Robert Bolton has more than 30 years of experience in the development and implementation of environmental projects related to drinking water, wastewater issues, municipal solid waste and general environmental programs. As a senior vice president at Arcadis, Bolton is responsible for managing several regional client relationships and serves as the Program Director for Arcadis’ OneCity initiative in Washington, D.C., which is focused on increasing the resiliency of infrastructure, facilities and communities within the metro D.C. area.
Sustainable Cities: People, Planet and Profit
The hub of our business is really around cities. Most of our clients, both public and private, are focused around city or big metropolitan areas. Our focus is on helping communities improve and improve the quality of life for themselves as well as the customers that they serve. We undertook the Sustainable Cities Mobility Index because mobility is a key component to being able to be sustainable in terms of providing service to their own staffs, as well as the communities that they operate in and serve.
Why US Cities Rank Low in the Index
We looked at 100 cities on a global basis and not one US city made it into the top 20. The highest ranking city was New York City, and they came in at number 23. Probably the biggest challenge that all of the US cities face is the continued dependency on passenger-car travel. We don’t have nearly as well developed metro systems or transit systems for sharing or using alternative means–whether it’s walking or bicycles or other methods of getting around. That’s the big challenge for the US cities, is to look at how they go about diversifying their transportation options.
Cities Need to Move Beyond Highways and Roads
The key for cities, which are really in competition with each other for branding themselves to their residents as well as attracting visitors as well as bringing business to their areas, they need to be able to provide systems that address the full spectrum of needs that people have, make it a place where they want to live, make it a place where they’re going to want to invest and also, ultimately, make it a place that’s safe for them from an environmental point of view.
Reversing Negative Perception of Public Transportation
There are some challenges that we face in the US. To some extent, there is this stigma of public transportation. There’s always been the focus on having your own means of transportation and folks have shied away from public transportation. We need to reverse that stigma. By changing that negative perception of public transit and identifying alternative transportation modes we’ll be in a better place to be able to compete not just here in the US but on a global basis. The ways cities can do that is to incentivize public transit through the use of pricing strategies, making parking less attractive by limiting parking options or charging higher rates, and then working with developers to incorporate amenities and incentive programs that encourage bike sharing or shuttles.
Airport Connections
I happen to live and work in the DC area, and we actually are fortunate in that the Reagan Airport, which is very close to downtown DC does have their metro system that’s right here, and you can get right on it and go right downtown. Then just very recently, they’ve extended the metro out to the Dulles Airport. I think those are exceptions to the experience that you’ve got in the US, and it’s much more probably our European counterparts where it’s almost seamless from getting on the plane in–name the city–in New York city, getting off in London then going right downtown on the next tube.
Improving Mobility By Connecting Stakeholders
I think the people who deal with these issues on a day-to-day basis are well aware of the challenges that they are facing, but it’s not necessarily front and center on the public agenda in many cases. This particular topic is so important in terms of getting these diversified systems in place, integrated across the community, to collaborate with the appropriate folks on the public side–whether it’s at the city, county or the state level–but then also engage with businesses and investors to develop sustainable mobility solutions that can be implemented and supported by the public.
Arcadis: Helping Communities Improve Through Infrastructure
Arcadis is an environmental engineering and management company that really focuses on what we can do to help communities improve what they do in terms of providing a quality-of-life experience for the residences and the businesses…What we really look to do is improve quality of life by improving, in many cases, infrastructure. That might be drinking water infrastructure, might be transportation networks or could be dealing with environmental issues associated with past experiences or problems that have been incurred as a result of industrial or other activities.
Download full transcript (PDF): Robert Bolton on The Infra Blog
Tags: Arcadis, Robert Bolton, Sustainable Cities Mobility Index
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