we are different") but is it.
1.	Desirable? Something that seems to you and the voters in your
city consider to be desirable?  Or is it so far off the political screen
as to merit no attention?
2.	Realistic? Is it an impossible goal for your city? We would
certainly expect that your initial reaction should be at the very least
skeptical. But hold on. Are you all that sure? Might it not be a good
idea to have at least a closer look?
3.	Divisive? Is it a policy that is going to divide your population
into two divisive groups and involve many negative, anti-car measures?
Well, we think not, but this is certainly something that needs to be
kept in mind as you move head in preparing any eventual program in this
often conflict-ridden area of public policy and private practice. 
4.	Costly? Is it going to require major increases in the amount of
money available to the sector?  The answer is, quite simply: No!
 
The Four Keys:  
(1)     Carefully setting clear, understandable, ambitious but safely
meetable performance targets. 
(2)     Strong commitment of local leaders from the top -- at least to
take this through the first Blueprint Go/No-Go phase. 
(3)     A very broad base of public support and participation. 
(4)     A highly committed local implementation partner with the
technical virtuosity needed to get the fine detail planned carefully,
executed and then consistently fine-tuned -- and the open community
spirit and orientation needed to get the job done.
 
How to get this done? The answer is: very carefully. The 20/20 program
requires strong leadership and communications skills, because behind
there must be a broad based public/private/community partnership that
will bring together and integrate the active participation of a far
broader number and range of groups and interests than traditionally
involved in the planning and implementation process. The preparatory and
planning process - which we advise should be carried out in an
intensive, broad-based 3 month "Blueprint Go/No Go Decision" effort -
must be highly inclusive and carried out in an Open Society initiative.
It should target to bring into the process not only those groups that
traditionally favor environmental initiatives, but also those who have
their doubts, including groups and interests who traditionally have
opposed anything other than the now suddenly old-mobility process (i.e.
and in brief: build and spend your way out of the problem).
 
The Downside:  It is our firm belief that if you approach this with the
care, energy and commitment needed, there is no downside.  It may turn
out that after your pre-study, you will elect different objectives and
levels of ambition. But who can criticize a city for taking this
challenge seriously and spending a relatively small amount of money and
time to see if they can get on the right path?
 
Variations: It may be that after the careful Blueprint Implementation
plan is completed, a rather different set of targets will emerge. One
distinct possibility is that a consensus that 20/20 per se is simply too
ambitious for your city. Fair enough.  The team might end up proposing
instead a 10/20 or even 5/20 program.  Would that be a problem? We don't
think so. Even if "all" the city were to target and achieve would be,
say, a 5% reductions over twice as many months, they would still be
inching toward what we call "Kyoto Compliance".  Indeed, such a
performance would be notable and offer great improvements which would
mark your city apart from the rest who are simply and passively
submitting to what they believe to be their destiny.
 
Please note: We are well aware that in many cities there is a lot
already going on to make specific point improvements and if the city is
lucky many qualified citizen groups and associations that are getting
involved and trying to make their contribution both in terms of steering
policy in the direction of being more sustainable, and in terms of
specific actions on their part to make this happen. The objective of the
New Mobility Initiative is not to get in their way or supplant their
efforts in any way, but rather to reinforce them and define a consistent
and supportive overall structure within which their energies and
projects can be better supported and coordinated.
 
Some References: These are of course critical questions, and the purpose
of this note is to at least start to address them. To get you going, you
can find further general background information on the approach on the
New Mobility Agenda site at http://newmobility.org
<http://newmobility.org/> .  And for a specific city application (in
process), you may wish to have a look at the Toronto New Mobility
Initiative at http://ecoplan.org/toronto.  But once you have worked your
way through these materials certainly the best way to begin to deepen
your understanding will be by getting in touch for direct discussions
and exchanges.
 
What next?  Well that is the purpose of this note to you.  We are
looking for a few leading organizations, groups and cities that want to
have a closer look at this to see how it might be tailored and applied
in one or more cities.  Efforts are already underway in Toronto, but it
is our view that other cities should not wait.  We know enough and the
problems are grave enough to begin now.
 
With this by way of first introduction, this is to invite you to get in
touch so that we can have a look together to see how this might be put
to work in practical terms.  Of course if you wish more background or
details on how all this works, this is the right place to turn.  The two
web sites offer a fair amount of information in support of these ideas,
but they are incomplete and in any event it is creative interaction in
each specific context which is needed to move this closer to reality.
 
With all good wishes,
 
Eric Britton
 
The New Mobility Agenda is at http://newmobility.org 
And Toronto's New Mobility 20/20 Initiative at
http://ecoplan.org/toronto 
 
The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative 
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France
T: +331 4326 1323              M: +336 7321 5868
IP Videoconference: 81.57.233.192      F: +331 5301 2896
E: postmaster @ ecoplan.org - Outgoing mail certified Virus Free. 
 
 
The New Mobility 20/20 Target Initiative in Brief
 
1.	Sustainable transportation will, should not wait? The cost of
the inefficiencies of today's dysfunctional transportation arrangements
in environmental, life quality and economic terms has already
outstripped the carrying capacity of many cities and the planet as a
while.  
2.	Probably the most effective way of understanding the full extent
of this dysfunctionality is to view it as a broad based 'public health'
problem. To get a feel for how this works click "The
<http://www.ecoplan.org/toronto/general/health.htm>  Doctor's Bill" at
http://www.ecoplan.org/toronto/general/health.htm.
3.	Your city can, if it decides to, make significant near term
inroads in congestion, pollution and life quality on its streets,
without waiting for more international treaties to be signed, new
technologies to appear from heaven, or large piles of government funding
to build new roads, intersections, metros, LRT or fund costly,
deficitory public transportation operations.
4.	Sustainable mobility at the level of a city or region - which is
what this is all about - can be achieved in far less time than you ever
thought through a (a) targeted, (b) aggressive, (c) locally-driven, (d)
coordinated, (e) now-oriented pattern-break commitment on the part of
local government and all concerned with the transport sector and its
extensions and their impact on your city.  
5.	There is a prudent process by which the program's ambitious aims
can be cheeked for consistency and do-ability, and which lends itself,
indeed depends on very specific local tailoring and participation.  But
any eventual remedial action program along these lines that is going to
yield results has to be accompanied ("sold") by a clear target and
process that the voters and public can understand, want to work toward,
and which they are confident will yield visible near-term results.
6.	Does this imply 20% new money on top of everything in process?
No! But it does require rethinking, redeploying and repackaging. And
yes, a certain number of new synergistic initiatives as well, including
some which perhaps you have not yet considered. 
7.	Is this to suggest that the entire content of the 20/20 program
must be new? Not at all. It is recognized that in many cities there are
already projects and programs that are moving in this direction, or at
least many elements of it. However the contribution of the 20/20 program
is that it provides a broader underlying structure, higher visibility
and a sense of urgency and support which has thus far been lacking.
8.	The planning period to develop a 20/20 program blueprint? Well,
we propose an intensive focused 3 month effort, but only if there is
major backing by and commitment of local government and the volunteer
sector.  Half-hearted support will just not work. Also requires
considerable technical expertise on the part of transport planners and
energetic entrepreneurship from both public and private sector actors in
the city, to allow us to use their expanding toolkit to better
understand and provide for the impact on the streets of the many changes
that together constitute the New Mobility Agenda for the city.
9.	This is not to say that there is no place for long term thinking
and action in the New Mobility Agenda, but rather the level of urgency
of the problems in most places requires immediate remedial action. Thus,
all longer term programs and thrust must be supported by aggressive and
broadly supported near term actions, for which the scope is in fact very
large.  (Which by the way should not do you a great deal of harm if you
happen to be mayor or councilman with an election in the wings).
 
We are now discussing a first round of 20/20 projects with local teams
in a first handful of cities and concerned organizations world-wide, so
why not with you?
 
The New Mobility Agenda is at http://newmobility.org 
And Toronto's New Mobility 20/20 Initiative at
http://ecoplan.org/toronto 
 
The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative 
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, 75006 Paris, France
T: +331 4326 1323              M: +336 7321 5868
IP Videoconference: 81.57.233.192      F: +331 5301 2896
E: postmaster @ ecoplan.org 
 
 
 
 
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