By Jeffrey Tumlin
- Measure what matters: “[Transportation planners] make projections but never go back and see if it was the right plan.”
- Make walking a pleasure: Successful planning design in all cities are measured by this. “Walking is engineered out of daily life…my industry has made walking effectively illegal…Don’t ever sacrifice walking for any other mode of transportation, even biking.”
- Put the needs of daily life within walking distance: With poorly planned neighborhoods and no walking and higher traffic volumes, less people know their neighbors and have less connection to their surroundings.
- Make biking safe and easy for everyone: There is no better way to attract people to cycling than to build bike lanes and provide facilities and access. Improves safety, health, retail sales, etc.
- Make transit Fast, Frequent, Reliable and Dignified: Mass transit is driven by labor costs, not cost of vehicles — demand nice, dependable, efficient buses. Give mass transit priority — make everyone feel welcome and valued.
- Adopt good street design manuals: Good design starts with place. The best transportation plan is a good land use plan.
- Make traffic analysis work: The transportation death spiral = Congestion -> Fix by widening roadway -> Brings faster driving -> Leads to more people driving, more congestion. Slower traffic is safer.
- Price is Right: Control supply and demand for roadways by choosing between spending more money to fix roads, or spending more time to wait through congestion.
- Manage and price parking: “Every city is stupid about parking.” The average cost is $25,000 per parking space and most cities will come to find that they could have better spent that money on something else. Better manage the spaces you already have to fill the empty ones before building new ones. Cities should invest in technology to direct people to open parking and use current inventory of spaces. Vary the prices for parking based on location, time of day, day of the week. Allow the money collected at meters to benefit the street or neighborhood where the money was collected.
- Create a better vision: The auto industry “used the belief that the automobile will change our lives” by making us more sexy, successful and powerful.
Found via Urban Places and Spaces