Positives in getting commuters to try alternatives

Rory Williams

In a radio interview four weeks ago, the chief executive of Toyota SA said that while Japan was a democracy and had a free-market economy, the Japanese have a fairly uniform view of society: a view that puts society first, the corporation second and the individual third.

What this means, he said, is that the prime minister can request that corporations pull together in one direction, and if they agree that it is a sensible request (and good for society), then they will do it. If that is true, then our much-vaunted ubuntu pales in comparison as a force for social advancement.

When we realise that something about South African society needs to change for the common good, we have to rely on either forcing people to change by altering – and enforcing – the regulations, or making sure that the new direction is so obvious and so well aligned with what we want as individuals, that we don’t need any persuading.

I have written before that one way to change behaviour is to get people to try alternatives at least once so that they know what the alternatives are, and if the alternatives make sense to them, they might change.

But how do we do this? There are certain moments in the history of a city when there is an opportunity to change direction, sometimes as a result of unplanned and even undesirable events like natural disasters or wars that literally wipe out parts of a city and force reconstruction in a way that is better than before.

Hurricane Sandy resulted in New York City planners rethinking how to protect coastal cities from storm surges. Earthquakes in various parts of the world have caused engineers to change standards for quake-resistant buildings. As tragic as some events are, they can stir us out of our complacency. But they don’t need to be such earth-shattering events.

A two-day strike last year on the London underground was a temporary but powerful inducement for changes in travel behaviour. A study by researchers from Oxford University looked at how people changed their routes during and after the strike (37 percent of underground stations remained open during the strike), and found that some of the changes were permanent, suggesting that behaviour before the strike was suboptimal.

When people were forced to try new routes to work, many discovered that they could improve on their travel times. After the strike, they did not return to their old routes, and the net effect for the city was an overall improvement in travel efficiency, with benefits for them and the public transport network.

This month’s ecoMobility festival in Sandton is an example of artificially creating conditions to induce change. The idea is to create a “push” and “pull” effect at the same time.

While squeezing drivers by reducing the road capacity into the Sandton business district, there are more options for moving in and out and within the area.

Whether those options actually make sense for the individual – and succeed in creating permanent change in behaviour – remains to be seen. Closer to home, Cape Town is improving conditions for pedestrians by altering the kerbs at intersections in the CBD, to shorten the distance that people have to walk from one side of the street to another, and improve safety.

This is one of a number of pedestrian improvement initiatives that began at least five years ago, but this two-year stage of construction is disruptive to traffic – and is, therefore, an opportunity to encourage drivers to change behaviour.

If that change is to use public transport, or to park on the edges of the CBD and walk the final distance to the office, or to cycle to work, then the challenge is that these alternatives need to make sense to commuters.

They need to feel safe and comfortable, and something about these travel choices needs to be an improvement on the previous choices that individuals made. For some people, public transport might already be a better option than they realise, and they just need to try it.

So, the City could work with the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa or employers to create a financial incentive for people to ride the train. Or they could increase the number of MyCiTi buses and offer a discount on fares for new card-holders.

Whatever the strategy, the key is to allow people to experience an improvement through individual experimentation, not simply plead for change.

@carbonsmart