The Myth-ing Truth

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“You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” Col. Jessep spits at Lt. Kaffee in the 1992 blockbuster, A Few Good Men.

It was a favourite film in my early teens. I could have quoted whole scenes at the time, but I haven’t seen it for many years. So what made me think of it?

I was reading tweets trending under #cycleactivecity, the Twitter Handle for the Cycle City Active City conference in Leicester on 19-20 May. I should have been there. I had been scheduled a short slot to speak about bike share, but I couldn’t make the logistics / finances of childcare and travel stack up. So I was checking what people there were tweeting about.

Someone had used the opportunity to launch a new website: Cycling Fallacies: http://cyclingfallacies.com/en/.

I admire this initiative and the interactive approach to dispelling common myths about cycling. The authors clearly believe that at least people at a conference on cycling can handle the truth. But does the website itself have a handle on those truths? I’m a transport planner with an ongoing passion for the promotion of sustainable transport and with experience delivering cycle strategy and infrastructure. Surely, I would recognise whether the listed cycling fallacies were myths or not. I had a look.

Yes, there they were. Commonly-heard statements like hilliness or weather or the absence of the Dutch ‘culture’ causing the lack of cycling in Britain. I agree that statements like these aren’t true, and I could give as much or more evidence than the website does as to why.

Some statements of myth were less common, but perhaps because they were so patently false, no explanation was required. Surely, I thought, people aren’t actually claiming that cycling causes congestion, nor that one can’t cycle without getting sweaty. When I used to cycle to work, I simply pedalled slower to avoid the need for a shower on arrival.

Yet I also spotted statements that were less clear-cut fallacy. For example, the need for increased driver education and cyclist skills training are not mythical. They are positive measures, even if they would not solve issues of cycle safety nor increase rates of cycling on their own. I doubt many transport planners or interested members of the public would profess that such measures should be taken in isolation nor that offering training undermines plans to implement cycle infrastructure.

Finally, I saw a statement which challenged me: “Everyone needs to share the road.” Surely, that is truth, not myth? I clicked on it. The explanation was that we can’t depend upon people travelling by car to respect the needs of cyclists on busy roads, so segregation is required. Ok, so maybe I have a different definition of sharing. I was thinking more of the road space, not necessarily the running lanes of a busy distributor road.

That thought might still be myth-understanding the fallacy purported in the original statement. I have been reading Dr Steve Melia’s book, Urban Transport without the Hot Air (2015), and he is also in the business of dispelling myths. He has a chapter on cycling myths and one on shared space myths. If the goal is to increase walking and cycling, he counsels against cycle lanes, shared pedestrian/cycle routes, and the complete ‘decluttering’ advocated by the shared space movement. He points to a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of the latter, and the assumption that there are different ‘types’ of cyclists as myth-takenly supporting the former two approaches. [I noted he attributed this assumption to the vocal British ‘sports’ cyclists and its once representative body, the CTC.] Rather, there should be space allocated fully to each mode on busy streets and ‘filtered permeability’ (through routes for cyclists and pedestrians, but not motor vehicles) on quiet streets.

So is that the myth-ing truth? If so, I think I can handle it.

 

 

Live Local, Go Slow, Walk

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May is National Walking Month as promoted by Living Streets, the major pedestrian charity and advocacy group. To celebrate, there are challenges and competitions to walk to school or walk to work or just walk anywhere for 20 minutes a day. There are led leisure walks and plenty of promotional material available in cities, towns and rural areas throughout the UK. With enough summer weather like we had over the weekend, it shouldn’t be too hard a sell. Yet if you think about it, it is odd that it needs to be sold at all.

Almost everyone walks, at least a little. It’s the oldest form of transport there is; walking upright was one of the characteristics that defined early humanoids.

Almost everyone can do it – old, young, unfit, unfamiliar with the roads, with assistance, with friends. It’s the most universally available form of transport, requiring neither money nor license nor necessarily any special infrastructure.

Yet in the Government’s new Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, which is out for consultation until 23 May 2016, the key objective for walking is “to reverse [its] decline”. It is hard to argue with the graph that shows a downward trend in the number of walking stages per person per year. Equally difficult to refute another graph showing the percentage of primary school children who walk to school fluctuating in a falling direction for over a decade, thus the second pedestrian-based objective to “increase” that percentage. However, these objectives are too pessimistic.

Why? Because the old ten-toe express is at least as on trend for 21st century transport as other topics I’ve written about recently, including bikeshare, virtual transport, and fleets of shared, autonomous, electric cars. ‘Walkability’ is in. Sprawl and car-dependency is out. Although it is not always possible to commute by foot, people now want to live where they can walk to shops, services and leisure activities. In terms of commute length, time spent walking is good for you, time spent driving isn’t. There are all the well-known benefits of walking, which you will often hear and see promoted by Living Streets and likeminded organisations and individuals: public health, zero emissions, social inclusion. And then there are the economic benefits.

Research in the United States, long a car-loving society, has shown that the most walkable places are now also the most desirable places to live and work. Local economies in such neighbourhoods, whether built in the 21st or the 19th centuries are thriving and surpassing their 20th century car-oriented counterparts. The issue is that there aren’t enough of them to go around, raising concerns about gentrification, displacement and inequality.

The same concerns could be raised in relation to the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy’s uniquely specific objective on walking to primary school. Are there enough good primary school places in the right locations for all children (or at least an ambitious percentage of 75% or so) to be able to walk to school?

Uninspiring objectives do not cause problems, but nor do they motivate anyone to find solutions. There is a latent demand within today’s populations to walk more. It would be best served by more positive objectives and ambitious targets with lists of cross-tier, cross-sector actions and dedicated funding to match. There are lists of actions and funding sources in the Strategy, incidentally, but I’ll leave you to judge them yourself. In the discipline of transport planning, ‘predict and provide’ was long the methodology used to justify infrastructure to serve new developments and existing demand. For car travel. Maybe it’s time to apply those tools to foot travel instead?

In a globalised world, people live their international lives through a little long-distance travel and a lot of virtual platforms. Is it any surprise that they like to live their physical life locally? Technology, current affairs, climate change – the world’s moving fast enough. Why not go slow in our own neighbourhoods so we can take it in? Do you currently practice or wish you could join the transport trend of walking?

[See original blog written on this theme for The Planner magazine: The School Run Walk]

 

A Transport Take on the Exodus Part III

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As it’s a Friday before a bank holiday weekend; and as it’s the end of Passover and I plan to re-enter the promised land of chametz soon…. Well it’s a good time to be frivolous. And so our story continues…

Our Hebrew chariot chauffeurs, cart train drivers, Nile ferry men and sedan chair carriers are wandering around the desert following an episode of mass road rage upon receiving The Ten Transport Services Commandments (https://go-how.com/2015/04/06/a-transport-take-on-the-exodus-part-ii/). Now their sons and daughters, following in their parents’ footsteps in career but not in attitude, are about to enter the promised land.

Will this be a land of roads free of potholes and rivers free of sewage? The Hebrews send two trusted souls in to check. Their scouts do find the roads and rivers as described by Moses, but they also find plenty of existing inhabitants using those roads and rivers. Their mission becomes one of industrial espionage.

When they return, all the new members of the Transport Workers’ Union Moses had founded gather round, clamouring to hear what the spies have to say.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” asks Caleb, a chariot chauffeur himself.

“Good!” call his fellows.

“The roads are truly well-built, well-maintained and link all the most desirable destinations.”

“Hooray!” The cart train drivers join in the cheer.

The other scout and cart train driver, Rahav, holds up her hand. “But it comes at a cost,” she says. “They have manure-free zones in their cities and settlements. If your horse or camel drops one, you are liable to pay a charge.”

“What blessed regulations,” said a sedan chair carrier in the crowd. He was ignored.

“And that isn’t the only bad news,” continued Caleb. “They also have this strange guild called Chauff-uber. Anyone can join. If they have a chariot, then they get a red guild badge and if they don’t, they get a blue guild flag.”

“What does that mean?” someone asked.

“Anyone with a blue flag can wave for a chariot and anyone with a red badge can answer. They don’t have to do it for a living – they can do it for extra money, as a… hobby.” He whispered the last word and silence fell on the crowd.

Then someone snorted, “Unfair competition!”

Someone else said, “Undercutting, I bet!”

Their complaints echoed in the desert air. A Nile ferry-man shouted out, “Hey, what about us?”

Rahav whistled loudly for attention. “We have not finished. There appears to be few ferry boats on their rivers. They don’t need them, as the rivers are not as wide, the roads are good, there are fords,” she shrugged.

“And there are also fewer overlords,” added Caleb, “so I don’t know if anyone really employs their own sedan chair carriers.”

“Then how are we supposed to make our living?” asks the loud ferry-man.

Caleb and Rahav look to the leader of the Hebrews, Joshua, for his wise answers.

“Perhaps you can hire yourselves out to many different customers for pleasure cruises and special occasions?” he suggested slowly.

Rahav nodded. “Who doesn’t want to scrub themselves up sometimes and then be carried over the dusty streets for the night, however free those streets of potholes and manure?”

“Indeed,” agreed Joshua. “Perhaps small goods and messages could be better carried by boat or foot as well. The Eternal One has brought us here and with his help we will not only learn new ways of working, but also we will continue to develop new ways of transport that benefit all. We will lead the way among nations.”

With many nods and fists of solidarity, the Hebrews agreed that they would enter their new land in freedom and hope.

Happy Passover!

Flying: more or less

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I just got back from America. We had a great time seeing dozens of family and friends. Yet, every time I fly, I feel a pang of guilt. Well, pang might be overstating it, but definitely a twinge.

After all, a major part of my professional life is advocating for sustainable transport and taking action to increase travel options that are friendlier to the environment and society. I tend to practice what I preach as well. I have commuted by bicycle, by train, and now mainly work from home. I walk my daughter to school and my groceries home from the shops. There are many benefits to making such choices, but I would not shirk from saying that reducing my carbon footprint is one of those benefits. I have learned about and believed in climate change for decades.

Yet I continue to fly. Regularly. As do many others. And although I feel a twinge of guilt, I wouldn’t want to see air travel severely restricted, even as I want to see the nations and cities of the world come together to fight climate change. In fact, if flight was restricted, wouldn’t the coming together of nations for whatever purpose be restricted as well?

So what place does flight have in the future of movement? Is the recent trend of more flights to more places carrying more passengers set to continue? Or will it come to an abrupt halt in our lifetimes?

Many argue for the importance of air travel on economic grounds, but only 19% of airplane passengers are travelling for business.

Yet flying for tourism, cultural exchange, exploration, international experience and involvement is not bereft of value either, not least economic value. Even if that value accrues to other countries more than my own.

And I would argue that flying for family has inestimable value to the positive development of our world civilisation. I previously suggested (https://go-how.com/2014/04/14/flying-for-family/) that leisure travel to visit family rather than for pure tourism likely accounts for a greater percentage of air passengers than commonly considered. Over 8 million people or 13% of the resident population of the UK in 2014 were born elsewhere. It would be fair to assume that a large number of these people, whether UK citizens or not, have family outside the country to visit, perhaps regularly, even if they can’t all boast of the numbers I saw this trip.

So flight must have a future. But perhaps its future requires more endeavour to remove those twinges of guilt.

The car is accelerating towards new technologies much faster than the airplane, but there is some progress to report. A solar airplane has flown over halfway round the world and is soon to complete the rest of its journey; http://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/three-unusual-ways-solar-soaring. Solar power is gaining traction in other areas of the sector as well.

Meanwhile, NASA and commercial aircraft manufacturers are reported to be researching the future of supersonic air travel, with the aim of not only economic viability, but less emissions too: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/supersonic-flight-concordes-successors-are-in-the-works-15-years-on-from-the-paris-crash-10415912.html.

Trends in other forms of transport are emphasising the sharing economy and utilisation of idle capacity. With more cooperation between nations, cities and airlines, I am certain that air travel too could become more efficient. Whenever I read about the debate around hub airports and expanding London’s Heathrow, I always wonder what could be achieved if Heathrow, Amsterdam’s Schipol and Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airports could collaborate to better serve the flying public and the local communities, never mind the environment. If they no longer saw themselves as competitors, perhaps an analysis of flight paths and filling seats could translate to significant fuel savings. There could be apps that guide passengers to journey choices that enable flights and airports to operate at optimum capacity in near real-time. Such application of current technological trends and use of big data is surely more likely if conglomerates of airports are involved.

I would like to believe that human flight is a 21st century trend that is and can be sustained. But that will only be the case if air travel can supress its extensive emissions and I can fly, without the guilt.

Frozen Fuel Duty

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A few short months after the UK Chancellor George Osbourne’s spending review, he has produced his eighth budget. Despite a bleaker economic outlook than in November 2015, much of the transport agenda remains the same. Yes, there were new announcements about northern infrastructure projects and Crossrail 2, but I don’t need to rehash my views on the prioritisation of major rail and road building over investment in local, sustainable and active transport. I did that after the spending review announcements: https://go-how.com/2015/12/01/spend-nationally-speak-locally/.

But there was one other transport-related, noteworthy item: fuel duty, also known as gas tax, is to remain frozen. Frozen in time at a rate that becomes ever more insignificant. Why? When increased tax receipts are so desperately needed? When prices at the pumps are lower than ever and people would barely notice? When back in 2010, the Conservative Party Manifesto suggested stabilising fuel prices, so tax would be lower when oil prices were higher and vice-versa? I haven’t even mentioned the recent commitments made in Paris to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, but then the budget also included financial aid for the oil and gas industry, so draw your own conclusions.

Why? Politics of course.

Then I went to the #smartertravellive conference, with hundreds of other transport planners, engineers and related professionals. I went to run a speed-learning session on bikeshare, but I also went to learn. And I learned that fuel duty may well become obsolete anyway. Cars and how people use them are changing. Shared. Electric. Autonomous. These are three trends in automotive circles that are accelerating and merging.

Congestion occurs when roads are filled to capacity with vehicles. Yet the vehicles are not filled to capacity, but often ¾ empty. Furthermore, most cars are only in use 5% of the time. The other 95% of the day, they are idle resources. The sharing economy is all about making better use of idle resources, and ever more people are changing their ideas of access and ownership. At #smartertravellive we were told that car manufacturers are selling vehicles to small groups rather than individuals. They are running car clubs or carsharing schemes like Zipcar, which are proliferating. In England and Wales, London leads the way, but even outside London, there are 22,500 members of car clubs sharing 700 vehicles and Carplus, a research and advocacy organisation for shared transport, reports that these members have sold or otherwise disposed of 2,700 private cars in the last 12 months alone.

Meanwhile, electric cars are still a small minority of the vehicles on the road, but their popularity is increasing rapidly, with over 50,000 registered in the UK in 2015 compared to 3,500 in 2013. The UK Government is investing in electric automotive technology, supporting both consumers and manufacturers. At the beginning of this month came the announcement that a 1,100 km network of rapid charging points (charging batteries to 80% capacity in 30 minutes) had been installed across the British Isles with 74 rapid chargers located at strategic points to enable longer distance travel by electric vehicles.

The UK government is also supporting the virtual and actual testing of autonomous vehicles, known to most of us as driverless cars. The clear intention is that the UK wants to be at the forefront of adopting the new technology.

Shared. Electric. Autonomous. Fewer vehicles filled with more people won’t raise as much fuel duty as the still current trend of mainly single-occupancy, commuter-driven cars. Electric cars won’t raise any fuel duty at all. In Oregon, USA, where electric and hybrid cars have long been popular, a voluntary mileage-based tax was introduced for a small number of drivers last summer. Car-sharing schemes are also going electric. And if the vehicles become autonomous too, then why own. If shared and stored at depots, why not have charging points there?

Professor John Miles asked the #smartertravellive conference delegates: Will we carry on using cars in 5 years’ time? He then provided the answer. Yes. But not necessarily on the same terms many do now. So if I could have a word with Mr. Osborne, I’d tell him that if he doesn’t take the opportunity to raise some much-needed tax receipts from car fuel now, future Chancellors may soon have no such receipts to raise. What will they make political capital from freezing then?

Research

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Research.

What comes to mind when you hear or see the word?

A computer screen displaying a Wikipedia article or a Google search results list?

Or a library?

The couple of shelves of reference books in your nearest branch library, or the large room of periodicals and Dewey-decimalised bookcases in an average town’s central library? Or perhaps you can dredge up an image of a large municipal or academic or even national library. One in a building of civic proportions, with row upon row and room following room of commonly used sources interspersed with desks and tables, and sometimes people at those tables, researching.

If you are very fortunate, the word can conjure up even more rarefied images. Images of doors to stacks and archives housed in basements, and attics, and warehouses with mechanical ladders, and compacted floors with no windows and half-height staircases between them. Such spaces are usually the province of reference librarians only, but sometimes others are allowed in. These are images that bring research into the realm of imagination. Or they do for me, especially as I remember and reimagine myself in the stacks in Butler Library, Columbia University, where, far from the noise of New York City, one could journey up to the top of the multitude of short flights to rediscover daylight on none other than the building’s roof. Only the addition of Terry Pratchett’s Orangutan Librarian handing me a banana could enhance the vision further.

There are, of course, other, more realistic images of research. Images of laboratories and observatories, surveys and censuses, references and reviews. Yet such images, though less romantic in their visualisation, are quite as enticing in their purpose. Research, I think, is no less than one of the cornerstones of civilisation. Research renews and creates civilisation, whether the topic is focused on understanding the past or investigating the potential future.

Why am I writing about research and what does it have to do with transport?

I have been thinking that transport research is what I am spending more and more of my time doing. Whether I am seeking inspiration for this mainly transport-focused blog or striving to keep up with all the news and studies cited in my professional journals and bulletins, I am researching. Usually from my desk at home, via the tools of the internet, but researching nonetheless.

In past working roles, there were plenty of reading and writing tasks, yet I only infrequently had the opportunity to do something I considered to be research. I was reacting and reporting, designing and delivering. I was only occasionally working to “establish facts and reach new conclusions” (OED). Often facts were provided by clients or became subjective with political spin. Conclusions were made as recommendations for action, but they could be based on existing programmes or precedents. They weren’t necessarily the result of an investigation into the evidence available, nor were they necessarily ‘new’. Time and support for innovation, never mind research, can be scarce commodities in the offices of many employers.

Yet now I am able to take the time, and I enjoy doing so. I have realised that research is not just a search for evidence or knowledge. It is discovering evidence and gaining knowledge that can improve understanding, give insights, untangle perspectives. Even reading news articles, I can research the range of discourse to arrive at a more balanced picture of events than that provided by the day’s headlines. Research demands a systematic approach and sometimes a scientific methodology, but that is part of its nature rather than its appeal. For me, how research can expand the mind, both individually and collectively, is what makes me feel privileged to have opportunities to think about research, write about research and do, in my own way, research.

 

Virtually Virtual Transport

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In January, I wrote about bike share and its potential to become an iconic mode of transport for the 21st century. It had me thinking, what other transport trends might shape the future of movement? The first that came to mind was not a transport mode, but the concept of virtual transport. I define this as various means of telecommunications used to undertake activities that would otherwise require travel.

Virtual transport doesn’t have a long history, but neither is it as recent a phenomenon as bike share. I remember significant speculation in the early noughties about the potential for working from home and tele-conferencing to reduce the need to travel. Indeed, ‘reducing the need to travel’ was a stock phrase, certain to be included in the list of sustainable transport measures in multi-modal strategies and local transport plans. Fewer journeys would mean less congestion, lower carbon emissions, happier and more productive people.

So is virtual transport as transforming as it was expected to be?

Take telecommuting. Reducing car commuting was the aim of many of those plans and strategies. The ability to telecommute has increased over the years. Most office workers could as easily complete the majority of their tasks – corresponding by email, writing reports, building spreadsheets, etc – at home as at a centralised office. Services can also sometimes be delivered remotely. Doctors offer telephone appointments to discuss a patient’s health and may even write a prescription and send it to their nearest pharmacy. I have a friend who teaches over Skype, working with schoolchildren who have struggled in the traditional classroom. Even manual work could be virtual, if robots undertake physical tasks directed by off-site humans.

And yet, for all the potential and technological capability, employers still want to see their employees on a regular basis. Staff often have a desire to keep their home and work environments separate. Or they enjoy being able to socialise and interact with colleagues. Trust built on body language needs bodies present. It seems that in the world of work, virtual transport has its limits.

What about other virtual transport? Virtual shopping for comparison goods and basic groceries is an ever-growing slice of the market. Online sales are up and shop sales down. Yet the result of virtual retail is fewer consumer journeys and more freight and delivery journeys. Purchases must reach their purchaser. We’re not quite at the stage where we want to buy virtual clothes or eat a virtual dinner.

Maybe the generation that will transform transport planning by virtual transport has simply not come of age yet. There are plenty of articles written on the impact of technology on teenagers and young adults, but one of the most-discussed is that they are socialising and spending their leisure time with friends through platforms like Facebook, messaging apps, chat rooms, online gaming, etc. Do they then make fewer social and leisure trips? Certainly, there has been extensive debate that in the face of squeezed personal budgets, they’ll choose the smartphone and tablet computer over buying a car.

However, I am somewhat sceptical that my children will see the end of actual transport. Humans need human interaction, which includes touching each other: shaking hands, kissing cheeks, hugging. Reducing the need to travel should be as much about making places more integrated and multi-use so that work, shops, services and leisure facilities can all be within walking and cycling distance, rather than assuming people should do everything virtually and remotely.

Conversely, most people do some things, and some work, remotely. People go to the office every day, but then check their work emails at home. There are temporary offices and meeting rooms for rent, as well as public spaces and cafes with wifi and charging points, allowing flexibility and convenience on an occasional or regular basis. Such infrastructure for virtual transport is essential for 21st century transport planning. It enables emergency response and economic productivity even in the event of ever more frequent extreme weather events, such as storms and flooding.

In conclusion, virtual transport is here to stay, but as one mode among many. Transporting us without moving at all.

Avoiding Responsibility

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I read an editorial the other day inspired by a proposal to remove the white centre lines on a few roads: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/removal-road-markings-safer-fewer-accidents-drivers.

The author, Simon Jenkins, used this news to introduce the concept of shared space, pointing out that it was not a very new concept, but that its uptake in the UK is pathetically slow despite overwhelming evidence that the principles of design it espouses increase road safety. The reason, the article concludes, is because authoritarian traffic engineers and government regulators want to play with their ‘boys’ toys’ (which apparently include traffic lights, one-way streets and cycle lanes) rather than allow ordinary road users to take responsibility for themselves. And that ordinary road users ‘let them’ get away with it.

It was at this point that I took issue. I would say that at least as often as an overenthusiastic traffic engineer or signal programmer overcomplicates a junction, members of the general public have demanded a new signalised pedestrian crossing or more signs or new cycle lanes or even speed cameras. People are not ‘letting’ traffic engineers, transport planners and others overregulate their roads; they are asking them to do it. And this all comes down to both the reason shared space is safer: the reallocation of responsibility to road users; and the reason it is rarely implemented: the desire to avoid responsibility.

Why do I believe this is the case? Well, let me take a step back first. Although I am not entirely sure the evidence is as overwhelming as the article portrays, I have long been an advocate of shared space, properly designed, and its ability in a variety of forms to improve road safety for most types of users. In fact, I have been directly involved in works to ‘declutter’ streetscapes, removing pedestrian guard railings, bollards and excessive signage. I also managed the policy input, scheme development and public consultation exercises for an area of local shops with a history of traffic accidents that at one point some of us on the team hoped might be transformed into an innovative shared space. It wasn’t.

Yes, there was a traffic engineer who said people in the neighbourhood ‘weren’t ready’ for such innovation. And there were strong views in favour of more control, rather than less, as a response to new development in the vicinity. But there were also local motorists who spoke out against the changes and then contradicted themselves by asking for six pedestrian crossing facilities in this small area to cross a mere three roads. Did they not trust themselves to drive through without running over schoolchildren unless traffic signals told them to stop?

Avoidance of responsibility is a trend in various aspects of modern society. Why else would Donald Trump be the frontrunner in the Republican presidential election campaign in the USA? People say they like that he is a ‘man of principle.’ Or is it really that they like the way he agrees to take responsibility for making unilateral decisions so that they don’t have to?

Shared space is a concept that is ripe for proliferation. It makes the public realm safer, encourages pedestrians and cyclists, encourages people to take responsibility and interact with their neighbours. Ideas piloted in those fabled, progressive European cities have spread around the world before. Ideas like pedestrianised shopping streets or public bikeshare schemes. Can shared spaces do the same? I don’t think traffic engineers or transport planners can stand in the way of an idea whose time has come. But local people unwilling to see change and afraid of responsibility could undermine improvements to their own streets and neighbourhoods. Perhaps the real responsibility of transport professionals is to educate them to respond otherwise.

Bikeshare: Poster Child or Passing Fad

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As January rumbles on, the new year forecasts and fortune telling continues apace. The state of the economy is a favourite for prognosticators, but elections (whether in November as in the US or not until May 2020 as in the UK), migration, climate, technology…. They’ve all made headlines.

In the transport sector, the headlines have mainly been won by the automobile of the future: driverless, electric, perhaps ownerless.

I’d like to put forward another candidate for transport form of the future: Cycle Hire (UK) or Bikeshare (US).

Bikeshare is the perfect fit for the 21st century. It is a publicly-available form of private transport, with smart infrastructure, operation and payment systems and real time, location-specific information. It is also a moving advertisement for the ability of cities to tackle modern challenges to public health, the environment, safety and access. Meanwhile, users get all the choice without any of the commitment, a perfect example of the sharing economy.

Over the last decade, bicycle hire has evolved from vacation bicycle rentals, organisation pool bikes and a few tentative trials into a full scale form of urban transport operational in hundreds of cities world-wide. It is not a stand-alone transport system, but complements existing public and private transport networks and is growing in popularity and importance and helping the bicycle grow its mode share.

But the future of bikeshare is not all plain sailing. Poor infrastructure, wavering political support and unrealistic business models could make recent progress appear a passing fad. Unless we make sure that doesn’t happen.

There is a desire for bikeshare among 21st century urban populations. The market for access to such goods and services on-demand is burgeoning in sectors from TV to travel. In transport terms, fewer people want to own, store and maintain their own bicycle (or car). However, they do want to choose their route, the length of rental, whether they want to take a bus or get a lift for the return journey.

These populations want ease of access and convenience, which means readily-available, geographic information, which is accurate in real time on their mobiles. Third generation bikeshare schemes have RFID chips and sometimes GPS trackers built into the bicycles. The docking stations are smart too. Most systems have their own apps. And as Moovit (http://www.geektime.com/2016/01/12/moovit-includes-global-bicycle-sharing-tracking-in-their-latest-update/) adds bikeshare data from around the world to their app, the complete transport package is becoming reality.

Unfortunately, that reality still fails to reach as wide a swathe of those urban populations as it should. Various bikeshare customer surveys indicate that the ridership is skewed towards young, male urban professionals. Are women, who have voiced their preference in other surveys for more segregation from traffic and more safety measures, discouraged by poor quality bicycle infrastructure? In 2011, the handbook Optimising Bike Sharing in European Cities was published. It listed the presence or absence of basic cycling infrastructure as its number one factor for the success and survival of bikeshare schemes.

Meanwhile, bikeshare is an emblem of civic pride in many places where mayors and municipal leaders want to showcase their efforts to reduce transport carbon emissions and air pollution and improve public health. However, because of the publicity bikeshare can attract, support for such schemes does not always survive a change in local leadership. In other cases, local governments are tentative and willing to fund only pilot schemes, which are much more likely to fail, as they do not provide sufficient coverage and convenience to attract significant ridership and fare income.

Which brings us to the third threat to bikeshare’s current success and future potential: unrealistic business models. I wrote about this before: https://go-how.com/2014/03/25/the-business-of-bike-hire/. Unfortunately, my observations of two years ago are still relevant. London may have a new sponsor and increased its ridership figures again and New York’s system has also seen improvements, but the obstacle of funding uncertainty remains for many schemes. I was excited to hear about the Bikeshare Transit Act (http://bikeportland.org/2016/01/07/rep-blumenauer-launches-bikeshare-transit-act-to-provide-funding-certainty) being introduced in the US Congress by a congressman who wants to see funding certainty provided to bikeshare systems in the same way it is provided to other public transport: through regular national subsidies. Could that happen in the UK too?

Whether by national legislation or neighbourhood action, my crystal ball shows that bikeshare is a perfect fit to be the 21st century poster child for urban transport. Now let’s make that fortune into the actual future.

Floods of the Future… Now

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For my first blog of 2016, there are some obvious topics.

One is New Year’s Resolutions. I tackled that two years ago and wrote about physical activity and how perhaps the transport and public health benefits can keep us to our commitments a little longer: https://go-how.com/2014/01/02/a-physical-impact/. Looking back, the blog still stands. Or moves. No need to write it again.

A second topic is what is new in the New Year. Here in the UK, rail commuters are greeted every year by new fares. Higher fares. Despite the policy promises to freeze regulated rail fares and introduce flexible season tickets late last year, I’ve seen enough on the news and Twitter as people went back to work on Monday, 4 January to suggest that not enough has happened yet to make my blog last year an un-fare reflection of this new year as well: https://go-how.com/2014/12/31/a-happy-new-fare/.

The most obvious topic, however, is not one that has to do with the annual change of number on calendars, but one that has been inescapable news for the last month: Floods. Since the beginning of December, parts of the UK have seen homes, businesses, villages and even cities were submerged under feet of water as storm after storm made December 2015 the wettest for over 100 years in Scotland, Wales and northwest England.

Even in the comparatively dry southeast, I thought I might have to invent a new sport of mud-skiing when I took my children to a local playground. And when we went to visit relatives on the Welsh borders, I didn’t dare take my toddler out for a walk on the usually lovely (and high ground of the) village common for fear of losing him in mud as deep and dangerous as quicksand.

The year as a whole is provisionally making the Met Office’s list of top ten wettest years since records of such things began in 1910. Even before the rains of Storm Desmond, Eva and Frank battered the British Isles, a met office blog: http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/tag/wettest/ noted that seven of those top ten years have been since 1998. Perhaps it is now eight of ten? Global warming and climate change anyone?

Enter link to transport:

Transport is a major carbon emitter, so transport planners are working hard to reduce emissions with measures aimed to increase walking, cycling and public transport use and to replace public, private and commercial vehicle fleets with electric/zero-emission vehicles powered by renewably-generated energy.

Yet, it’s not enough. The floods are here and even with all the commitments of the Paris conference, likely to get worse.

Still, is it a coincidence that a Transport Minister has been set to oversee the flood response in Yorkshire? Highways services often have responsibility over the maintenance of storm drains and street gutters. I only focused on transport in my review of the spending review: https://go-how.com/2015/12/01/spend-nationally-speak-locally/, but there are parallels between the budgets for the Department for Transport and local governments and that of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has responsibility for flood control. Namely, a focus on infrastructure spending, undermined by cuts in revenue and maintenance spending and indeed overall budget.

Conclusion? Transport planners need to get involved in adaptation and we need to be creative. Not by inventing mud skiing or recommending that people keep canoes in their garages (although the canoe is the bicycle of the water). Rather, by how we build and maintain our roads and drains and other public infrastructure.

Car parks, for example. When I worked at Reading, an annual question was how many days during that year had the Park and Ride site in the flood plain of the River Lodden been closed due to flood warnings and how much money had been lost in fares whilst paying rent on the private car park the service used. The solution to this perennial problem was realised in 2015: a replacement Park and Ride site on drier ground. Yet, ignoring the land ownership issue, true adaptation might have gone one step further – making the old site a fit-for-purpose water storage area that might protect property downstream.

Likewise, what role could riverside roads, whether highways or pedestrian/cycle green-ways play in offering another level to which a river could rise, another barrier before the waters cascade into buildings? Centuries-old bridges have been broken by the recent floods – could we not only rebuild them stronger, but also better, designed to not only withstand, but accommodate and re-direct flood waters?

This Christmas, the UK had yet another taste of the floods of the future. Floods have caused billions in damage more frequently than ever before. They will continue to do so unless politicians and professionals think strategically and creatively. Transport planners and engineers are one set of professionals that can help.