One of the protests most frequently offered for not wanting to use positioning satellites to toll our roads is the assumption that cars will be tracked and the perception of considerable loss of privacy that would entail. Any journalist will tell you this. While it is technically possible to build such a repugnant system, few would tolerate it.
It can be argued that it is neither useful nor sensible to build such systems that way. But there are two perfect reasons this will not happen. First, in most countries, such a system would be so unacceptable to drivers that it would be boycotted or vandalized to an extent that it would become unreliable and perhaps even inoperable as a financial system. Second, most of these same countries are in the process of adopting policies that will not permit tracking of private vehicles, using road pricing data for any purpose other than intended, or retaining such data once payment is settled, which in the case of a prepaid account would be instantaneous.
The International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT) has been addressing this for some time. Founded in 1983 in the framework of the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, the IWGDPT formulates recommendations to improve the protection of privacy in telecommunications. The Sofia Memorandum, issued at the 45th meeting of the WG in March 2009 directs its guidance toward road pricing.
The WG made the following
"recommendations designed to protect the privacy of drivers and owners of vehicles:
- The anonymity of the driver can and should be preserved by using the so-called smart client or anonymous proxy approaches that keep personal data of the drivers under their sole control and do not require off-board location record-keeping.
- Road pricing systems can and should be designed so that the detailed trip data are fully and permanently deleted from the system after the charges have been settled in order to prevent the creation of movement profiles or the potential for function-creep.
- Processing of personal data for other purposes (e.g. pay-as you drive insurance or behavioral-based marketing), should only be possible with clear and unambiguous consent from the individual.
- In terms of enforcement, the system should not ascertain the identity of the driver or owner of a vehicle unless there is evidence that the driver has committed something which is defined as a violation of the road pricing system."
Miroslav Marc, member of ISO/CEN standardization committees dealing with road use charging, explains: “IWGDPT opinions are not legally binding nor is that intended. They are formal recommendations. The Sofia Memorandum, however, is not just a European document, but an international one, since IWGDPT members come from around the world. The weight of these recommendations is reflected in the respect for the institutions that adopted them.”
Privacy Commissioners in several countries have indicated that they will promote these recommendations. Natasa Pirc Musar, the Slovene Information Commissioner, issued a similar opinion, prior to the IWGDPT guidance, stressing that data can only be used for the purposes stated and must be managed according to the criticality of the need (“principle of proportionality”). Her opinion: Personal data (including location data) is to remain exclusively under the surveillance of the user.
Marc also pointed out that “Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), issued his opinion on the European Commission's proposed plan to accelerate and coordinate the deployment of ITS in road transportation in Europe based on guidance of the Sofia Memorandum.”
In paragraph 45 under Safeguards for the use of location tools for the provision of ITS location-based services, The EDPS states:
"The use of location technologies is particularly intrusive from a privacy viewpoint… As was stressed by the Article 29 Working Party, the processing of location data is a particularly sensitive matter involving the key issue of the freedom to move anonymously, and which requires the implementation of specific safeguards in order to prevent surveillance of individuals and misuse of the data."
It is doubtful that any country will permit GNSS telematics that do not provide extreme privacy protection, even anonymity – i.e., likely disallowing methods to permit location data to leave the vehicle without driver/owner control. Brazil’s Federal Government (Seventh Circuit Federal CIVIL ACTION PUBLIC Autos) recently made it illegal to mandate tracking-enabled telematics.
All of this means that thin-class telematics (that forward location information to a data centre for processing) for road-user charging will likely have little market excepting possibly for commercial vehicles. The task, now, for road-use telematics designers is to make fat devices (that determine a bill on-board) cheaper.
In a Globe article 2009.11.17, Jennifer Pritchett offered a neutral-to-positive story on the technology to address the pending shift from fuel taxes to road-use-charges. The 20 comments were 60% pro road-pricing, 40% against.
Analyst Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. offered what other readers thought was a negative, almost calloused comment. It was so badly received that he managed to have it removed, leaving only copies in other’s comments.
"These kinds of [road tolling] technologies make [transportation] more efficient, I don't deny that, but if governments collectively want to protect the 900,000 to one million jobs in the automotive industry, they also have to accept that we need more vehicles, not less ... I'm against road pricing… We need consumers to drive more, not less."
I read his full original, it was brutally honest. His comment was lambasted by a couple of others. But DesRosiers is in every way correct. He has a right to an opinion that it should not be done (in fact he agrees it would be effective). His critical point, however, was “if governments collectively want to protect the 900,000 to one million jobs in the automotive industry…”
DesRosiers is on to something. He's uncovered the REAL problem. It is not “privacy”. It is not “equity for the poor”. It is not “because we already pay fuel tax”. It is not even that about a third of readers don’t understand market economics, which DesRosiers clearly does. The problem DesRosiers points to is that the government is tripping over itself. The Ministry of Energy is promising that Ontario Power Generation will be ready with the electricity for the presumably-pending electric vehicle. The Ministry of Industry is promising (and investing) in saving automotive jobs. The Ministry of Revenue refuses to raise gas tax. The Ministry of Transportation is refusing to toll roads, while insisting that Metrolinx figure out the missing $38B to fix our egregious transportation (cars, transit and bikes) system.
Fleet electrification plus government money artificially pumping out more and more cars will accelerate the pressure on our roads -- both lack of funding due to the withering gas-tax and congestion as a consequence of the government's DesRosierian Economics. And on my car radio this morning, as I waited for three light changes to get through one intersection, I listened to a report that Canada has its greatest debt ever and another story about global warming.
Who are the biggest losers in all this? You are. You are stuck in filth and traffic whether on bus, bike or car because government Ministries are uncoordinated and isolated from each other, each with their own bacon to save. And which Ministry loses for lack of coordination? They all do.
If you want to use your car ten years from now, you should ask for road pricing to reduce congestion. If you want to use transit 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing to double your service. If you want to use a bike 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing to open up room for bikeways. If you want to telework 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing so your employer can better justify your not spending time and money to drive to the office (your employer respects your money, but discounts your time). If you want a greener city 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing that varies by engine type.
And, if you really hate government so much, you should ask for road pricing, and then never drive again. If you really think it is all a big tax grab, why not just starve them out?
Sometimes a short film is better that a blog. Jane Jacobs talked about removing road space making traffic disappear back in the 60s. That's 50 years ago.
At a recent road-pricing conference here in Toronto, after hearing some eight presentations about congestion-pricing and road-pricing, a woman stood up to express a concern that we were overly focused on only one small issue. That we ought to look at broader issues of planning and sprawl - the really big contextual issues that threaten us.
I followed her comment by asserting that road pricing was in fact the keystone to most of these things and that solving this will open up enormous possibilities throughout her list of broader concerns. In fact, I assert that many of these things she was concerned with are symptoms of the wrong economic model for paying for roads.
I spoke with her afterward - Professor Judith Nagata, with the Anthropology Department at York University. She introduced me to David Owen's book, Green Metropolis. It looks promising.
Changing the we pay for using cars will be one of the most important shifts of the 21st century. At least as important as Henry Ford's assembly line. It has engineering, transportation, urban planning, economic, public health, livability, safety, social equity, sociological, employment, commercial, transit, military, geo-political, climate change, and many other implications. It is not surprising that an anthropologist would take an interest.
This morning, the Globe and Mail printed a story about Skymeter that left out a critical detail.
Road-use metering technology (such as Skymeter's) is constrained to be "Location Anonymous", by compliance with the Sofia Memorandum from the International Working Group for Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT). Location data are not permitted to exit the vehicle. All charges owed are calculated on-board and only the billing data may be forwarded from the device. It is in fact more private than E-ZPass or 407 transponders and cameras. We are forced by law to NOT provide or permit a method to "see" where a vehicle is. To do this reliably while blocking fraud and tampering forms the bulk of our innovation over the past seven years. Unfortunately, this fact is never passed on by journalists. We are not sure why. Perhaps because such privacy protection is good news. There is no Big Brother. There is only paying for what you use.
The recent OECD report about Toronto, that only a few of us can read since it is unavailable to non-accredited journalists until 2010, has generated a mini-furor among Toronto's free-road driverazzi, who think their gas-tax pays for Toronto's potholes (I mean roads) and are all sure the gummint will take their money but not fix anything.
To the OECD's credit, they defended Road Pricing awhile back in January 2002.
Contrary to some sceptical voices in the car lobby, road pricing is not an attack on car use, but rather a way of enhancing it. If there is an enemy of the car industry, it is inefficient congestion.
2009.11.10 Today, the Globe’s Brian Fenlon and Post’s Natalie Alcoba reports some sharp criticism for Toronto from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (from a report commissioned by the City). Bravo! Someone to tell us like it is!
But why do we need to pay an external body to tell us we have “one of the highest rates of car use among cities in the organization's 30 member countries” and that “the Toronto region should consider measures such as toll lanes, local fuel and parking taxes, and a Singapore-style congestion charge in which roads in the city centre and major routes such as the 400-series highways would be subject to fees that vary according to peak hours”? We know this, don’t we? Or perhaps like a case of a person in the next cubicle with a body odor problem, we need someone else to deliver the message.
The Globe article reports one of the OECD’s findings as “our region lags on innovation indicators such as patents, citations, high-tech employment and entrepreneurship… Governments should invest in more initiatives like Toronto's MaRS Discovery District.”
Now that cuts a bit close. A firm called Skymeter is in MaRS. They have developed several patents there. In fact those patents permit Ontario to solve the aforementioned “congestion charge” that would allow road-use fees to vary according to peak hours and well as cleaning up our parking problem. They have entrepreneurs and hire high-tech staff. I am one of them. And some 15 countries and cities are studying this Canadian-innovated and Canadian-made technology. Only innovations like Skymeter’s can prove the OECD wrong.
A CBC report.
And another.
OCED review.
Another OECD review.
Earlier in November 2009, I was a guest on a talk-TV show, Goldhawk Live (Rogers). The host Dale Goldhawk, posed the question: “Road tolls: are you for or against?”
There were two live guests, myself, an advocate of pricing all road-use at the marginal rate needed to manage congestion, and Jim Kenzie, a respected and awarded automotive journalist and car racer. Mr Kenzie is not an advocate of road tolling.
Mr Goldhawk also pre-arranged two phone in-guests: Marty Collier a local transport consultant and long-time road pricing advocate who runs an annual conference here in Toronto, and Economics Professor Harry Kitchen, author of "Financing Public Transit and Transportation in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton: Future Initiatives," (2008).
Clearly, the guest deck was stacked three to one against Mr Kenzie.
When asked to explain the new-generation tolling technology, I briefly explained that it metered all road use and parking use, compared that use to an internal database of charging information for the purpose of road tolling, parking payment and pay-as-you-go insurance. I explained that location information was not permitted to leave the vehicle and that the device I had brought to the show shielded privacy to conform with international data privacy standards, which demand that location data not leave the vehicle.
Mr Kenzie’s position was the usual “we already pay way too many taxes, this is just more government intrusion that is no different than ‘big brother’ ”. He also pointed out that automotive emissions were so little that they should not be considered further in the global warming issue. Then he said that gas tax should absolutely be raised, contradicting his comment re “way too many taxes” only a minute before.
My position was that all roads should be tolled at a few cents per kilometer to replace fuel tax and to manage congestion and emissions. That long trips should pay more than short trips, and that peak-hour trips would cost more than non-peak-hour trips. I also criticized tolling “just the Don Valley and the Gardiner” as that forced people commuting from East and North East to pay (for example) $8 subsidizing those using the 401 and 427 (for free) coming from the North West. (I did not have a chance to describe the mess this would make of traffic on parallel streets and arteries.)
Mr Collier’s position was that road tolling (as well as pay-as-you-go insurance) was important for people to become conscious of the costs of their travel choices, that pay-as-you-go transportation sent ‘pricing signals’ to commuters, some of whom would make better choices thereby benefiting everyone, including those who continued driving on now-less-congested roads. (While this is an accurate description of the use of tax structures to influence choice – another example is tobacco taxes – this seemed to go over the head of at least one caller who resorted to describing Mr Collier as a “ding-dong”.)
Prof. Kitchen pointed out that he has been a long-time advocate of road pricing and that road tolls are increasingly critical to transportation funding. He says this with some authority, since he is one of a handful of respected Canadian academics that have written extensively on the subject.
By my recollection, the callers were split about 50/50, and a concurrent web-poll was 64% pro road-tolling, a surprising result since prior to a road pricing deployment, a population is usually about 30-40% pro-pricing.
What did you say?
Several of the callers agreed with Kenzie by repeating the usual: “I don't like tolling – just raise the gas-tax”. About this, I make two observations. First, more and more drivers are recognizing that there is a funding problem. A minority blames it on political conspirators who misspend; others, aware that the gas tax has not been raised in years, can understand why the problem is real.
Second, few people are able to grasp two key issues: (a) the fuel tax does not address congestion (Collier’s “pricing signals”) and (b) that increasing engine efficiency robs the tax base – i.e., green driving hurts road funding. The perfect illustration was a caller about ¾ through the show, who was explaining why raising the gas tax was the answer. I interrupting and said: “yes, but I have an all-electric car. How long are you willing to subsidize me?” He paused and said: “Oh, well, that's a different matter. Maybe your system will be needed for that.”
I was taken off-guard by Kenzie’s response to that: “The problem is all these efficiency standards. The government should force all vehicles to get 10 miles to the gallon or less”. I hesitated to point out that such a step would multiply fuel costs per kilometer by about 250% whereas the road tolls that Collier, Kitchen, and I are describing would cause an effective per kilometer increase of 20-30%. I suspect that Kenzie did not mean what he said, knowing it was absurd. Rather I sensed that he realized that the diversification of power plants and the specter of low-cost, self-generated electricity mooted all his arguments, and that he probably spoke more in anger than in jest.
I do not think that most people have the time or patience for arguments about pricing signals and using taxes to flatten peak-hour travel. But I do think drivers of internal combustion engines will start to ask for a new, altered or complementary tax-structure for greener vehicles as soon as fleet electrification reaches, say, 5 or 6%. Crediting politicians with greater than average intelligence, I think they will see the problem at 3 or 4%.
Why? Because a 3% drop in vehicle miles travel bankrupted the Highway Trust Fund in the US during the recent recession, and has sent the US into a flurry of interest in road-tolling to close this funding gap.
A couple days ago, in Part I, I described a way to create space for wider, safer, separated, arterial bike lanes by offering managed parking within a block to replace street parking displaced by those lanes. While no new parking spaces are needed, this still requires a modest amount of funding.
The same in-car equipment needed to manage all that extra parking is also able to selectively toll a single street. In Toronto, a small number of arterials such as Bathurst, Gerrard, St.Clair or Vic Park (better ones would be chosen by traffic planners), could be tolled during peak hours (drivers can avoid the toll by avoiding those few streets during those hours – so the system is voluntary, as is the 407). Streets tolled in this way would have dramatically less automotive traffic during peak hours (perhaps 80% less) and can then be used for bike lanes and RT (rapid transit). Those drivers wishing to take advantage of these routes to save peak-hour travel time might pay, say, 12 to 15 cents/km (i.e., less than the 407 fee of 18 cents or so). The revenue from these drivers would help fund the alterations needed to accommodate the bike lanes.
The beneficiaries of such a scheme would be:
- The TTC which would pay less per kilometer for such a RT scheme than they did for the St. Clair streetcar modifications.
- Transit users who can expect a significant timesaving due to less congestion on their route.
- Cyclists who will be safer.
- Parts of the new streetcar system that would be better in the company of more bikes and fewer cars.
- The people cycling on these new paths who will experience increased relative health benefits.
- Drivers who avoid this route and will experience less congestion because of increased bike use and increased transit use in the same travel corridor (even in winter, those cyclists that use these routes that revert to transit will likely use the transit in the same corridor).
- Some of the businesses along the route that will see more cycle traffic.
- The residents along the route who will experience a drop in pollutants
- Ontario, which would have an opportunity to test voluntary tolling programs in advance of their necessity due to falling fuel-tax revenue.
- Toronto, which would be able to add this program to their growing list of green initiatives to help them meet the promised 80% reduction in GHG (not much besides sleeping reduces GHG production more than biking).
How it works
A small telematics ‘black box’ is mounted on the windshield (just like a 407 ‘tolltag’). It gathers position information which it then turns into a toll amount (no position information leaves the ‘front-end’ system. When the vehicle is parked, the black box determines if any toll is owed for the prior journey (most roads are not payable), if it is payable a notice goes to a billing center saying how much is owed and to whom. An account (which may be “pre-paid/anonymous”) is then debited or a private, non-anonymous, account is charged. This is done without the ‘gantries’ that hover over the 407, because the positioning is done by GPS and the communication by build-in cellular. The black-box software that is used to be certain a car was on the road being charged for is sophisticated and involves a highly reliable form of GPS called financial-grade GPS for these kinds of applications. It is designed to be impossible to overcharge. The system is also designed so that it cannot be tracked (like a having a Garmin NUVI or a Tom Tom that only the driver can see. So security (anti-theft) features are not available on this system.
When the car leaves its parking spot, a similar determination is made to determine the parking fee for that spot, as described in Part I. Several other services, such as pay-as-you-drive insurance, loyalty rewards for parking, modality rewards for not driving during peak hours, and the like will soon be available.
In a speech given 9 October 2009 at the National Club in Toronto, Yvonne Bambrick, Executive Director, Toronto Cyclist Union, presented an idea to replace street parking on one side of an oft-biked city artery (Queen Street) with a two-way bike lane.
For those of us who drive, we can imagine the loss of several kilometers of street parking to mean longer searches by circling for on-street parking, more congestion, and further walks to our favorite restaurants and shops as we park ever farther away from our destination.
For those of us who bike, the idea sounds fair. During peak hours, each bike takes either 0.83 cars off our congested streets or one rider off our crowded subway, while each parking spot adds one more car. Sounds exciting and sensible. But realistically the ‘cars-first’ habit of operating in Toronto society makes this idea seem remote at first blush.
Fortunately, there is a way to replace several kilometers of street parking and make Bambrick’s bike lane idea work – all while being kinder to cars and business along Queen street – or other similar arterial. It is possible to have more and safer biking in Toronto while improving automobile access and reducing congestion all at the same time. To do this requires a relatively modest change – miniscule in comparison to Metrolinx’s 25-year, $50B Big Move or the City of Toronto’s Herculean target of an 80% reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In fact, such a modest move as I will describe below would contribute to both of these grander goals showing the world and ourselves that moving toward such changes is possible.
First, consider that there are more parking spots available than are publicly or freely accessible to visiting cars. This parking is in many hundreds of small segments (four to 20 spots) that may be privately owned by banks, shops, churches, service stations or is on-street one or two blocks off of the main arterial and is managed by ‘no parking’ signs, extremely limited availability, ‘one-hour free’ parking, being chained-off, or enforced by tire marking and ticketing. This ‘other’ parking produces little or no revenue for its owners or residents, generates a spillover enforcement problem and provides ‘free parking’ for those that know how to play the game. All parties except scofflaws and freeloaders lose in this scenario.
Private, dedicated-commercial and residential parking is managed this way for two reasons: (a) it is intended for the customers or employees of those businesses or for the residents of those streets, and (b) the cost in effort and equipment to rent those few spaces when they are not used for their primary purpose, using market pricing makes it infeasible to do so.
This second issue – management expense – is critical. I am told that in North America about 70% of all parking revenue is absorbed by infrastructure, enforcement and collection costs. Granted, some of this due to under-pricing, but some is also due to the sheer expense of the machinery and people required to take one or two dollars from you. Parking is painfully expensive to manage (and the transaction cost makes it painful to use!) - all of which helps keep underpriced, overcrowded street parking in place. A certain formula for non-livability, 20th century parking management is as physically inefficient as it is economically and socially inept.
This serves to ensure that there are very many spots or small lots that could be sold for short-term parking but are simply made unavailable because they are not profitable to manage and create a liability, loss or nuisance if used unmanaged.
It is possible, using new, anonymous, satellite-based, "smart meters" to manage those small parking areas in a way that protects the interests of visiting motorists, residents and business owners. Developed in Canada, these in-vehicle payment management systems require no curbside meters for parking and no 407-type gantries for road tolling. Such a system would be set up to reserve sufficient free parking access for customers and residents while charging market rates to non-customers and non-residents in replacement for the lost street parking.
Second, consider that the reason street-parking is often fully occupied for long stretches of each day and on each street is a supply-and-demand problem exacerbated by two, long-term, opposing municipal policies: constrain automotive infrastructure to reduce automotive use (see ex-Mayor Crombie’s comment in transcript) and keep on-street prices low to make sure street parking is affordable for visitors.
There are a lot of good reasons for both of these policies. But the unintended results include congestion, emissions (while circling), less room and less safety for bikes and less livability.
Making more market-priced parking available, both on-street and off-street, on existing pavement can:
- Benefit business both in attracting customers and in receiving payment for their unoccupied spots
- Make dedicated two-way bike lanes feasible without making parking less available
- Increase bike safety
- Provide new business for private and municipal parking operators to manage new parking inventory
- Improve the local funding base by keeping additional parking revenue in the community
- Provide income for churches and other charities that may participate.
- Provide a way to remove most costs from street parking operations.
- Reduce demand for sidewalk-crowding pay-and display machines
Parking management is one of the most underappreciated urban opportunities we have. Since 2002, it has been my goal to make it possible to charge on all (or many more) streets without curbside meter collection and enforcement, to provide MORE off-street parking by repurposing the private spots already built (i.e., without increasing land-use), by allowing these private lots to charge for use by non-customers. (Imagine a banking lot sign: 30 minutes free parking. For satellite meter users: 8 cents per minute after 30 minutes, 2 cents per minute after closing (5pm) and on weekends).
There is a dangerous tendency to set bikes against cars or drivers against transit users or even the CAA against Transportation Demand Management professionals. Such a Car-Wars mentality serves no one except unscrupulous news sellers. All modalities are appropriate and needed. We are missing only a balance. Addressing the combination of too little parking, underpriced-parking, wasted parking potential, and street-parking-at-the-expense-of-bicycle-access-and-safety is a place to start.
Next: Funding: Get Serious About Toronto Cycling, Part II
Peter Gorrie at the Toronto Star asserts that traffic congestion is a wicked problem. Is he right?
A ‘wicked problem’ is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.
Says Laurence J. Peter: “Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.”
The following comments prescriptively follow the opening chapter of a book by Dr. Jeff Conklin called “Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems”. While the architecture of the argument and indeed many of the passages forming the matrix of the discourse are Conklin’s, the assertions and analysis are mine. So, in a fundamental way, this series is jointly authored, but the blame for errors and weak assertions rests solely with me.
Wicked problems, according to Jeff Conklin, have six critical characteristics:
- You don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.
- Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
- Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
- Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel.
- Every solution to a wicked problem is a 'one shot operation'.
- Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.
PART I: CONGESTION
Let’s look at congestion through the lens of Conklin’s six descriptive characteristics to assess whether Peter Gorrie is correct.
1. You don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.
Many solutions are proposed to solve congestion. More roads, more transit, fewer trips, car-pooling, higher density, eat local, telework, smaller cars, roundabouts, removing stop signs, synchronizing signals. The list is very long.
The innumerable ills of congestion are well described, and a great number of solutions have been offered, but we have not tried a solution that has taken hold and that shows more than a temporary or local relief such as the London Congestion System or continuous-flow intersections, respectively. Perhaps this is because the greatest determinant of congestion – an increase in the number of cars – continuously overwhelms our otherwise sensible, local solutions to keep up.
Every solution offered eases the problem a bit while exposing new aspects or another layer of the problem. A new lane invites more traffic. A new transit service or an HOV lane is underused. An increase in bicycle use creates a safety issue.
Perhaps congestion is not necessarily the problem we should tackle, but rather just a symptom of problem we could solve. So what is the problem? To say ‘too many cars’ states the obvious. To say we feel entitled to a private vehicle or that we ‘have earned it’ or prefer it to another mode of travel says why the problem is entrenched, but does not lead to a solution. To say we ‘ought’ to change our travel choices (carpool, bike, transit) moves only a small minority to change.
To say ‘driving is not correctly priced’ may help but that changes the problem domain completely exposing a host of other problems. I will return to this in Part II because it is its own wicked problem.
While there are thousands of papers decrying and detailing the problem of congestion there is no single agreed definitive statement of ‘The Problem.’ As a problem, traffic congestion is ill-structured, a complex and arguably evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. Horst Rittel said, “One cannot understand the problem without knowing about its context; one cannot meaningfully search for information without the orientation of a solution concept; one cannot first understand, then solve.” Moreover, what ‘the Problem’ is depends on who you ask – different stakeholders have different views about what the problem is and what constitutes an acceptable solution.
This tells us that there is no ‘perfect solution’ or even one good (in every sense) solution to congestion.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
Since there is no definitive ‘The Problem’, there is also no definitive ‘The Solution.’ The problem solving process ends when you run out of resources, such as time, money, or energy, not when some optimal or ‘final and correct’ solution emerges.
For congestion, no ‘The Solution’ has yet appeared. It is hard to envision a solution that we would like that has the roads we have be enough for the cars we want to use.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
They are only ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘good enough,’ or ‘not good enough’ solutions to Congestion. The determination of solution quality is not objective and cannot be derived from following a formula. Solutions are assessed in a social context in which “many parties are equipped, interested, and/or entitled to judge [them],” and these judgments vary widely and depend on the stakeholder’s independent values and goals.
I have yet to read any description of a solution to congestion in an online newspaper article or blog that is not followed by a plethora of varying opinions vehemently for or vehemently against. If you want to increase your facility for insulting other stakeholders, these comments are a great place to start.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel.
There are so many factors and conditions, all embedded in a dynamic social, political, geographical and economic context, that no two congestion problems are alike, and the solutions to them will always be custom designed and fitted. Rittel: “The condition in a city constructing a subway may look similar to the conditions in San Francisco, say, . . differences in commuter habits or residential patterns may far outweigh similarities in subway layout, down-town layout, and the rest.” Over time one acquires wisdom and experience about the approach to wicked problems, but one is always a beginner in the specifics of a new wicked problem.
Surely, transit works in some urban geographies, but not in others. Sometimes you can add a lane for cars or bikes, sometimes not. Sometimes what you can physically or politically achieve will have no impact in any case.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one-shot operation.’
Every attempt has consequences. As Rittel says, “One cannot build a freeway to see how it works.” This is the “Catch 22” about wicked problems: you can’t learn about the problem without trying solutions, but every solution you try is expensive and has lasting unintended consequences which are likely to spawn new wicked problems.
Many solutions to congestion are large and expensive. Urban rail is a huge undertaking. Is it the best solution? Not all agree. Even if they did, what route should it take? How long should it be? Should it follow the majority path of current commuters or will transit-oriented development make it worthwhile to lay track where no one currently goes?
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.
There may be no solutions, or there may be a host of potential solutions that are devised, and another host that are never even thought of. Thus, it is a matter of creativity to devise potential solutions, and a matter of judgment to determine which are valid, which should be pursued and implemented.
Who can say that we have thought of all solutions to congestion? In any one location we visit, we might be surprised at a local solution. I was recently in Springfield Missouri, and was surprised to learn of the effectiveness of a continuous flow intersection. This system, which I had never seen before, is now projected to reduce gridlock delays by over 70% rather than the original 32% projected.
So, I would say Peter Gorrie was right.
See the entire whitepaper, here.
Good that this kind of poll is being conducted. Privacy is complicated. It is critical, sacred, protected, violated, dangerous and for sale. A lot of what we worry about does not matter, but other things we don’t know about do. Online privacy is only one of many privacy issues, but because it is bigger, faster and invisible (to many of us) it may be more important than other potential infringements. I tossed my PC and moved to Mac because I was spending precious time each day running spyware and other malware filters. My time was more valuable to me than privacy – in that case. But I am also glad not to be watched – or watched less, because my IP address is still watched by site visits.
Privacy shields will continue to grow in importance. As we eventually move away from fuel taxes to charging for road use by miles traveled, devices to meter your road use will need to be designed so that your location information is private. The EU is looking at this now and privacy commissioners there are insisting that location data never leave your vehicle. Ever. If technology is designed to prevent that completely, then you can drive anonymously, as you do now (excepting that your license plate can be read by a camera). But that leads to a gap in auditability. That can be addressed by writing to your handheld for only you to read, but that could leave an opening for privacy infringement, however small.
Regardless of what is done technically – legislated or not – we must address the definition of privacy on the road as well as in cyberspace. Roads are public, your use is a privilege, but your trip’s time and route is usually seen as private except partially when violating a traffic rule or driving through a toll booth. Interesting distinctions.
Even internet-enabled meters for power use in your home carry potential threats. Every new wireless – or wired – technology has privacy threats, and we will only be using more such technology.
Consider that the best way to protect privacy may be to set a price on personal data. Imagine that you can ‘dial-up’ what to hide, delete, sell, publish and receive advertisements about. Any commodity with a price will be protected far more carefully than you now know how to protect your own privacy. That will all be very complex so you’ll need a trusted broker to sell/hide that data for you. And governments cannot operate this service.
Does poorly-managed privacy in a consumer society exacerbate the cost to the planet? In a consumer society the cost (waste) in selling to you can be reduced if corporations could target more accurately and you would be exposed to less nuisance (waste of time, junk mail, spam).
Privacy Commissioners have their work cut out.
