Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:39:15
Speaker 1
The portion of trips in the downtown area made by car are well under 20%, probably less than 10%, and that the majority of road space is dedicated to automobile parking and travel. And you can see in these images that the roads are hardly used at that space is not used efficiently, and the sidewalks are actually quite crowded and often uncomfortable because transportation planners have dedicated the majority of road space, the majority of their funding to accommodate an automobile travel, even when it makes no sense whatsoever.

00:00:39:18 - 00:01:01:27
Speaker 2
Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Todd Litman with the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Victoria, British Columbia. We're going to be diving into some of his research work and his publications. It's a little awkward, but it's a good one, So let's get right to it with Todd.

00:01:01:29 - 00:01:06:26
Speaker 2
Todd Litman, it's wonderful to have you back on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:01:06:28 - 00:01:08:27
Speaker 1
Thank you very much.

00:01:09:00 - 00:01:18:04
Speaker 2
So, Todd, I love to have my guests just give a real quick 30 seconds introduction. So who is Todd Littman?

00:01:18:07 - 00:01:32:24
Speaker 1
I am executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. I've spent the last 30 years or so working on what I call innovative or emerging transportation planning issues.

00:01:32:27 - 00:01:59:26
Speaker 2
I love it. I love it. And I'm it's delightful to welcome you back because this is your second time on the podcast, first time on the video version of it. But you and I have actually this is actually believe it or not, you may not know this, but this is your third time, you know, on the Active Towns channel, because I also recorded a video with you there in Victoria, because that's where you located.

00:01:59:26 - 00:02:01:21
Speaker 2
You're in Victoria, B.C..

00:02:01:24 - 00:02:02:19
Speaker 1
That's right.

00:02:02:21 - 00:02:24:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. And in fact, when we met in person and in I recorded that video with you, that was part of a tour that you were leading. It was a bike tour that you were leading for the Congress, for the New Urbanism. I want to see that was in 2017. Does that seem about right to you?

00:02:24:06 - 00:02:29:03
Speaker 1
Right. I would have to go back to my notes to be sure, but that sounds about right.

00:02:29:06 - 00:03:04:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you looked a lot younger then. There you are. So, yeah, you were you were gracious enough to to actually take us on a tour there in Victoria, British Columbia, and and really sort of showing off some of the extraordinary bicycle infrastructure. And then we were talking about land use planning and we were also talking about, you know, the the importance of, you know, creating sociable networks in sociable communities.

00:03:04:24 - 00:03:21:03
Speaker 2
Talk a little bit about, you know, Victoria, B.C. It's you're been your home for a while and are there any updates that you know to you know, sort of what we the spirit of what we were covering when we were, you know, touring around in Victoria?

00:03:21:06 - 00:04:01:27
Speaker 1
Absolutely. We have actually we we just completed of every five year travel survey that is the regional government commissioned a major survey, commissioned a major survey every five years, and we just released the 2022. And the results are actually really encouraging. So for example, we saw a large increase in walking and bicycling mode share and a very significant reduction in automobile travel.

00:04:01:29 - 00:04:26:11
Speaker 1
So automobile trips are down, walking and bicycling are up. This did occur, you know, at the tail end. The travel survey occurred at the tail end of the this little pandemic that we had. And so transit ridership did not increase, but it didn't decline nearly as much as we saw in a lot of other cities around the world.

00:04:26:13 - 00:05:16:00
Speaker 1
And I think that that validates the investments that our city has made in in non auto travel. And the we're also doing a lot of infill development. So we're encouraging more housing, we're creating more housing in the walkable urban neighborhoods. And that demonstrates that what seems like a small increase in walking and bicycling can actually reflect a pretty large reduction in automobile travel, that there is a leverage effect, that if we create more walkable neighborhoods, what I like to call urban villages, we do see the reduction and driving a fairly significant reduction in driving.

00:05:16:02 - 00:05:37:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And you were actually talking a little bit about this in this video, this sort of rolling in the background here. One of the things that you had talked about was, you know, that that concept of these urban villages and, you know, maybe if they maybe somebody does need to drive into it and maybe they park, but then park and then go and do many other little trips as well.

00:05:37:24 - 00:06:12:01
Speaker 1
That's right. What we find is that when we create a truly accessible, multimodal neighborhood where it's easy to get around without a lot of driving, that people take advantage of that opportunity. And it comes out in many ways these days. I really love using Walk Score as an indicator of a well-designed community. Interesting thing is, a walk score doesn't really measure walking or walkability.

00:06:12:03 - 00:06:29:29
Speaker 1
It doesn't measure sidewalks or crosswalks, but it does measure land use. Mix the and density the number of commonly used destinations that you can reach within what's considered a walkable distance. And that turns out to be really key.

00:06:30:01 - 00:06:54:26
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. I'm glad you brought that up is that it's really looks looks at density and proximity of meaningful destinations within a particular neighborhood. To your point, though, it doesn't get into any qualitative analysis of whether the sidewalks are actually safe or, you know, whether, you know, it's truly pleasant environment necessarily, but at least proximity is there.

00:06:54:27 - 00:07:22:22
Speaker 2
Well, I'll be sure to include the link to this video in the show notes for this episode down below. So folks who are listening to this, you'll want to definitely pop on over to the the landing page for this episode out at Active Towns dot org or in the show notes on your listening platform. And those of you here on YouTube, you can just click on the video description down below and you can get the link to that video and you can watch the entire thing.

00:07:22:29 - 00:07:41:12
Speaker 2
And here's some of the the wisdom that was coming out way back in 2017 from Todd and I. And I also wanted to to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about the Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

00:07:41:14 - 00:08:08:05
Speaker 1
I established DTI in 1993, so the past millennium, and amazingly that's been my consulting firm and research platform. And amazingly it has continued all that time. I've been able to find really interesting research projects for the last 30 plus years.

00:08:08:07 - 00:08:35:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. So why don't you go ahead and explain a little bit more about that. How does one start up there? They're all, you know, dating way back to the 1990s and and and yes, this is your website and we were sort of poking fun at you a couple of weeks ago that the website does look a little bit like it's from the 1990s but it is a treasure trove of resources.

00:08:35:12 - 00:08:45:15
Speaker 2
But talk a little bit about that. How does one go about creating a career out of doing this sort of work, The research that you do and the publications that you do?

00:08:45:18 - 00:09:20:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a great question. I started off doing research for my master's thesis, looking at the costs and benefits, how to how to apply economic analysis to different forms of transportation. And my work expanded on the scope. So a few previous studies had looked at certain aspects of these impacts. So some studies looked at infrastructure costs, you know, what does it cost to provide roads and sidewalks and bike lanes?

00:09:20:19 - 00:10:08:21
Speaker 1
And other studies looked at the environmental impacts, you know, how do air pollution and noise and and land use impacts vary between different forms of transportation and others looked at consumer costs or parking costs. But there were very few studies that tried to pull all that together. That was my master's thesis. And so as I was completing it, I started getting consulting contracts and after a couple of these contracts and getting some interest and getting paid for doing that, I, I took the risk, established DTI as my as my research organization and consulting firm.

00:10:08:23 - 00:10:38:27
Speaker 1
And amazingly over the I have been able to get work and funded work that allowed me to focus on this. I'm very lucky that if I because I have low overhead, I've been able to minimize my overhead. I'm able to to get by. If I if I have a relatively modest amount of paid work each month or each year.

00:10:39:01 - 00:11:10:20
Speaker 1
It took a while. So it was a decade of really struggling. And I was supporting a family of four at the time. And at that time it often seemed risky. And every time I got a good contract, I'd call it my little miracle. Another miracle came through. There are all kinds of complications if you're on your own small scale consultant, things like you're spending a lot of time lining up contracts, putting in bids.

00:11:10:23 - 00:11:42:13
Speaker 1
You know, it's the nature of the person that's hiring you. They generally like at least three in as many as ten bids on any contract, which means that if you're a if you're working as a consultant, you usually need to submit 3 to 10 proposals for each one. You get successful, each one that gets selected. So as a consultant, you spend a lot of time preparing proposals, knowing that most of them you're going to fail.

00:11:42:16 - 00:12:10:08
Speaker 1
It also requires me to do my own, you know, accounting and administrative work and that document layout and and there's often quite a lag between when I complete a project and what I when I get paid for it. It's typical that, you know, you do some work and you submit an invoice and maybe a month later you actually get a check or a wire transfer.

00:12:10:10 - 00:12:46:12
Speaker 1
But there's often there's some kind of little technical glitch in, in the money transfer or something like that. It could easily be two or three months. So if you're going to set yourself up as a consultant, you just need to be aware. You've got to you've got to have you're running a business. Yeah. Now, I've been lucky that the areas that I'm interested in tend to be emerging issues, issues that are getting more attention over time.

00:12:46:15 - 00:13:19:18
Speaker 1
And so my interest, I often if there's a new issue that that interests me and I don't as far as I can see, there's not a lot of other researchers working on it. I'll take some time. I'll often spend a week or two weeks or more doing research on that subject and and developing my own analysis of of how we could do a better job, how communities or governments could do a better job, or businesses could do a better job of addressing that issue.

00:13:19:21 - 00:13:48:02
Speaker 1
And those are unfunded what I call unfunded projects. I just do them because I'm interested and if I'm lucky, that will become somebody else. Some somebody will find reasons to hire me to do more research on that subject. And that's been my my mentor method for the last few years, the last few decades. And amazingly, it has work.

00:13:48:02 - 00:13:58:00
Speaker 1
So I, I sometimes get those miracles where something that I'm interested turns out to have some broader interest.

00:13:58:03 - 00:14:19:29
Speaker 2
Yeah, fantastic. And as we can see, this is the landing page for season one, episode 33 when we last spoke in depth. And I really do encourage everybody to go and listen to this one. This is an audio only podcast and a podcast episode and again, there's a link to that particular video that we were just looking at.

00:14:20:02 - 00:14:40:13
Speaker 2
And yeah, it really is amazing. You have been one of the mainstays of doing research in this particular area. Now, if I remember correctly, you probably try to attend the the Transportation Research Board a meet up. Do were you there last week?

00:14:40:15 - 00:14:41:27
Speaker 1
Absolutely, yes.

00:14:42:00 - 00:14:43:05
Speaker 2
Fantastic.

00:14:43:07 - 00:15:10:28
Speaker 1
This is from what I can estimate. This is either my 30th or 31st year of attending. For me, it's great fun because I get to see the emerging research that other people are doing and see lots of old friends and make new ones. The Transportation Research Board. It's a section of the National Academy of Sciences, so there's a lot of resources being invested there.

00:15:11:05 - 00:15:34:29
Speaker 1
And then there are some fun side events like the transportation camp where they generally me exclude me as the exception. But a lot of young people come together with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and curiosity and discuss these important emerging issues.

00:15:35:02 - 00:16:13:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I'm going to pull up your your LinkedIn page because you, you, you do post a fair amount of stuff out on LinkedIn and keep us posted of some of the stuff that you're doing. And it occurs to me that, yeah, you actually did post about the Derby because you were as you were there. And what are the things that you had mentioned in that is your joy of a, you know, going through and walking through the poster sessions and oftentimes at conferences and meetups, those are one of the things that, you know, it's like, yeah, don't forget about going through the poster sessions.

00:16:13:06 - 00:16:20:25
Speaker 2
Talk a little bit about that and why those poster sessions are so impactful and important from your perspective.

00:16:21:02 - 00:16:50:28
Speaker 1
Sure. Let's put this into perspective. Researchers are working on something that they're excited about and then in July we submit our abstracts or we submit papers to present at this conference six months later. And if we're lucky, we, you know, some of our papers get accepted. In the past, most of the presentations were what we call a panel presentation.

00:16:50:28 - 00:17:15:26
Speaker 1
You sit at a table with other researchers and you've got 15 minutes or so to present your research. And in practice, if you're attending one of those sessions, very likely you're only interested in one or two of the presentations, but you're stuck in that room. You have to sit through the other ones that you might not be interested in at all.

00:17:16:01 - 00:17:42:24
Speaker 1
And to tell you the truth, some presenters are not very good at giving and making an interesting story. They might have a fantastic research, but sometimes sitting through 15 minutes of somebody is either I'm not interested in it or I'm not impressed with how they're presenting the information. And it's fairly time demanding for everybody to sit in those rooms and watch these presentations.

00:17:42:27 - 00:18:09:28
Speaker 2
Yeah, if I can jump in real quick, Todd. So what you're really saying is that one of the beautiful things about this is just this we're looking at the image on here, and you have the ability to sort of walk around, scan that research. And if you have additional questions, there's usually times when the poster presenters are there and then you can have a one on one sort of Q&A with them about the context of that, that presentation.

00:18:09:28 - 00:18:44:11
Speaker 1
Exactly. Exactly. So over time, there just wasn't there weren't enough slots in the in the in the panel sessions. So what's happened over time is an increasing portion of the papers are now presented as poster in the poster sessions and this photo doesn't really give justice to this huge scale of this thing. You're in a giant hall with at any one point, there's probably about 100 or more of as inpatients being presented and there are in sections.

00:18:44:11 - 00:19:20:23
Speaker 1
So there might be one of these aisles is focusing on, say, economic analysis and another is on model transportation modeling and another is on is on emerging or somebody is working on public transit or walkability or something else, and they'll be poster after poster. And like you say, you walk through and you look at the heading and you look at you can I typically will spend 10 seconds assessing whether I'm at all interested in this thing.

00:19:20:25 - 00:19:46:07
Speaker 1
And then if I am, I'll spend a minute reading through and there's kind of a standard format. There's an abstract that summarizes it. There's graphs showing, you know, key analysis, and then there's conclusions and findings. So in 10 seconds, I can usually determine whether I'm interested in the subject and in the minute I can get the key findings.

00:19:46:09 - 00:20:12:27
Speaker 1
And then the fun thing is that the author is there. And if I have questions or I'm really excited or or if I disagree with them and think that their their research is biased or incomplete, I can tell them that to their face. And it is it is actually in practice, it's generally much more fun than sitting in one of these panel sessions.

00:20:12:27 - 00:20:38:02
Speaker 1
So I like to do it. It's often the younger researchers offer a good portion of them are, let's say a student is presenting their dissertation or thesis findings or something. There's so so I find it great fun. It's a it's a really good activity at a conference.

00:20:38:04 - 00:21:08:20
Speaker 2
I've honed in on this particular photo. This is another one of your photos that you had posted out on social media. And I, I chuckled when I saw this particular photo because and you'll see why I chuckled about it, because they have another one that'll that I'll pop on over to. But before I give you my take as to why I find this funny, what was your sort of thought when you were framing this shot and taking a snapshot of it?

00:21:08:22 - 00:21:32:26
Speaker 1
Well, it is kind of funny. Partly it just shows what the conference center is like. This is the Washington, D.C. Conference Center, and there are probably about 14,000 transportation researchers attending this conference. The scale is astounding. Wow. 14,000. Wow.

00:21:32:28 - 00:21:35:12
Speaker 2
And just amazing. Yeah.

00:21:35:14 - 00:22:19:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so there's a lot going on. But it is kind of fun to be an active transportation advocate. I like walking, bicycling and to see how quickly, if there is an escalator, people who are who who would normally walk and bicycle, they just go suck, they get sucked into it. So one of my one of my conference and travel day physical activity strategies is that whenever there is stairs, I'll take them rather than the escalator or the elevator.

00:22:19:06 - 00:22:35:07
Speaker 1
So this, you know, I look at these stairs, beautiful stairs, beautiful carpet. But even though, you know, there's an irony here, a lot of those people would probably go and work out at a gym.

00:22:35:10 - 00:22:35:20
Speaker 2
Right.

00:22:35:21 - 00:22:44:29
Speaker 1
In order to be there, maintain their exercise when the escalator is there. You just without thinking, wander onto it.

00:22:45:01 - 00:23:12:07
Speaker 2
Yeah. Usually where you took my my bait, you know, I was you knew which direction I was going. This particular images, courtesy of Darren Buck, who was also in attendance there at the at t r b and and yeah, it's it's one of those things that we we know about human behavior is that, you know, we we tend to gravitate towards the easy way up and down.

00:23:12:07 - 00:23:40:10
Speaker 2
And it's it's always quite amazing and it's it's good for a little little poking fun at as well I do the same thing as you do is I go out of my way to, you know, find those stairs. In this case, the stairs and the escalators are literally right next to each other. And so it is an even more interesting sort of illustration of human behavior and how we do gravitate towards the easy way up.

00:23:40:12 - 00:23:44:18
Speaker 1
Well, it's also a reminder of of design.

00:23:44:21 - 00:23:46:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yes.

00:23:46:14 - 00:24:17:26
Speaker 1
We if if we want to encourage active lifestyles, the stairs should be more prominent and more attract than the escalator and elevator. And this is an issue, for example, in designing office buildings, in hospitals and other other facilities is often the escalator and elevator are the prominent. And if there are stairs, you have to go out of your way.

00:24:17:26 - 00:24:49:18
Speaker 1
And it's a lot of the stairwells are ugly. They just there's no no, but nobody bothered to design them to be attractive. They're sometimes dark and dirty. So if we do want to be healthier, there's some just little design features you could call the there's you know, your extra exercise. You could call them an exercise snack and you could call designing, you know, giving prominence to the to the healthier option.

00:24:49:20 - 00:24:51:14
Speaker 1
You could call that a nudge.

00:24:51:17 - 00:25:15:09
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And in this case, you know, they're both side by side, like you said, you pointed out that there there were quite attractive and certainly inviting and right there. So proximity was there. But it just, you know, kind of speak to the fact that, yeah, we have to kind of think a little bit more appropriately about, well, how do we sort of nudge people towards that active mobility choice?

00:25:15:16 - 00:25:43:18
Speaker 2
And it's easy for us to to sort of extend this analogy that we're that we're using here towards our cycle networks and our walking networks that we have out in our cities. How can we encourage more active mobility? And we may have to take into consideration not only proximity and make it obvious, but also make it, you know, truly enjoyable and pleasurable for people to choose to walk or bike.

00:25:43:21 - 00:26:30:12
Speaker 1
Sure comes up in many circumstances So frequently. The implication is we're doing somebody a favor by minimizing the amount that they have to walk. I especially notice it in airports where they'll often be a shuttle bus of some sort from one terminal to another. And in a lot of cases, they don't even give you the option of walking, even though if you take into account the time you waste waiting for that shuttle and then you're crammed into an unpleasant, you know, craft the little pod of some sort, if they had a walking corridor option, I would certainly choose it, you know, half the time or, you know, most of the time, unless I'm in a

00:26:30:12 - 00:26:45:21
Speaker 1
rush. So and there are countless examples of when the just the design details discourage people from using the physical activity. Active option.

00:26:45:23 - 00:27:15:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. So I've pulled up on screen here your most recent article that you had published in Plan Edison and and again it it I think is is appropriate for us to to emphasize that as part of the research that you do and the work that you do your constantly publishing. And so this is just the most recent, you know published just you know, a few days ago on January 8th, 20, 24.

00:27:15:12 - 00:27:19:27
Speaker 2
Talk a little bit about this particular publication and what you covering.

00:27:20:00 - 00:27:58:29
Speaker 1
Sure. Well, Planet is is the website for professional planners. It's used by people all over the world, but it is, you know, North American focus in practice, sustainable transportation hierarchies come up frequently. It is part of what you would call the paradigm shift from focusing on speed. So automobile transportation policies that favor automobile transportation are justified because driving is generally faster than walking bicycling in public transit and so for the last century, we've created we've reinforced a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:27:58:29 - 00:28:33:08
Speaker 1
So we put most of our planning resources into roads and parking facilities. We are we are essentially favoring and subsidizing automobile travel at a much higher rate than we do the the what you could call the affordable, inclusive, resource efficient modes like walking and bicycling and public transit. So occasionally planners realize that we need to reprioritize in a term that we use as a sustainable transportation hierarchy.

00:28:33:10 - 00:29:21:01
Speaker 1
Now, if you can go down on the on my blog here, you'll see that other researchers have developed. There's a number of images of these sustainable hierarchy images, but basically it says that when there's some resources are being allocated, whether money or road space or time, we should savor the affordable, efficient modes. And this image is a straight why you can say that, you know, driving a car requires far more space and so is far less appropriate in urban conditions and requires far more expensive infrastructure than walking, bicycling and public transit.

00:29:21:03 - 00:29:56:15
Speaker 1
If you're an environmentalist focusing on environmental impacts, you could say that automobile travel produces far more emissions, you know, requires far more energy and reduces and produces more emissions. So there are a number of these these images that to convey that my research has been to go into the into a much more detail. So I come up with estimates of the the specific estimates of the infrastructure, your costs and the cost to consumers of different modes.

00:29:56:18 - 00:30:31:06
Speaker 1
The accident risks the different modes impose the pollution, the impervious surface they require. So the amount of land that has to be paid for roads and parking facilities. So I do more multifaceted analysis, but the results are the conclusions are very consistent that walking, bicycling and public transit tend to be more affordable, inclusive and efficient. Okay, so then you go down and you ask, well, what should that how should we apply that to something like funding allocation?

00:30:31:08 - 00:30:59:06
Speaker 1
So if you go down a little bit more in my blog, you'll see one of my graphs here where I ask how much what portion of our infrastructure dollars do we typically spend on walking and bicycling in public transit, not non auto modes. And it turns out to be in the typical community, probably about 10% or less of our transportation dollars are spent on non auto modes.

00:30:59:08 - 00:31:28:27
Speaker 1
And then you can compare that with demand for those modes. How much do people want to use walking and bicycling and public transit? And you can compare it with total trips, traffic deaths, urban trips. So the trips in urban areas where traffic congestion and accident risk and air pollution are most significant and where the benefits of reduced driving would be greatest potential trips and frequent users.

00:31:28:27 - 00:31:57:24
Speaker 1
So there's some surveys asked people, Do you use non auto modes at least three times a week? And it turns out yeah, about half. Even though the commonly used statistics say that 90% of trips are made by by automobile, you can invert that and you can say about half of the population. Asian relies on walking, bicycling and public transit at least occasionally is three times a week.

00:31:57:27 - 00:32:28:21
Speaker 1
And so you can see they're users, they're frequent users. And of course, a lot of those some of those are are totally dependent. There are people who cannot drive or should not drive. And so the quality of non auto travel become a critical issue in their ability to access critical services and activities, whether they can get to work or school or they can go shopping or get to health care depends on the quality of non auto travel.

00:32:28:24 - 00:32:56:08
Speaker 1
So anyway, my conclusion is that our current practice is greatly underwritten. Invest in non auto travel. Now these images come from my recent trip to China and we stopped in Hong Kong when we arrived and returned. And look at these images of a Hong Kong street where this is a street. This is one of the densest and one of the largest and densest cities in the world.

00:32:56:11 - 00:33:39:06
Speaker 1
And it has a very low automobile mode share. So the portion of trips in the downtown area made by car are well under 20%, probably less than 10%, and that the majority of road space is dedicated to automobile parking and travel. And you can see in these images that the roads are hardly used that that space is not used efficiently and the sidewalks are actually quite crowded and often uncomfortable because transportation planners have dedicated the majority of road space, the majority of their funding to accommodate an automobile travel, even when it makes no sense whatsoever.

00:33:39:06 - 00:34:14:19
Speaker 1
It's a it's just the way transportation planners and transportation agencies function these days. They're biased in favor of spending dollars on automobile motorized travel to the detriment of non auto travel. Yeah. And then it also has implications for community design. I emphasize the value, the benefits that come from living in a multimodal community, a community where you don't need to and where walking and bicycling and public transit are normal and efficient and convenient.

00:34:14:21 - 00:34:41:14
Speaker 1
And the easiest way to measure this that I find is this walk score. Here is an example of walk square in Nashville. And basically green means walk score of over 70, which means that you probably could get it by quite conveniently without having a car. If you're if you're if you don't own a car, you can't afford a car or you have a physical disability that prevents you from driving.

00:34:41:18 - 00:34:54:03
Speaker 1
The best advice I can give is make sure you live in a neighborhood that has a walk score least 70 and that you are you have good shoes.

00:34:54:06 - 00:35:37:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. It's fascinating to to your point that you were just talking about, about the arrogance of space, that the, you know, the transportation planning has had with regards to the automobile. And it's like, well, now we see it now, especially like in Hong Kong, you can see just how out of shape it is. But there's so much sunk costs that in terms of, you know, we've invested this in the automobile, so difficult for them to then be able to give that There's a lot of like biases, like you said, you know, that's sort of baked into that as well as, you know, just saying, well, no, no, no, we can't we can't go

00:35:37:06 - 00:35:59:24
Speaker 2
back or whatever. We can't expand the pedestrian realm to take over this space. So there's a lot of resistance, but it makes it a little bit more, I think, powerful and impactful when researchers such as yourself are like pointing this out and being able to illustrate just how out of sync it is with what reality is.

00:35:59:27 - 00:36:31:22
Speaker 1
Well, I'm maybe a little bit more of an optimist. I like to look on the positive side of these issues. And yes, in my one of my recent studies that looks at planning distortions, it does point out that conventional planning basically allocates funding based on travel speed. The assumption is that faster is better, so faster modes are better than slower modes and anything that reduces speed.

00:36:31:22 - 00:36:59:19
Speaker 1
So traffic congestion is bad and as a problem to be solved and our funding is allocated based on overcoming any delay and increasing speed. So that's been going on for the last century and it is embedded in the planning process. The performance indicators the transportation agencies use are strongly oriented. They say they're based on maximizing speed and reducing.

00:36:59:21 - 00:37:43:01
Speaker 1
That's what the performance indicators emphasize. But on the other hand, there's plenty of good evidence that transportation system users that's you and me are recognize rising the value of non auto travel. So, for example, the National Association of Realtors has commissioned a series of consumer studies studies asking people what type of neighborhood do you want to live in and what type of home and what type of neighborhood and if you have no constraints, you know, 80% of people say, Yeah, I want to live in a in a single family house on a big lot.

00:37:43:02 - 00:38:35:25
Speaker 1
You know, I want the typical suburban house. But if you give them realistic tradeoffs and you say, okay, the big suburban house is going to require a lot more driving. So you're going to spend a lot more time and money traveling. Would you rather live in a automobile dependent, isolated single family house or in a more compact house in a walkable urban neighborhood, more than half the people surveyed say, yeah, I would give up my big lot single family house and choose either a smaller single family or townhouse or an apartment building if that is what it takes so that I can live in a in a more accessible, walkable neighborhood.

00:38:35:28 - 00:39:17:05
Speaker 1
So my conclusion is that improving walking and bicycling and public transit and increasing the amount of housing in those neighborhoods, so so infill development that allows more families, especially working class families, that struggle financially to be able to find appropriate housing in those walkable urban neighborhoods. It benefits everybody. It benefits those households a lot. But it also benefits everybody else in the community because people who live in those neighborhoods, they're driving less and they're they're imposing less risk on others and they're producing less pollution.

00:39:17:05 - 00:39:51:25
Speaker 1
They don't require as much road space. They don't require as many parking spaces. So I believe that my research indicates that a more multi-modal planning so that that sustainable transportation hierarchy and smart growth policies that create more infill development and repairing suburban neighborhoods so suburban neighborhoods become more multi-modal, those are actually responding to consumer demands. They're doing they're providing people, households with options they currently don't have.

00:39:51:25 - 00:40:14:26
Speaker 1
They want, but they don't have those options such as affordable, more affordable housing and walkable urban neighborhoods. And the current trends, the demographic and economic, are saying that that's even more important in the future. For example, John, do you do you aspire to grow old? Do you hope that you can grow old already?

00:40:14:26 - 00:40:17:15
Speaker 2
Get in there.

00:40:17:17 - 00:40:38:00
Speaker 1
And even though you know, it might not be great to be old, it's better than the alternative, which is to die. So we want to grow old. And in planning there's this concept of aging. And so if you read the magazines, especially magazines by organizations like them, the associate, what is it called?

00:40:38:00 - 00:40:40:00
Speaker 2
AARP? Yes.

00:40:40:03 - 00:41:07:19
Speaker 1
AARP. They'll often tell you, Yeah, to prepare for your your old age. You want to have a good insurance policy and a good retirement policy. And you want a house that can accommodate your you in a wheelchair. And so there's a lot of talk about designing houses to be more comfortable for people with disabilities. My research emphasizes that we don't want to just have houses that accommodate people with disabilities.

00:41:07:25 - 00:41:35:11
Speaker 1
We want neighborhoods that are really good for people with disabilities aging in place in your own community. And what does that mean? Most important thing is good walkability. You feel safe even if you're in a wheelchair or using a walker that you would feel safe getting from your house to stores and parks and restaurants and pubs without a car that it is convenient.

00:41:35:13 - 00:42:04:05
Speaker 1
And it is it is actually pleasant to get around your neighborhood by by walking. So by walking and associated modes like wheelchairs. Okay. So the question that every smart citizen to be asking their local officials is how well are you preparing for my future self, given the possibility that my future self is going to have some sort of mobility impairment.

00:42:04:05 - 00:42:28:04
Speaker 1
So I want I want sidewalks that are safe, sidewalks and crosswalks that are safe for wheelchair users. And there's a possibility that my future self will be impoverished. So maybe I don't have a car, I can't afford a car and I need compact, affordable housing. I need an apartment rather I can no longer afford a full size house.

00:42:28:06 - 00:42:53:00
Speaker 1
So even if you are your typical North American that lives in a single family house and drives everywhere, you still have good reasons to say that. Even though that's my current situation, I want to prepare for our future. The future possibility that I'm going to need non auto travel and more affordable housing.

00:42:53:03 - 00:43:34:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. And when we talk about attractive housing and attractive places to live and, you know, desirable places to live, you know, I love this particular slide that you have, which is creating paradise. Paradise is not a destination. It's something that we create in our own communities. And one of the, you know, reoccurring jokes in urbanism is that, you know, people will travel to far flung places to experience walkability and beautiful places and, you know, and they'll come back and they'll rave with photographs of all these places and and saying, you know, gosh, you know, that was such an amazing place.

00:43:34:11 - 00:43:52:10
Speaker 2
We never had to drive. We were able to walk everywhere, use transit, etc.. But then when they come back home, sometimes there's that disconnect of, yeah, we could never do that here. But I think you're saying something a little bit differently here. It's like, Well, we can create something in our own communities.

00:43:52:13 - 00:44:25:24
Speaker 1
It's very much what you point out in urban planning. It has some very specific implications for the last century, the assumption was that paradise was a suburban location and that we all wanted we all wanted to move out of the city into this, you know, bucolic countryside. And and that meant bunch of suburban growth. Now In order to live at the urban fringe, you need lots of driving.

00:44:25:24 - 00:45:05:11
Speaker 1
You're going to drive a lot and all that. Driving is going to spoil those walkable urban neighborhoods in the city center that where you could live with less automobile travel. So one of the things that's come up, one of the issues that's gotten a lot of attention recently is that for the most of the last half century departments of transportation, they built these urban highways that spoiled the urban, the walkable, urban neighborhoods in most North American cities.

00:45:05:13 - 00:45:42:08
Speaker 1
And you can see the underlying political structure or factor, whether it was driven by classism and racism assumption that it was good to displace those what you would call slum urban neighborhoods. But the the mechanism that transportation agencies used is that they recognized the increase in travel speed that those highways provided to the suburb and residents, suburban motorists.

00:45:42:10 - 00:46:15:16
Speaker 1
But they totally ignored the loss of access of multimodal accessibility that those highways just destroyed when they when they displaced walkable urban neighborhoods so that the people who lived in those walkable urban neighborhoods, they didn't need a car. They could get everything they needed within a walk or a bike ride or a relatively short transit because they were right close to the center of things.

00:46:15:18 - 00:46:46:06
Speaker 1
But then you bring in a bunch of bulldozers and you a bunch of highways in those that cut through those neighborhoods. And and and you're displacing all those households. And you're assuming the whole process was assume that all those people were going to move out to the suburbs and lead a better lifestyle, ignoring the fact that that meant they were going to have to spend far, far more money and far more time traveling.

00:46:46:08 - 00:47:18:19
Speaker 1
And for most many of those people, especially lower income households that made their life far worse, it was a huge harm. So this this, this new vision, we're beginning to to realize the value of accessibility. My research goes into quite a bit of detail for this. And in fact, one of my projects that I completed while ago is is what's called the commute duration dashboard.

00:47:18:21 - 00:47:57:29
Speaker 1
I did this with University of California San Jose researchers. And we took the the census data on commuter Asian and we heat mapped it and so you can see how much time the average commuter spends getting to work in various locations. And unsurprisingly at least to us familiar with the issues, people who live in the central neighborhoods spend far less time like half as much time on average getting to work as people who live in outlying neighborhoods in suburbs.

00:47:58:01 - 00:48:44:17
Speaker 1
It points out how foolish it was, how contradictory it was to destroy the central neighborhoods with highways in order to help suburbanites drive faster, because overall they end up spending far more time traveling because of that reduction in access ability. So if we use accessibility based metrics rather than mobility based metrics, we would build far, far fewer urban highways, almost none, and we would spend those resources instead improving urban neighborhoods, making in urban neighborhoods better for walking, bicycling, and significantly improving the efficiency of public transit.

00:48:44:20 - 00:49:02:17
Speaker 1
So a whole bunch of trips that are currently made by automobile would now go to public transport, are walking and bicycling, and we would do a whole bunch to make it easier to live in those walkable urban villages where you can minimize the amount of time and money you spend driving.

00:49:02:20 - 00:49:27:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, I was going to say tired and I would just put it up on the screen, hear your slide, our fair share. And so you're talking about, you know, investing money. And this really, I think, is a very, very impactful graph that you have here that talks about how extraordinary and how out of whack it is in terms of the majority of transportation investments are devoted to automobile transportation.

00:49:27:26 - 00:50:00:09
Speaker 1
Sure. And this and one detail to point out is that an awful lot of that subsidy is is actually parking. It's not just roads. It's that zoning codes in almost every community require property owners to spend a huge amount on off street parking, forcing people who don't own a car or drive less than average to subsidize these expensive facilities that they don't need.

00:50:00:09 - 00:50:17:11
Speaker 1
So you're forced to pay for a parking space you don't need because of current zoning code. So we can do a lot to create a more equitable, fair transportation system by reforming our parking requirements and investing more in the non auto modes.

00:50:17:13 - 00:50:37:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, I think it's really important to when we I'm glad you had parking on there because it's it's like one of those things that we just don't think enough about. And when I say we, I'm not talking about us in the bubble. We talk about it all the time and we think about it all the time.

00:50:37:12 - 00:50:55:23
Speaker 2
But outside the bubble bubble of active mobility and urbanism, it's not talked about at that much. Here you have your graph of external costs. Talk a little bit more about this, because I think that's another thing that people don't really think about are these externalities right?

00:50:55:23 - 00:51:26:20
Speaker 1
So external costs are costs that one person, one activity imposes on other people. A lot of this is common knowledge, but but we don't usually present it. So it's common knowledge, for example, that if somebody has a choice between, let's say, driving to work or taking the bus to work or maybe bicycling to work, that the person that chooses to drive is imposing more congestion delay on others.

00:51:26:27 - 00:51:57:11
Speaker 1
That's an example of an external costs and your decisions and also imposing more risk particular only on vulnerable road users, walkers, bicyclists and motorcyclists. And you can do the same with air pollution. Somebody choosing to drive is going to produce more air pollution than somebody traveling by walking and bicycling and usually public transit. So and there's actually a number of studies that have put a dollar value.

00:51:57:11 - 00:52:28:28
Speaker 1
So they've estimated what would be the cost, the monetized costs, the monetary cost of those impacts. So how much, for example, would you have to pay to compensate people for the congestion delay or the air pollution or the parking subsidies that are caused by driving? And how does that compare with other modes? And I think most people would agree with would would understand my analysis if I do these analyzes individually.

00:52:28:28 - 00:52:59:25
Speaker 1
So if you look at just the congestion that somebody imposes when they decide to drive or just the accident risk or just the air pollution, what becomes really interesting is when you sum them up and you think about what are the total impacts. So there are many ways to frame this. What I like to think about is what would be the benefits to you if your neighbors drove less own fewer cars, drove less and relied more on walking and bicycling and public transport.

00:52:59:26 - 00:53:34:06
Speaker 1
Even if you're a motorist, you would benefit. You could benefit if your community invested more in walking and bicycling and public transit and introduced what we call transportation demand management, TDI incentives. So they encourage people to to shift when they can. We're not saying everybody's got to give up driving altogether, but most people make a bunch of trips that if they are in the habit of, they'll make by car that, you know, it's time to go and do a little bit of shopping and people get in their car and they drive.

00:53:34:06 - 00:54:03:13
Speaker 1
Even if there's a store that sells that product, that's that's within, say, a ten minute walk. And if they had a little incentive, like if they had pay for the parking at the at the store, it'd be much more normal for them to walk or bicycle. Those are the changeable trips. And so the research on external costs or you could say the the demand management benefits, the benefits of getting people to drive less.

00:54:03:16 - 00:54:09:10
Speaker 1
That becomes a critical component for deciding what we should invest in.

00:54:09:12 - 00:54:44:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, and we sort of alluded to that earlier too, is that a lot of those trips that we take are in fact incredibly short. You know, there may be you know, an individual may have, you know, maybe one trip a day or two trips a day that are longer distance. But many of the trips that we because we see a significant number of trips in most communities in North America, somewhere between 40 to sometimes even 50% of total trips are inherently bikeable distances, for instance.

00:54:44:25 - 00:55:14:06
Speaker 2
And so, you know, going back to the analogy that we were using and talking about, you know, do you take the stairs or do you take the escalator, it's like, you know, we have to really, truly make our networks are mobility networks and our choices of truly attractive and in legitimate, reasonable choices, so that a pragmatic decision of, should I you know, I'm just going just down the road there, it's less than a mile.

00:55:14:09 - 00:55:44:26
Speaker 2
Maybe I can even walk. It's a beautiful day, or it's just slightly more than a mile maybe, you know, hey, maybe I'll go for a bike ride because we've have this, you know, all ages and abilities network in place and, you know, suddenly, you know, it is that much more attractive if you can layer on some additional incentives that that make that choice a little bit easier, all the better because then we do start to see, you know, modal shifts, which is, you know, kind of what we're talking about when we talk about TDM.

00:55:44:29 - 00:56:15:12
Speaker 1
Bingo. Exactly. So a lot of my research goes into detail about this, these these issues. One of my newest reports is called Completing Sidewalk Networks Benefits and Costs. And it asks a simple question, You know, what portion of city streets and sidewalks and it turns out in most cities between 20 and 40% of streets don't have sidewalks or the sidewalks are in very bad shape.

00:56:15:14 - 00:56:55:05
Speaker 1
And yes, it would take some investment. It would take some money to complete those sidewalk networks and make sure they're all what we call ADA compliant, meaning that they can accommodate wheelchairs. And walkers, what we find is currently most cities do not have straight in direct investments in sidewalks. What they do is they say any time a property owner develops their property, they're required by law to add a sidewalk to the street, which is a terribly inefficient, out and often unfair way to to build your sidewalk network.

00:56:55:05 - 00:57:25:19
Speaker 1
And that explains why many streets lack full sidewalks. We're waiting for all of those properties to be developed. And many of the sidewalks that were built, you know, decades ago are not up to quality. So what my research finds is that most communities are taking into account what government spend and what private property spend that most communities are spending somewhere around 40 or $50 a year per capita on sidewalks.

00:57:25:21 - 00:57:49:21
Speaker 1
And in order to and we have some examples of some cities that have committed to update or to upgrade their sidewalk network, say, within ten years. And in order to do that, they essentially need to double that funding. They would need to spend go from spending, let's say, $50 a year per capita to $100 a year per capita to complete sidewalk networks.

00:57:49:24 - 00:58:17:03
Speaker 1
And now, John, is that a lot of money is a no. It's tiny compared with what we spend on roads and what we spend on parking subsidies and what we spend on our vehicles. So what my analysis and there are some studies that have looked at what happens if you do complete the sidewalk network and the crosswalk network.

00:58:17:05 - 00:58:47:28
Speaker 1
We do see more walking. It also is critical for allowing people to use public transportation because almost every transit trip includes walking links. And so sidewalks and cleaning your sidewalk network does allow households to reduce the amount of money they spend on automobiles, and it allows businesses to reduce what they're spending on off street parking for those motorists.

00:58:48:01 - 00:59:21:21
Speaker 1
And it reduces it can reduce it, help reduce the need to expand the highways and roads, especially if it becomes part of your public transit development. So there are huge savings and benefits if we can make sure that any any every street has a complete sidewalk network where it can pay for itself many times over. That's my the conclusion, my research and that's validated here in our community.

00:59:21:23 - 00:59:49:10
Speaker 1
We have been spending quite a bit on sidewalks, but also on our bikeway network. So our bike way network here in Victoria getting us back to to where we started, you know, looking at those images of Victoria, yes, Victoria has made we spent in the last decade about $35 million on bikeways in Victoria. Sounds like a lot of money.

00:59:49:12 - 01:00:36:09
Speaker 1
It turns out it's about 30, $40 annual per capita. If you look at $35 million over ten years. So it's not that much money. And it's been part it's it helps explain why per capita vehicle travel has declined significantly. I'm not saying it's the only cause. There were other factors. And in fact, our ability to work at home, the increased use, the telework and working at home has probably been the dominant reason that we're seeing reductions in automobile travel, but especially in the core communities in the in the urban, the denser neighborhoods, we're seeing an awful lot of bicycling and scooter use.

01:00:36:11 - 01:01:02:22
Speaker 1
And we're seeing, especially with e-bikes, the potential for for walking and for bicycling, just about doubles. So if in the past we predicted that, you know, if we fully develop our bikeway network, we might achieve 5% bike mode share. Now you should double that to ten 10% with e-bikes. And one of my frustrations, you know, I'm I'm a good environmentalist.

01:01:02:22 - 01:01:41:16
Speaker 1
I strongly support environmental strategies, including fleet electrification. But it is frustrating to me that. Most fleet electrification, they begin and end with cars and they will happily subsidize the purchase of a Tesla at 5 to $10000. They will. They will. They will. There are if you if you include state, federal and state and local subsidies for electric vehicles and vehicle recharging stations works out to be 5 to $10000 per vehicle.

01:01:41:19 - 01:02:39:25
Speaker 1
And yet most jurisdictions are not offering significant subsidies for e-bikes for for micro modes. If they are, it's a tiny portion of the total fleet electrification subsidy or funding, and it usually runs out within a few days or or weeks of when it is opened. So one of the you know, we were talking about the the sustainable transportation hierarchy, one of the ways that should express itself, one of the first things we should do is make sure that fleet electrification subsidies go first, prioritize micro modes first rather than last, and recognize that in order for people to take advantage of their e-bikes, they they don't just need to buy an e-bike.

01:02:39:25 - 01:03:15:11
Speaker 1
They need facilities, bike ways so that they can safely use them. Now, if you come to Victoria again, one of the fun things is to stand at the side of some of those bikeway networks and watch all of the people having enjoying those facilities, including a bunch of parents with cargo bikes and other extended bikes with their kids bicycling, their kids are out and people using electric scooters, which it's not.

01:03:15:15 - 01:03:33:04
Speaker 1
It's, it's, it's, it's very affordable. It's good for the environment. And there's a fun factor there that I think we need to take into account. People enjoy using their bikes and e-bikes and scooters.

01:03:33:06 - 01:03:55:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And I think I just saw some recent posts out on out on the interwebs of some new bicycling infrastructure coming in to that fourth street protected bikeway there in Victoria. Right. That. Well is that what that is. Yeah.

01:03:55:07 - 01:04:40:05
Speaker 1
Yes. So fourth Street is the major arterial between Victoria and Oak Bay which is the wealthy suburb just up past Victoria and we now have a fully protected bikeway that will provide that connection between Victoria and Oak Bay and it should be another transformative project where a bunch of people who are currently either unable or let's say it's a little intimidated by the idea of bicycling, you know, say they live in Oak Bay and they've got to get to Victoria or wear something like that.

01:04:40:07 - 01:05:19:20
Speaker 1
They will now have a really nice, comfortable route. So I suspect that with that we're going to see a significant shift on that corridor and that happens to be that's part of that corridor also takes you to the University of Victoria. So we will now finally have a fairly nice bike route between the university and downtown. So everybody benefits, even motorists will benefit from reduced traffic congestion and reduced need to chauffeur the non drivers and their families as these alternatives develop.

01:05:19:23 - 01:05:35:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, well you can already guess that I want to book my return trip to come visit you and check out the expanding bicycle network. It's always a pleasure to connect with you, Todd. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast once again.

01:05:35:20 - 01:05:38:14
Speaker 1
It's my pleasure, John. Thank you very much.

01:05:38:16 - 01:05:53:27
Speaker 2
A Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Todd Litman, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be happy to subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

01:05:54:00 - 01:06:14:25
Speaker 2
And if you're enjoying this content here on the activities channel, please consider supporting my efforts. You can do so on Peachtree and buy me a coffee. YouTube Super. Thanks. That's right down below. As well as buying things from the active town store, including the good stuff like this streets of people's swag out there, as well as making contributions to the nonprofit.

01:06:14:27 - 01:06:43:02
Speaker 2
Every little bit helps and is very much appreciated. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super. Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

01:06:43:05 - 01:06:44:12
Speaker 2
Thank you all so much.