[sustran] Re: [NewMobilityCafe] Re: New Mobility Citizen Poll for
Your City- A ProposalforDiscussion
Walter Hook
whook at itdp.org
Tue Apr 25 01:07:04 JST 2006
I admit I am a bit astonished by Todd and Eric’s comments in support of on
street parking. I thought we would all be more or less on the same page on
this.
Eric’s support for on street parking, that it is ugly and therefore will
ultimately one day lead to citizen awareness, does not appear to be borne
out by the facts. Streets in most cities have been clogged with ugly,
undercharged parked cars since the 20s, and it has not led to any
consciousness raising: people just don’t see anything wrong with it because
it is just normal to them. We need some beautifully redesigned streets to
show neighborhoods that they don’t have to live on ugly streets, and see no
justification for us to be encouraging congestion and on street parking in
the hopes it will one day lead to a sustainable mobility revolution. That
is like rejecting the minimum wage because it ameliorates the chances of a
hoped for utopian revolution.
Prof. Hermann Knoflacher of the Univ. of Vienna believes, and I am inclined
to agree, makes a compelling argument that on street parking is THE central
problem with western traffic systems. He goes so far as to say that if we
dealt with the parking issue, we wouldn’t need congestion charging. Maybe.
He argues that total travel times are biased in favor of private car modes
over transit modes largely because society allows people to park their cars
right in front of their houses and right adjacent to their offices, while
the nearest bus stop is likely to be some distance away. Because the
walking trip is taken at very slow speeds, and this has to be added to the
waiting time for the bus, the total trip time is therefore significantly
biased against the transit trip. Therefore, on street parking has several
significant dis-benefits: one, it biases modal choice towards private car
use, two it consumes public space that otherwise could be used for children
to play, people to sit and play dominoes, walk, etc. In addition, on street
parking is generally badly underpriced in terms of land rent, subsidizing
driving. In addition, car parking if removed would also provide the space
for a bike lane that could be physically protected from traffic, although on
a residential street the bike lane isn’t necessary if you can traffic calm
the whole street.
Best
Walter
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Alexander Litman [mailto:litman at vtpi.org]
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2006 11:10 AM
To: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; eric.britton at ecoplan.org;
whook at itdp.org; sustran-discuss at jca.apc.org;
sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org; NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com
Cc: CarFreeCafe at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [NewMobilityCafe] [sustran] Re: New Mobility Citizen Poll for
Your City- A ProposalforDiscussion
On the other hand, on-street parking is the most efficient type of parking
that can be provided. Most off-street spaces only serve a single destination
and so have low load factors, while on-street spaces serve many destinations
and have high load factors, and so are more efficient overall. Also,
off-street spaces require driveways which use a portion of the curb and
cross sidewalks. For these reasons many urban planners now support the
provision of a maximum number of on-street spaces and a minimum number of
off-street spaces (for discussion of ways to use parking facilities more
efficiently see my new report "Parking Management"
(http://www.vtpi.org/park_man.pdf ) and book "Parking Management Best
Practices" ( http://www.planning.org/bookservice/description.htm?BCODE=APMB
<http://www.planning.org/bookservice/description.htm?BCODE=APMB> ).
If the choice is really between sidewalks and on-street parking I would
generally choose providing a sidewalk, but it is desirable to provide
on-street parking where possible.
Best wishes,
-Todd Litman
At 07:01 AM 4/24/2006, Lee Schipper wrote:
Years ago a good Swedish Transport economist posed the same question. by
measuring how much time people spent walking to where
there was green space, he figured out that providing on-street parking
rather than more green space and broader sidewalks led to a real
economic loss. His advice was to provide parking only in private, commercial
areas (he also looked at how much off-street parking cost).
One benefit of such an approach * say every other street in NYCity had no
parking...just bays for deliveries here and there * front yards would
reappaear
and children and families could play in the streets more safely!
>>> whook at itdp.org 4/24/2006 9:44:09 AM >>>
Eric,
Paul white and i had a related idea over lunch the other day, and we were
wondering if this has ever been tried.
What if all the property owners and permanent tenants living along a block
of urban street were given the choice by the municipality of whether they
wanted the space in front of their house dedicated to car parking or
sidewalk? How many residents would vote for car parking? It might be done
something like this. The department of transport could determine the needed
road capacity, but the parking units would be a function of ultra local
democracy. What if as a result, each permanent resident or registered
voter, or even just each property tax payer, on a city block got to
determine the democratic use of the public space in front of their property.
Since it is currently most of the time dedicated to parking, at least in the
US, even if only 10% voted to get rid of the parking, that would be 10% of
the parking units we could reclaim. On my block i would guess that maybe
50% would opt for a wider sidewalk. Then a block association could be free
to contract an architect to redesign the street with that same number of
units of parking.
I am wondering if there are any successful examples of this sort of ultra
local democracy?
Walter
-----Original Message-----
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org
[ mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org
<mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org> ] On Behalf
Of Eric Britton
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:34 PM
To: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; Sustran Resource Centre
Cc: CarFreeCafe at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sustran] New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal
forDiscussion
New Mobility Citizen Poll for Your City- A Proposal for Discussion
When it comes to creating more viable and fairer transport systems, and
behind that our real objective: more agreeable and more sustainable cities,
we have one recurrent problem that we can perhaps deal with if we put our
heads together.
As is well known, whenever any given 'soft transport', "public space" or
some type of "not quite so many cars" initiative is proposed in any given
place, the first and most striking thing that happens is the howls of
protest that immediately emerge from all those who claim that their
democratic entitlements are being threatened by, as they often like to put
it, some small group of arrogant bike-happy technocrats and their fellow
eco-travelers. And since the media always likes a good cat fight, these
righteous citizens often dominate the news. For the rest, for you and me and
others like us, hey! we're the Silent Minority. The absolutely
disenfranchised.
Well, it does not always have to be like that and here is one proposal
concerning which I would like to invite discussions and refinement - all as
a prelude to giving this idea a couple of trial runs in one or more
pioneering cities.
The idea is to carry out an annual open citizen survey of attitudes and
preferences concerning transport policy and practice (and the investments
that go with it) in your city. The results should be made widely available
through old and new media, and brought to the fore of the attention of the
politicians, administrators and policy makers in your city. Here without any
pretense of it being anything other than a grain of sand to get us going is
my draft proposal for content for quick mini-survey that can be administered
by phone, email or on any street corner by volunteers:
Note to the reader: In a first instance, before digging into the details, I
would like to ask the members of this fine group: (a) is this an idea that
is worth pursuing; (b) are there some (better)examples that we should be
looking at and learning from. Then once we have a feel for this as a useful
activity, we can then start to see how we might together fine tune a good
questionnaire and routine.
1, Draft Mini-survey (for comment and . . . )
All questions where appropriate to be answered simply by a 1 (yes), 0 (don't
know), -or -1 (no), which will facilitate aggregation and overview.
1. Name
2. City of residence
3. M/F
4. Age: <15; 15-30; 30-65; >65
5. Do you own/drive a car?
6. My city government has a coherent, announced transportation policy:
7. I believe that this is a wise and well executed policy.
8. We need to spend more money to build more roads and more parking as
a main transport priority.
9. We need to give much more attention and spend more money on "soft
transport" and related life quality initiatives (examples: better support of
pedestrians and cyclists, traffic calming, more public transport, new forms
of shared transport, ITC substitutes for displacement.)
10. It is possible for people to live here well and easily without having
their own car.
11. If they want my vote -- all candidates for local public office should
take a firm stand on their transportation policies, and issue as part of
their platform a signed personal statement indicating their support of more
sustainable transport projects and programs.
Your eventual brief comments or suggestions: ____________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
2. How to execute - Thoughts on
* This maybe is pushing it for length. If it can't be administered
in three minutes, it probably will not do the job. Try it out on a couple of
friends and let us know.
* There is plenty of evidence that people tend to create and
administrate questionnaires that one way or another tend to elicit their
favored response. We should meticulously avoid doing this, and in our
selection of questions - and people to be queried. If it ain't neutral, it
is not worth a lot. So careful, eh?
* The simple mental model I have for this is an excel table with
names in columns, etc. All leading to easy sorting and sub-total
* To have a real impact, it will best be administered at some fixed
time.
As examples: on Earth Day, in cooperation with any local Car Free Days,
European Moblity Week, etc.)
* The procedures and information should be fully public so that
there can be no charges of rigging the returns. (Expect in Belarusia and
Florida in which it is OK.)
* Also involve schools, various clubs and groups, senior citizens,
handicapped, pedestrian and cyclist naturally but also take it into
hospitals, prisons, old people's homes, jails, and the homeless.
* Local media partnerships, and even strong involvement by them,
will be most useful.
* I would propose that the on-street interviews be carried out on
one day - but that an entire week be given over to the entire procedures.
* The results should be publicly announced.
* And then all those in local government should be asked to comment
and give their appreciations of what this means. (Note: Our friends in South
Africa with their first Car Free Days last year did a good job of this which
we might usefully consult)
* We propose that this be an annual exercise.
* And that to the extent possible and sensible, we might want to
think about questions and formats that are sufficiently parallel to allow us
to aggregate.
* BTW, is there or has there ever been anything like this in your
city? Neighborhood? That we can learn from?
3. Parallel in-death Survey
It may be a good idea to have a more in depth survey for those people
disposed to spend more time with us on this.
The trick will be to determine who, how, when, - and how used?
Here are a few first thoughts on this to get us going:
* Employment, social status
* Where live/where work
* If it were faster and cheaper to get to work or school by some way
other than driving a car (in traffic) would you be willing to consider it?
* When was the last time you took a bus or rail transit?
* Used a bike to get to work or school?
* D you think that it might be a good idea for your city to publish
and maintain a "sustainable transportation webpage" that reports on key
indicators including traffic deaths and incidents (by gravity and type), CO2
or other clean air indicators, parametric indicators of infrastructure and
performance of NMT options, etc.
* Would you be willing to work, say, 20 hours over a period of one or
two months. as a volunteer to support better researched specific projects
in your neighborhood.
* Etc.
* Etc
*
Check in here via the homepage at http://www.newmobility.org
<http://www.newmobility.org >
To post message to group: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com
But please think twice before posting to the group as a whole
(It might be that your note is best sent to one person?)
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
NewMobilityCafe-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Sincerely,
Todd Alexander Litman
Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
litman at vtpi.org
Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
“Efficiency - Equity - Clarity”
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