Cork Unstuck
4 lean approaches for un-sticking traffic bottlenecks in my hometown
Like you, I live in a city with a big traffic problem. A traffic problem that is ignored and accepted with equal gusto by politicians and citizens alike.
76% of us choose to drive alone to work and never think about the impact this has on our lives. And when was the last time you heard an election candidate talk about solving traffic congestion?
As a citizen, I don’t accept that my commute from Douglas to Cork City Centre needs to take 50 minutes. And so I spent some time thinking about the problem.
Traffic in Cork
Traffic in Cork is like traffic in most cities — it sucks on particular corridors at peak travel times due to a twice-daily commuting tsunami.
Traffic in Douglas
I happen to live on one of the worst commute corridors in Cork (Douglas to Cork) but I couldn’t find any traffic analysis for this corridor, so I decided to do some roadside counting of my own.
I downloaded a tally counter app (Flick Counter) and then counted traffic on Douglas Road at a single location between 8AM and 9AM on two different mornings.
It’s a lean approach and totally non-scientific but it gave me a better picture of my particular commute problem.
As you can see, the key learning for my corridor is that school traffic makes all the difference between very heavy traffic and no traffic.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any evidence of my local authorities thinking practically or creatively about this problem and only 3 out of 7 of my city councillors replied when I wrote to them several weeks ago and asked what would make a difference to traffic in Douglas.
Their ideas included building “extra lanes”, “road improvements for public transport and cycling”, and a “holistic plan” for the Douglas corridor. No really practical solutions or behavioral science thinking to solve the problem.
And so here are 4 lean approaches I suggest for killing traffic in Cork.
1. Appoint a Commute Czar for the Cork Metro Area
Killing traffic should be a top concern of local authorities to improve quality of life, reduce congestion, improve air quality and save money. Taking 15,000 cars off the road helped Washington DC keep $127 million per year in their local economy.
For some reason, Cork has 2 transport authorities with 2 separate transport development plans. The Douglas area is officially within the remit of Cork County Council, even though it’s very definitely part of Cork City. There is some talk of those 2 authorities one day being merged, but no definite plans and, unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear any politician advocating for it at the recent local elections.
Cork City Council’s current efforts focus primarily on introducing cycle lanes throughout the city and introducing bike-sharing points throughout the city centre. While this is great and will help people more easily get around the city centre, it will have zero impact on my commute problem from Douglas to Cork.
Cork County Council meanwhile does have a new Douglas Land Use and Transportation Strategy, which will introduce new cycle lanes in Douglas, reduce traffic speeds in the centre of Douglas, increase bus priority and in the long-term change junctions to improve the efficiency of traffic movements. However, it’s difficult to see how this will kill traffic in Cork, especially in the short-term.
So while Cork City Council focuses mainly on the city centre and Cork County Council focuses on traffic around the city, there doesn’t appear to be anyone responsible for fixing problem traffic corridors in the metro area. There is a Cork Area Strategic Plan, adopted by both councils in 2001, and a steering committee that I think is still active, but is that the best way to address one of our most urgent problems? And where’s the solution for my commute?
A Commute Czar should be appointed with responsibility for killing traffic at the only time it really occurs — peak travel times. Killing traffic congestion should not just be part of disparate long-term transport plans. It requires dedicated thinking and experimentation. It’s also not just a challenge of large-scale urban civil engineering, but equally a challenge of behavioural science. It requires behavioural design thinking. Some suggested experiments are included below.
2. Disperse School Traffic
Every school in Cork opens at 9AM, which is the same opening time as the vast majority of businesses in Cork. Douglas happens to have a cluster of large schools along the Douglas to Cork corridor. As my roadside counting has shown, removing school traffic has the potential to completely kill traffic on problem corridors.
Cork should be experimenting in dispersing this traffic. Simply mandating a shift in school opening times from 9AM to 8AM would likely meet with resistance from some teachers, parents and students alike. However, taking a behavioural science approach — surely it makes sense to experiment with different approaches for incentivising behavioural change.
For example, what if parents could opt-in to dropping their children off at school at 8AM instead of 9AM. The cost of introducing an hour of breakfast clubs, arts classes or yoga classes for a trial period at a couple of schools could be sourced externally (local businesses, local authorities) and the benefits could prove to be substantial for the community. If it proves successful, then the comparative cost of expanding to more schools would be tiny compared to the more traditional infrastructural approaches currently planned.
3. Disperse Commute Traffic
Ok, so it sounds impossible, right? How could you possibly get Cork’s workers to change their commute time?
It’s possible. And it’s important because a 5% reduction in traffic volume doesn’t simply lead to a 5% reduction in traffic congestion. It can kill traffic completely. Watch this awesome explanation of how traffic works.
In 2012, Singapore introduced Incentives for Singapore’s Commuters (INSINC), which rewards commuters for commuting at off-peak hours. Commuters get an increased chance of winning cash prizes for each 1 km traveled during those hours. More than 100,000 people signed up, with 8%-15% shifting their commute time. A similar project in Bangalore in 2008/2009 resulted in a doubling of bus ridership pre-rush hour and a reduction in the average morning commute time for all bus riders from 71 to 54 minutes.
Another way to disperse peak travel time commuting would be to provide public transport discounts at off-peak hours. Several mid-size European cities have moved to zero-fare public transport, in which public transport funding comes from sources other than fares, such as taxation or commercial sponsorship. When the city of Hasselt (Belgium) introduced zero-fare public transport, ridership increased as much as 13 times.
For example, what if commercial sponsorship was sought for a 1-month experiment to see what would happen if public transport was free in Cork between the hours of 7AM and 8AM. Free public transport for 1-month brought to you by Apple or IBM or EMC… sounds great — and not impossible, right?
4. Incentivise Carpooling
Naturally, the most efficient way to tackle traffic congestion anywhere is to make better use of the empty seats in people’s cars. 76% of us choose to drive alone and the average car occupancy rate for commuting is 1.2 people per car. Those 230,000 cars that Cork City Council tells us enter the city each day contain 874,000 empty seats, so why don’t we try to fill them up?
Ok, so carpooling is inconvenient and inflexible and awkward, right? Wrong!
Every day in San Francisco 12,000 people “casual carpool” to work — they stand at fixed pick-up zones, where drivers pull in and pick people up. Drivers get to use carpool lanes so they fly past traffic into the city, and passengers get a free and flexible commute.
Closer to home, there’s an amazing community of commuters in Kinsale who use our Carma Carpooling mobile app to arrange carpools into Cork. Every day about 30-40 people share the cost of the commute using the app and get to know their neighbours better.
As the world-leader in carpooling technology (check out our $1 MILLION PRIZE for other developers to tackle traffic congestion — announced today), we’d love to support carpooling initiatives in Cork — if we could get some support from Cork City Council or Cork County Council for through-traffic carpooling privileges.
Here are 4 things we could immediately implement in Cork to make carpooling a more flexible, convenient and rewarding option for commuters in Cork:
- Designated high-visibility carpool pick-up zones beside bus stops where people can choose to carpool with passing drivers
- Designated Park and Pool areas on targeted corridors (e.g. in Kinsale) where people can leave their cars and form lines to fill up waiting cars
- Access to bus lanes for verified carpools with 3 occupants +
- Designated free parking for verified carpools with 3 occupants +
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