Reinventing Transport

For the last year or two, most of my work (and blogging) has focused on parking (see the  Reinventing Parking blog  or on facebook ). But now I also want to revive this neglected blog and to use it to stay mindful of what really motivates my work (including the parking work). So what exactly is it that motivates my transport policy work? The statement below is an attempt to capture what I am trying to achieve as clearly as I can. A  mission statement  for my professional life, if you like. Yikes. You will see signs of these motivations throughout this blog, its predecessor , in my tweeting  and in much of my professional writing .  I aim to help cities, towns and streets unleash greater success, equity and conviviality  by focusing more on transport's 'ends' (such as  placemaking , accessibility and mobility ) than its ' means ' (such as  vehicles and traffic ) and  by enhancing choice  and choice-making i...

Freely flowing traffic is a good thing, right? And affordable motoring is good too, isn't it? Most motorists in most cities would surely agree. Maybe you would too? But as citizens and voters I think we need to be careful what we wish for. When political leaders decide that the central goals of urban transport policy are 1) solving traffic congestion and 2) keeping driving affordable, they may make themselves popular with motorists, but they also risk gradually turning their city into a monster.  I argued along these lines in a talk I gave on Wednesday to a couple of hundred junior college (high school) students (the presentation is at the end of this post). It was a non-technical talk on basic priorities in urban transport planning. Below is part of my reasoning. The Los Angeles region is not the world's most automobile-dependent city but it is the only mega-city to try so hard to keep driving fast and cheap. When faced with traffic problems it is tempting to ju...

Can you help me make this analogy more useful? A household owning a car is like a tiny business hiring a jack-of-all-trades (but master of none ...). Your mobility needs during the course of a whole year can be likened to the skills and labour needs of a new business contemplating its first employee. Having a car gives you a tool that handles most of your mobility needs. It is like hiring a full-time staffer who is a 'jack-of-all trades'. He or she is versatile but not especially skilled or quick at any particular task. There are significant fixed costs too. You have to pay him or her about the same in both busy times and slow periods. In both cases there is an alternative.  A family can refrain from getting a car and rely instead on the various alternatives. That's like the small business putting off that first full-time employee and deciding instead to engage a series of contractors to do tasks that the owner-founder can no longer handle, as and when they ar...

What competition do cars have in your city? I don't mean competition between Toyota, Ford or Hyundai. I don't even mean competition between cars and public transport for this morning's work trips. I am talking about competition between a car-owning lifestyle and a set of alternatives that add up to a whole lifestyle, creating a complete 'mobility package' attractive enough to make car ownership feel optional. In places like Manhattan or Hong Kong or the inner cities of Zurich, Paris, Tokyo or London a lifestyle without your own car is already an attractive option even for wealthy people.   But could we extend the range of places where not having a car is an excellent lifestyle choice? Can we make car use more provisional and less locked-in to our liefstyles and our urban systems? How? Here is a presentation I gave last year which tackles some of these issues in a non-technical way. Under-appreciated and neglected urban transport policy opportunities (and ref...

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. In 1999 and 2000, when I was living in Kuala Lumpur and working for the SUSTRAN Network, I collaborated with Tamim Raad to produce a little yellow book called "Taking Steps: A Community Action Guide to People-Centred, Equitable and Sustainable Urban Transport" . The old URL for downloading Taking Steps is now dead, so here is a new one, via google docs. You can view or download the Taking Steps book here . The aim of the book was to demystify urban transport (especially for civil society in Asia): The purpose of this guide is to introduce urban transport issues to a wider audience than just professional transport planners and experts. Many community organisations, journalists and decision-makers need to have some awareness of the basics of urban transport. This book tries to make it easier to find out those basics. Is the book badly dated? Not as badly as I had thought. I think I would handle various issues differently now. And...

What is "success" in urban transport policy? A common answer used to be "keeping vehicles moving and avoiding traffic jams". But by now, most people involved with urban transport realise that "keeping the traffic moving" is NOT a useful goal. Mobility, especially mobility for vehicles, is just a means to other ends. It should never be seen as an end in itself. If we make preventing congestion our goal, we are confusing ends with means. OK. So what is the real goal of urban transport planning then? Most of us tend to answer " accessibility "! Planning for accessibility involves trying to make it easy to REACH the things we want to (like contacts, services, goods, jobs, education). This seems like progress. Here we have a much more coherent purpose for transport planning, right? Unfortunately, accessibility doesn't seem to excite many people. Despite decades of lip service to accessibility planning most cities still have way too m...

A new blog on transport innovations has appeared. SMART's Inspire Mobility blog started in June. It is billed as "the official on-line innovations library of SMART (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation) at the University of Michigan". The blog depends on contributions from readers, so head over there if you think you have a transport innovation to submit. What is SMART? More information here . It also has a lively series of events and speakers and a useful e-newsletter . I like their 'five themes' approach to 'sustainable transportation'. The diagram above is from the SMART website here .

It's interesting to see the ideal of universal car ownership gradually eroding. Don't believe me? There have been several books in recent years along the lines of " Divorce your car! " and " How to live well without a car ". The rise of car-sharing has prompted some to see it as a potential alternative to car ownership. The car-free housing movement seems to be gathering pace and entering the mainstream of real estate development in certain places. Meanwhile, Shoupista parking policy reformists are increasingly questioning parking entitlements, including (gasp!) residential parking entitlements. Even William Ford Jr . of Ford Motor Company seems willing to contemplate a future in which cars provide a service rather than being primarily a product . So more and more people seem to be asking the question, 'are our cars dispensable' or 'could we make our cars more dispensable?' But maybe a more positive way to ask the same question is, 'can...

Carsharing is quietly growing and expanding to ever more cities. But will carsharing ever become mainstream? Dave Brook at the US Carsharing blog recently outlined an optimistic vision for the future of car-sharing . A Flexcar promotion in Seattle in 2007 (Flexcar is now part of Zipcar). Image by Joe Mabel on Wikimedia Commons. His scenario may not be quite as 'visionary' as Chris Bradshaw's ideas, which I have mentioned before , but is well worth a look. The comments discussion is also enlightening. As you would expect, his focus is on American conditions. Here are some highlights: Carsharing will be in the suburbs , as well, and not just around transit hubs and regional centers where higher density mixed used development can support carsharing. ... Car owners will be able to make their cars available to the carsharing members for a few days at a time and share the revenues with the service. ... Carsharing will team up with public transit agencies, including a new...