[sustran] More on 20/20 How does it work?

[EcoPlan, Paris]

Dear Friends,
 
I hesitate at least slightly before taking your time with this, but we
have been contacted by some of our Sustran colleagues asking for a bit
more background on how we see this approach working possibly in their
city.  The following has been hammered out this morning in an attempt to
provide at least a first answer to this.
 
And please, if you see any possible merit in this approach at all, it
would be splendid if you would take the time needed to have a close look
at this and then let us have the benefit of your critical comments and
suggestions. And in this we invite you to play rough, since the issues
are too important to be minced around.
 
Kindest thanks,
 
Eric
 
Other 20/20 background/thinkpieces available:
 
1.	Introduction: The New Mobility 20/20 Target Initiative in Brief
2.	Why "Dysfunctional Transportation" is major public health threat
for your city
3.	New Mobility 20/20 Target Initiative - Partnership Call for
demonstration projects (letter announcing project and a call for
international partners)
4.	A New Mobility 20/20 Target Initiative for Your City? In Brief
5.	Transport and Health: How long do we wait before acting? (Draft
for Leeds Seminar  on 'Transport and health-joining up agendas' of 15
Nov.
 
Also see:
*         The New Mobility Agenda is at http://newmobility.org 
*         Toronto's New Mobility 20/20 Initiative at
http://ecoplan.org/toronto 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
20/20. How does it work? A Conceptual Overview
 
What you have here is a quick conceptual outline of what I consider to
be some of the main pillars of the New Mobility Agenda 20/20 approach.
I have been asked by several people if I could make a stab at putting
these high points on a single page so that they could better appreciate
how this is intended to work. Obviously one cannot get into any kind of
detail without bringing in the specific operational context. That said,
the five-stage preparatory and follow-up routine briefly set out here is
in fact the proposed means for sorting out these critical details in
each case and the intense technical preparations that are needed to make
the whole program work. 
 
1.         Highlights:
1.      20/20 program to take top priority in transportation policy and
expenditures for period
o        Open Society Initiative with broadest public support and active
participation
o        Explicit targeting and checkable, open reporting on performance
o        "Packages of measures"
o        Carrots and sticks (for respectively inefficient users of
street space and efficient)
o        Time phased, with time allowed for adaptation as system morphs
toward more sustainable mobility  
2.      Infrastructure and financial management:
o        The bottom line here is that the whole system has to be shifted
radically to favor space-efficient transport in cities.
o        No new infrastructure construction under program
o        Aggressive and innovative management of the existing
transportation infrastructure 
o        Zero increase of total transportation and related budgets
(environment, public health, etc.)
o        New infrastructure delineated via 'thousands of pounds of
paint", signing, and control mechanisms
o        No (or few and those very strategic) purchase of vehicles, etc.
for taxpayer funded public transport operations
3.      New mobility choices
o        A new climate of experimentation and opening for new shared
services
o        Innovative push for new private and community transport
services providers (people and goods)
o        Tighter integration of IT throughout
4.      Implementation: 4 step process, see below for summary
 
2.         Infrastructure Shifts and Management: (Basically the
'sticks')
1.      Major and aggressive push to increase road space available to
"high efficiency users" (HEU)
a.      Example: If today in city HOV lanes and the like account for 2%
of total infrastructure - the 20/20 approach will increase this by x 10
within 20 months.
b.      HEUs included not only traditional forms of public
transportation but also human powered transport and both new and older
forms of shared vehicles (example: carsharing, car pooling, group taxis,
organized hitchhiking and the like)
2.      This will require aggressive control of abuses, which can be
carried out by a combination of harder-hitting enforcement, cost
effective monitoring technologies, and more draconian penalties for
abuse.
3.      Strategic parking programs aimed specifically to reduce end
point access in peak periods.
4.      Infrastructure and environment monitoring (major push to x10
increases)
5.      Open public reporting on the costs and inefficiencies of the
system (including open information on pollution levels, accidents,
respiratory illnesses due to traffic, road rage and other forms of
dangerous uncivic behaviour, associated medical costs, green travel
planning, Improving the pedestrian environment, better public
information systems and services Including via mobile phones), improved
system integration (all purveyors), etc.
6.      Road pricing programs, while certainly desirable and appropriate
in the longer run, are unlikely to be able to be properly prepared and
brought on line within this short implementation horizon. That said they
are obvious candidates for next stage enhancement and extension.
7.      Note: Any expensive longer term projects will need to be
reviewed and possibly revised within the new perspectives opened up by
the New Mobility System, which are sure to be very different from the
old thinking and priorities.
 
3.         Aggressive Expansion of New Mobility Choices: (More the
'carrots')
1.      It will be immediately apparent that if we are to put pressure
on inefficient solo-driver cars in the city, we must be able to offer
high quality alternatives, including new services that provide something
approaching (or improving on) 'car like mobility'. Which is what this
pillar is all about. 
2.      It is understood that the response pattern is based on (a)
forceful (b) scale upgrading of all space-efficient suppliers (on the
understanding that 'space-efficiency' must correlate with environmental
efficiency as well), and that these must be (c) modulated and
coordinated so as together to make up the backbone of the city's New
Mobility 'Protocol' (as in a medical protocol for treatment). 
3.      x10 increases in everything that works: Here are some examples
of areas/services which the 20/20 program might do well to target x10
increases within the 20 month target period: cycle access and safety,
carsharing, car pooling, telework and other teleservices, efficient
goods delivery, taxi patronage (including a careful shift to shared
taxis, E&H transport, improvement of intermodal, walking/cycling to
school, DRT, community bus and minibus services, new private purveyors,
unified fare schemes, driver training (all services), support of
promising new near term services, 
a.      (When we say x10 here, it is above all symbolic. The actual
increase if any will of course need to e the object of careful analysis
and preparation. That said, the point we are trying to get across is
that promising concepts need far more forceful support than they would
'normally' get within the old mobility paradigm.
4.      Main public transport (throughput) improvement via greatly
enhanced (x10) and more efficient access to city's road space, better
enforcement of priorities, improved passenger interfaces, easier and
probably a lot cheaper) fares, careful use of IT, etc.
a.      Note: "Public transport" as traditionally defined and practiced
offers something of a potential trap in this context, since in most
places it has habitually been seen as the only alternative to private
cars. This is a dangerous and debilitating assumption, which needs to be
rethought and remedied if the new high quality, much more demand
responsive services that people will need if they are ever to be tempted
out of their cars (which they will find ever more stuck in traffic) and
still get to work on time, fresh and, why not?, and lower costs than in
the old space-inefficient paradigm.
 
4.         Execution:
 
There is no reason why any city and team cannot undertake to plan and
execute a terrific 20/20 or similar program on their own.  Thus far, the
only discussions that we have had - and these are just getting underway
now - is with groups that have expressed interest in working is some way
with us to get their own city project going. To this end, we summarize
here how we see it from the perspective of a project we are working with
and supporting from the beginning. But believe us, you can do it on your
own.
 
1.      First Step: Locate a well placed city partner willing to
collaborate in order to plan, implement and then to evaluate the results
of a 20/20 demonstration project in their city and prepare to build on
this further as a next step.  The city partner must have a high level of
local backing because this is, at the end of the day, a project which is
as much political as it is technical.  (Which is why we call it an Open
Society Initiative.)


2.      Advance Planning Mission: Which typically will take one or two
weeks and provide the financial support needed to bring a two man team
to the host city to work with all those concerned locally in order to
determine if and how this approach can be tailored to make its best
contribution to the host city (and others concerned).  


3.      Implementation Blueprint Stage: Far the greater part of the work
at this critical stage is carried out by the local team, including a
wide range of organizations and groups that need to be brought together
to make this ambitions program work. To the extent that external
assistance or cooperation is needed this will be defined at the time of
the Advanced Planning Mission.


4.      The 20/20 Pilot Project: The requirement for external support
and financing will be defined in the Blueprint Stage, but once again
these are above all local action programs and which in addition do not
require new infrastructure construction.  Moreover, it is to be hoped
that a substantial part of the planning and implementation activities
are going to be carried out on a volunteer basis.


5.      Evaluation and Follow-up: This is the final phase of the program
as we see it today, and this in turn will come out of the various
preceding stages.
 
Finally, we need to take into consideration that this approach is based
on the understanding that a high degree of urgency surrounds the
problems, which means that many of the more traditional planning and
support routes and routines are not so appropriate in this case. This
requires new patterns of behaviour and a higher sense of urgency from
most of the established actors, including of course above all for
government agencies at all the various concerned levels since they
normally have little flexibility of the sort that is so important here.
As we say, sustainability is today's problem, not tomorrow's when it
will be at least a bit too late.  And today is . today!
 
5. External Finance for pioneering projects:
 
It is our belief that this approach is sufficiently promising and
potentially effective and important that for cities in need (in the
developing or Accession countries for example) it is worthy of external
financing during the intitial stages at least until such time that the
model is clearly there for all to see, appreciate and seize it for their
own. Clear demonstration of unfamiliar new concepts is very important,
as we have seen in many cases in the sector in the past.  Among the most
recent of these is London's successful experience in pioneering
Congestion Charging (incidentally a project which has in the target area
obtained result that are on the scale of the 20/20 objectives), which is
now there for other cities to see and consider - and believe me they
are.
 
That said, we do not propose that you as a city or concerned group wait
around for someone to show up to bankroll your project. Indeed as you
move ahead to define it and then make your plans and targets more
broadly known, the possibilities of support become far more likely.
 
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