Vision Zero

One visible campaign of the New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has been Vision Zero, an attempt to reduce road deaths in the city.

I applaud this, and find it a good example of the sort of thing mayors can influence. There are many dimensions to such an issue, and a mayor can pull them together as a united team and also add profile.

It is a great issue to choose. Who could argue against improving road safety? In many countries, a traffic accident is the most likely cause of death among people aged 5-50. If we reach five and can manage to avoid that fate, then we might even be halving our chances of not living a full life. In the US, sadly, that might not quite be true, because so many people die from shootings and stabbings. But reducing the traffic risk is a wonderful goal.

It is also an attainable goal. Key to the Vision Zero concept is that a traffic accident is never just an accident, and is always avoidable, by a combination of smarter human decisions and a more forgiving infrastructure. Once we take the step of accepting that accidents don’t happen, and also stop the practice of putting a monetary trade-off value on a human life, then the logical conclusion is that zero road deaths is possible and that we should do all we can to achieve it.

In Shell, along with many other corporations, we took a similar path with workplace safety, over a sustained period from about 1990 to the present, with impressive results. There were always cynics. Safety became an industry of its own, immune to cutbacks and criticism, and seemingly filling the environment with their mantras. Others felt that the leaders were driven by litigation risk rather than valuing the lives of staff: I did not believe this, and, even if it were true, the travails of BP show that even such cynical motivation had a value.

I am not a natural dogmatist, and at times felt the safety mantra became a bit mindless, but I was swayed during my last years in the major projects department. There I saw for myself the stunning correlation between projects with a strong safety record and those with good economic outcomes. That convinced me that creating a good safety culture had benefits beyond safety itself.

Vision Zero started in Sweden in the 1990’s. That is no surprise, for the Swedes value safety and life and have the discipline to learn and follow good practice. They already were European leaders before Vision Zero, despite the considerable handicap of their climate and issues with alcoholism. Various European countries took up the mantle since, and now some US cities have followed suit, not before time, since the US track record for read related deaths is very poor compared with Europe, perhaps because of the libertarian tendencies of a large minority of drivers.

The way the campaign is visible around the city is impressive. I looked up the list of specific initiatives. That is impressive too for its length and for how comprehensive it is. As always in the US, there are challenges when it comes to corralling together overlapping or separate legislative bodies. In New York there are also challenges relating to historical union practices.

I do however wonder if there some missed opportunities. The initiative list had a flavour of being copied across from other cities and countries, with local amendments driven more by administrative challenges than by the specific driving and pedestrian issues facing New Yorkers. In other words, it might be somewhat back-office led rather than customer led.

One opportunity might be the practical driving test. To gain a New York driving licence, the practical element involves driving a few blocks for about 12 minutes. I find this wholly inadequate, even though the examiners are no doubt experienced assessors. Main roads and expressways are truly scary here: why are they not assessed? It must be to save money on examiners – just the sort of false economy that Vision Zero is designed to weed out.

Then there is infrastructure. The main reason expressways are so scary is because they are not just crowded but also flawed in structure. I can understand how that happened – land is at a premium and New Yorkers love practical compromise over dogma. But the result is plainly dangerous, and more than necessarily so.

Street lighting on expressways, especially around junctions, is pitiful. Signage is inconsistent. For much of the year potholes necessitate high-speed lane and speed adjustments. Road works seem to go on for years and entail narrow lanes and rapid driver adjustments. Worst of all, in many places there are simply not long enough entry lanes. Until I know a road very well, I find many faster roads akin more to a funfair or grand prix than a safe driving experience.

Now longer entry lanes would be expensive and sometimes infeasible. But a lot of the other issues could be dealt with at relatively low cost. Given the way the network is, I am actually amazed that I don’t witness many more deadly smashes than I do. Yet the Vision Zero initiatives only seem to scratch the surface of this issue.

Then there are the drivers, and here I have an idea. Campaigns are good to raise awareness. More cameras and more police will catch some offenders. But this is all likely to be incremental. The fact is that maybe 5% of New York drivers are completely reckless and thoughtless. These will be immune to campaigns, and relying on police and cameras will not deter or punish them often enough.

So why not take a leaf from elsewhere in the modern economy and rely on other drivers? Nowadays we would not use a hotel or restaurant without contributing to trip advisor. A similar app could help us rate our fellow drivers.

I suggest a very simple interface working by sms. The app prevents you from typing an sms while actually driving, so only pedestrians, passengers or drivers in parked cars can use it. You type in the number plate of another vehicle and then a code. 1 could be a general compliment. 2 could signal reckless driving. And 3 could signal selfish driving, such as cutting in a long line or double parking.

DMV, police and insurance companies would collect the data. Only a large of identical entries would be considered significant, so there is no risk of people abusing the system by targeting friends or enemies. Some professional drivers already invite feedback with numbers to call on the back of their trucks, so the method is already somewhat established. The result would be a step change in reliable feedback about the driving habits of all of us. Our driving safety score could become as important as our credit score.

Insurance companies would surely pay for the development of the app, and receive a payback by adjusting premia based on a better knowledge of risk. In my view, police and vehicle authorities should also be able to act on the data, so long as the weight of evidence is conclusive enough. Just like with trip advisor, there would be some rogue entries, but with a large enough sample over a long enough time period these could be safely ignored.

Such an app could transform road safety, and be the flagship initiative for Vision Zero. In an earlier life I might have tried to monetise this idea, but I have realised that I will not get around to it until it is too late, so I offer it up to interested parties. Why not go for it, Bill de Blasio? Or Progressive, or Geico?          

In praise of minimum wages

Minimum wages are having something of a moment. Many cities in the US have started to impose much higher minimum wages, while Germany has overcome its long resistance and set quite a high wage. But the reward for chutzpah goes to UK chancellor George Osborne.

Osborne is not my favourite politician, but you have to admire his political instincts. His recent budget contained much that is obnoxious, notably on housing and inheritance, but he made sure that the headlines concerned his announcement of a radical increase in the minimum wage. This was presented as a generous recognition of hard working people, and it stole the clothes of the opposition labour party, who had fought the election on promises including a smaller increase.

What made this so brilliant was that it was actually a sleight of hand. Osborne’s main budget priority was to reduce the welfare bill, and on this he was hemmed in by promises to pensioners and others. The available target was tax credits, introduced by the Blair government to support working people on low wages. Osborne drastically reduced criteria for tax credits – while to his credit continuing to raise personal allowances. By doing this he made a huge dent in his own budget and transferred responsibility for low-paid workers from the state to their employers. The lower-paid workers will not be better off at all, but the treasury will.

The Economist ran a typically thorough analysis of the arguments for minimum wages and tax credits as alternatives. It acknowledged the need for one or the other in the modern world where supply of labour outstrips demand. It also acknowledged that much research showed that minimum wages did not harm employment, despite being one of those who argued that this would happen when minimum wages first came into fashion around the millennium.

The argument in favour of minimum wages against tax credits is simple. It saves the state money that can be used elsewhere. This argument is especially strong when there is a risk that companies take advantage of tax credits. Why pay staff $10 per hour when you can pay them $7 per hour and the employee gets the other $3 back from the government? The longer tax credits are in place, the more likely such distortions will take place. In times when government resources are limited and where the corporate share of wealth grows ever higher, this is powerful indeed.

The countervailing argument is that minimum wages will eventually reduce employment. Faced with paying $10 per hour out of its own pocket, the employer has a number of options. In short term, it will probably swallow the higher wage and try to pass on the extra costs to customers through higher prices or let profits suffer.

But in the longer term, the business may choose to lay off the employee. Perhaps the company becomes uncompetitive against foreign rivals with lower labour costs. Perhaps it can even offshore labour itself. And perhaps it could replace the labour component with capital alternatives such as technology. The Economist takes the simple example of supermarket checkout staff. When staff are cheaper it pays to have manned lines. But if wages go up the alternative of investing in self-service lines increases.

The Economist concludes that higher minimum wages and minimum wages held for the longer term are unchartered territory, and that surveys so far showing that minimum wages do not harm employment tend to lack the longer term perspective and apply to lower wage floors compared with median wages.

That is fair enough, but for me it misses the main point, which is the human one. Can we really sustain an economy where people are required to work for wages where they can’t live a decent life? Whether mitigated by tax credits or minimum wages, we must have one or the other. And once you draw that conclusion, the answer as to which is clear.

There have been major structural changes to employment models. The potential workforce has expanded, by including women and many older people (some places I go to seem to have no staff under seventy). Automation continues to attack what used to be mainstay jobs, while globalization allows much work to be done anywhere. These trends are not going to reverse any time soon, and the natural consequence is to drive wages down to desperation levels.

Where minimum wages and tax credits are parsimonious, we already see this. People end up doing two or three jobs. Mums continue to work when expecting and having just given birth. Working hours get longer and longer, jobs further from home, vacations vanish, ever worse conditions are accepted. For what is the alternative? Even a tiny wage is better than none at all when there are mouths to feed.

The consequence is not just misery, it is deprivation. Kids are taken out of school or left alone at home. Home is often without heat or somewhere to do homework. Extended families share rooms. Good diet becomes impossible, and healthcare squandered. Debt mounts up to add to fear.

I saw a telling chart two weeks ago, again in the Economist. We have come to expect downward trends in infant and maternal mortality everywhere, indeed that is a global good-news story. But in one country, the trend has decisively turned in the wrong direction over the last twenty years: that country is the USA. I am pretty convinced that the appalling quality of life of the bottom 30% is the root cause of this.

So, maximizing jobs on its own is not a laudable aim, we must maximize decent jobs, those able to sustain a healthy life. Do we want a return to the 19^th century, when kids worked? Regulation has removed some of the most egregious practices and should continue to do so. Companies will get away with whatever they can, so a minimum wage is one of those things that must be regulated, along with fair contracts, maternity benefits and the like.

Tax credits only paper over the problem, indeed they might make it worse if employers exploit them. Minimum wages are a human right.

So should we just accept lower total employment? It is no doubt true that minimum wages speed up automation and offshoring. So be it. Such things benefit consumers and support innovation, as well as global development.

The job of government is not to paper over the cracks with tax credits, though it is good to have a progressive income taxation system. Government must seek to deal with the structural causes. Again, protectionism is no answer, we should not fight the trends. Government should use some of the money saved on tax credits for safety nets, and the rest to try to nudge the economy towards new, decent jobs.

Part of this is about making business easier and improving education, but an even more structural rethink of employment principles may be necessary.

An example - can we not greatly expand the workforce defined as carers? The vulnerable receive inadequate care and most of what they do receive is supplied voluntarily by families. If such work were certified, trained, and paid a living wage (even for our own parents or children) we can achieve many good societal outcomes at once. Everyone’s quality of life can increase, and our lives can become more balanced.

Now Mr. Osborne, that would really be a newsworthy innovation. I fear you have come to a good partial solution for completely bad reasons. By the way, I predict that your move will also increase Britain’s flagging productivity, since this is much more about the portfolio of work in the economy than about how hard people work.

Sadly, I have little expectation that so cynical a politician will use the opportunity he has just created for himself to shape an improved society. Sadly, the other parties in Britain seem set to be peddling even worse remedies.

London Pride

I lived in and around London for four separate periods between 1979 and 1996, but haven’t lived in the UK at all since then. In both of the last two summers, I’ve had a chance to visit London for a few days, and each time I’ve been very impressed.

The London I remember well was rather grimy, not completely safe, and divided into monochrome districts. Transport was unreliable and overpriced. You got the feeling that there was plenty going on, but that it was not accessible to all. The wealthy lived among their own kind inside the circle line, and the young had the energy to get their kicks despite the inconveniences. For everyone else, you may have worked in town but you spent much of the rest of your life within your own suburb.

I suppose some of this is still partially true, but I do sense that things have improved in all these areas. As a visitor, I had a sense of a city where people of all backgrounds and preferences could coalesce easily. Some had a tough life, but for most there was at least opportunity for some fulfillment.

When I got home, I started thinking about these observations about a city I thought I knew so well? Might I be misleading myself? Is it me that changed rather than London? Have many cities changed in the same ways? What lessons could London offer to others? And do I have to rethink my biases about living there again?

I might be misleading myself a bit. When I first lived in London I had little money and had to budget a lot. Later I had a family and schooling and other considerations. Now I was a tourist, one able to stay quite close to the action and travel at less crowded times. Just like everywhere can seem beautiful when the sun shines, everywhere can seem attractive as a relaxed tourist.

But then I am sure some of the changes are real. London was multi-cultural before, but in a segregated kind of way. There are far more parts of the city now which are like Queens, with the ethnicities blending together more seamlessly.

And clearly transport has improved. I remember a subway map with a centre defined by the circle line and everything else as arteries for commuters. The overground was only for commuters, a series of disconnected hubs and spokes of which you rarely used more than the one to your home.

Now the city has expanded and connected, and it is a triumph for the planners. The canary wharf expansion to the east was followed by the Olympic expansion to its north, so now the circle line lies decisively to the west of the centre of gravity of the expanded city. Further, various dilapidated rail lines have been integrated into the network to enable better connections, a process that Crossrail with further enhance from next year. Tickets are flexible, maps are helpful, trains are cleaner and more frequent, and from next years will start to run 24/7 (unions notwithstanding). The congestion charge has helped too, decluttering the middle and encouraging investment in mass transit.

So yes, I changed a bit, and these visits were not in typical circumstances, but I do think London changed more, and overwhelmingly for the better. The next question is about other cities. Have all cities become more livable?

Again, to a degree this is true. Take New York. When I first visited, in 1982, I remember taking a wrong turn only five or so blocks from Times Square and immediately feeling very unsafe indeed. Now in three years I have been carefree in where I have ventured and never felt unsafe once. That is the main change, but here too, mass transit is better, the city is cleaner, and the place is less ghettoized.

As the world’s population has gravitated into cities, those cities have often responded well. But not all. Houston just grows outwards with no soul and ever-greater reliance on the car. LA is still ghettoized and sprawling. Rome is still unsafe and dirty. Delhi is ever more polluted. You can take a whole day getting from one side of Jakarta to the other.

Three keys seem to divide the winners from the losers. These are security, mass transport and housing. London has done a very good job with the first two and somehow muddled through with the last one. Singapore has done well with all three, New York to a degree also, while Manila or Jakarta seem to have failed in all the key areas. Get them right, and also somehow create a magnet for jobs and youth and buzz, and cities can thrive.

All cities have benefited somehow by humanity somehow becoming smarter at entertaining themselves, perhaps helped by technology and communication. It seems to be possible nowadays to follow any passion, to find others with the same preferences. In a big city, now it is possible not just to find a few general choirs, but to find one with just the right combination of size and style.

London has made some excellent moves. I remember Ken Livingstone campaigning for cheaper mass transit back in 1982, and then for the congestion charge in the 1990’s. He may not have been quite as supportive of canary wharf, but at least he didn’t block it. And the specific positioning of the Olympics in Stratford, perfect for regeneration and expansion of the core city, was a stroke of genius. History will look kindly on Mr. Livingstone, I believe, much as Messrs Guiliani and Bloomberg deserve great credit for New York.

On the Olympics, you read a lot of conflicting material about the economic value for cities: from what I observe, it may have cost London a lot, but the value of regenerating so effectively a part adjacent to the centre must be massive, and something it is very hard to do just with incremental steps.

In the twenty years since I lived in the UK, I have had no yearning at all to return. Now I am rethinking that bias. It is worth considering how the bias came about in the first place.

 My view of England became rather tarnished while away. When I returned, it was usually to see my Mum in Eastbourne. I witnessed to terrible transport links outside London and the limiting provincial attitude there too. But that was through the lens of a suffering older person, so I may have been too pessimistic in my conclusions.

A bigger factor may have been the external portrayal of British attitudes through the media and public affairs. The politics and the press and some TV continue to epitomize a place I would rather not live. Now, perhaps the same would be true for any other country if I were somehow connected to those sources. It is certainly true of the US: the gun crazy, arrogant, celebrity-obsessed place described in the media is a long way from the reality of New York City.

So, London has been promoted up the list of possible destinations after New York, in my own mind and in my wife’s as well. Partly this could have come from noticing previous negative bias, partly from observing first hand the great things that London has achieved, and partly just a reflection of a growing preference for cities in general.

It may be a moot point, because what is clear is that many others have reached the same conclusion, and the housing policy of muddling through has houses in and around London very expensive, perhaps too expensive for me. Still, for a while longer we can dream of what might be possible, and also to recover a bit of pride for my native land, or at least its capital.