4-3 Lecture by Prof. Robert E. Paaswell - CUNY

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From the course by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Management of Urban Infrastructures – part 1

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École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Management of Urban Infrastructures – part 1

393 ratings

Sustainability, Resilience and Efficiency are fundamental considerations for city managers in managing urban infrastructures. Today, more than 3.9 billion people, making up more than 54% of the global population, live in cities. Urbanization is expected to continue in the coming years, raising the urban population to 6.0 billion by 2045. This dramatic increase in urban populations will inevitably increase the demand for energy, mobility (transportation), water, and other urban services in every city around the world. Without functional governance and management structures that ensure efficient, resilient and sustainable performance in cities, the current urbanization growth might become a catastrophic risk threatening the quality of life of the humanity. Sustainable development in 21st century can only be realized by introducing innovations in both management and operations of urban infrastructures systems. Developing management practices that effectively integrates the processes of urban planning with urban infrastructures planning and management is a challenging goal that many cities are struggling with nowadays, but is a must for transforming cities to sustainable and resilient engines of growth in both developing and developed economies. This course will provide you with the basic principles of urban infrastructure management that are fundamental for building prosperous cities that are sustainable, resilient and efficient. In order to obtain a certificate for this course, the participants have to pass four graded quizzes and complete four mandatory assignments, plus a final exam. In addition to the graded assignments students have the option to write a 7-10 page peer-reviewed case study about management of energy OR transportation system in their city (on your own choice). The best case studies will be also evaluated by our jury at IGLUS and the authors of the 3 best case studies will win a full tuition fee waiver scholarship to enroll in the IGLUS professional training program in Spring 2017. You can also pre-enroll in our upcoming MOOC on Smart Cities now. Find our more here: http://iglus.org/smart-cities-mooc/

From the lesson

Block 4 - Introduction to Urban Transport Management

Welcome to the 4th block: an Introduction to Urban Transport Management. In this block, we will study the ever-important urban transportation system. We will begin with an introduction to urban transportation systems (4-1), and then we will learn how to manage urban transportation systems (4-2). Prof. Robert E. Paaswell, from the City University of New York, will lecture us on the challenges of managing urban transport (4-3), and Mr. Beat Muller, from CarPostal, will complement Prof. Paaswell’s views, but from the practitioner perspective (4-4). Finally we will address the broader challenges of urban transportation (4-5), and conclude the MOOC with a short wrap up (4-6). After watching the six intense videos in this block, go visit the discussion forums to solve any doubts or simply share your comments on the topic of the lecture. You will find a summary of the content, as well as an illustrative case study on the revolutionary transformation of Seoul’s transport system in the 4th block reading. To conclude the block, test your knowledge in the quiz “What did I learn in Block 4?”, and answer Short Answer Assignment 4 to investigate how the concepts on urban transportation apply to your city.

4-3 Lecture by Prof. Robert E. Paaswell - CUNY7:56

Meet the Instructors

Matthias Finger
Professor
EPFL, ITPP, MIR, IGLUS Lab

Hi, I am Robert Paaswell. I am a Distinguished Professor

Today I am going to talk about managing urban transportation systems.

Urban transportation systems are complicated.

We all know of urban traffic, trucks, cars, buses, everything in city streets.

I am going to concentrate on urban public transportation,

which is the most complex and probably one of the most money-consuming

aspects of public transportation.

of what urban modes are.

I am going to go through an overview, a quick overview,

of Civil Engineering at the City College of New York

Who owns the urban modes? Who owns the public transportation system?

Who owns the streets?

What are the roles of social contracts?

We provide public transportation

because we feel there is a public need for it,

and we want to know what creates that need and who is responsible for it.

And then, once we get into who owns it, and the fact that it is public,

we have to get into political issues.

Public transportation is big business

and there are political interests involved in it.

But let me start first with the job.

Urban public transportation is very simple.

The job is to meet the demand of the people who want to travel.

And so the role of the public transit manager is to provide trips.

Or, as we say in the public transportation jargon,

we have to "meet service".

So the public transit manager every day gets up

and gets a sheet on his or her desk,

that says, "Have I met service"?

Do I have enough vehicles and enough person power--

bus operators, conductors, maintainers,

to meet that service?

And if I don't, why don't I?

The service that you have is a function of urban demand.

How many people want the service?

What kinds of trips are they taking? Are they business trips, working trips?

So where do they start and where do they end?

Where should I have my routes? How often should I put out

the number of buses or rail cars, or light rail cars that I need?

So once you have a sense of demand,

you then know the equipment that you need.

When you know how often you have to provide that equipment,

you know the number of drivers you have,

and once you have all the equipment, you know everything else.

Once you understand demand, which is the big outside figure,

once you know where people are coming from,

and where they are going to and when they are coming

and when they want to go, and what you need for that,

you pretty much know

that you are going to have to establish funding to pay for that,

and so you have to work on a couple of budgets--

an operating budget and a capital budget.

You need to understand that if you are going to provide service

you need to have the funds in order to provide that service.

And finally you are going to have to have a system of management,

to manage the system.

And I will talk about that in a few minutes too,

but you are going to have to have an overall chief

somebody that says, "this is the way we are going to operate service today"

and you are going to have to have an organization

that is designed to provide that service.

You are going to have to have bus operators,

you are going to have to have bus maintainers,

you are going to have to have people to clean the station,

you are going to have to have people to buy the equipment, to plan the routes,

to organize the system.

So you find that transit organizations

become very complex organizations

because there are a lot of things to do

in order to, very simply, have your bus at your bus-stop

when you want it in the morning.

In the United States we have different kinds of ownership models

but the primary ownership model in the United States

is a Public Authority,

and a Public Authority is a unit of state government ususally.

It operates like a corporation

It has got a board of directors or a board of managers

that is usually appointed by a public official

or a set of public officials.

In some cases they might be elected by the population.

And their job is to set the oversight

and operating conditions of the organization

and to basically hire the general manager,

the person that is going to manage all the operations.

And then the general manager's job

is to provide the service

and reporting to the board are what we call operating units.

For example, in New York City, we have the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,

which is like a holding company in a sense.

It sets the rules, it negotiates the budget,

it sets the hours of operation, the fare policy and everything else.

But the New York City Transit

provides the buses and rail cars,

and the whole personnel system

to maintain that to provide the service.

One of the reasons that you have an oversight body

is that the public demands accountability for its public transportation systems.

It wants to make sure that whoever is operating the public transit

does it with the public in mind

and is not, in a sense, taking advantage of the public

but is meeting the public demand for service

at times and places that they want, contracting out for services,

something that is done in Europe

and something that we are beginning to look at in the United States.

It has come later.

But you recognize that when you are contracting out for service,

the person who is providing the service

is looking for a profit, if it is a private sector.

In this they need a profit. In the public sector there is no profit.

But there are pluses and minuses on both sides.

Public transportation has always been considered a public good,

but the amount that the public pays for that public good

is depending on politics of the region.

In the European Union the general feeling is that the public should pay

the full and true operating costs of the service,

not the capital cost, not the cost to build the system

but the true operating cost.

In the United States the fares are set at politically acceptable levels,

levels that the politicians,

the people that control the system whether it is a governor or a mayor,

or some local unit of government,

feels that it is a reasonable fare for someone to pay

so that they can get to work

they can get to the hospital, if they are seniors,

they can carry out activities without any kind of hinderance.

And as a result the fares in the United States

only reach about thirty to fifty percent of the operating costs,

so operating costs in the United States

have to be subsidized.

Public transportation is inherently a political entity.

It is up to the local managers of the public transit system

to convince the funding agencies,

the people who are going to provide the subsidies

that these are necessary for the levels of service

that everything is priced right, the oversight is in place

you are buying things, you are bidding packages,

everything is within reason will work well,

and you can only meet the demand

if you get the subsidy to complete the subsidy

plus the fares and meet the total operating needs.

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