Friday, 31 August 2007
To: The Mayor, City Council, City Manager (and candidates for any of above posts)
cc: Supporting senior staff, local NGOs, consultants, concerned citizens/groups
Subject: Transport innovations, strategies for city leaders
Dear City Leaders,
Most people and institutions may not have grasped this yet, but the simple truth is that we have arrived at a point of major discontinuity in the daily transport arrangements, in our cities and in our lives. Few are more aware of this than you. And if you are a strong leader, you recognize as well that now is the time for action.
Look out the window this morning and what do you see on the street -- despite all the work you have done and hard earned taxpayer money you are spending on the sector? Increasing traffic congestion. More lost time. Mounting pollution and public health problems. Accidents. Poorly served groups and areas. Swelling subsidy costs. City centers in duress. And now fears of global warming, $100 oil, and suddenly the chilling prospect of energy blackmail. The old system may once have worked, but today it is clearly no longer doing its job. And in case you haven't noticed it, the voters are starting to. Sustainability and sustainable transportation are now emerging as major election issues.
What has changed most dramatically over the last year or so, however, has been the fast growing awareness that the climate clock is ticking, and that in addition to the many excellent reasons we have had for the last decades to reinvent transport in our cities, there is now another one -- and this from all evidence is one that is not about to wait.
We know that we need to cut CO2 and other emissions dramatically, and that one of the keys to the necessary strategy has to be the major, long overdue reform of our transportation arrangements. Including in cities. Responsible city leaders and others are increasingly ready to face these challenges. But where to start?
| Why New Mobility approaches are needed |
Fortunately, not all the news is bad. Quietly a new era is taking shape and has already made sufficient progress so that it can be seen and learned from in the places where it is doing the job -- offering real-world, on-street and in-pocketbook improvements, many of which can be put to work in your city or community. And by contrast with traditional practices, these new approaches can generate visible results within an extremely short period of time -- and at far lower levels of cost: the
New Mobility Agenda
What's the difference between the old transport model and the one that is quietly taking its place? Well, the one that is winding down, often with considerable pain, is the hugely costly "all car/no choice" system which has dominated public policy and private practice for more than half a century in most cities around the world. The big problem with the old system is similar to that of any kind of dominant monoculture: it simply lacks the variety and flexibility, and hence the resilience and adaptability, needed to ensure long-term survival in a changing world.
What is starting to replace the old model in enough places and with enough success to mark the clear dawning of a new era is the New Mobility Agenda, a wide-open, collaborative, international move to a more varied, complex, robust and synergistic transportation polyculture. What is striking about this is that the main driver for this transition lies not in fears of environmental catastrophe or oil shut-down, and not even in our collective good sense or ethics, but rather in the fact that enough successful new practices and models are starting to show results that we now, finally, start to have real choices.
Playing the "Car Card": But there is more to technical and political success than just good thoughts about sustainability. We do not live in a vacuume so it is also important to be realistic -- and for that reason one innovative pillar of the Reinventing Transport project is that it plays the so-called "Car Card". Briefly this boils down to making sure that we address the problems and concerns of car owner/drivers as well in positive way. Therefore , the project offers a number of new ideas for improving their use of public space, improving their economics, and improving the convenience of using their own cars. And all that without losing track of where the overall policy package must go: fewer cars, more mobility, a city that works, and higher quality of life all around.
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