Helsinki Background Note for Project - 1 March 2012

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Examining the prospects for

Equity-Based Transportation

A Peer Enquiry by the City of Helsinki

Work Program Introduct ion & Schedule

Helsinki Department of City Planning and Transportation

Kansakoulukatu 1 A FI-00099 City of Helsinki


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Equity-Based Transportation Planning, Policy and Practice

(A collaborative investigation of an unusual concept in Helsinki Finland)

Draft background notes for Helsinki project 27 Feb. 2012 Page 2

1. Introduction

The following summary presents some first background information on a collaborative investigation just

getting underway in the City of Helsinki, looking into the concept of equity-based transportation planning

and policy at the level of a city. This is the first peer project in this series and is being carried out under the

direction of the Helsinki Department of City Planning and Transportation over the period 15 February to 13

April 2012. It is being followed closely by a group of international colleagues who share these concerns.

2. Behind the project

Whenever we create a social system there is always, inevitably, and often also invisibly, a philosophy

behind it. This is true whether the example involves education, food, shelter, health, energy, water,

migration, the economy, culture, politics or, in our case here, mobility and transport in and around cities.

The usually unstated philosophy behind investments in the transport sector for the better part of the last

century has been consistently based on two fundamental structural pillars: speed and distance. Enormous

achievements have been possible working from these premises because we had technologies such as

trains, cars, ICT and infrastructure tools which permitted us to achieve these underlying objectives.

However this process, progress if you will, has come at some cost. One result of this largely invisible

transportation philosophy has been that not only have such important qualities such as proximity,

environment, quality of life, social contact and fairness to all been considerably atrophied over all these

years. But also as part of this invisible Faustian deal, in most places we have ended up spending on the

order of 80% of all public investments on infrastructure and other components that primarily support the

automotive society (which has sometimes been characterized as the all-car, no-choice society).

If you look at the numbers you see that this policy ends up allocating some 80% of all hard-earned public

moneys, to serve what is in fact a transportation minority. In fact, a relatively prosperous and generally

well favored transport minority. Now that is, or at least should be, a significant problem.

As we look into this project we need to bear in mind that it's 2012, and here we are in this new and very

different century, and the questions we are asking ourselves and the values that we are working with are in

many respects quite different from those of the old century now well behind us. The unrest we are seeing

not only in the developing world but also in the most prosperous nations concerning many of the

unquestioned historical and often distinctly inequitable arrangements are part of this emerging new social

and economic fabric.

So it is time to start to look around for and develop some new foundation philosophies for our cities

concerning what we should be doing with all these great technologies and considerable investments, and

giving more attention to understanding how they end up influencing all of us in our day-to-day lives. In a

society in which democracy, well-being and sustainability are core values, fairness is important. And

fairness means equity. Moreover, when it comes to the reform of our transportation arrangements with

equity as our flag, and assuming we get it right, the results will not only be fairer mobility for all, but also

significantly improved system efficiency and economics, both for individuals and the community as a whole.

Which is the concept that we are now looking at closely in Helsinki.


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Strategy

Over the last decades we have incessantly been told about ("sold") many kinds of transportation strategies

or techniques which variously promise great things for mobility and well-being: sustainable transportation,

green transportation, clean, smart, soft, active, low-carbon, fuel-efficient, carfree, intelligent, liveable andmore. But while there are many cities in which such concepts have been put into place as projects, with

varying degrees of success, the truth is that as things stand in 2012 we have yet to find and put to work a

(a) single, (b) strong, (c) inclusive, (d) measurable central theme around which to organize policies and

decide investments that are, at once, (i) coherent, (ii) consistent and (iii) checkable.

In most cities our transport policies and actions all too often based on ad hoc individual decisions and rough

assemblages of policies, projects and services, some good, some less good, but which as a whole are not

really systemic. And, not surprisingly, the city and the people suffer from this. At best what we are seeing

are good measures implemented here and there, with luck more or less well integrated and coordinated,

but at the same time the big investments that that are being made in the sector are not consistent with a

single base strategy. This is dangerous because if we have no strong central core and test to which all

actions and decisions can be disciplined, we are going to suffer a policy of bits and pieces, some better,

some worse, and the whole badly lacking. This is a real problem, as we are seeing in city after city.

But all that said, we need to bear in mind that it is not easy to create a coherent system -- unless we have

at the core a central indicator or metric that will allow us to align all our individual decisions and pull the

whole thing together in a coherent package in which all the individual decisions reinforce each other so

that they all move in the same direction. This project proposes to look at one central metric by which the

entire program and service package can be judged. Namely that of equity, a concept which is potentially as

powerful as it is, until now, unknown.

The Helsinki project in brief

The project keys on a series of brainstorming sessions organized over the month of March 2012, with a

small core team working under the aegis of the Helsinki Department of City Planning and Transportation,

meeting and exchanging ideas and proposals with a broad cross-section of individuals and groups,

government, private sector and volunteer organizations, to examine together what the transportation

system of the city and its surrounding areas might look like, if, instead of distance and speed, public sector

investments and actions were required to look first and above all to the concept of equity.

To be sure we are clear on this: when we say equitywe are not talking about equalityin its raw sense, nor

evenjustice in the legal sense. Rather we are talking about fairness, social justice and true democracy .

When Abraham Lincoln ended the Gettysburg Address during the darkest days of the American Civil War

with the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people", he was in fact talking about

democracy and equity.

It needs to be said that one reason for choosing a Finnish city for this first collaborative peer investigation

is directly related to their great accomplishments over the last years in building one of the most highly

respected educational systems in the world (see theOECD PISA programresults over the last decade) based

specifically on the concept of equity. Our project will also examine the strategic base of their success in the

education sector, to see if there are lessons which can be applied to transportation systems reform.
http://www.pisa.oecd.org/http://www.pisa.oecd.org/http://www.pisa.oecd.org/http://www.pisa.oecd.org/


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We are well aware that in many parts of the world the transportation arrangements are grossly unfair to

the very large proportion of the population. Some cities, some projects do better than others but the

broad central trend is there, and it is not good. The systems and services offered are often outstandingly

and visibly unfair to the elderly and to the frail, to those who cannot drive and do not have access to cars,

those who cannot afford to own and operate a car, including those who may work and own and use a carbut who really are not sufficiently well-off to be able to afford the high costs associated with car ownership

and use, those who are penalized in their daily and family lives as a result of having to travel long distances

in often inconvenient or even absent public transportation, to those who would like to walk or bicycle in

safety, to children in many aspects of their day to day lives, to women who by and large are not fairly

treated by the existing transportation arrangements, and the long list goes on.

In a word, in most cities on this planet for the great majority of all people the present transportation

arrangements are inequitable. The all-car no-choice transportation arrangements of the 20th

century are

not doing the job for the transportation majority. They are unfair, inefficient and uneconomic.

So what if we were to turn the situation around and take as a starting point for public policy and

investments in the sector not so much the twentieth century values of speed and distance but 21st-century

values of equity , social justice and deep democracy.

This project under the supervision of the city of Helsinki is in the two months ahead engaging an open

exploration of the concept of equity-based transportation systems in Helsinki. The project method keys on

the participation of a small team who will meet with a good cross-section of groups and interests in various

parts of Helsinki, and discuss with them both in general and very specifically such things as: what is already

going on in their sector to create more equitable mobility arrangements; what are the ongoing plans and

goals; and what would be needed from city or national government, or other sources eventually, in order to

achieve some significant steps toward a more equitable transportation system.

One of the key pillars behind this program is a belief that, properly engaged, the move to equity-based

transportation can lead to greater efficiency and economy both for specific groups and individuals, and also

for the city and its region as a whole. That it is to say that it is going to be a step up, and not a step down.

At the end of the day, once you understand and accept the basic principle of equity a huge number of other

good things follow. And you have only to look in one place to see if you have it -- and that is on the streets

of your city. If the mayor, all public servants, and the top 20% of your community travel by the same means

as the other 80%, you have an equitable system. If not, not!

This is team work.

As principle investigator, Eric Britton is working under the direction of the City Planning Department/

Transportation Division and with their team, to help organize and chair a set of "peer encounters",

presentations, brainstorming sessions, dialogues and events in cooperation with a group of leading thinkers

and actors in the field in Helsinki. Britton is serving as moderator and rapporteur for these events, and

upon completion of a month long work cycle submit a draft report presenting main findings and

recommendations. To be submitted to the group in advance draft form for comment and guidelines for

finalization prior to being formally submitted to the Department of City Planning.


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Project Schedule

1. 15 to 29 February. Planning stage. Development of program plan, contact suggestions, schedules,and basic supporting documentation.

2. 1 to 14 March. Initial outreach program and finalization of Finnish documentation. Developmentand communication of basic documentation and interview and meeting arrangements with a broadcross-section of individuals, groups and programs working in sector. (Clickhereto get an idea of

the organisations to be contacted for the project.)

3. 14 to 20 and 24 to 26 March. Interviews, site visits and conversations with key groups and interestsin the greater Helsinki area to be carried out. (Interview and dialogue process will in fact continue

over the entire period through 29 March.)

4. 21 to 23 March. Invitational three-day Master Class will be held in the auditorium of theDepartment of City Planning, with the formal presentations and public discussions running from

09:00 to 11:30 each day, followed up by continuing private discussions and exchanges with the

team over the remainder of those days. Session 1: Equity and Transport. 2. Equity and Transport in

Helsinki. 3. Strategic responses at project and overall systemic levels.

5. 24 to 28 March. Continuing contacts with key interest groups, as well as review sessions with theteams responsible for organizing the ongoing programs generating the Helsinki Master Plan,

Metropolitan Area Transport System Plan and the Program for Promoting Cycling in Helsinki. On

27 March a final public presentation and discussion to be organized in the auditorium of the

Department of City Planning, both to report on mission findings, and seek further information and

views to be included in the final report and recommendations

6. 29 March to 13 April. Report drafting, internal review is limited distribution to external reviewers,and report finalization and submittal on thirteen April.

Further information/Sources: Website: An informal website has been set up athttp://equitytransport.wordpress.com/. Intended

to help international readers of World Streets and others to follow and learn from Helsinki project .

Outreach: Inventory of groups, organizations to be contracted. Click here Facebook page to support the project athttp://www.facebook.com/EquityTransport. Twitter athttps://twitter.com/#!/EquityT Library: A small library of useful documentation can be foundhere Working Contacts: Eric Britton [email protected] +331 7550 3788 Skype: newmobility.

Taneli Nissinen, Traffic Engineer, City of Helsinki. [email protected]+ 358 (9) 310 37091
http://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://equitytransport.wordpress.com/http://equitytransport.wordpress.com/http://equitytransport.wordpress.com/http://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://www.facebook.com/EquityTransporthttp://www.facebook.com/EquityTransporthttp://www.facebook.com/EquityTransporthttps://twitter.com/#!/EquityThttps://twitter.com/#!/EquityThttps://twitter.com/#!/EquityThttp://www.scribd.com/collections/3494669/Equity-Based-Transportationhttp://www.scribd.com/collections/3494669/Equity-Based-Transportationmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.scribd.com/collections/3494669/Equity-Based-Transportationhttps://twitter.com/#!/EquityThttp://www.facebook.com/EquityTransporthttp://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zdhttp://equitytransport.wordpress.com/http://wp.me/p2abHZ-1zd

Documents

Helsinki Background Note for Project - 1 March 2012