One of the first things that people ask about this approach is for specific leads on how these ambitious objectives are gong to be achieved. They often ask: "what are the handful of smart things we should be doing here to deal with our problems?". In all too many cities that's the wrong question, because in most places the degree of dysfunctionality, systemic dysfunctionality is such that a lot more is needed than just some "handful".

This is no magic wand. But there is a solution process which consists of the careful construction of integrated packages of synergistic measures -- many of them: sought out and applied with considerable imagination, technical virtuosity, broad support from from within the community. And lots of hard work.

Fortunately there is a very long list of things that can be done to make this approach work. In all cases the measures identified in this section of the site have worked in practice on the street; they are not thus just theory, laboratory or paper products. Not all are equally well known in all places. And each one needs to be carefully studied and tailored in each place for its specific operating environment of course. But the means now exist so that you can inform yourself completely and with confidence about what works, how it works, where it works, and what you have to look out for to make sure that it works for you. It's a very long list.

The real trick will be in the manner in which each city team selects and combines them to create a properly synergistic package. That is very important, not least because most of these measures and approaches in themselves can offer no more than small percent contributions in the short time that 20/20 targets. But it will be in the manner that you put them together that your objectives will be met.

A quicklist to get you started

Here just to get you going is a first quicklist of measures - the first thirty that come to mind -- which we recently sent on to our colleagues in, of all places, Los Angeles, in order to feed some first discussions there about if and how 20/20 might be a useful approach for them . As you will see below, this first list just skims the surface, but it shoudl help to get you into the pciture.

Bear in mind too that we are looking for tools and measures that can be applied and start to give on-street in-lung results within months, not years. Moreover, behind each of these simple titles are in fact dozens, even hundreds of individual measures and projects that are just waiting to be sorted out and brought into a coherent synergistic package. But you will see more on this level of detail on the next page of this site.

1. Access measures to support independent living (targeting people with mobility problems not currently provided for adequately)
2. BTR - Bus rapid transit and its assorted short term variants
3. Carpooling and other kinds of vehicle pools
4. Carsharing
5. Cycle access and support
6. Driver training
7. Economic, financial and legal incentives to favor sustainable transport
8. Enforcement techniques - more strategic and more effective
9. Flextime schemes
10. Hitchhiking (more or les informal, flexible liftshare schemes)- organized and strategic Identifying and dismantling old and outmoded ordinances holding back adaptation and change
11. Information system interfaces (including via internet, SMS and mobile phones)
12. Land use integration
13. New shared transport services (including emphasis on new technology communications interfaces such as mobile phones, SMS, the net, etc. with both traditional and new purveyors of group or shared transportation)
14. HOV strategies and exclusive or limited access lanes
15. Park and ride (and its variants)
16. Parking measures and solutions
17. Pedestrian protection and improvements
18. Pricing strategies - sector wide
19. Public space projects to support new uses and patterns
20. Public transport improvements (not necessarily lots of new vehicles)
21. School access and student/school programs
22. Strategic goods movement arrangements
23. Strategic parking measures
24. Taxi innovations, service improvements
25. TDM - Transportation Demand Management and all its many variants
26. Telework and tele-quite a few other things as well
27. Traffic calming
28. Transit access areas/stops
29. Videoconferencing and other distance group work systems
30. Unified access schemes to all public carriers
31. And eventually, though this takes time to get right, congestion and road charging.

What is certainly worth bearing in mind as you consider this list is that none of these offer anything like a "big Bang" solution to the city's transportation and environment problems. The closest to an exception in the present short term context is the matter of generally reorganizing non-trivial portions of the road infrastructure to accommodate more efficient traffic. But for the rest what you are looking at is a lot of things that need to be considered, and then somehow and through your great diligence fitted together into the revised framework that is going to be the means by which you achieve your ambitious objectives.

But it will be only when you sit down with the full range of groups and organizations that need to be brought into these discussions that you will begin to appreciate the very wide range and number of things that you can do in your city to restructure and revitalize the transport system.

Back to top

And what you CAN'T do in 20 months - A friendly reminder

You have 20 months to achieve your publicly targeted priority objectives. And that's all. Any failure to reach these announced public targets will be immediately visible (that's part of the package). This gives the city little time for anything other than the bare tactical essentials to meet those agreed, important goals.

• There is thus no time to build anything new of any size, such as a new road, an interchange, additional traffic lanes, a metro line or extension, an LRT or anything else that requires scale tampering with the physical infrastructure
• Rebuild any part of the city, create new activity clusters, move people into new areas, etc.
• There is in fact not even time to carry out the planning for such projects.
• Any such projects which are in the pipeline, need to be reexamined in the light of the near term priorities which will certainly alter the financial envelope, timing of expenditures, and doing anything non-strategic that might modify or impede throughput or efficiency on the overall system
• There will be neither the funding nor the time available to program, order and accept delivery of new transit vehicles.
• There is not even time for funding available for setting up a new road pricing or congestion charging systems.

What this boils down to in the final analysis is that for the time being all the usual big ticket items have to be put on hold and subjected to the new priorities that have been set for the immediate short term, agreed tactical objectives.

If this sounds unfriendly to longer term thinking and problem solving, think again. Basically what we are proposing here is a focused problem solving effort which surely at the end of the day will yield new perspective as to what is important, what can be done, and what needs to be done in the longer term. One of the main benefits of such a targeted, results-oriented publicly-visible effort, is that it provides, or at least should provide, an entirely new perspective as to what is important for your city, and what it is the best way to go about achieving your objectives. It will most probably destroy a lot of old thinking and old myths in the process.