This year, Transportation Camp DC brought together more than 500 transportation professionals and students dedicated to multimodal mobility. As an unconference, the event encouraged input from more different voices than a dozen ordinary conferences.
From the oversized menu of events, I chose five, loosely based on the themes of public input, access, and equity. Because so many people spoke so rapidly, it was impossible for me to identify who said what, so I will mostly present these as a kind of hive mind.
A key point that came up in several sessions was the idea of a Universal Basic Mobility to parallel the idea of Universal Basic Income. Equitable, safe mobility, most Campers agreed, is a basic human right.
One card to rule them all
The first event I attended, “Draining the Swamp: Simplify Subsidy Programs to Reduce Dependence,” presented a blueprint toward better serving those with limited mobility. Steve Yaffe, retired Transportation Operations Manager at Arlington County, explained that over 80 different federal programs provide rides to various groups, with little coordination. We are in a mobility revolution, but government isn’t doing enough to catch up.
Yafee suggested a single card, similar to DC’s SmartCard but more comprehensive, that would be usable by all modes—scooter, bus, train, bikeshare, access vans, and ride-hailing. The idea is that people are best equipped to understand their own mobility needs, to budget and make decisions. A card empowers them to do so.
A mobility version of the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card currently used by state welfare agencies, the new card would provide payment and would automatically calculate plans that include free or discount service. For those without credit it would be linked directly to debit cards. A common database would include such details as mobility aids needed by an individual. It would be designed for ease of entering new and different mobility options, such as a local vanpool, into the system.
One concern during the discussion is the need to ensure proper training to take care of special needs, such as wheelchair access. This would require a training program and perhaps licensing, but would be easy to set up the database to track.
Lessons from Vision Zero in Philadelphia and Washington, DC
Perhaps the most basic equity and access issue is the ability to cross the street without getting hit by a car. This was the topic of the session “Moving the needle: (How) is vision zero working in your city?” For those who don’t know, Vision Zero is the campaign to eliminate traffic fatalities by redesigning streets and rules to account for human error.
The presenters, Heike Jacob and Alex Baum, discussed Philadelphia’s rather late start on Vision Zero and apparent tremendous success. This stands in sharp contrast to Washington DC, which has seen pedestrian deaths increase every year, while in Philadelphia they went down.
Upon further discussion, that decrease might be something of a statistical anomaly, as Philadelphia’s program started after a rise in pedestrian deaths that leveled off in 2017. Another discussant also pointed out that DC’s streets are increasingly filled with scooters, bikes, and walkers, leaving people far more exposed than in Philadelphia. Overall, the discussion revealed the difficulty not just in collecting data about walkers and bikers but of attributing causation.
Still, we do know that certain actions are likely to decrease pedestrian deaths. Three primary principles are education, enforcement, and engineering. One of the participants, however, argued that education is the least important of these and engineering most effective.
A primary engineering solution is a road diet. Slowing traffic, for instance by narrowing lane width, might be the single best way to reduce traffic deaths. Not only are fewer people hit, but a person struck at 20 miles per hour has only a 10 percent chance of dying, versus 90 percent at 40 mph.
Of course, a Vision Zero program is only as good as its implementation, and the politics are tricky. Opposition from drivers is a key problem. Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street added a protected bike lane that spurred enough angry calls to put the lane’s future in doubt. Even worse happened in Los Angeles, when a wealthy neighborhood hired a PR firm to protest a protected bike lane that slowed car traffic, including a social media campaign. This backlash has dampened Vision Zero not just in LA but elsewhere in California.
The session concluded with a discussion of better ways to advocate for Vision Zero. Participants thought the name was jargony and can alienate some people. One person suggested blunt statements to politicians, such as “when are you going to stop murdering children.” I wonder if that degree of bluntness might be counterproductive, but direct language is needed, such as, perhaps, “Current policies are leading to the death of children. How can we protect them”?
How can we eliminate misinformation about reducing car use?
As the previous makes clear, inertia is tricky. It would be easy just to vilify the wealthy Californians who are blocking Vision Zero (I know I really, really want to), but this will just intensify conflict. Liz Raskpof led a discussion on “the greatest challenges to effective public engagement” that employed a free-flowing format.
Pushing car advocates into a defensive corner will not work, participants agreed. Driving is a lifestyle issue, and directly assaulting lifestyle doesn’t work. Even where data is largely on the Vision Zero side, people seem hard-wired to double down on existing beliefs.
Driving is a lifestyle issue, and directly assaulting that lifestyle doesn’t work. But there is a workaround.
Fortunately, there’s an antidote in human nature, as humans do respond to stories much more than just hard numbers. So it’s a matter of telling the right stories (then backing them with data).
One thing participants were adamant about is hatred of traditional public meetings. The same people keep showing up, they are not representative of their communities, and they are impervious to change. It is therefore imperative to find new means of public engagement, from social media to visiting community centers, malls, and public events (as Mobility Lab has discussed). One participant even suggested riding buses to talk to people.
Another tactic is to work on projects in small chunks to gradually win over public support. In Silicon Valley, explained one participant, a $35 million corridor plan was resoundingly defeated. The proponents had some success when they switched to a piecemeal approach, breaking the project into small changes, such as just adding transit signal priority or just moving a bus stop, and carefully explaining the data behind each action.
It is also important to point out the ways change benefits opponents, for instance, noting that their own children will be safer with road diets or that they, themselves, will be able to remain in their beloved neighborhood when they age and downsize if small, affordable units are available.
How to defeat NIMBYs
The idea of trial approaches that don’t demand a sudden overturning of lifestyles was central to a presentation “Defeat NIMBY-ism in your own backyard,” presented by the technology company Swiftly. (NIMBY stands for “not-in-my-backyard”.)
The central problem is that the impact of a project, such as a new light rail line, is felt particularly strongly in one neighborhood or community even though the benefits are widely shared. Because many people who will benefit from the light rail line likely don’t live next door to it, they might not be aware of how they can benefit from the project until it happens. It’s easy, then, to galvanize opponents (the people who live next door) but hard to mobilize possible supporters.
Guerrilla style advocacy for protected bike lanes in Wichita. https://t.co/eC2KIKwfOb From @KSNNews | Moving the conversation on #cycling. pic.twitter.com/HuP42csmyL
— 20/20/20 Movement (@202020movement) February 27, 2017
To remedy this, the session’s leaders recommended pilot projects, such as a Wichita, Kansas protected bike lane that was built using plungers (on sale for 50 cents each!). To explain a wayfinding system based on totem-pole style informational displays in downtown Toronto, planners began with cardboard cutouts so that the public could visualize the advantages. These small pilots then led to larger, permanent changes.
Change is still difficult. NIMBYs tend to be older property owners who vote at high rates. More young and low income people need to speak up, but getting them to public meetings is not easy. One suggestion is voter mobilization campaigns to counteract the power of NIMBYs. One participant even ran against a local NIMBY and is now a neighborhood commissioner.
It’s also true that there is now a potent, if small, YIMBY (yes-in-my-backyard) movement, people who believe in the power of, for instance, low-income housing or better bus service to create a more equitable society and bring diversity to neighborhoods. This group must be mobilized if there is any hope of defeating NIMBYism.
Despite new innovations, people don’t have equal access to high-quality transportation
With entrenched interests and inertia, inequity continues to plague the transit world. For a session on “Transportation equity: Now and in the future,” the leaders weren’t present. Appropriately for the topic of equity, and for the unconference, the discussion flowed on, organized by all of us.
Inequities remain throughout the transportation system, from legacy systems to the latest innovations. Dockless bikeshare and scooter-share, for instance, struggle to increase accessibility in many ways. They require users to have not just a smartphone but a credit card. Although some companies are working on payment options such as text messaging or using an RFID card, these are not widely implemented. Rebalancing is another issue, since bikes and scooters tend to end up in more affluent areas. Washington, DC does require a minimum of six vehicles in each ward at the start of the day, but given the size of the city, this is woefully inadequate.
Dockless systems are just the latest in a long history of inequity. Many neighborhoods, particularly low-income neighborhoods, lack safe streets for people walking, biking, or using scooters. In other cities, such as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, critical infrastructure, such as sidewalks, is simply missing.
Discussants also noted ride-hailing largely is inaccessible for people with physical disabilities, since Uber and Lyft aren’t ADA accessible. There are some attempts to change that. Uber is piloting ADA accessible vehicles in six cities, but this doesn’t come close to matching needs. At least one participant argued that relying on private companies for paratransit would produce bad results, as they are answerable first and foremost to their shareholders.
Politicians and planners, too, were faulted, largely for driving cars rather than using the modes they are charged with managing. One participant suggested that transit board members be required to live without a car for three months to understand not just commuting but other essential activities, like shopping for groceries.
The gap between those with access to cars and safe streets and those without is wide and decisions are not made equitably. Until that changes, until we have real transportation democracy, it will be a slog toward safer streets and convenient transit for all.