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...

Shared space street design is a fantastic innovation. But most excitement about shared space (or “naked streets”) seems to focus on the counter-intuitive phenomenon of “ safety through uncertainty ”. I think another important lesson from shared space has been neglected. A key benefit of shared space is that it expands the urban public realm. And this is done with little or no loss of transport utility. This point was emphasized by shared-space pioneer, Hans Monderman , but is often forgotten or under-emphasised. This "public space dividend" is also relevant to many more streets than shared space itself will ever be applied to. Many street-design innovations can yield such a dividend if they create spaces where speeds stay below about 30 km/h. This would allow a surprising amount of what we now think of as traffic space to become part of the low-speed public realm. How? I try to explain in an article, " Earning a Public Space Dividend in the Streets " ( pdf ), ju...

Fun, art and gleeful spontaneity in the streets feature in this delightful and inspiring 20 min talk. The playfulness here is not just in the streets but with the streets . Ted Dewan at euroGel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo . The potential highlighted here for life in streets is in total and utter contrast with the automobile dependent landscapes in my post below . Ted Dewan is the pioneer of ' road witching '. Towards the end of the video he makes some connections with David Engwicht 's 'mental speed bumps'. David also promotes safety through intrigue and uncertainty. Ted's talk also mentions the emerging possibilities of Shared Space . All of this is about reclaiming at least some of our street space as public realm again. It is about treating streets as places not highways. Do you think these ideas are relevant in the rest of the world, outside rich western cities? I think so. Hat tip to the wonderful How We Drive blog .

Who knew? Many Latin American city cores have wonderful pedestrian zones that rival those of European cities in quality. A new post by Barbara Knecht at Planetizen Interchange highlights the region's downtown pedestrian zones and its many Ciclovia (car-free Sunday's with certain roads closed to motor vehicles and opened to feet and non-motorised wheels). In a recent trip from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile I traveled through Montevideo and Colonia, Uruguay; Rosario, Mendoza, San Juan and Cordoba, Argentina; Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, Chile. All ten cities had significant thriving downtown pedestrian zones. The smallest was perhaps 5 blocks in San Juan, the largest 30 blocks in Santiago. Actually, I did know. The photos with this post are mine, taken in Puebla, Mexico.

Four decades ago, French leaders wanted to remake Paris to suit the needs of the car. But in recent years, Paris has been reclaiming its streets for life's rich pageant, not just motor traffic. This Streetfilm (from the Livable Streets Network ) offers a wonderful visual tour of Paris's traffic-calming efforts. You will need a flash plug-in to see it. The whole archive of Streetfilms is well worth a good look.

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...