How will we move tomorrow?

Written By Lucile Ramackers

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken over most of the world in the last couple of months and has the majority of the world’s population confined at home or at least urged to respect social distancing, turning our priorities and our schedules upside down in a very short period of time. As we are navigating this challenging situation, health is obviously our first concern, but mobility is also completely hampered and disrupted, to the point that it might be drastically reshaped. Our transportation system being shaken to the core, what would a more resilient and sustainable model be? I know what you might be thinking: “another article about a future we know close to nothing about with lots of wishful thinking?”. Perhaps, but I honestly believe that the only way to cope with the current situation is to try and change our paradigm, experiment with these new constraints and sort out what we need to keep as a society. Here are some of my educated guesses.

Dense cities are the basis of our development

The fear of the virus might trigger some desires to shut oneself away with their loved ones, because the grass always seems greener elsewhere. In the case of urbanites, leaving may offer better material living conditions during this confinement period. Big and dense cities usually offer smaller apartments, leading those who could afford it to consider isolating themselves in a more pleasant environment (even if it was strongly advised against by the authorities as it could carry the virus to places that had not been infected yet). Paris is not exempt from that trend and France’s INSEE (French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Research) estimates that 11% of Parisian residents relocated elsewhere. But once we’ve processed our new normality, let’s not forget that we’re social animals in need of interaction, and cities are a massive crossroad of people coming from different backgrounds. It can sometimes feel lonely until one has found their rythm and made a home, but it’s not for lack of opportunities. Indeed, as cities attract people for economic reasons, they are bound to host (more) smart individuals and be a fertile ground for sparking new ideas. This is why I strongly believe that tomorrow’s solutions for our current crisis will come first and foremost from densely populated cities. But how can you make social distancing and density work together? The two are actually not mutually exclusive and we shouldn’t confuse density with overcrowdedness. In fact, we need to find ways to spread out attendance and rush hours, and it is not necessarily by lowering cities’ density. Let’s explore how we could achieve that.

Public transportation is still essential

Public transport ridership suffered a massive decline since the beginning of the pandemic and lockdown measures. It now stands at 10% in the Ile-de-France Region (Greater Paris), but due to the service decrease, some trains and buses are still crowded, especially where essential workers live, proof that public transportation is indeed fundamental and allows our cities to function. As Jarrett Walker—public transport consultant and writer of the blog Human Transit —put it simply in its piece in CityLab :

“THE GOAL OF TRANSIT, RIGHT NOW, IS NOT COMPETING FOR RIDERS NOR PROVIDING A SOCIAL SERVICE. IT IS HELPING PREVENT THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION.”

— JARRET WALKER

It might seem extreme, but essential services like hospitals, grocery stores and basic utilities run thanks to people on low-wage jobs: they keep us safe, fed and stocked with supplies, so that we, meanwhile, can afford to work from home. Public transportation is not something we do for them, but for ourselves and everyone in our society. In short, the goal of public transport is the very functionning of the city (where we’re incidentally most likely to find a cure or a vaccine for the virus).

In addition, public transportation helps us keep our cities liveable. If we were all to drive cars to feel safe, we would instead strangle our city in congestion, poison the air we breathe and restore dramatic road casualty numbers. A picture can speak volumes and I can’t resist using this famous one produced by i-SUSTAIN in collaboration with the city of Seattle:

The physical impact cars have on space in cities - The Commuter Toolkit - Seattle

It shows another truth everyone is experiencing right now: cars take space and are an incredibly ineffective way of moving people around a city. Even improved, the way we use cars is not optimal, to say the least. Most cars are only used twice a day and spend over 90% of their time parked, no matter the technology.

One could argue that there is a bias against autonomous cars, because they can be shared more easily, thus using less space throughout the day. It doesn’t solve the peak hour issue, though. It could however be mitigated thanks to our newfound ability to work from home, at least partially, helping spreading the demand throughout the day.

As public transportation is essential, it needs to remain (or become in some cases) reliable, and it has to be more flexible and adaptable according to demand and the latest developments. This is where transport authorities and public transport consultants — myself included — need to make the effort and come up with better and smarter contractual provisions. These arrangements will improve responsiveness and be useful in dealing with any kind of crisis affecting mobility. States have to step in too, because the public procurement code might require adjustment and transport agencies won’t be able to cope with the financial consequences on their own. For instance, Ile-de-France Mobilités (IdFM, Greater Paris’ transport agency) estimated its Coronavirus-related losses at €1 billion, ie €500 million per month of lockown. Indeed, while the income from ticketing represents less than 30% of its annual budget of around €10 billion, IdFM is at risk from the “versement transport” (transport contribution, a tax paid by local companies) suspension, which accounts for more than half of its resources. Indeed, IdFM recently turned to the French State for help. Thoses resources are needed now more than ever because investments will be vital to adapt our system to its new constraints:

  • all-door boarding and systematic pre-paying in buses, to limit contacts and queuing,

  • contactless tickets deployment (via a card, an app or a credit card, which is already underway in most big cities),

  • improved real-time passenger information in order to know when a train or a bus is coming, but also how full it is, so that one can adapt its journey, (in any case, this is a really valuable data for planning transport)

  • and finally, a makeover of the rolling stock’s interior layout, to allow the maximum number of people to travel while respecting social distancing. This one will be tricky, but we need to get creative in finding ways to adapt sitting arrangements and enable everyone to travel safely.

In short, public transportation will need money — and it is definitely not a time to make it free — but it is a collective investment we should make nonetheless.

Urban planning should be more fluid

As a lot of us are confined at home at the moment, there is a lot less traffic and everyone can realise how much public space is dedicated to the car, moving or parked. This currently leads to somewhat absurd situations when sidewalks are too narrow and people can’t maintain the minimum social distance when out. Those sidewalks have been too narrow for quite a long time actually, as anyone in a wheelchair or with a stroller was already painfully aware of. It is time now more than ever to rethink our priorities and speed up the feeble change in favour of other means of transport, because it actually makes more sense. These diagrams by the Global Designing Cities Initiative show how multimodal streets offer more capacity and a more pleasant environment:

Multimodal streets serve more people - Global Designing Cities Initiative

Granted, capacity is obviously lower with social distancing measures being implemented, but even if bikes had to be more spread out, the multimodal street would still allow around 3 500 bikes per hour and a lot more pedestrians…

Times of crisis only have one silver lining: they give us the opportunity to think outside the box and experiment. Supporters of tactical urbanism everywhere suggest to turn it into something positive, testing low-cost and temporary solutions to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places. Some of the most famous pop-up urbanism experiments include Paris-Plages — temporary artificial beaches each summer along the Seine river and the Bassin de la Villette — and Times Square's transformation into a pedestrian-friendly space — now permanent — lead by Janette Sadik-Khan, then Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation.

The different transformation phases on Broadway-Times Square, New York — urb-i

It is an amazing way to see what works and to adapt quickly what doesn’t, because it is absolutely important to also have the possibility to fail and learn from past mistakes. Both these succesful experiments led to permanently banning cars, from the right bank of the Seine river — after half a century with an expressway — and to creating other plazas and pedestrian malls in New York city. I cannot recommend enough browsing through the before-after pictures selected by urb-i and be inspired by the transformations!

The return of the bike

The bicycle has made a huge come-back in cities around the world in the past decade. It was actually supposed to be the subject of this article — before the Covid-19 crisis broke out and I figured it wouldn’t make sense not to write about what is happening now… After decades of being neglected by most urbanites and city planners, the bike appears today as a cheap, efficient and sustainable means of transportation. My belief is not to advocate for the bike dogmatically, but to broaden the options available today so that everyone can choose the best means of transportation for each of their journeys. In a city, the bike happens to be a pretty good option but it will always be complementary to walking, riding public transportation, taking a taxi and yes, sometimes, even driving a car.

With today’s social distancing measures in action, the bike simultaneously gets you out onto the streets, in contact with fresh air and other people, but it’s very rare that you’ll be in over-close proximity to others. Even at rush-hour in a large city, you can almost always stake out a metre or two of your own, away from other riders and drivers. This is why many cities have seized this opportunity to create temporary bike lanes and widen existing ones, as listed in Adrien Lelièvre’s twitter thread. The first ones to do so were Bogota and Berlin, inspiring others to follow suit. The company I work for happens to be a subsidiary of a Berlin-based consulting firm, so I used to travel (mostly by train) to Berlin quite often (and hopefully will again before the end of the year) and know that city pretty well, in all its messiness (don’t let the Germans fool you as being organised)… And let’s just say that Berlin’s got 99 problems, but the bike ain’t one: despite somewhat lacking infrastructure, the city’s low density — and the fact that it’s extremely flat — make it a de facto haven for bikers all around.

This doesn’t mean that the city is not trying to still improve things. In fact, the Berlin Senate has been thinking about upgrading bike lanes for quite some time now, as the Berlin Mobility Act was approved in July 2018, but concrete steps were late to be implemented. The pandemic finally sped things up and saw the city taking action almost immediately: broader bike lanes, new ones materialised with paint and traffic cones wherever possible and even the publication of the city’s very own temporary bike lanes design guide (in German, but translated in French by the non-profit organisation Paris en Selle). It is actually one of Berlin’s biggest strengths: making do with whatever is available, which is extremely valuable in a crisis like ours.

Oakland, California, is another remarkable example, as it wasn’t the first city to impose car restrictions, but it ultimately offered one of the most ambitious plans out there. The city sees it as an opportunity to make everyone realise that streets are not just for cars and hopes to pave the way for more permanent change. And finally, after a late start, France is considering favouring the bike for post-confinement journeys. Now is never too late…

And this is what is at stake here: how this crisis will shape our very future. Even if it is a challenging one, cities will remain the center of our economic life and our best bet remains to innovate and find a long term cure for the virus. But, in order to run smootlhy and sustainably, a city needs an efficient public transport network, which should be a priority, even if it costs money to adapt it (and presents an opportunity to speed up already necessary changes). And every stable and reliable foundation for urban development needs a complementary and more flexible approach, such as tactical urbanism, to quickly test and keep the good ideas. In this scenario, the bike is an incredible ally as it doesn’t require expensive infrastructure and can cater to a lot of urban mobility needs. Many of the changes made today will become our new normality tomorrow, so taking this chance to push in the right direction and turn this crisis into an opportunity is the only way to succeed together.

Sources:

Lucile Ramackers
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