local transportation - changing a complex system.

a minipost

There has been quite a bit of activity with escooters in cities as well as ebikes in the past year or two.  I'm hugely in favor of walking, bikes and ebikes - negative on scooters - but it needs to be recognized these are elements of highly localized transportation systems that have a lot of infrastructure, legal and social norms and other elements that tend to have a lot of inertia.¹

 

Change can happen, but meaningful change will take time.  Some areas are easier than others, but the recognized leaders in Denmark and the Netherlands required about twenty years before serious change took hold and fifty years in they're still still learning and experimenting,  The bad news is much of the geography that was determined by the car is wrong if you want change. The good news is there are a number of examples that addressed very different initial conditions and evolved to good enough solutions.  It is non-trivial and the bike or ebike is not the major component.  A lot of hard fought learning exists.  There are some folks who have written extensively on these issues:  David Levinson (his books, blogs and mailing list) and Horace Dediu (lots of work on micromobility!), and Jeff Speck (books) on walkable cities.  If you're interested in the physics and system level issues I'm always happy to chat.²

 

Normally I'd go on for pages at this point, but this is a mini-post, so check out these short videos

 

The Dutch are the world leaders (the Danes are close, but..)  - that said there's a lot of experimentation and variety in the country.  Utrecht is an excellent example near the top:

Just as important, tropical Oslo has decided to make a major change. . an example of a city in the process of doing something (there are many others and there will be an explosion of activity in the EU in the next two or three years .. unfortunately I'd only count one in North America)

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¹ Many systems have hidden externalities and complexities.  I've heard more than a few security experts say voting is one of the most difficult and complex systems they can think of.  It's much larger than just voting machines.  And these complex systems have often hidden externalities.  The popularity of the automobile created the suburbs and other non-optimal bits of infrastructure that have had an enormous impact on global warming..

² I've worked with a couple of governments looking at the future of transit.  I tend to start with the physics and then explore the systems.

 

 

Comments

[Nancy White]

I've been in some conversations with friends who work globally and we are also trying to suss out being plane free!