Title:Road to Recovery: An APA Chat with John Porcari
کورت کریستینسن، رئیس APA، FAICP، با جان پورکاری، رئیس خدمات مشاوره WSP و معاون سابق وزیر حمل و نقل ایالات متحده، در مورد راه بهبود و نقش اساسی برنامه ریزان در احیای اقتصاد و بازسازی جوامع گفتگو می کند. جان همچنین یکی از سخنرانان اصلی در NPC20 @ Home بود. کرت و جان برخی از موضوعات بررسی شده در جلسه جان را انتخاب می کنند – محرک، بهبودی و برنامه ریزی تحول آفرین. به جلسه جان و مجموعه کامل NPC20 @ Home دسترسی پیدا کنید: https://www.planning.org/NPC20collection
چت دوم با نماینده ارل بلومناور را تماشا کنید: https://youtu.be/9vLho2REUYg
چت سوم با سامانتا هارکینز را تماشا کنید: https://youtu.be/fG1C-NyTxrA
قسمتی از متن فیلم: Hello and welcome i’m kirk christiansen president of the American Planning Association thanks for joining me today for a conversation about the road to recovery and the essential role of planners in restoring our economy and rebuild in our communities I think that there’s no more critical issue for the planning community right now than
Answering the question how do we lead the way to a resilient equitable and sustainable recovery this conversation is part of a piece work to answer that question Congress is working now on legislation to provide more support for state and local governments and considering options for infrastructure investment as a tool for stimulus
Planning is essential to recovery we need to make sure it’s included I’m delighted to be drunk going by John Pocari president of advisory services for WSP and former Deputy Secretary of US Department of Transportation John was also an AP AIDS keynote speaker at NBC 20 at home today we’re going to pick up
On some of those issues and themes stimulus recovery and transformational planning you can ask access this set of that session and the full NPC 20 at home collection via planning org backslash NPC 20 collection welcome John thanks Curt good to be here so your session was very well attended on that
That final day and thank you for being part of that session the NPC 20th home was extremely successful and we thought this would be a good opportunity for us to continue that conversation so in the NPC 20 at-home session you talked about the work happening in Washington DC on
Yeah yes thanks for asking Kurt it’s it’s a really interesting time as you know there’s been some temporary short-term relief for the industry in the form of twenty five billion dollars for transit and seven point four billion dollars for aviation and a roughly a billion dollars for Amtrak that’s just
For the operating short-term operating holes that they have and only part of it as recently as earlier today the house announced a proposal with 15 billion dollars for highways and a little over 15 billion dollars for transit and it’s the starting point for the next negotiation and as you pointed out it’s
It’s really crucial that planning be part of this discussion from the beginning because this is not just about triage about stopping the bleeding on the operating costs for infrastructure systems it’s actually about building a better future in a different future and you can only do that through a more
Holistic process that includes planning yes I would completely agree with you and I think that we’ve had a lack of infrastructure planning especially since the Great Recession which kind of leads me into the next question the last time we did an infrastructure did in this from training a stimulus bill was the
American Recovery and investment Act during the Great Recession what about 10 or 12 years ago and you were deputy secretary of the US Department of Transportation man what lessons should we take away from the successes and limitations of that legislation it’s a great question first the Recovery Act from an economic development and
Economic recovery point of view did was supposed to do the infrastructure part of that nearly eight hundred billion dollar bill was 47 billion dollars for infrastructure the infrastructure part of it went off very well there were projects that were underway very quickly I actually had a unique perspective I
Started as a state that was Quixote secretary putting together a program when the stimulus bill was signed we had the first project underway the day after the president signed it and a few weeks later I as you point out I was deputy secretary administering the program at the federal level so it
Worked in getting people get back to work it’s big limitation was it was not transform transformational in any way it wasn’t intended to be we have a different set of circumstances today with koban 19 and we certainly know a lot more about the built environment and if you think about background issues
That have to be front and center going forward like climate change the the non transformational nature of the last stimulus bill needs to be supplanted by something that that really thinks more widely about what kind of future we want at the end of the day these investments
Are a foundational way to build a different future and you can only do that with the kind of interaction and planning and thoughtful process that by design was not in the last stimulus bill and I think planning planning and planners play a huge role in in that
Forward thinking that that we must have as part of these these conversations and planning needs to be seen as a must-have especially in times of crisis as someone working on a planning project around the country and the globe what do you see as the value of planning and reopening our
Economy and building a sustainable and equitable economic recovery we we know that we need to rebuild in a different way we know that the very definition of resiliency is different post pandemic than it was beforehand and we know that that actually building a future that that is equitable that empowers people
It involves a lot of community engagement you don’t get that without the kind of planning process on the front end that that brings communities together that lets people vision together and that is in stark contrast to some of the infrastructure projects in the past if you think about the interstate
Construction peak years for example driving interstates literally through the hearts of communities in bisecting communities those kind of mistakes which are generational mistakes you’re stuck with them for generations we’ll have those again if we’re not more careful and the the planning part where we’re thinking about how the definition
Of resiliency is expanded to include public health concerns for example active transportation things like walking and biking electric scooters the kind of supplemental transportation elements that were that are more and more popular how do those fit into a larger system and in do you build the social space
Again as part of that do you make sure you electrify the future as part of your response to climate change all those things happen through a planning process I think for as a profession it’s a it’s a uniquely interesting and advantageous time for the planning profession because
We can actually help build a better future together in a way that hasn’t been done in the past knowing more than we’ve known in the past yeah I would totally agree with you I it’s been really interesting during these quarantine times when I’ve been driving around the city of Richmond
Virginia and I’ve seen some of that happening these these these projects infrastructure projects that are going on right now because they have time to do them one example is one of the streets down where I live one of the roads main thoroughfares they removed a lane in
Each direction put in a dedicated bike lane and then had parking on the other side of that bike lanes so it’s protected bike lane now as opposed to – and it’s in an area that is is more low-income or not so yes equitable resilient kind of thinking outside of
The box and we’re seeing it on the ground now but that more needs to be done so how’s your perspective devolved from your varied experience overseeing the state VLT to shaping policy at a federal level and now advising advising clients through your role in the private sector
Steve I mean a big impact not only in your state but also in on the federal level now you get to work in the trenches in the local government so how would I was that evolve over time well it’s interesting I I like to think that every every bit of that experience
Has helped in in different ways and you’re right we have clients worldwide today that while there’s less traffic volumes are taking parking lanes or general purpose lanes and turning them over to active transportation but as part of that fundamentally rethinking what what it actually means to to have infrastructure that serves people and
And another example is we have multiple clients were working with that are thinking about portal-to-portal transit not just the mainline transit but how do you do the first and last mile do the transportation network companies have a positive role to play does micro mobility have a positive role to play
And as we electrify the transport sector how does that translate into portal-to-portal trips so at the state level I had had real advantage in Maryland d-o-t in that it’s not just highways its transit its it’s the trail system it’s aviation ports everything so it was much more of a holistic look to
Begin with in translating that to the federal level it gave me a greater appreciation frankly for how different the needs are and how we in different parts of the country and even within regions how different it is and in the idea of being modally agnostic of not dictating a solution but but actually
Having a community-based consensus and discussion process that it leads you to a different place and a more sustainable one all those have been I think helpful perspectives I have a keen appreciation for some of the historical parts of it as well I mentioned earlier that infrastructure investments are
Generational and they truly are so you have to really think very long term about investments that are being made today and some of the stimulus investments from your great-grandparents it could be the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam we’re still living with today and they’re still driving the
Economies today so it’s really important that we that we think it’s who from that perspective I’d also point out that in the Recovery Act as a federal level in the Obama administration one of the really great things was through the the tiger grant program which was created as
Part of the Recovery Act for the first time ever we built a direct relationship between the federal government and local governments where local needs actually drove federal funding rather than the other way around where local needs weren’t distorted or miss shapen by available federal funding and I think
One of the great lessons going forward is we think about the next phase of stimulus for the country now is making sure that you have that local lens and and are looking at it through the local lens and being responsive to local needs at the end of the day it’s a national
System composed of local elements that really aggregate into a national system yeah when I was living grew up in Los Angeles and I mean through my lifetime up until about a year and a half ago maybe to Virginia I saw those infrastructure projects that were transformational during my my parents my
Grandparents time the building of their their freeway system an Iowa system in the Los Angeles area it was just phenomenal so it’s it’s amazing what what we live with for such a long period of time so we have to keep on thinking about things in different ways and making sure that
We’re thinking about the future generations as well and kind of piggybacking on that whole transformational aspect and you’re teeing up King up remarks you touched on several potential transformational planning issues things like infrastructure electrification vertical right-of-way planning and resiliency I’m really really interested in that because I think that’s where
We’re headed and if we don’t start planning for it now we’ll be way behind so what are your thoughts and I’m planning’s focus now and how a federal policy can promote that work well it’s mutually reinforcing first of all I think that that good planning can actually drive federal
Policy not not just the other way around and if you take a topic like electrification I think we all understand if if if you look at the data by far the biggest challenge of this generation is climate change and and responding to that adequately begins with taking the single largest group of
Co2 emitters which is the transport sector and electrifying it as quickly as possible and that’s that’s not just your personal vehicle that’s the entire system it’s medium and heavy-duty trucks it’s the transit systems it it’s every bit of it how do you do that in a holistic way that actually builds value in
Communities those are really critical issues and from a community empowerment point of view how do you actually do that so I mentioned electrification because our successful response to climate change certainly begins there it doesn’t end there but it begins there and this is the perfect time to think about how
Stimulus money would be spent in a way that actually responds to that future and builds for that future likewise with vertical right-of-way so we we tend to do corridor planning in two dimensions whether it’s highway or transit or a combination of it the vertical dimension of it is at least as
Important if you think about the value of right away owned by government at the local level the vertical part of it in the future will be every bit as valuable as the surface so it may be unmanned package delivery today for prescriptions or anything else it is certainly going
To include moving people in the very near future and you have some really interesting work going on where cities are thinking about that vertical dimension is an extension of their planning and zoning in the vertical dimension as opposed to say the Federal Aviation Administration regulating airspace down to ground level and that
Is an opportunity as well if you’re doing corridor planning today and you’re not thinking about connected not economist vehicles on the surface unmanned aerial mobility in the vertical dimension if you’re not thinking about using that right away for fiber for conductive charging then you’re not really envisioning the full value of
That right-of-way and only through a planning process where you’re really thinking in those generational terms can you pull that value out and think about it in a way that serves the ongoing and changing needs of of the communities that’s really interesting I mean I last year went to many different
Chapter conferences and one of the keynotes the Texas chapter conference was about unmanned autonomous flight vehicles that would be able to move you from one place to another instead of getting into a car I know that in at the Mississippi Alabama conference we talked about infrastructure in regards to cable
And and making sure that they were a smart city so I know that these things are out there we just need to be talking about them more and I’m glad that that you as as a thought leader is doing this so thank you so I think kind of wrapping up maybe the questions
It’s it’s essential for the entire planning community industry APA and the profession public and private sectors nonprofits to work together for influence how can we ensure that this important connection to APA and how can we make this happen well another good question first and foremost as a
Profession planning to be at the table as part of this discussion and your your leaving those efforts right now is absolutely critical the again the mistake from the Recovery Act and I was one of the guilty parties where we didn’t add to the planning process we focused on the construction end of the
Pipeline and while we got a lot of value in reviving the economy no one is saying that was transformational so as a profession planning being at the table and as part of this discussion and working with fellow organizations whether it’s engineers or its other organizations like the American public transportation Association the airport
Consulting council and then some of the non-traditional actors that are out there the International City Management Association so city managers seeing the value in that Meiko amp oh there’s there’s there’s lots of organizations that APA can and should I think partner with as part of this and that but the more general point
In in the crucial point is that we need to think about doing this in a way with the infrastructure serving people rather than just taking existing programs and just pumping money through them we need to actually together think about and plan a better future that is more
Resilient that that not just to the next pandemic which we will have sooner or later but to the climate realities to the economic development realities and the mobility challenges that we have and huge segments of our communities right now wow that’s that’s really been fascinating and and really insightful
And thank you for expanding on what you did at the plenary on that Friday AF or NPC 20 at home so I want to thank you for those insights Shawn and I appreciate you taking time with us to talk and thanks to all of you for joining this conversation your advocacy
Is critically important now more than ever if you aren’t already a member of the planners out because he Network I would hope that you would sign up using the my APA on plan org for this free to member APA resource an insurer supporting planning essential is is to
Recovery if you look on that part we have things that you can send to your congressional leaders from your local area and that is something that it really does make a difference I also would take the time to have our people that are listening to go back and look
At our policy guides look at our our knowledge base collections pay attention the Action Alerts to make sure that you’re able to send those things out to your congressional leaders and for more check out NBC 20 at home collection the critical covet 19 planning resources at planning org this interview is the first
Of several APA conversations with thought leaders about planning and recovery so stay tuned to APA and thanks again John Thank You Curt and thanks for your leadership thank you
ID: 9L8GpYqYrBw
Time: 1590606607
Date: 2020-05-27 23:40:07
Duration: 00:21:22
