This article argues for a much more integrated approach to transportation policy and regulation

   This post is authored by Carlos Pardo, NUMO’s senior manager of pilots. 

27 Feb. 2020

How Magic Carpets Could Change the Way We Think about Transportation Policy

We need to get radical about transforming transportation policy.

Technology — particularly access to data and the almost overnight emergence of tech-enabled mobility disruptions such as electric scooters, app-based ride-hailing and more — has led us here.

In just a few years, we have witnessed the abrupt entrance and rapid proliferation of new vehicles, services, actors and business models that have shifted how we use transportation as well as the expectations we have regarding mobility choices.

Amid the unrelenting pace of these disruptive changes, we are gradually waking up to the fact that the way we think about how we connect people to the places and things they need is outdated and tends to promote an unjust, inefficient transportation system that prioritizes moving fast, heavy and dangerous automobiles over the right of way of pedestrians, cyclists and other street users. But if we do nothing, this moment of opportunity to transform a hundred-year-old system will be wasted.

There’s just one problem. Well… many, actually. But the one I’m talking about is archaic thinking when it comes to transportation (but also urban planning and policymaking because they’re inextricably linked as both a problematic consequence of and the solution to fixing our transportation system).

We tend to design our cities, our transportation systems and the rules that govern them separately — completely siloed and without the insight that will be necessary for not only fixing our inefficient transportation system, but also creating more joyful cities where people lead quality lives and are connected to economic opportunities.

Cities, states and even entire countries are unwilling (or unable) to respond quickly to the breathtaking pace of change in the transportation sector. Those who do react to new vehicles and business models do so with policies and best practices that are decades or even a century old. One of the more explicit examples of this problem is when cities impose far higher fines on improperly-parked shared scooters than on double-parked automobiles or those illegally parked in handicap spaces, despite scooters having a much smaller physical footprint.

If we want to take bold steps to think beyond our inefficient transportation system that prioritizes cars and treats people and all other modes as second-class, we must first break down and reconstruct the mindsets and resulting policies that govern land use and transportation. After all, we can’t solve our problems with the same kind of thinking that created them (thanks, Einstein).

Think differently than the way we always have. Easier said than done, right? It can be done, though — with the right tool.

Enter magic carpets. I promise I’ll explain.

If we’re to undergo a radical relearning of why, how and where we move, we need to redefine the rules of space.

No, not that kind of space.

This kind of space. Urban space. Street space. Public space and right of way.

Right now, the right of way — the space we have available in our streets — is predominantly allocated to cars, which are larger, heavier, greater in number, less adaptable and less maneuverable than other modes. These features help us justify the prioritization of cars on many streets, resulting in a vicious cycle in which cars force out other modes that are lighter, smaller and more nimble. This cycle also highlights the inefficiency of our transportation system, which is increasingly unsafe, unsustainable and congested.

But when we try to enact measures — reallocating street space or implementing road pricing, for instance — intended to curtail problems like congestion, some then argue it’s unfair to charge drivers a fee or to take lanes away from them. Meanwhile, urban residents trying to go about their day on foot, bike, scooter or moped find their streets unusable and unsafe because space is a finite resource and there is no more left for them. Many pedestrian advocates protest that they get the smallest piece of the pie, even though most people are pedestrians for at least some of the time.

We need a leveling of the playing field, but we can only get there when we move beyond thinking what is possible and begin to anticipate what could be possible.

We can start by crafting better, more flexible policies that proactively expect the unexpected — planning for disruptions rather than reacting when disruption happens. For better or worse, we are getting used to seeing new disruptions in transportation all the time. Each of these new vehicles and services has concrete attributes that can guide us toward better policies that are suited for both the new mobility disruptions yet to come and the elements of our transportation system we want to keep (public transit, electric car fleets).

Better, more flexible transportation policies. Ok. But then why magic carpets?

It’s a thought exercise. If magic carpets were to appear, like scooters or app-based ride-hailing once did, on our streets tomorrow morning, how would our current transportation policies fare? Not well: we probably would see bans on magic carpet circulation the next day, fines for riding magic carpets on urban streets and resulting protests of users who already are delighted with that new service. But no real solution would materialize.

A good, proactive transportation policy will offer a clear regulatory response to disruptions such as magic carpets while also prioritizing and preserving the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable users. Those policies, however, still need to be developed.

So how would we regulate magic carpets if they were to appear on our streets overnight? We can’t with our current policies. That’s the point of this extended metaphor — to get us to think outside of the box and guide transport policy to become flexible and clever enough to expect the unexpected.

If magic carpets did one day appear on the streets, city planners and engineers would have to make concrete decisions about where they can be ridden and how they will interact with other road users. What are the principles that will guide us to these decisions? What criteria should we prioritize when allocating street space for magic carpets? How do we determine whether magic carpets should be charged — and how much — to use roads? After all, even if magic carpets fly above streets, they will still need space to land. Should single-passenger magic carpets be given the same landing priority as multi-passenger magic carpets? Do we want to phase out less efficient, more polluting forms of transport? If so, how might deployment and regulation of magic carpets help us accomplish that goal? And how might elements of magic carpets themselves — their square footage or whether they can be rolled up for storage — affect how we plan for and regulate these vehicles?

If we are thinking about the kind of cities we want and what measures will get us there, we might choose to favor magic carpets based on specific attributes that align with broad goals. In this scenario, magic carpets wouldn’t need street space for travel, only landing. They also would be clean, quiet, zero carbon, affordable and accessible to everyone. Rather than making choices based on incumbency and the status quo — that cars are dominant so they will remain dominant — we could make decisions based on which transportation options best comport with our values and with creating the cities and planet we want. We would allow our decisions to be guided by transportation principles rather than pre-existing assumptions regarding how transportation policies should be crafted. In that sense, we could define how all of these policies expand the right of way and prioritize the movement of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable users on our existing streets.

Changing the way we’ve been taught to think is hard. That’s why NUMO, the New Urban Mobility alliance, has developed mind-opening tools such as MoMobility, an urban transformation card game, and the magic carpet exercise to challenge us to imagine new solutions and create a new understanding of why we move, how we do so and what modes will take us where we want to go. Only then will we be able to redefine how we allot space, whether to charge (or not charge) a fee and if data sharing should be a requirement.

View original article at medium.com