✅ Do It Right - MM#626
Often when we rush to try and deliver experimental street changes, we don't take the time to actually design the experiment itself. And that is important if we want changes to become permanent.
Good day my good friend.
Yesterday went to show, to me at least, just how much can be achieved by travelling public transport. For an afternoon meeting in Glasgow, I decided that rather than take the sleeper train up the night before or – heaven forbid – fly from a London airport to Glasgow and back in a day, I would head up on the West Coast Mainline. A five and a half hour journey of which three hours were spent working, and a further two hours just spent looking out the window at this kind of thing.
By the way, a lesson I learned is that this shot (which I think is referred to in the industry as a Tim Dunn shot) is really hard to get on a camera phone on a train travelling at full speed. And I mean really hard.
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James
🧪 The right kind of experiment
Remember back to the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic? I mean, it felt like everything was going horribly wrong for quite a while, and according to the ongoing COVID-19 Inquiry its seems that much of government was feeling the same, but there was a lot done active travel in a very short space of time. Local authorities were given money and the direction from government to do radical things in favour of walking and cycling.
As for me, as I did not have any paid work at the time, I was very jealous. It was a golden time when the wildest dreams of active travel advocates were starting to be realised. We could close streets, build temporary extensions to pavements and cycle lanes, implement low traffic neighbourhoods. The money was flowing, the direction was clear, and politicians were supportive.
And we all know what happened next. While many were very successful and resulted in things being more permanent, many were also removed. The backlash was fierce, and politicians wilted – or in some cases got elected on the back of the promise to remove these awful things.
Reflecting on this now has made think about many things. The politics of active travel and policy directions I have already reflected on. But another is in the nature of experimentation when it comes to making changes on our streets that benefit people and our climate.
In the UK, engineers often make use of Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETROs) to make changes to highways under trial conditions. The idea is simple. Unlike a normal Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) which makes any changes to the legal status of a highway (e.g. changing part of a road from a general carriageway to a cycle track) permanent, an Experimental Order allows engineers to put in such changes temporarily, see what happens, then either make the changes permanent through a permanent TRO, or remove it if the experiment fails. In theory anyway. In practice engineers can also extend the experiment if they are unsure, or shouty councillor calls for the experiment to be stopped before you find out anything.
But ETROs are just the mechanism through which an experiment on the highway network can be done legally. They are not the experiment itself, and much more work needs to be done – including non-technical work – to create a robust experiment on our highway networks through which we can demonstrate impact and make the case for change.
Transport professionals don’t really have much of a grasp on the ‘correct’ ways to experiment outside of the technical aspects. And whilst their application does not translate perfectly across, in fields such as medical science principles on ethical experimentation. For example, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) establishes the following 6 principles for ethical research:
Research should aim to maximise benefit for individuals and society and minimise risk and harm.
The rights and dignity of individuals and groups should be respected.
Wherever possible, participation should be voluntary and appropriately informed.
Research should be conducted with integrity and transparency
Lines of responsibility and accountability should be clearly defined
Independence of research should be maintained and where conflicts of interest cannot be avoided they should be made explicit.
Can we honestly say that many of the experiments that took place abided by such principles? Was there informed consent, and were there clear lines of accountability for the public? Were they conducted transparently and the results published transparently?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not expecting full, detailed, academic study of every single change to road layouts here. What I am saying is that much of the anger resulting from these experimental changes could have been mitigated by doing the basics of good experimentation.
The good news is that none of this is difficult with good planning, and realising that the value of ERTOs and other methods of experimenting and piloting is to confirm that what you plan will work as intended, and you can make changes if necessary. Taking the UKRI principles in turn:
Easy. Just make the links between what is planned and your wider transport and other objectives.
Meaningful engagement prior to the experiment taking place, with local communities getting a chance to shape the experiment and what it hopes to achieve.
Voluntary may be hard, but informed is not. Make every effort to inform people as to its potential impact on them.
Publish what you plan to do, your methods for determining impact, and your data openly and accessibly.
Tell people who ultimately makes the decision on the scheme.
Make any conflicts of interest of people involved in the project clear and open. There is some really good guidance for councillors on conflicts of interest that can be adapted for this purpose.
During the first months of the pandemic, us transport professionals got the opportunity to conduct experiments and changes that we wanted to see done. But the world is not like that, and we must run experiments in how the world is at the moment. Its not fair, and we could get to a fairer and more sustainable world more quickly if we were given the power to just go ahead and do things how we wanted, like during the early stages of COVID. For us, making the change will be long, hard, and full of battles. But in the end, doing it right is the quickest way of making making this change stick everywhere.
What you can do: Please do experimental changes to streets, but understand how to do them well. The Tactical Urbanism Guide contains some useful hints on the sorts of measures that can be done, and there is also best practice on how to effectively monitor the impacts of schemes including experimental ones.
When developing schemes with your local community, councillors, and professionals, identify opportunities to deliver changes in an experimental manner. Set out the extent of that experiment, what the parameters for success are, and inform people about it.
🎓 From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author - they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
Racial and income inequalities in access to healthcare in Brazilian cities
TL:DR - People on low incomes have better access to primary care. People on higher incomes have better access to complex care.
Decisions & distance: The relationship between child care access and child care travel
TL:DR - People who have greater access to childcare are more likely to use it.
TL:DR - If you package together road pricing with other things, it may be more acceptable. Maybe.
TL:DR - Some models estimate that where public transport is an option, they compete with autonomous vehicles. I’m not so sure.
✊ Awesome people doing awesome things
Many of you will no doubt have read of Janette Sadik-Khan and the excellent work that she did in transforming New York City. Well, it appears that some of her successors are continuing the good work. Steinway Street in Astoria has recieved a load of money to turn it from a car-dominated monstrosity to something much, much better for pedestrians. All of which followed protests seeking action to reduce road traffic deaths. Well done all!
📻 On the Wireless
I have been an occasional listener to the Freakonomics Radio podcast for a while. For those who don’t know, its a podcast that really focuses a lot on behavioural economics (or ‘the hidden side of everything’ as they call it). One of their latest episodes is on why it is so hard and expensive to build things in America. Lets be honest, it should just be why is it so hard and expensive to build things period. It gives a good introduction on exactly why building stuff is hard.
🖼️ Graphic Design
Leonardo Da Vinci painted a lot, and invented even more. But did you know that it is thought that he came up with the first ‘aerial photograph?’ Ok, not quite, but he created this aerial shot based on his own measurements from the ground, and its thought to be the first of its kind. Its amazing.
📚 Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
Google’s new geothermal energy project is up and running (The Verge)
The Big Fail (Marginal Revolution)
Policy Lessons from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Tim Harford)1
Amid ‘checkout charity’ boom, some Americans are more likely to be impulse givers than others (The Conversation)
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In the recent local by-election in my area, the Monster Raving Looney Party candidate’s immigration policy was to put Doctor’s Receptionist’s on every border because “nobody will ever get past them.” I laughed so much I almost voted for her.