As transportation-policy rockstar Ray LaHood once said at a Mobility Lab event, there should be Mobility Labs all over the U.S.
While our little shop headquartered in Arlington, Va., may still be the only Mobility Lab in the country, there may soon be another. With Aspen, Colo., “drowning in automobiles,” Mayor Steve Skadron is hoping to experiment with the ways people get around in his skiing mecca.
According to the Aspen Times:
The main idea is to offer options that will realistically compete with people’s private cars. That could mean providing a fleet of electric bikes and buses with space for people to bring gear and dogs aboard. It also could mean offering a fleet of ride-share mopeds, a network of on-demand electric vehicle shuttles or self-driving vans, according to a statement announcing the mobility lab.
It might also mean reconfiguring downtown streets for a better traffic flow and eliminating parking to make streets more people-oriented, according to city officials.
In order to make the mobility lab happen, the city must find people, companies, and organizations to fund it. That will likely include reaching out to technology companies like Tesla and Google “who might be interested in bringing a fleet of electric cars or autonomous vehicles to Aspen,” the statement says. Another option is Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has pledged to help cities figure out what is possible with transportation, officials said.
The lab likely will cost about $1 million, which the city cannot afford, said Ashley Perl, the city’s climate-action manager.
While infrastructure improvements are always a costly and time-consuming struggle, part of Aspen’s plan that aligns most with the strategies we use at our own Mobility Lab is the idea of engaging the community and local businesses. What worked for us was to do local research about transportation options over many years, and then use that data to help convince leaders which kinds of options were most realistic and could pay back dividends both financially and in terms of making our area awesome.
That kind of strategy can’t simply be dropped in for a short period. It takes years of planning and relationship building throughout the community. One of the programs we regularly research with collaboratively is Arlington Transportation Partners, which helps more than 220 businesses and properties make transportation easier in the county. ATP has worked hard over a long time to build up so many relationships that in turn make such a difference in cutting down on traffic jams.
The idea for the mobility lab came about a year ago during a conversation with a representative of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Councilman Bert Myrin said he’d like to see the main focus of the study concentrate on the area between the Intercept Lot and Aspen. He said he supported using city funds for the project and felt that the $60,000 the city paid for new grass at Wagner Park after the recent Food & Wine Classic would have been better spent on the mobility lab.
Perl said city staff will need as much as $125,000 to fund phase one of implementing the mobility study.
Councilor Ward Hauenstein suggested enlisting psychologists instead of transportation consultants to figure out how to get people out of their cars.
That’s probably a really smart way to go. It seems like getting people to change their transportation habits would be easy, but take it from us, it’s not.
Photo of Aspen traffic jam by Daniel X. O’Neil/Flickr.