TOWARDS
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATIONOECD International Conference, Vancouver Canada, 24-27 March 1996
TOWARDS
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION
Introduction...
In our societies, transportation is an urban activity. Cities are where most of us live and are the place where most transportation occurs. Throughout the Conference, our discussions revealed problems in the ways we organize urban transportation, using too many resources by taking too many trips, for too long distances, using too many vehicles, with too much excess capacity. The form of our cities reflects these excesses, sprawling across the countryside with a huge proportion of the valuable urban space given over to roads, parking facilities and low density developments designed for the most inefficient mode of urban transportation, private automobiles. As a consequence of these failures, of the wastefulness in the way we move things around, we are transforming our planet into something that is less useful, and less beautiful, for our children.
Traffic is diminishing the quality of life in our congested and sometimes smog-ridden cities. People without cars are becoming isolated from jobs and services, and the traffic is producing health problems. We are not meeting the emission targets agreed to by many of our countries in the Framework Convention on Global Climate Change. Despite all these negative factors, a recent OECD study revealed that automobile traffic has grown at 3.3 per cent per annum in member countries during the last generation, and road freight traffic has grown at nearly 5 per cent annually.
Chaired by Debra Darke with co-chair Frank Venna, the session on "Urban and Suburban Transportation" discussed the central, urban dimension of the problems of sustainability in transportation. Throughout this Conference there was substantial agreement that there are deep-seated failures in the ways that our essentially urban civilization organizes itself to transport people and goods. In this urban session, the Conference focused its exploration of these problems on the cities, the arena where solutions can and must be found.
It is worth noting that these papers thus continue the debate around some critical issues like the urgency and difficulty of altering present social habits and lifestyles, specially under the threat of perpetuating them as role models for developing countries which follow our footsteps.
Mr. Michael Bach
Michael Bach told us of the findings of the recent three-year study by OECD's Group on Urban Affairs in conjunction with the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, of the social, environmental and economic implications of our urban transportation practices. The story he reported is a dismal comment on economic planning, and one which is not widely known. In addition to the deleterious and costly environmental consequences of our present road traffic, this major OECD study outlined some other significant economic costs, such as:
In the difficult economic circumstances of our time, when we need government to become efficient and eliminate unnecessary expenditures, these are huge cost elements which could yield economic gains if they were better controlled.
OECD countries involve a very wide gamut of city shapes, some compact, or even very compact, others with very low density seemingly incapable of reversing past trends. Hence principles matter more than universal prescriptions.
This OECD/ECMT study, which was published as "Urban Travel and Sustainable Development" recommends an integrated three-stage policy approach. Current practices in urban planning and land use planning, traffic management, parking control and the provision of other means of transport, must be improved to the standard of "best practices". There are descriptions of many of these alternative measures in the Conference papers, and related references. The second strand of this policy package are the policy innovations required to shape urban developments into less car-dependent forms and apply congestion pricing to traffic management. The third strand, which the OECD study concludes to be essential in order to bring about a reduction in traffic, is a fuel tax which increases progressively in the order of 7 per cent per annum in real terms.
Mr. Bach's presentation also introduced the new transportation and land use planning policy in the United Kingdom, PPG13. This policy statement contains positive measures to reduce the need to travel such as intensifying settlement patterns, strengthening local centers and locating major travel demand generators in central areas, improving choice of access, and limiting parking. Among the essential steps, Mr. Bach describes:
In his remarks, Mr. Bach re-emphasizes one of the Conference basic themes: the need to consider a holistic approach if any inroads are to be made. At the same time, he places the accent on the fact that the system has be managed and monitored on a continued basis, given its very nature as a complex system, capable of adaptation and reacting to a stimulus by learning new behavioral patterns. He also began an important consideration of timing that was reinforced several times throughout the session. He observed that urban authorities must act now to improve their planning and transportation practices, as urban growth is slow and it will take many years for the impact of these measures to build up. Also, most traffic-generating land uses are those that change rapidly. So the land use decisions we make every day are the important ones - a journey of one thousand miles begins with one step.
Finally, a touch of optimism comes from considering that many policies regarded as "radical" not long ago, have already become part of the mainstream
Jean-Pierre Orfeuil and Alain Morcheoine
Jean-Pierre Orfeuil and Alain Morcheoine provided insights on some of the complexities which must be faced in improving urban transportation. Their combined presentation touched on transport demand management, urban sub-regional travel patterns, land use mixing, and some of the complications surrounding nodal split. Orfeuil noted particular problems of maintaining the impetus for public transit in higher-density, centre-driven cities, and developing transit in the context of low-density sprawl.
M. Orfeuil's paper is a reminder that we are dealing with a complex system not amenable by clear cut and simple recipes like "high density and center driven development" Some other papers in the Conference have highlighted the increase in transit patronage. However very often those numbers hide a decreasing share of the total "motorized trips" market by transit, as car mobility gains a higher relief in pervasive manner. Equally important, they fail to say that the home-to-work trip, target of most transit strategies, represents a decreasing percentage of total mobility.
The conventional wisdom that the car industry equals jobs and economic development becomes a road block to contend with when planning changes away from automobile dependence.
Among other barriers and roadblocks to contend with:
Finally, M. Orfeuil points out very appropriately towards "feedback" as a key concept, echoing some other voices being heard through the Conference.
Mr. Neal Irwin
Neal Irwin's contribution was particularly important as it was focused on the automobile-dominated cities of Canada (and by implication, North America). Irwin observed that urban Canadians use four to five times as much transportation energy per capita as is used by comparable Europeans. Within Canadian cities, the rate of car ownership in suburban areas is almost twice the rate seen in mature areas. New suburbs have over three times as many lane-km of roads per capita, and these areas generate fewer than half as many annual transit rides per person.
While Neal Irwin's text went on to discuss activity in urban Canada to further sustainability, his data also contributes to the consideration of another aspect of this topic. A frightening implication of the above mentioned facts is that North American urban life is often seen as a model in developing countries, yet our Conference has amply demonstrated that this automobile-based way of living entails plundering our planets scarce resources. By demonstrating this excessiveness of "the North American way", Irwin's paper may help sensitize North Americans to their personal contribution to these serious societal and environmental problems.
Neal Irwin's presentation included operational criteria for assessing the sustainability of urban transportation measures, followed by an overview of Canadian "best practices". He proposes that congestion pricing measures be phased in as part of a longer term strategy, beginning in Canada's three largest urban regions, in higher growth cities and towns, and in the case of significant new roads such as Highway 407 in the Greater Toronto Region.
Mr. Irwin's paper among other aspects has brought attention to the fact that the term sustainability requires not only an environmental balance but a functional, social and an economic equilibrium as well, if our systems are to prevail. By his own criteria our systems have to be not only "clean" (that is environmentally sound) and "conserving" (focused on demand management), but also "capable" (functional), "compatible" (that is tuned to social lifestyles) and "affordable" (or, economically sustainable)
Furthermore, Mr. Irwin's paper attempts to set realistic short term goals, coherent with our mid and long term objectives. In particular, at a time ripe with many promises attached to further technological improvements, he encourages the use of proven and simpler tools which when used in a holistic approach are effective and readily available to all of us:
We agree with his opinion that road pricing has still a long way ahead before it is politically and socially ripe for widespread implementation. On the other hand, land use policies aimed towards more compact and mixed used while are a prerequisite for mid and long term sustainability, that cannot be expected to provide tangible results in a near future scenario. His basic theme is the need to act today as long as the new measures are properly framed in the long view, specially when the fiscal crisis, being already here, can be turn around to work on behalf of a more sustainable transport policy.
Charles Vlek
Charles Vlek spoke about our urban transportation problem as a "dilemma of the commons". This is a situation where a collective cost or risk is incurred, taken or generated through the combined negative externalities of various individuals who act (relatively) independently of one another. In order to achieve significant reductions in car use, he identified five conditions which need to be fulfilled:
This Conference provided much of the information needed to meet the first two conditions posed by Vlek, as well as discussing alternatives that can lead to improvement.
Other Panelists
Several panelists illustrated "best practices" which emphasized integrated approaches for making urban transportation more sustainable. Michel Labrecque discussed the integrated transport mix, with mass transit, car-pooling, taxis, go-trains, intercity buses, cycling and walking. Joe Stott, whose organization thoughtfully gave complimentary transit passes to all conference delegates, spoke of the integration in transportation and land use planning in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Paul Zykofsky's paper summarized planning principles for making livable communities through integration and mix in land uses, in which sustainable transportation is a logical consequence. He spoke of "the new urbanism", described several recent growth management studies that had identified multi-million dollar cost savings associated with more compact, mixed land-use patterns, and mentioned many communities in the western United States that are adopting these improved planning schemes.
Other Papers
Other papers which had been prepared for the conference also contained valuable discussions. Several concerned urban planning, and particularly land use planning, at various levels including the international bio-region, the urban region, and the suburb. There was considerable discussion of cycling as a part of sustainable transportation, and a thoughtful paper described the contribution of successful policies to facilitate walking as a foundation for urban transportation and a measure to strengthen community. Papers advocated property tax reform to encourage densification, suggested that enablement of civil society should be part of national transportation policy, and asserted that growing environmentalism rooted in generational change will increase the use of public transit.
This session has shown that the professional and academic community has reached a remarkable intellectual consensus, setting the stage now for a unified policy action program as the next logical step. Not surprisingly this session presentations have insisted on the need for a holistic approach and the appropriateness of dealing with a system that has to be managed on a continuous basis, as opposed to measures dealing with the symptoms "once and for all"
One of the main contributions is the emerging concept of "feedback" as a key consideration if we are to influence the dynamics of this complex system. Equally important in a Conference where environmental impacts seem to be under the central spotlight is the reminder that sustainability has other requirements as well, among which social and political sustainabilty become some of the basic building blocks of the new policies.
We find particularly interesting the so called social dilemma raised by Mr. Vlek and, the difficulty of a pro-active approach when only a crisis is regarded as a politically correct driver for change (Thomas Deen Paradigm)
Rapporteurs:
Mikel Murga
Peter Spurr