Congestion Relief: Zoning Reform

Plan and implement measures to integrate our economic and social spheres. Real estate zoning practices segregate commercial from residential property. The current split has weakened our communities. Treatment should heal and reinvigorate public discourse.

Shorten Distance: It is a fallacy to blame traffic congestion entirely on Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOV) and to deny the significance of distance traveled. Daily trip miles translate directly into traffic congestion.

Congestion Relief: Visualize the Future

The future can only be different. Either way, pressures exist to attain lower energy usage levels. Establish a contest and forum to define visions of the future. Post all entries on the Internet. Professionals and university professors will form a panel of judges. Awards will take the form of recognition in categories selected by the judges, which may vary year to year. Post rules on the Internet. Schools will be encouraged to help students, inhabitants of the future, compete as classroom teams. Practicality and novelty should be considered preeminent. Not only the end, but also the means – to achieve it – must be stated and accompany every submission.

Congestion Relief: Urban Colonies

Roads pave over much of the urban landscape. A casual observer realizes the dominance of automobiles in urban planning. Roads and parking facilities fill a disproportionate share of our living space. Prepare an urban renewal agenda to plow under streets, reclaim usable real estate, and establish walking and biking communities, in the liberated area.

Congestion Relief: Track Progress

Keep track of progress on congestion relief goals. Our society is the result of accumulated transformations down through the past and up to the present. Priorities and goals must be monitored and adapted in this changing environment. Measure progress and report it as soon as the information is available. Items to cover include tax revenues and spending; traffic volume, delays, and peek capacity speed, at standardized places; oil consumption, in some practical breakdown; and public participation in congestion relief programs. Conduct public opinion polls. Post all results on the Internet.

Congestion Relief: Task Forces

Establish task force commissions with targeted objectives.

The traffic congestion problem space is too vast to attack on a single front. Divide and conquer is a tried-and-true approach that turns big problems into smaller, manageable ones of narrower scope. Identifying and isolating specialized categories improves the chances of success. Task forces contain the tools to tackle clearly defined objectives: compartmentalized congestion relief goals. For each autonomous task force, guidance is encapsulated in its mission statement - its marching orders, which are the means to govern control and feedback.

Empowerment Task Force: The mission is to advance the vision and goals of congestion relief in the public interest.
Mobility Task Force: The mission is to reduce trip distance and frequency in the public interest.
Optimization Task Force: The mission is to improve our transportation system operating efficiency in the public interest.
Ride Sharing Task Force: The mission is to increase vehicle occupancy in the public interest.

A term format gives each task force chief authority, responsibility, and independence, within defined task force constraints; and accountability, to taxpayer investors. Participatory democracy must be encouraged. Public scrutiny and criticism come with the job. The overall intent is to attract public servants of conviction and sound judgment to serve as task force chiefs.

The primary duty of each task force is to prepare proposals and manage contracts that support the task force mission statement. Stated proposal objectives must be specific and measurable. Proposals must be posted on the Internet and open to criticism. Each task force solicits and evaluates contract bids on its own proposals. Freedom of information is honored and encouraged. Funding competition will take place between proposals. A majority approval of the joint chiefs is required to fund a proposal - subject to available tax funds, of course.

Upon proposal approval, a contract will be awarded and the performance monitored by its originating task force. Contracts must have a limited duration, not to exceed the term limit of the task force chief. As politicians face competition at term boundaries, contracts and contract renewals should be open to competition too. Winners must not be decided by lowest bid alone, but by cost/benefit analysis that takes into account experience and quality issues – the way a savvy investor decides.

Each task force chief manages an independent budget. Task force budgets are approved by a majority of the joint chiefs. Within their budgets each task force is allowed a small permanent staff not to exceed seven in number. The small permanent staff restriction concentrates attention on task force goals and inhibits bureaucratic growth. Permanent staff members perform duties that help create task force policy, generate proposals, solicit and evaluate bids, cost/benefit analysis, award contracts, contract overview, prepare semi-annual reports, etc.

Each task force has an obligation to pursue matching grants. A lone funding source attracts predators and parasites, until it is depleted and dies. Joint funding spreads costs and permits a wider range of proposals to be considered for implementation with outsider checks and balances. It also increases the visibility of task force causes at the community level, at the state level and nationally – ensuring survival of congestion relief goals.

Each task force must publish a semi-annual report on the Internet. It must include or contain links to its balance sheet, the task force mission statement, philosophy and policies to meet its task force objectives, accountings of proposals and contracts, measures of progress, a timeline of significant events, any mid-course corrections, and future projections. Open proceedings and close scrutiny are essential to providing an accurate and meaningful accounting.

Open Competition: A forum must be open to public debate, through the Internet and town meetings, to attract the best, worst and wildest ideas imaginable. Each Task Force then filters through this treasure of ideas to generate proposals relevant to their mission statement.

Congestion Relief: Slogan Campaign

Positive slogans reinforce positive behavior. Become part of the solution. Ride share and share life. Join the solution. Hop on the bandwagon. Pass the bucket. The bucket stops here. The oil stops here.

Congestion Relief: Real Estate Market Exchange

It allows people to place buy and sell orders for single or packaged properties, which are maintained within a database with free access via the Internet. People can seek opportunities to improve ride sharing possibilities without putting their houses on the real estate market.

Congestion Relief: Real Estate Congestion

Traffic congestion is caused by real estate congestion – the limited prospects of buying a home. Disorganized traffic patterns are caused by disorganized real estate patterns. The current real estate market is stifled by tradition. Affordability is not the primary reason that dictates where people live – availability is. For ride sharing to succeed, as the major contributor to congestion relief it has the potential to become, people who commute to the same vicinity need to become neighbors. Neighbor ride sharing appeals to a wider clientèle than mass transit alternatives because of its unrestricted coverage. The majority hates paying taxes to benefit a minority. Incentives empower those who help themselves. Reimbursement benefits, due to their distributed nature, are open to any resident within or any commuter into the jurisdiction.

To visualize the extent of this problem requires only wall space, investment in a street map and box of push pins, and the motivation to make a difference. Disorder becomes obvious when push pins are stuck into the map at the residence addresses of commuters who work within the same vicinity. As a visual reminder, street maps and push pins can counteract out-of-sight out-of-mind apathy. The goal of this lifestyle changing exercise is to rally the push pins into clusters to promote and advance ride sharing. To facilitate and reward residence moves, toward this end, relocation expenses that improve neighbor ride sharing need reimbursement. Some people are more altruistic than others, and might be willing and able to participate at lower reimbursement levels. To achieve target levels, reimbursement levels should be adjustable to induce customer demand as necessary. To achieve the greatest gain for the least cost, competition between commuters is needed.

To avoid a bureaucratic nightmare of processing claims, disbursements will be made available to commuters through escrow. Disbursements, paid via Electronic Fund Transfers, can only be sought and redeemed, one per commuter, during escrow on owner occupied property transactions. It is the responsibility of escrow companies to certify a ride sharing gain, with criminal penalties for fraud. The names and addresses of all partners within ride sharing distance, which varies with commute distance, must be recorded. The buyer must supply proof. Disbursements of different denominations can be offered to balance commuter demand and available funds. A database will manage these disbursements. Closeness and numbers determine ride sharing gains. The number of eligible disbursements, on qualified separate transactions, for an individual commuter is not limited.

Taxpayers cannot afford full reimbursement. The instantaneous gratification of total compensation is prohibitively expensive. A calculator program is needed to show people the time until break even on ride sharing cost savings from fuel, car maintenance, and car insurance, etc. based on distances, the number ride sharing, and travel time.

To promote a local market for housing clusters, disbursements can be use to defray costs to form real estate holding companies of shareholder occupied properties. With the proper legal foundation, moving should become cheaper and easier – with less red tape. As with Stock Markets, a dynamic, high volume, real estate market should create competition for an expanded range of services including discount brokers. This could also be leveraged to mitigate the current mortgage crisis.

Congestion Relief: Real Estate Rewards

Get real estate agents involvement with cash incentives to steer home buyers to locate in neighborhoods with ride sharing partners.

Congestion Relief: Public Service Campaign

Produce television public service announcements that are also available as Internet videos. Fables and parables teach appropriate behavior through analogy. New territory is hard for many to comprehend. Some people are hard to reach, but humor can help create a lasting impression. Imagine the following videos in the Seattle area, where mass transit has been a fiasco.

Moving Assistance video: The Commuter Presort message can be communicated with a volunteer cast of thousands forming a bucket brigade, moving hundreds of household items along the sidewalks of our communities – over hills, across bridges and past landmarks - to their new home. By ferry or ski lift we follow the move. Play is halted at sporting events for fans and players to join a bucket brigade outside on the sidewalk, baffling the opposing team. After the flow passes, the umpire shouts, “Play ball.” Musicians and audience – dressed in tux and gown – file onto the sidewalk outside a symphony hall to keep books, furniture, goldfish in a fishbowl, kitchen utensils, docile pet cat, and buckets moving along.

Casting Call video: Crafting this new self-image should be fun. Seattle Seafair pirates can begin the move by ransacking the starting home and passing belongings to a mixture of: ordinary citizens, people dressed in costume, members of supporting organizations - like trade unions and church choirs, until finally Seattle celebrities ask, “Where does this go?”

On Time video: With a volunteer cast of thousands, a stadium can be emptied in choreographed fashion. Each row of people remains seated waiting in turn to stand and take to the stairs in precision then proceed to the exits and to buses parked outside, where they load into labeled school buses - from districts throughout the region. Airport flight attendants give the safety rundown aboard each bus as ground crews, with flashlight wands, direct bus departures. Rated best “ON TIME” service in the industry.

Rat Race video: Inside a bus, cheerful passengers sway and sing a song in multi-part harmony. “Thank you mister bus driver, bus driver, bus driver. Thank you mister bus driver. Thanks for the ride. We went this way, and that way, and this way, and that way. Thank you mister bus driver. Thanks for the ride.” Viewed from outside, the bus turns into a bank parking lot where the sports fans depart to parked cars, exchange good-byes, and leave for home. Voice over: “Forget the rat race. Rejoin the human race. Ride share.”

A Better Deal video: The educational show-and-tell approach of proof is needed to create believers and missionaries, not just followers. On a split screen, top and bottom, two decks of cards sit face-up on a green felt background. The top deck is then shuffled. Dealing starts from both decks simultaneously. Each half screen shows its own timer. In the top half screen, cards are placed down in piles of the same suit. When the deck is depleted each pile is sorted from King to Ace and spread on the table. At the same time in the bottom half screen, thirteen cards are counted from the top of the deck then spread on the table. The cards are presorted. This is repeated for the next thirteen cards and so forth until done. Each timer stops when its process is finished. The timer on bottom stops much sooner than the timer on top. The top is labeled, “Late 20th Century Suburbs.” The bottom is labeled, “A Better Deal.”

Congestion Relief: Public Education

The purpose, rules and etiquette of congestion relief goals must be debated and clarified to have a lasting contribution. Establish a web site for environment friendly tips and ratings as an avenue to direct positive changes in behavior.

Congestion Relief: Parking Space Market Exchange

Park & Ride Lots take space and concentrate traffic patterns. Create a database with free access via the Internet to manage available parking spaces or parking spaces freed by ride sharing to be used as ride sharing collection points. Entries need to include number of spaces, times of day, and days of week – like during church and bank off-hours.

Congestion Relief: Moving Expense Tax Deduction

Our national congressional delegation is hereby authorized to sponsor legislation to amend the Internal Revenue Service code for the Moving Expenses form 3903 to allow deductions of non-reimbursed expenses from moves made to improve neighbor ride sharing. Requested deductible items include costs of escrow, title insurance, building inspection, broker commissions, mortgage origination and movers.

Congestion Relief: Mobilize Activists

Coordinate volunteer and grassroots efforts in support of congestion relief goals. Create a single source to draw media attention to congestion relief events.

Congestion Relief: Information Sharing

During World War II the US airplane manufacturers formed an alliance of cooperation rather than competition. Airplane plans were shared, so previously competing companies could manufacturer the same airplanes. In the process proprietary information was exchanged. This experiment during the war was a success, but not business as usual. Scientific knowledge has advanced because of the information sharing technique.

The US airline industry could be much more energy efficient, if only the anti-trust restrictions on collaboration between competing carriers was suspended. This would take a war on oil attitude and government regulation, so conspiring airlines don’t exploit cartel induced monopoly markets. If a market can support more than one flight a day, then one airline should not receive a monopoly to ensure some level of competition.

Congestion Relief: Growth Management

Redirect urban planning toward congestion relief goals. Curtail suburban sprawl. Infill the urban landscape. Restrict building and development practices. Co-locate residences near businesses.

Congestion Relief: Fuel Taxes

Tax on fuel consumption to provoke changes in behavior and overcome our addiction to cheap fuel. Raise tax level on fuel to penalize consumption and reflect the true cost of low priced fuel consumption as it pertains to traffic congestion. Directed at encouraging conservation measures and decreasing the competitive disadvantages of promising alternate technologies. Vehicle expenses include operations, maintenance, and the capital cost of the vehicle. By increasing the price of fuel, an operating expense, the competitive balance of the three expense categories changes. Vehicles that are more fuel efficient become more attractive to buyers relative to less fuel efficient versions. At high enough tax levels spontaneous driving patterns diminish, trips become better planned, and shorter commuting distances are favored. Raising fuel taxes in a controlled fashion can better accommodate the economic impact than the pending catastrophe awaiting us when oil reserves, a non-renewable resource, become depleted. Sooner or later, controlled or uncontrolled, changes on this order are inevitable. An artificial crisis is easier to plan and survive.

A blanket effort is required. Otherwise people will drive outside the impacted area to buy fuel at depressed levels, and thus obstruct progress along these fronts. Multi-level target groups might be necessary. Exemption and partial exemption from fuel taxes would be analogous to subsidies. Freight trucks and farm equipment could be exempted to forestall inflation of food and consumer prices, whereas no personal vehicles should ever be exempted. To localize taxes, for instance higher in urban areas where more options for behavior modification exist, require all gas stations to use government sponsored and special issue credit/debit cards or non-exempt standard alternatives like cash or normal credit cards. The credit card system must be able to distinguish commercial from personal use, i.e. diesel from gasoline, and apply the appropriate tax rate based upon user residence address.

Short Term: Public notice of hardships along with requirements for sacrifice and change.
Long Term: Diminished mobility and optimized travel.

Congestion Relief: Famous Ride Sharers Game

Post a compilation of images on the Internet where people can nominate and submit their own choices – including “us.”

Examples are: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, Bonnie and Clyde, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, the Beverly Hillbillies, Trojan Horse Greeks, armed forces crews from local bases, Oregon Trail pioneers, the Jamaican bobsled team, Vikings, pirates, parade queen and court float, TV Batman and Robin, Starship Enterprise crews, school and professional sports teams at away games, and the D-Day invasion flotilla.

Congestion Relief: Exception Handling

Transportation systems are designed for ideal conditions. The Real World introduces non-ideal cases. Operational failures of the transportation system, from breakdowns and accidents, interrupt normal traffic flow. Relief efforts must move through the impasse created by the blockage. This handicap is especially severe for restricted direction or single lane roadways, like freeways, highways, and bridges. Examine and make recommendations on land, water, and air alternatives that can arrive on the scene faster with service capabilities. Displacing the obstructions temporarily will free the bottleneck and allow traditional relief efforts to arrive through less impeded traffic.

Congestion Relief: Distributed Factories

Local manufacturing instead of centralized factories that ship products globally. Move information not freight, e-mail not weight.

Congestion Relief: Demand Side Transportation Services

Institute group transportation available upon request. The shortest distance and fastest time between two points is a straight line without stops along the way. Scheduled bus routes are a supply side scheme, like mass production, which delivers universal service. These buses act like trawlers traversing a watershed path. But automobiles travel directly point-to-point, and on command. A responsive transportation approach better serves the demand side needs of transportation consumers. To compete effectively against automobiles, transit services must satisfy customer needs for regular or arranged point-to-point service by handling requests for ride sharing transportation for organized consumer groups.

Establish a source of information and services and institute special event transportation services. Work to help neighbors coordinate themselves into ride sharing groups with neighborhood sign-up locations for events. Work with event destinations like sports, arts, concerts, fairs, parks, malls and shopping districts to arrange neighborhood pickup and delivery. Work with suppliers of transportation services. Together, the three ingredients can support point-to-point ride sharing between high-density destinations and local neighborhoods. Also coordinate security services.

Short Term: Private enterprise, door-to-door taxis and airport shuttles
Long Term: Coordinated event shuttles for self-organized neighbors

Congestion Relief: Delivery Services

Door-to-door delivery routes have successful models like newspapers, mail, garbage, recycling, meter readers, and the ice cream truck.

Congestion Relief: Congestion Relief Conference

Sponsor a yearly conference as a clearinghouse of academic and private research on congestion relief.

Congestion Relief: Commuter Presort

People who commute to the same vicinity need to be neighbors, for large-scale ride sharing to succeed. Expanding neighbor ride sharing aids congestion relief through increased vehicle occupancy at comparable travel time. Commuting is a daily sorting problem from source to destination, then later back again. Individual commuter sources and destinations are consistent, to a large extent. A presort can improve the efficiency of repetitious sorts, by improving order before the commute begins. To boost ride sharing opportunities, commuters who travel to the same location must live within the same neighborhoods – they need to become neighbors. By empowering this presort process, congestion relief goals are advanced.

Congestion Relief: Bus Stop Turnouts

Buses block traffic lanes at bus stops when the curb lane is active. To alleviate this problem, cut turnouts from sidewalks to accommodate bus stops.

Congestion Relief: Bucket Brigade Promotions

Bucket Brigade dynamics mimic traffic. A bucket brigade, operating asynchronously, will naturally bunch up just like traffic. To synchronize a bucket brigade, the even elements must work together in unison and mirror the odd elements working together in counter unison – the alternating give-and-take is synchronized with a “heave-ho” cadence or drums delivering the beat.

Cameo appearances of bucket brigades in unlikely places, like news conferences, should get a laugh while promoting fun and positive reinforcement. Organize bucket brigade teach-ins so local shows can enact a bucket brigade in the middle of their ordinary broadcast, concert, sporting event, play, company meeting or whatever. License bucket and bucket brigade merchandise as symbols of regional pride, for the tourist industry and to promote mind share.

Congestion Relief: Behavior Modification

For most people it is nearly impossible to understand social options to congestion relief. Industrial age trends are supported by centralized concepts that are ingrained in our culture. Social options are characterized by localized efforts. Motivation is required to modify people’s behavior. In commercial practice, fads are the result of catchy advertising campaigns, demand and word of mouth.

Congestion Relief: No Action (Baseline)

Existing transportation infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance. Employment and population growth is increasing faster than road or rail options can expand coverage and deliver capacity into service.