La concurrence pour les trottoirs s'intensifie et les villes vont devoir la gérer.

In case you missed it, 2018 was designated the Year of the Kerbby Sabrina Sussman, Zipcar’s public partnerships manager. This is because competition for limited kerb space has been increasing over the past few years, particularly in cities. The kerb is the place that provides “access” between the street and the footpath. The definition tends to include the lane beyond the kerb that is used for car parking, bus stops, taxi pickups and dropoffs, and loading and unloading goods. But kerb competition is increasing from a range of new users including: car sharing, ride sharing, e-scooter share, bike share and e-bike share, food delivery, online order deliveries and, in coming years, autonomous vehicles. And this increasing focus on the kerb is highlighted in recent reports by the Institute of Traffic Engineers, the International Transport Forum and North America’s National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). With this range of new users, cities need to rethink how they manage this contested real estate. Without better kerb management, cities will face increased congestion on local streets from vehicles circulating to access the kerb and on footpaths from a range of shared mobility devices. One change cities will need to make to accommodate these new users is to repurpose kerb space, which has traditionally been used for parking, to other uses. This change will most likely have a significant financial impact. One survey of the 25 largest US cities found parking-related revenues totalled US$5 billion in 2016, or about US$129 per person. While repurposing kerb space will not affect all of this revenue, it will have an impact on city budgets. To minimise this impact, cities will need to think about if, and how, to charge new users of kerb space.

Pour gérer les bordures, il faut d'abord identifier les usages

La ville de Seattle est l'un des leaders en matière de gestion des trottoirs. La ville a classé l'utilisation des trottoirs en six fonctions clés :

1. la mobilité pour les voies de circulation, les pistes cyclables et les couloirs de bus
2. l'accès des personnes utilisant les arrêts de bus, les parkings à vélos et les zones de chargement
3. accès au commerce pour la livraison de marchandises
4. activation pour les petits parcs, les food trucks et l'art public
5. verdissement pour les plantations, les jardins de pluie et les biodégradations.
6. le stockage pour le stationnement, les arrêts de bus et la construction.

L'une des premières analyses approfondies de la bordure de trottoir a été réalisée à San Francisco. Dans le cadre de cette étude commandée en 2018 par Uber Technologies, les consultants (Fehr and Peers) ont développé un indice de productivité des trottoirs (CPI). L'indice a pris en compte trois éléments pour comparer la productivité de l'utilisation des bordures.

1. nombre de passagers utilisant l'espace en bordure de trottoir par mode
2. la période pendant laquelle l'activité a été observée
3. de l'espace total consacré à cet usage.

Comment calculer la productivité des bordures

The CPI is a useful way of quantifying the various competing uses for the kerb. It’s calculated by dividing the amount of activity by the amount of space used, multiplied by the unit of time. For example, the CPI for a bus stop that uses 45 metres of kerb for 250 arriving and departing passengers over four hours would be: 250 passengers/(45 metres x 4 hours), or 1.39 passengers/metre-hours. Alternatively, the CPI for a car space that uses five metres of kerb that services two passengers over four hours would be: 2 passengers/(5 metres x 4 hours), or 0.1 passengers/metre-hours. The CPI shows a bus stop is 13.9 times (1.39/0.1) more productive than a car park. This analysis of usage data provides some rigour in developing a kerb management plan.

Fonder la gestion sur "la mesure plutôt que le mythe".

Pour aller de l'avant, Fehr et Peer recommandent une stratégie de gestion comportant trois éléments :

1. déplacement des utilisations de bordures existantes vers d'autres zones
2. la conversion, qui consiste à éliminer certaines utilisations actuelles et à les remplacer par de nouvelles utilisations
3. la flexibilité, de sorte que l'utilisation des trottoirs change en fonction du moment de la journée.

Trials of flexible kerb management are under way in Washington DC, San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale. In changing how the kerb is managed, the 2018 report from North America’s National Association of City Transportation Officials recommends a “measurement over myth” strategy when converting parking to other uses. Surveys on arrival mode consistently show public transport and active travel modes deliver more customers to adjacent businesses than private motor vehicles. Before-and-after studies confirm that replacing parking with public transport or bike lanes increases sales for area businesses. While new mobility startups are part of the reason cities need to develop kerb management plans, other startups are developing new ways to manage this increasingly contested space. Some of these new companies include:

• Les bordures ouvertes de Coord, une entreprise dérivée de Sidewalk, qui fournit des passages pour fauteuils roulants, des bouches d'incendie, des arrêts de bus et d'autres éléments de bordures physiques.
• Populus, une société de transport de San Francisco qui a mis au point un gestionnaire de mobilité fournissant des données sur le stationnement des scooters et des vélos électriques en libre-service.
• Remix, qui a développé l'outil New Mobility pour analyser et visualiser les flux de données.

These startups have raised millions of dollars, due in part to the recognised value of the kerb. Cities need to make the transition from parking cities to pickup/dropoff cities and to flexible cities. For this to happen, cities will need to think strategically about how to manage their kerbs with the emergence of new users and new mobility management options. One of the first steps in this transition is for cities to ensure data standards and data-sharing arrangements are established as part of the basis for giving new users permission to access the kerb. Neil Sipe, professeur de planification urbaine et régionale, L'Université de Queensland Cet article est republié de The Conversation sous une licence Creative Commons. Lire l'article original.