Summit urges cities to plan for shared transportation system

Gabe Klein experienced a prelude of what he expects urban living to be like in the U.S. in the nottoo-distant future during a yearend trip to Stockholm and Amsterdam:

In two weeks of travel with his wife, two young children and an au pair, the group was in a taxi for about four minutes. The rest of the time, they used public transportation, biked, shared rides with others or walked.

Pushed by the development of self-driving vehicles, Mr. Klein said, that type of shared transportation model is quickly working its way here. He sees it as an opportunity for American cities to remake a system developed primarily for cars after World War II.

“What we’re trying to do is reengineer what we did in the 1950s,” said Mr. Klein, a former commissioner of transportation in Washington, D.C., and Chicago and cofounder of a firm that advises cities how to adapt to new technology. At that time, American society “invented all the wrong things” by designing high-capacity highways to move residents out from cities to suburbs, creating congestion, air pollution and public infrastructure needs that didn’t exist before, he maintained.

Mr. Klein served as co-moderator for one of three groups at the National Summit on Design and

Urban Mobility held Downtown this week. The summit for 120 planning, design and transportation industry officials from across the country ended Friday with broad recommendations for steps cities should take to prepare for a shared transportation system. A final report intended as a national framework will be published next month.

Mr. Klein’s group focused on people and the changes that will be needed to retrain as many as 17 million drivers, parking lot attendants and others who could lose jobs to shared transportation. He urged leaders to use fees, taxes and incentives to push forthe results they want.

For example, he said, cities should consider offering rent assistance or other incentives for people to give up personal vehicles and move into urban areas. Public housing, in particular, and other urban developments should consider eliminating parking lots to encourage shared transportation. Parking and gas taxes should be reduced or eliminated in favor of high fees based on miles traveled for private vehicles, especially those used only by a driver.

“The people who play in the sandbox have to pay for the sandbox,” Mr. Klein said.

A group that looked at public policy encouraged officials to get ahead of changes by building consensus in communities about how they should look in the future, from street design to reuse of underutilized parking facilities. Foundations, the business community and the public should be involved.

“Each of us … is going to have a new responsibility,” said Marilyn Taylor, an architect and former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design who co-moderated that group.

“Public officials have a role of pulling everyone together and developing a vision. It has to start now.”

The public policy group stressed that communities should take advantage of public ownership of the road system and make sure they control how excess capacity is used. That includes redesigning streets for curb dropoffs of passengers, new transit stations and bike lanes between curbs and pedestrian sidewalks.

If industry alone controls such factors, urban areas could be jammed with selfdriving vehicles the same as it is with owner-occupied vehicles now.

“This asset [streets] needs to be very carefully managed for public benefit, not just corporate profit,” said co-moderator Jeff Tumlin, director of strategy at Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, a San Francisco transportation and engineering firm.

Although there was no specific policy recommendation, the summit generally endorsed Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s call for cities to have a compact with selfdriving firms for them to help with job retraining, full access to data and accessibility for all segments of the community.

The American Architectural Foundation, which coordinated the summit with Pittsburgh officials, expects to present a final report at a National Press Club event in Washington, D.C., next month. The group may hold regional meetings nationwide to encourage cities to use the recommendations.