A 20/20 Initiative for Your City?

The 20/20 policy keys on creating a coordinated, quite sizeable complex of time-phased 'carrots and sticks', all of which are geared to making more efficient use of the existing transport infrastructure of the city. In leading edge cities we can see that many of these tools and measures are well known -- but not all of them. It is the combination of packages of new measures, new ways of applying and coordinating known ones, and the creation of an overall coordinating framework with strong and extensive public commitment and corresponding technical competence that lies at the heart of this approach.

Hmm. At first glance this may sound a bit unlikely (at least for our city, "we are different") but is it? Desirable? Something that seems to you and the voters in your city consider to be desirable? Or is it so far off the political screen as to merit no attention? Realistic? Is it simply an impossible goal for your city?

We would certainly expect that your initial reaction should be at the very least skeptical. But hold on. Are you all that sure? Might it not be a good idea to have at least a closer look? Divisive? Is it a policy that is going to divide your population into two divisive groups and involve many negative, anti-car measures? Well, we think not, but this is certainly something that needs to be kept in mind as you move head in preparing any eventual program in this often conflict-ridden area of public policy and private practice. Costly? Is it going to require major increases in the amount of money available to the sector? The answer is, quite simply: No!

I. Implementation Highlights:

The following offers a quick conceptual outline of some of the main pillars of the 20/20 approach. This is necessarily handled at this state at a certain level of abstraction. One cannot get into any kind of detail without bringing in the specific operational context of the city and its unique problematique. That said, the five-stage preparatory and follow-up routine briefly set out here (see IV. below) 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. 20/20 program to take top priority in transportation policy and expenditures in the city for the target period
   • To be handled as an Open Society Initiative with broadest public support and active participation
   • Explicit targeting and checkable, open reporting on performance, step by step along the way
   • "Packages of measures" that are planned and implemented to maximize syergies
   • "Carrots and sticks" (for, respectively, efficient users of scarce street space and inefficient carriers)
   • Time phased, with time allowed for adaptation as system morphs toward more sustainable mobility
2. Infrastructure and financial management:
   • The bottom line here is that the whole system has to be shifted radically to favor space-efficient transport in cities.
   • Aggressive and innovative management of the existing transportation infrastructure
   • New infrastructure delineated via 'thousands of pounds of paint", signing, and control mechanisms
   • No (or few and those very strategic) purchase of vehicles, etc. for taxpayer funded public transport operations
   • Zero increase of total transportation and related budgets (environment, public health, etc.)
   • No new major infrastructure construction under program (unless it is already on line and can be used as an instrument to support and trigger the rest)
3. New mobility choices
   • A new climate of experimentation and opening for new shared services
   • Innovative push for new private and community transport services providers (people and goods)
   • Tighter integration of IT throughout
4. Implementation: 5 step process (see V below for summary).

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II. Infrastructure Shifts and Management:

1. High space efficiency users: At the vital core of the program and approach is the major and aggressive push to increase road space available to "high space efficiency users" (HSEU) - which of course within this time horizon means taking it away from the "space-inefficient" users.
   • 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.
   • HSEUs 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. Strategic parking programs aimed specifically to reduce end point access in peak periods.
3. Policing and control: 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.
4. Infrastructure and environment monitoring (major push to x10 increases)
5. "People manage what they measure." This is one of the mainkeys to the success of the program. It suggests a parallel effort of 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, etc.
6. Road pricing programs - for example - 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. Big, longer term projects? 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.
8. Note on Finance: The transportation arrangements in most of our cities are today notoriously and almost universally devoid of economic sense. Thus a key performance target of the New Mobility Agenda is to get the economics of private access of public resources in better order. In a word, when we use scarce road or parking spaces for our private convenience, it is only fair that we pay our full share of the costs involved. And as we move to such a system we will see not only that appropriate pricing can serve to limit abusive use and help us move toward Kyoto Compliance, but also provide considerable streams of income that were previously not available. And it will only be right that these new moneys will be used to improve the system as a whole, including the steady improvement of what we are calling here 'space efficient transportation' (a phrase that intends to go far beyond the old concepts of line haul, scheduled public carriers).

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III. Aggressive Expansion of New Mobility Choices:

(This may be the area in which those of us accustomed to a certain universe of transport choices and structures may have the hardest time in adjusting our sights. But this is, as it happens, the very key to the new transportation paradigms that we must now start to move toward.)

Efficiency objective for all: 'Car-like mobility ':
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 convenient high quality alternatives, including new services that provide something approaching (or improving on) 'car like mobility'. Which is what this pillar is all about. New Mobility 'Protocol': 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).

Building blocks of the new system: A hallmark of the old mobility system (see Annex) is that it is almost always seen by politicians, the public and the media as purely binary: i.e., with private transport (i.e., cars) or public transportation (deficit financed large vehicles plying fixed routes on schedules). That is badly wrong, and in the New Mobility paradigm we take this old thinking apart and start to view the transportation system as offering many more options and far more varied. Here are some examples of transportation sub-systems that need to be explored and then orchestrated aggressively into the new movement cocktail:

• active transport
• carsharing,
• car pooling,
• community bus and minibus services,
• cycle access, safety, and support
• driver training (all services),
• DRT,
• efficient goods delivery,
• green travel planning,
• E&H transport,
• improved system integration (all purveyors),
• improvement of intermodality,
• improving the pedestrian environment,
• new private purveyors,
• new SOA public information systems and services (including via mobile phones),
• support of promising new near term services,
• taxi patronage (including a careful shift to shared taxis),
• telework and other teleservices,
• unified fare schemes,
• walking/cycling to school,
• and the list goes on. (See Tools Checklist for more on this.)

Target "x10" increases in everything that works: The first step planning goal in a 20/20 program is to identify and stimulate these much more varied services, each of which will be an important part of our new multi-level integrated transportation system. Indeed, a good place to start is to see if and how the program might target "x10" increases in each of these within the 20 month implementation period (When we say x10 here, it is above all symbolic. The actual increase if any will of course need to be 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. Have a look at how this might be achieved in your city.) Public transport? Main public transport (throughput) improvement in the New Mobility Agenda will be achieved 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.

Note: This familiar phrase "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.

The New Mobility Players: Here is where virtually every city is still coming up short, for reasons that make sense in the old mobility paradigm but which now have to be altered so that new forms of 'car like' mobility can begin to take on their fare share of the burden of the shift as people get out of their cars (for something better). How might that work? For one telling example, consider what happens if every traveler has a mobile phone interface that provides both latest travel and schedule information and plugs her into a range of services, prices and levels of convenience. These new services are going to change the nature of transport in cities. Stay tuned.

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IV. Strategic Considerations

The Four Keys to Success:

1. Carefully setting clear, understandable, ambitious but safely meetable performance targets.
2. Strong commitment of local leaders from the top -- at least to take this through the first Blueprint Go/No-Go phase.
3. A very broad base of public support and participation.
4. A highly committed local implementation partner with the technical virtuosity needed to get the fine detail planned carefully, executed and then consistently fine-tuned -- and the open community spirit and orientation needed to get the job done.

How to get the job done? The answer is: very carefully. The 20/20 program requires strong leadership and communications skills, because behind there must be a broad based public/private/community partnership that will bring together and integrate the active participation of a far broader number and range of groups and interests than traditionally involved in the planning and implementation process. The preparatory and planning process - which we advise should be carried out in an intensive, broad-based 3 month "Blueprint Go/No Go Decision" effort - must be highly inclusive and carried out in an Open Society initiative. It should target to bring into the process not only those groups that traditionally favor environmental initiatives, but also those who have their doubts, including groups and interests who traditionally have opposed anything other than the now suddenly old-mobility process (i.e. and in brief: build and spend your way out of the problem).

An important difference: As you will note this approach breaks many of the 'established rules of the transportation game', to the extent that it may well appear as 'foreign' or even uncomfortable in light of existing administrative and planning routines in the sector which have tended to be much longer term in general. We are talking about a project that is to be decided, fully planned, implemented and evaluated for next stages within the time period that most transportation projects are just starting to get off the drawing boards. This is going to make the partner search more challenging for sure.

The Downside: It is our firm belief that if you approach this with the care, energy and commitment needed, there is no downside. It may turn out that after your pre-study, you will elect different objectives and levels of ambition. But who can criticize a city for taking this challenge seriously and spending a relatively small amount of money and time to see if they can get on the right path?

Variations: It may be that after the careful Blueprint Implementation plan is completed, a rather different set of targets will emerge. One distinct possibility is that a consensus that 20/20 per se is simply too ambitious for your city. Fair enough. The team might end up proposing instead a 10/20 or even 5/20 program. Would that be a problem? We don't think so. Even if "all" the city were to target and achieve would be, say, a 5% reductions over twice as many months, they would still be inching toward what we call "Kyoto Compliance". Indeed, such a performance would be notable and offer great improvements which would mark your city apart from the rest who are simply and passively submitting to what they believe to be their destiny.

Please note: We are well aware that in many cities there is a lot already going on to make specific point improvements and if the city is lucky many qualified citizen groups and associations that are getting involved and trying to make their contribution both in terms of steering policy in the direction of being more sustainable, and in terms of specific actions on their part to make this happen. The objective of the New Mobility Initiative is not to get in their way or supplant their efforts in any way, but rather to reinforce them and define a consistent and supportive overall structure within which their energies and projects can be better supported and coordinated.

International Networking: We are hopeful that we will be able to set up a small but highly efficient IP mediated network to permit the first group of pioneer cities to share materials and results in an international co-learning exercise. It is also intended that projects will be open to representatives of visiting cities, who will be invited not only to observe but also to share their critical comments and recommendations to the host team.

And what about the "Long Run": No more metros? LRT construction? 'New energy' demonstration projects. Even new infrastructure building or improvement? Not quite. But . . . References to Keynes aside, we hope that you will understand that the fact that we strongly advise that over the first two years the overwhelming thrust and attention of the city be to meeting these ambitious and demanding priority objectives. And through this process to initiate this effective move to an entirely new transportation paradigm - and it is indeed no less than that - should not be interpreted as suggesting that we once and for all bury all long term construction projects and the like. But, we do advise that they will need to be rethought radically given the emerging new policy and performance frame. Once your city has shifted gears and achieved at least parts of these objectives, it is likely that your perspectives as to what is needed in the longer haul in terms of more expensive, taxpayer supported transportation investments will be rather different. But we can see about that in time. For now, let's get started on what is the most important!

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V. 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 however - 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 - City identification: 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: This typically will take one or two weeks and require 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!