Virtually all of the necessary preconditions are now in place for far-reaching, rapid, low cost improvements in the ways that people get around in our cites. The needs are there, they are increasingly understood -- and we now know what to do and how to get the job done. The challenge is to find the vision, political will, and leadership to get the job done, step by deliberate step:
But you have to have a coherent, ethical, publicly announced, checkable, overarching strategy. Without it you are destined to play at the edges of the problems, and while you may be able to announce a success or improvement here or there, the overall impact that your city needs to break the old patterns will not be there. You really need that consistent, omni-present strategy.
Piecing it all together: The 15 Point New Mobility Strategy
Here in fifteen points is the basic strategic policy frame that we have pieced together over the years of observation and close contact with projects and programs in leading cities around the world under the New Mobility Agenda. and if you click here you can see in a short video (4 minute draft) a synopsis of the basic five-point core strategy that the city of Paris has announced and adhered to over the last seven years. With significant results.
Sustainable transportation in cities. That's all we do. In partnership projects with groups and individuals around the world.
Climate-driven: The on-going climate emergency sets the base timetable for action in our sector which accounts for 20% of GHGs. At the same time GHG reduction works as a strong surrogate for just about everything else to which we need to be giving priority attention in our cities.
Vision and leadership: Break with the past, get outside the box, and take on the real problems of mobility, well-being and economic health in our cities. Then make the case for change.
Tighten time frame for action: Select and gear all actions to achieve visible results within 2-5 year time frame. Set firm targets for all to see and judge the results. No-excuse transport policy.
Reduce traffic radically.The critical, incontrovertible policy core of the Agenda. If we don't achieve this, we will have a situation where all the key indicators will continue to move in the wrong direction. But we can cut traffic and at the same time improve mobility. That's our strategy.
Extend the range and quality of new mobility services:A whole range of exciting and practical new service types are needed if we are to keep our cities viable. And they need to COMBINE to offer better, faster and cheaper transportation than the old car-intensive arrangements or debt-financed traditional public transit.
Full speed ahead with new technology: : New mobility is at its core heavily driven by the aggressive application of state of the art logistics, communications and information technology across the full spectrum of service types. These are the seven leagues boots of new mobility
Frugal economics: We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% of the transport related budgets and use it to address to projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years.
Play the "infrastructure joker": The transport infrastructures of our cities have been vastly overbuilt. And they are unable to deliver the goods. That's just great, since it means that we can now take over substantial portions of the street network for far more efficient modes.
Broaden ownership: Make each New Mobility program a broad-based collaborative enterprise that listens to and engages the whole city, including those who are not yet ready to join in.
The female metric: If we design transportation systems that work well for women of all ages and conditions, they will work well for society as a whole. Women are the metric of new mobility.
Pick winners: New approaches demand success. There is no margin of error. So chose policies and services with track records of success and build on their experience.
Partnerships: This approach, because it is new and unfamiliar to most people, is unlike to be understood the first times around. Hence a major education, consultation and outreach effort is needed in each place to make it work. Old mobility was the terrain in which decisions were made by transport experts working within their assigned zones of competence. New mobility is based on wide-based collaborative problem solving, outreach and harnessing the great strengths of the informed and educated populations of our cities. Public/private/citizen partnerships.
Erase space:Leading edge projects need leading edge counsel and inputs. And this is not always directly at hand. But we have the means today to erase these barriers. Let's use them.
Use time wisely: Cities and people have their own rhythms -- if we are to alter their way of doing things we need to be highly strategic and subtle in our use of time for the necessary conversions.
To move ahead in time to save the planet and improve life quality of the majority of the people who live in our cities (no, they are not all happy car owner-drivers: get out there and count them. You'll see.), we need to have a fair, unified, coherent, and memorable strategy. The work of the New Mobility Agenda is given over to trying to encourage and assist this vital process and the necessary public debate behind it.
This is the central key to the whole effort.
Because we now know that a waiting game will have deadly consequences. Hence we need to concentrate our minds and efforts on actions that are going to have early pay-offs.
And while the ideal is certainly anything that will lead to big visible paybacks in less than two years - a target that is in fact be obtainable by at least some of the measures that are getting attention here - the fact is that a couple of years of operational experience is often needed to fine tune, debug and start to get the most out of your new mobility measure. So let's give it enough time to get the job done.
In addition, within this frame you are going to have time to . . .
At the very least to replace your present vehicle with something more appropriate for responsible 21st century city travel.
Alternavitely and better yet If possible where you live and work) shed your car altogether as new affordable alternatives start to come on line in your community (affordable carsharing among them of course)
To seek a better, more environmentally coherent place to live and work
And if you are an industrial or service group, enough time to design and bring on line a new range of products adn services.
And finally if you are a mayor or elected official, this gives you time to achieve your announced objectives within your electoral term. Four years: Put up or shut up. Seems fair. That's why we have elections.
The keys to the year ahead are two: First, to face the music and recognize the full dimensions and urgency of the crushing problems before our cities and our planet. And in parallel with this, to find more effective ways to solve these challenges, through more seamless international networking and collaborative problem solving. There is a great deal of knowledge and good accumulated experience out there, but it needs to be better harnessed and put to work for your city. Many of these wheels have already been invented; so here is no reason to start from zero every time. But how to spot, chose and adapt the best for your unique case? That is the challenge before each city and project team.
The Annual State of The Commons Message as announced in Jan, 2008, offering a quick recap of 2007, a look ahead to 2008, and an introspection about the nature of problem-solving in our main areas of competence.
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