As counterintuitive as it may sound, one way you could try and improve traffic congestion is to discourage people from riding their bikes and instead encourage them to drive more. That's what's happening in Toronto right now. Another way is to dramatically restrict car usage. And starting this Monday, that's what Paris will be doing with its new limited traffic zone (zone à trafic limité) in the center of the city:
This new ZTL is approximately 5 square kilometers. About 100,000 people live within its boundaries, and it is estimated that somewhere between 350,000 to 500,000 vehicles enter it each day. But according to the city, it is estimated that only around 30% of these trips are absolutely necessary (because of a lack of alternatives, for example). The purpose of the ZTL is to reduce the unnecessary ones.
The way it will work is that drivers will no longer be allowed to drive through this zone. You'll only be able to enter if you plan on stopping for a legitimate reason. It's not yet clear what this exact list of approved reasons will be, but the general idea is that if you want to drive in for dinner or to attend a meeting, that's fine. What you can't do, though, is just drive around in a souped-up Honda Civic blasting Taylor Swift.
The next 6 months are planned to be a period of education. Drivers exiting the zone are just going to be told that there's this new ZTL and that they better have stopped somewhere. But eventually there will be a 135 euro fine and eventually drivers will be expected to furnish some sort of supporting evidence for their stop, such as a restaurant receipt. There's also talk of adding automatic cameras.
Of course, this creates a lot of gray areas. What about if you're just going over to a friend's place for dinner? Will they then need to write you a note saying that you went over for some homemade bouillabaisse? Yeah, I don't know the answer to this. But you have to admit that this is a bold city-building move, and a far more effective way of improving traffic flows.
Unlike removing bike lanes, this plan will actually work.
Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
I haven't seen this sort of data before and it's an interesting way of looking at job access, transit connectivity, and overall built form:
As counterintuitive as it may sound, one way you could try and improve traffic congestion is to discourage people from riding their bikes and instead encourage them to drive more. That's what's happening in Toronto right now. Another way is to dramatically restrict car usage. And starting this Monday, that's what Paris will be doing with its new limited traffic zone (zone à trafic limité) in the center of the city:
This new ZTL is approximately 5 square kilometers. About 100,000 people live within its boundaries, and it is estimated that somewhere between 350,000 to 500,000 vehicles enter it each day. But according to the city, it is estimated that only around 30% of these trips are absolutely necessary (because of a lack of alternatives, for example). The purpose of the ZTL is to reduce the unnecessary ones.
The way it will work is that drivers will no longer be allowed to drive through this zone. You'll only be able to enter if you plan on stopping for a legitimate reason. It's not yet clear what this exact list of approved reasons will be, but the general idea is that if you want to drive in for dinner or to attend a meeting, that's fine. What you can't do, though, is just drive around in a souped-up Honda Civic blasting Taylor Swift.
The next 6 months are planned to be a period of education. Drivers exiting the zone are just going to be told that there's this new ZTL and that they better have stopped somewhere. But eventually there will be a 135 euro fine and eventually drivers will be expected to furnish some sort of supporting evidence for their stop, such as a restaurant receipt. There's also talk of adding automatic cameras.
Of course, this creates a lot of gray areas. What about if you're just going over to a friend's place for dinner? Will they then need to write you a note saying that you went over for some homemade bouillabaisse? Yeah, I don't know the answer to this. But you have to admit that this is a bold city-building move, and a far more effective way of improving traffic flows.
Unlike removing bike lanes, this plan will actually work.
Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
I haven't seen this sort of data before and it's an interesting way of looking at job access, transit connectivity, and overall built form:
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
The above is a table from New Geography (using data from the University of Minnesota). And what it shows is how many more jobs, across the US, can be accessed within a 30-minute commute by car versus by transit. For example, what this data tells us is that, on average across the US, there are about 56x more jobs that can be quickly accessed by car versus by transit.
But there is also huge variation across the 50 largest cities in the US. On the top end is Detroit, where there about 130x more jobs that can be accessed by car (again within 30 minutes). This isn't at all surprising. Also not surprising is the fact that New York is on the lowest end with only 5.6x as many car-versus-transit jobs. This is one of the reasons why I spoke yesterday about NYC being such an ideal candidate for something like NYC 25x25.
What a lower number tells us is that the city is far less reliant on personal vehicles and almost certainly has a higher urban density. That's why you see cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago near the top of this list. And in my opinion, this is where you want to be. The goal should be to minimize this multiple.
I haven't seen a dataset like this before, but I'm now curious to see how it varies globally. It feels like something that more of us should be monitoring. Because we know that there are strong links between jobs access and the overall economic performance of a city.
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
The above is a table from New Geography (using data from the University of Minnesota). And what it shows is how many more jobs, across the US, can be accessed within a 30-minute commute by car versus by transit. For example, what this data tells us is that, on average across the US, there are about 56x more jobs that can be quickly accessed by car versus by transit.
But there is also huge variation across the 50 largest cities in the US. On the top end is Detroit, where there about 130x more jobs that can be accessed by car (again within 30 minutes). This isn't at all surprising. Also not surprising is the fact that New York is on the lowest end with only 5.6x as many car-versus-transit jobs. This is one of the reasons why I spoke yesterday about NYC being such an ideal candidate for something like NYC 25x25.
What a lower number tells us is that the city is far less reliant on personal vehicles and almost certainly has a higher urban density. That's why you see cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago near the top of this list. And in my opinion, this is where you want to be. The goal should be to minimize this multiple.
I haven't seen a dataset like this before, but I'm now curious to see how it varies globally. It feels like something that more of us should be monitoring. Because we know that there are strong links between jobs access and the overall economic performance of a city.
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