And what about the "Long Run"

How to achieve this? Here is the core of the strategy that we now propose for your consideration, comment, and action:

• Set out clear, explicit, understandable, ambitious but safely meetable performance targets in the participating city.
• Make sure you have total commitment of local leaders from the top -- at least to take this through the first Blueprint Go/No-Go phase.
• And a very broad base of public support and participation.
• Highly committed local implementation partners 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.

What is useful about this concept is that it is at once short term results oriented, far-reaching, affordable and realistic. No less important, it targets highly ambitious near term efficiency and visible environmental improvements without requiring massive injections of hard earned taxpayer money. It also, with the right kind of preparatory work and support, can offer a very powerful political tool for mayors and city counsels who wish to offer a better, safer, cleaner and more affordable city to their electorate.

Not more metros? LRT construction? 'New energy' demonstration projects. Even new infrastructure building or improvement? Not quite. But . . .

References to Maynard Keynes aside, we hope that you will understand that the fact that we strongly advise that over the next 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!

Back to top

External finance for pioneering projects in Developing World

It is our belief that this approach is sufficiently promising and potentially effective and important that for cities in need (in the developing or Accession countries for example) it is worthy of external financing during the intitial stages at least until such time that the model is clearly there for all to see, appreciate and seize it for their own. Clear demonstration of unfamiliar new concepts is very important, as we have seen in many cases in the sector in the past. Among the most recent of these is London's successful experience in pioneering Congestion Charging (incidentally a project which has in the target area obtained result that are on the scale of the 20/20 objectives), which is now there for other cities to see and consider - and believe me they are.