Preliminary introduction (in process)

There is a key to this strategy and once you have understood and accepted it most of the rest follows more or less naturally. The key? The decision to make major CO2 reductions on the order of the Clinton targets on an emergency basis starting immediately and concentrating entirely on what can be done in the next several years. This simple (and courageous) decision, as Doctor Samuel Johnson so well put it concerning the man about to be hung in two weeks time: "concentrates the mind something marvelous".

A quick reminder here that anything that reduces emissions is also dong a great deal of other good things for the city and the people who live and work there, but this we have gone into elsewhere here.

To keep it brief for now, the strategy we recommend - and incidentally the only one that will do the job the President is asking for! -- boils down to (a) sharp phased reductions reducing the number of vehicles moving around the city, concentrating on getting out or otherwise constraining those that are doing the worst jobs (i.e., single occupancy cars and the like) and in parallel (b) opening up space and opportunities for means and modes that are most space efficient. Which in turn brings us to the aggressive (draconian is also a word here) management of the existing transport infrastructure on the one hand, and in parallel the support and creation of more efficient means of communication and transportation, concentrating on innovative means and measure that can be brought on line in months, not decades. And in parallel identifying and supporting measures and initiatives that can serve to shorten or eliminate unnecessary trips altogether . . .

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Strategic notes: Phase 1

Here is what we are fully confident can be achieved by any city which takes the Clinton Challenge to heart over a first 2-4 year learning period. (In all that follows, we concentrate solely on the city transport portion of the overall CO2 challenge that your Initiative is addressing.)

1. Annual CO2 (and thereby traffic and fossil fuel) reductions on the order of 5 -10%, based on a vigorous leadership policy with strong technical support which builds on the earlier 20/20 model of the Kyoto World Cities program (in a nutshell: significant annual reductions on the order of the 5-10% target of street and parking space for private cars, while increasing quality and frequency of service of alternative carriers based on improved public transport and an array of new shared transport services.)

2. This is what we know can be done. The next strategic problem to be resolved is how to make this happen. The key here is to realize that this is not a transport challenge, per se. It is above all a challenge of politics, leadership and communications. What we need to do, we can do. But the key will be to find a way to ensure that it becomes our common goal.

3. And here the mere fact that the Clinton Climate Initiative is behind this can definitely make a big difference, even more in terms of leadership and the very high pubic visibility that it can bring to any cooperating city or group than in terms of the amount of funding they may eventually be able to muster to support these innovations (bearing in mind as just one sobering point of reference is that there are today something like five hundred cities around the world of more than one million population).

4. The first challenge in our view will be to demonstrate the validity of the basic concept, that sharp CO2 reductions can indeed be achieved in the mobility systems of real world cities without a collapse of the economy, quality of life or service levels for the huge majority of people living and working in that place. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that if this strategy is properly fine tuned it will result in visible progress in all these key areas.

5. (The reason incidentally that this is possible, has to do with the fact that the present transport arrangements in virtually every city in the world are so egregiously under-performing and over-built that they leave enormous room for improvement without requiring any major increases in public investment or private budgets. To the contrary it is reasonable to anticipate considerable economic on both these scores.)

6. So Challenge 1 is to somehow ferret out those cities and leaders that are willing to give this strategy a try. Now there are a certain number of cities world wide that are already moving along in this direction, but none yet nearly at the rate that the Clinton Challenge is calling for. So the next question becomes that of how to find, mobilize and support those already leading the way to create even more ambitious targets and strategies - and to find ways t share their results (and the problems encountered along the way) with cities and groups around the world that are looking for viable ideas and examples.

7. It will be important to differentiate between cities and projects that accept and are willing to go for the full strategy, and those (a great majority in a first instance surely) who will have good project ideas and will be looking for financial and other support to get them built. You can have a great transport project that will offer real advantages over the old model in many ways, including in specific point CO2 reductions, but without have the necessary city wide (and by city we insist on meaning the major contiguous metropolitan area and not just some urban core) CO2 reduction potential. In point of fact, there are today many such good projects getting underway, but what it missing, and what is critical for the Clinton Climate Initiative is that they now be placed in the far more rigorous context that is required if the first round of CO2 targets is to be met. And this critical difference must never escape our eyes.

8. Thus, if the Clinton Climate Initiative is able to find and create a significant number of these open and highly ambitious CO2 alliances over the next, say, two to four years - will that require some kind of Public Contract to nail down? - this will already be a huge first step. We will now start to have examples and models that can be extended to other cities. Today virtually every city in the world is locked into the "old mobility' models which are essentially car-based and which treat any other means of getting around as a necessary but definitely secondary priority.

Then, once we begin to have this new base (say sometime in 2009) we will be able to resurvey the field and, based on all we have learned over this important and surely tumultuous first period, consider how best to extend these new paradigms and make them the dominant model for cities around the world.

For the time being, let us point you to our original presentation of what we then called our 20/20 strategy for the Kyoto World Cities program (20% traffic reductions in 20 months), which you will find here on the left menu. This will be discussed, critiqued and revised in the weeks ahead to provide a better base for future implementations.

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Old Mobility rules - Five kinds of world cities (Where are you?)

The following message was posted to several hundred cooperating world wide colleagues with deep experience in our sector on 24 January, with a first set of responses that follow directly below. (For more go to http://newmobility.org and click the "Talking New Mobility" links to the Idea Factory and Global South (Sustran Network).

-----Original Message-----
From: eric.britton@free.fr [mailto:eric.britton@free.fr]
Looking at them from a sustainability or Old/New Mobility perspective, I would propose that there are basically five gross categories of cities in the world today. Moreover, it's my guess that as you work your way down this list you find that the number of cities in each progressive category grows much smaller. Here it is in a nutshell, with "worse" of course meaning more traffic, more CO2 et al each year.

Category 1. Comatose, and . .
Cities doing nothing to deal with the issues, getting worse fast and who don't seem to care. And in general are steadily doing what is needed to make things even worse.

Category 2. Nervous, but . . .
Those doing nothing, getting worse. . . but who are starting to worry. And who just don't know where to start.

Category 3. Starting to cope, but . . .
Those who overall are continuing to do worse (i.e., who continue to have growing traffic, more CO2, etc.), but have started to do a few better things - examples, some pedestrianization, cycling paths, buying more buses, improved intermodal links, some parking and public space improvements, traffic engineering to smooth flows and provide most consistent speeds, etc.. And above all talking a lot about it. But who from the bottom line are still spending their money in the wrong (old) way, such that the only real impact of all this proto-greenness is to provide a cover for not really attacking the problem at the root.

Category 4. Ambitious, but . . .
Those who have decided explicitly to break with past practices and are starting to do long lists of good things. About these there are three important things to be said: First that up to now they represent a tiny extremely small minority. Second, in every case I know the basic bottom-line traffic and environmental indicators continue to move in the wrong direction, if not for some narrow target area for the urban region as a whole. And finally when you look at the budgets they are still when you total them up spending more on roads and parking than on the rest.

Category 5. World Leaders - Clinton-compliant
Cities who have bought into a policy massive, near term traffic and CO2 reduction, and who have adopted an aggressive integrated retrofit strategy for the sector with clearly defined, publicly available benchmarks and indicators of both micro and macro progress. Who have radically revised their budgets in the transport and related sectors, and are spending more on the new measures and programs than on road building, etc. If a city in Category 5 is to be "Clinton Compliant", as it must be, this means they are targeting and getting traffic and CO2 reductions on the order of 5%-8% annually

Think of this as a Ladder of Sustainable Transportation performance, with one clear strategic goal of any eventual program being to do what is needed to help cities move up a rung as quickly as possible. It is my guess that the world leaders, who may serve to provide some practical examples for the rest, will be mainly in Category 4. And now in closing two questions:

• " First, to ask you where in this rough ranking you would put the city or cities you know best.

• " Second, to ask if you can tell us one single city in the world who have made it to the final level -- one in which the move to sustainability is currently on track and, in being so, able to provide a shining example for the rest. (Though we have some great examples of cities that are real trying to dig in at Cat. 4, and that already is a wonderful start.

With your permission your replies will be posted to the New Mobility Idea Factory and the Global South Forum. I look forward to them and hope that you will find this exercise of some use.

Kind thanks.

Eric Britton

PS. PS. It is my thought that this information, perspective and eventual diverse feedback from world colleagues who know their cities from direct in-place experience, may help the Clinton Climate Initiative/Large Cities transport team in their search for places, projects, methods and partners to, in some way, lead their campaign to encourage and assist the up-hill (but winnable) battle for the necessary huge CO2 savings in world cities.

Comments from international observors and policy experts

-----Original Message----- From: Sujit Patwardhan [mailto:sujitjp@gmail.com], India
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007
Subject: Re: [Sustran] Old Mobility rules - 5 kinds of cities

Thanks Eric for this excellent exercise. Pune I would say is in Category 3 and somewhat stuck there. I will write in some detail soon. Warm regards,

Sujit

Sujit Patwardhan - sujit@vsnl.com - sujitjp@gmail.com
"Yamuna", ICS Colony, Ganeshkhind Road, Pune 411 007 India
Hon. Secretary: Parisar
Founder Member: PTTF (Pune Traffic & Transportation Forum)

-----Original Message----- From: Brendan Finn, Ireland
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

I suggest to add Category 0, those who are getting worse by doing plenty - of the "wrong" stuff - and are pretty determined to keep doing it. Those who are "doing nothing" - Category 1/2 - have at least paused in the hole they are digging.

I would put Dublin in category 3, dressing itself up as something better. For all the talk about Transport 21 and public transport investment, the big bucks have gone into roads and will continue to do so for the next few years.

For Cork, I would say that they are 4, with the caveats exactly as you describe them.

Brendan.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lize Jennings, South Africa
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

Cape Town, South Africa probably falls within category 2 and 3. Although there are some people in the local government who wish to implement measures to improve the situation, particularly in addressing the problem of congestion, there is still the problem of traditional thinking and planning who believe that expanding roadways are probably the only way to go. In many cases the traditional (old-school) thinkers and those with the money.

The interventions that are planned to be implemented are on a very small scale and are usually run as pilot projects, which once tested, stop because funding runs out.

South Africa is hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup and we are currently experiencing major congestion problems, particularly in the centre of town (where the main stadium will the built), so we can't image what it will be like once the large number of visitors arrive in the country.

There are however, some organizations that are working with governments to change their thinking and planning methods and hopefully make a difference.

We'll just have to wait and see.

Regards, Lize

On Behalf Of Ryan McGreal, Canada
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

Quoting eric.britton@ecoplan.org: > I would like to propose to you a thinking exercise. It works like this. . . .

Hi Eric,

Do you mind if I post this to Raise the Hammer? I think it's a great system for categorizing cities (my city, Hamilton, Ontario, for example, is clearly a Category 3).

Sincerely,

Ryan McGreal
Editor, Raise the Hammer

On Behalf Of Ian Wingrove, UK
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

London is probably in category five. London is the only world city where car traffic as a proportion of journeys is in decline. Spending on public transport obviously dwarfs spending on roads, but apart from one new road bridge in East London which has been strongly opposed, there is no major road building program. Expenditure is slowly being switched to better things. The amount spent on cycling has trebled since 2004. The Demand Management Strategy now has around £30m of funding a year. As a result of this years agreement over the budget between the London Mayor and the greens we have started increasing the funding for walking.

There is also a big push on low and zero emission vehicles, as well as continuing work of safer roads. This year we also have £25m set aside over the next three years for work on climate change and transport. A climate change action plan will be launched shortly to add some substance to the targets and indicators.

The one area we still haven't cracked is planning, which is outside of the budget process.

Most of what is happening is outlined in the attached letter from the London Mayor to the two green Assembly members, which is the deal struck in return for their pivotal support for his budget.

Cheers, IW

From: Eric Britton
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

I am delighted to hear Ian that London is a strong Category 5 candidate? I recall when I was lending a hand in the Contested Streets film out of New York last summer, that they were looking very favorably on your fair city as a possible example.

But just to be quite sure on the ground rules in all this.

Category 5: Verifiable progress for the full defined city area (we need to be very clear on this) in terms of:

1. An explicit announced and strongly defended and supported city policy to this effect.
2. Global decreases in overall vehicle traffic (not just here and there). I.e., for the city area as a whole
3. Corresponding area-wide CO2 decreases (though to measure but there are ways)
4. Significant shifts from single occupancy (or thereabouts) car trips anywhere in the city area.
5. Significant tightening of road space available for moving and stationary cars
6. No quality sacrifices in "mobility for all" in terms of trip availability, cost and convenience for

It may be that the first three on this list are all we need to do this job, but let me post this as a challenge draft and see what we can do with it.

I am eager to hear what others who know your city well have to say. I think this could prove a lively and creative exercise for us all.

Eric Britton

On Behalf Of Simon Norton, UK
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007

In the UK in particular divided responsibility is a particular problem. Most cities have no control over their transport policies -- buses are deregulated, decisions on trains are made at national level, and projects such as light rail are dependent on Government support. Cities do not have adequate fund raising powers. The planning system also denies the planning authorities (who are sometimes but not always the city councils) full control over what gets built, with the result that "planning drift" -- the gradual replacement of less car dependent development by more car dependent development -- is still widespread.

In London, the central area may deserve a category 5, though even there progress is agonisingly slow. Outer London boroughs, I think, are split between category 3s and category 4s.

Cambridge is to my mind a clear category 3. The County Council makes lots of good sounding noise but doesn't really have the policies to save the city (outside the historic area) from car domination. Politically the ruling group on the county council doesn't have a single member from within the city, and people from the surrounding area are far more car oriented, so this really isn't surprising. Unfortunately the County Council seems to be a regular winner of awards -- even though its political orientation is not aligned with that of the central government -- which gives a misleading impression of the real state of affairs.

Simon Norton

On Behalf Of Chris Bradshaw
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 Eric,

If you want to make the points that your five 'states' represents _kinds_ of cities, you will need names for each, e.g., the famous article by Sherrie Arnstein about kinds of public participation (http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-participation.html).

Probably the titles would suggest either the outcomes (from "about to be overwhelmed" to "fated for significant upsurge in eco-tourism and reduced property taxes") for the various kinds or a characterization of their mental model of their own efficacy, e.g., "out-to-lunch", "slightly conscious," "struggling," "just coping, and "showing leadership."

You seem to have done a good job of keeping the 'rungs' on your ladder close enough that the next one up doesn't appear to be too daunting.

You should develop into a longer piece with specific jobs each needs to do to get to the next rung.

Chris Bradshaw, Ottawa

On Behalf Of Jack M. Nilles
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 1:39 AM Eric: A great set of distinctions.

Los Angeles, unfortunately, seems also to be stuck at 3. In the early 1990s the South Coast (or Southern California) Air Quality Management District had a regulation requiring traffic reduction. The regulation had some teeth, requiring all employers of more than 100 employees in a single facility to comply with an upper limit on the number of commuter cars associated with the facility--or face a fine of up to $10,000 per day of noncompliance.

This regulation spurred considerable interest in traffic reduction, including a telecommuting demonstration project by the City of Los Angeles. Alas, the captains of industry prevailed and the regulation was scrapped in the mid-90s. So even though our per capita, normal-sized automobile air pollution production has been decreasing, it has been largely through technology not behavior change. The city's telecommuting program vanished with the transition from Mayor Bradley (a populist) to Mayor Riordan (a financier). A decade after I thought we were finally getting people's attention we're back to the old ways of approaching the problem, not even questioning the need for, timing of, or vehicle used in some trips.

On the other hand, my car put on 700 miles in 2005. If only we can get the other 12 million LAers to try similar measures. OK, half of them. It's feasible. A couple of days per week.

Never mind level 5, are there any cities of more than 100,00 population at level 4?

Cheers,

Jack Nilles

On Behalf Of Jonathan Kagan, UK
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007

Simon points out that being a category 4 or 5 takes more than commitment, it also requires a degree of independence. That being said, can anyone suggest a list of top cities in category 4?

Thanks. Jonathan

-----Original Message----- From: Eric Britton (ChoiceMail) [mailto:Eric.Britton@ecoplan.org] Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007

To which I answered as a first go. What about . . . ?

• Category 1. Profligate
• Category 2. Perplexed
• Category 3. Pusillanimous
• Category 4. Punctilious
• Category 5. World Leader - model for CCI

I draw this exchange to your attention this morning with the thought that as you play with these words and the concepts behind them, you may, I would like to think, begin to dig in more deeply to the issues and challenges. I really think that all of us need to start to get involved and ready to pitch in to put this in high gear.

Transport in cities is perhaps the one area in which we can do most in the shortest amount of time. So stay tuned.

From: Carlos F. Pardo SUTP [mailto:carlos.pardo@sutp.org], Bogotá, Colombia
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007

This rating is interesting, and very similar to the stages of change of Proshansky et al which are used to describe people's level of awareness towards physical activity. I adapted it to my "public awareness and behavior change in sustainable transport" training document (in www.sutp.org ), and I think it's also nice to apply it to cities. It's very simple and a good way to "rank" and know how to act upon them. I also wrote a bit about that in the training document, since people in the "1" stage (technically called precontemplation) are not really reactive to changing drastically to a very different setting (unless their mayor is very progressive), and people in the "4" stage (technically, action) are really easy to improve towards level 5 (maintenance).

In cities, there's also a big problem with those that find there is something wrong (congestion, emissions, road safety), but when they try to solve it they do unsustainable things: build highways, ring roads, pedestrian overpasses, ban rickshaws, ask for driver licenses for bicycles, take bicycles away from people without helmets (and the cost of retrieving the bicycle is higher than the bicycle itself). So they would be in a kind of "stage 3" but going the wrong way... I'm not sure how to go about this. Maybe a drawing would be good to show this, but I'm not that good drawing these things (or it takes me weeks to finish).

If this message is not yet too long, another concept that really extends all this is Vygotstky's zone of proximal development, which actually explains (though for education of children) how to teach with people depending on their current level of knowledge. The interesting thing is that he states this as a dynamic process (and writing it around 1930!) where people have a "zone" to which they can improve, so anything that goes beyond that would be discarded or never understood (only when they've reached a zone that goes farther).

I would then propose that people state the cities' ratings and the direction towards where they're going ("3 directed towards 5"). For example, Bogotá was for a long time a 4 or 5, but during the past few years may have been going down. These past few months, however, it is really aiming towards a 5 (and if Peñalosa wins again, it should definitely go to 5 and beyond).

Best regards, Carlos F. Pardo
Coordinador de Proyecto, GTZ - Proyecto de Transporte Sostenible (SUTP, SUTP-LAC)
Cl 126 # 52A-28 of 404 Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Mrs. Mayor: The ten advantages of a New Mobility program for your city

1. It is ambitious (as it needs to be to make a difference.)

2. It is focused (20/20 and that's all)

3. It is simple (hence easy to communicate and sell)

4. It builds on and engages a broad local base.

5. It is effective. (It can handle the challenge.)

6. It is cheap. (Can be made to work within your existing resources.)

7. It is positive (Targets "car-like mobility" for all, a very different way of thinking about transport in cities).

8. It can be guaranteed (through careful planning and consultation)

9. It provides a consistent, high profile, broad overarching policy umbrella and incentive package for doing and better supporting all the good things you certainly should be doing anyway.

10. It is great politics. (Visible successes during electoral term. Great national and international visibility for your cityI)

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