Hi. I'm here to talk about congestion, namely road congestion. Road congestion is a pervasive phenomenon. It exists in basically all of the cities all around the world, which is a little bit surprising when you think about it. I mean, think about how different cities are, actually. I mean, you have the typical European cities, with a dense urban core, good public transportation mostly, not a lot of road capacity. But then, on the other hand, you have the American cities. It's moving by itself, okay. Anyway, the American cities: lots of roads dispersed over large areas, almost no public transportation. And then you have the emerging world cities, with a mixed variety of vehicles, mixed land-use patterns, also rather dispersed but often with a very dense urban core. And traffic planners all around the world have tried lots of different measures: dense cities or dispersed cities, lots of roads or lots of public transport or lots of bike lanes or more information, or lots of different things, but nothing seems to work.
Prišiel som vám porozprávať o zápche. Konkrétne o dopravnej zápche. Dopravné zápchy sú všade. Vznikajú v skoro všetkých mestách na celom svete a keď sa nad tým zamyslíte, je to prekvapivé. Len si predstavte, aké je každé mesto iné. Napríklad typické európske mestá majú zahustené centrum, dobrú hromadnú dopravu a málo miesta na cestách. A na druhej strane sú americké mestá. (Fajn, prepína sa mi to samo.) Zoberme si teda mestá v USA. Veľa ciest rozvetvených po veľkých oblastiach a skoro nijaká hromadná doprava. Potom existujú rozrastajúce sa svetové metropoly s rôznorodou škálou vozidiel a a infraštruktúrou. Centrá miest sú väčšinou rozvetvené, ale často veľmi prehustené. Dopravní znalci po celom svete už vyskúšali rôzne opatrenia: prehustené i rozťahané mestá, hustú dopravnú sieť aj hromadnú dopravu, cyklistické chodníky a viac informácií alebo veľa iných vecí, ale nič nepomohlo.
But all of these attempts have one thing in common. They're basically attempts at figuring out what people should do instead of rush hour car driving. They're essentially, to a point, attempts at planning what other people should do, planning their life for them.
Všetky pokusy majú však niečo spoločné. Snažia sa zistiť, čo by mali ľudia robiť namiesto jazdy v dopravnej špičke. Snažia sa ľuďom povedať, čo by mali robiť. Plánujú im život.
Now, planning a complex social system is a very hard thing to do, and let me tell you a story. Back in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, an urban planner in London got a phone call from a colleague in Moscow saying, basically, "Hi, this is Vladimir. I'd like to know, who's in charge of London's bread supply?"
Viete, naplánovať celú spoločnosť je skutočne ťažké... poviem vám príbeh. Keď v roku 1989 padol Berlínsky múr, územnému plánovačovi v Londýne zavolal kolega z Moskvy. Hovoril: „Ahoj, tu je Vladimir. Chcel by som vedieť, kto má na starosti zásobovanie Londýna chlebom.“
And the urban planner in London goes, "What do you mean, who's in charge of London's — I mean, no one is in charge." "Oh, but surely someone must be in charge. I mean, it's a very complicated system. Someone must control all of this."
A územný plánovač odpovedal: „Čo tým myslíš? Nikto to nemá na starosti.“ „Ale veď niekto sa o to musí starať. Je to zložité, niekto to musí riadiť.“
"No. No. No one is in charge. I mean, it basically -- I haven't really thought of it. It basically organizes itself."
„Nie, nie. Nikto. Vlastne som sa nad tým nezamýšľal. Zásobovanie funguje samo od seba.“
It organizes itself. That's an example of a complex social system which has the ability of self-organizing, and this is a very deep insight. When you try to solve really complex social problems, the right thing to do is most of the time to create the incentives. You don't plan the details, and people will figure out what to do, how to adapt to this new framework.
Funguje samo od seba. Je to príklad spoločenského systému, ktorý sa vie sám zorganizovať. Skutočne sme hlboko nahliadli do problému. Keď chcete vyriešiť zložité spoločenské problémy väčšinou je správne vytvoriť podnety. Neplánujte detaily a ľudia sami prídu na to, čo robiť a ako sa prispôsobiť novému systému.
And let's now look at how we can use this insight to combat road congestion.
Poďme sa pozrieť, ako využijeme tento poznatok na boj proti dopravným zápcham.
This is a map of Stockholm, my hometown. Now, Stockholm is a medium-sized city, roughly two million people, but Stockholm also has lots of water and lots of water means lots of bridges -- narrow bridges, old bridges -- which means lots of road congestion. And these red dots show the most congested parts, which are the bridges that lead into the inner city. And then someone came up with the idea that, apart from good public transport, apart from spending money on roads, let's try to charge drivers one or two euros at these bottlenecks.
Toto je mapa Štokholmu, kde som vyrastal. Štokholm je stredne veľké mesto s dvomi miliónmi ľudí. Je tam aj veľa vody a veľa vody znamená veľa mostov – sú úzke a staré. Znamená to veľa dopravných zápch. Červené bodky ukazujú miesta s najčastejšími zápchami, čo sú vlastne mosty vedúce do stredu mesta. Zrazu niekomu skrsla v hlave myšlienka, že namiesto dobrej hromadnej dopravy a namiesto investovania peňazí do ciest môžu v týchto lievikoch účtovať 1 alebo 2 eurá.
Now, one or two euros, that isn't really a lot of money, I mean compared to parking charges and running costs, etc., so you would probably expect that car drivers wouldn't really react to this fairly small charge. You would be wrong. One or two euros was enough to make 20 percent of cars disappear from rush hours. Now, 20 percent, well, that's a fairly huge figure, you might think, but you've still got 80 percent left of the problem, right? Because you still have 80 percent of the traffic. Now, that's also wrong, because traffic happens to be a nonlinear phenomenon, meaning that once you reach above a certain capacity threshold then congestion starts to increase really, really rapidly. But fortunately, it also works the other way around. If you can reduce traffic even somewhat, then congestion will go down much faster than you might think. Now, congestion charges were introduced in Stockholm on January 3, 2006, and the first picture here is a picture of Stockholm, one of the typical streets, January 2. The first day with the congestion charges looked like this. This is what happens when you take away 20 percent of the cars from the streets. You really reduce congestion quite substantially.
Nie je to veľa peňazí, ak to porovnáte s cenou parkovania, prevádzkovými nákladmi... Asi by ste čakali, že šoféri nebudú mať námietky. Ale mýlite sa. Stačili 1 až 2 eurá a 20 % áut zmizlo z dopravnej špičky. Povedali by ste, že 20 % je celkom veľa. Ale stále nám ostáva zvyšných 80 % problému, nie? Tých 80 % áut tam ešte stále je. To nie je pravda, lebo doprava je nelineárny jav. Čo znamená, že keď sa dosiahne určitá kapacitná hranica, zápcha sa začne zväčšovať veľmi, veľmi rýchlo. Našťastie to funguje aj naopak. Ak iba trochu znížite počet áut, zápcha sa bude znižovať ešte rýchlejšie. Poplatky sa v Štokholme zaviedli 3. januára 2006. Na prvom obrázku je Štokholm, jedna z jeho typických ulíc, 2. januára. Takto vyzeral prvý deň po zavedení poplatkov. Takto to vyzerá, keď z ciest zmizne 20 % áut. Zápchy sa značne zmenšili.
But, well, as I said, I mean, car drivers adapt, right? So after a while they would all come back because they have sort of gotten used to charges. Wrong again. It's now six and a half years ago since the congestion charges were introduced in Stockholm, and we basically have the same low traffic levels still.
Ale ako som už povedal, vodiči sa prispôsobujú. Takže po čase sa všetci vrátia, lebo si na poplatky zvyknú. Zase sa mýlite. Poplatky sa zaviedli pred 6 a pol rokom a stále máme rovnako nízku mieru zápch.
But you see, there's an interesting gap here in the time series in 2007. Well, the thing is that, the congestion charges, they were introduced first as a trial, so they were introduced in January and then abolished again at the end of July, followed by a referendum, and then they were reintroduced again in 2007, which of course was a wonderful scientific opportunity. I mean, this was a really fun experiment to start with, and we actually got to do it twice. And personally, I would like to do this every once a year or so, but they won't let me do that. But it was fun anyway.
Ale ako vidíte, v roku 2007 sa objavila zaujímavá diera. Je to preto, lebo poplatky sa v januári zaviedli najskôr iba skúšobne a na konci júla sa zrušili. Nasledovalo referendum a znova sa v roku 2007 zaviedli, čo bola úžasná príležitosť pre vedu. Začali sme so zábavným pokusom a dokonca sme ho uskutočnili dvakrát. Osobne by som ho robil každý rok. Ale to mi nedovolia. Ale aj tak to bola zábava.
So, we followed up. What happened? This is the last day with the congestion charges, July 31, and you see the same street but now it's summer, and summer in Stockholm is a very nice and light time of the year, and the first day without the congestion charges looked like this. All the cars were back again, and you even have to admire the car drivers. They adapt so extremely quickly. The first day they all came back. And this effect hanged on. So 2007 figures looked like this.
Takže čo sa stalo? Toto je 31. júl, posledný deň poplatkov. Toto je tá istá ulica, ale v lete. Leto v Štokholme je veľmi pekné a slnečné obdobie. Prvý deň bez poplatkov vyzeral takto. Všetky autá sa vrátili a dokonca musíte obdivovať vodičov. Rýchlo sa prispôsobujú. Všetci sa vrátili už v prvý deň. A všetko bolo ako pred tým. Štatistika z roku 2007 vyzerá takto.
Now these traffic figures are really exciting and a little bit surprising and very useful to know, but I would say that the most surprising slide here I'm going to show you today is not this one. It's this one. This shows public support for congestion pricing of Stockholm, and you see that when congestion pricing were introduced in the beginning of Spring 2006, people were fiercely against it. Seventy percent of the population didn't want this. But what happened when the congestion charges were there is not what you would expect, that people hated it more and more. No, on the contrary, they changed, up to a point where we now have 70 percent support for keeping the charges, meaning that -- I mean, let me repeat that: 70 percent of the population in Stockholm want to keep a price for something that used to be free.
Tieto čísla sú skutočne zaujímavé a aj trochu prekvapivé a veľmi užitočné. Ale najprekvapivejšia časť prezentácie, ktorú vám ukážem, nie je táto. Ale táto. Verejná podpora poplatkov v Štokholme. Keď sa na začiatku jari 2006 zaviedli poplatky, boli ľudia zásadne proti. Nechcelo ich 70 % obyvateľov. Ale keď sa poplatky zaviedli, nestalo sa to, že by ich ľudia stále viac nechceli. Práve naopak. Ľudia postoj zmenili, dokonca teraz 70 % ľudí poplatky podporuje a chce ich. Budem sa opakovať, ale znamená to, že 70 % obyvateľov Štokholmu chce platiť za niečo, čo bolo kedysi zadarmo.
Okay. So why can that be? Why is that? Well, think about it this way. Who changed? I mean, the 20 percent of the car drivers that disappeared, surely they must be discontent in a way. And where did they go? If we can understand this, then maybe we can figure out how people can be so happy with this. Well, so we did this huge interview survey with lots of travel services, and tried to figure out who changed, and where did they go? And it turned out that they don't know themselves. (Laughter) For some reason, the car drivers are -- they are confident they actually drive the same way that they used to do. And why is that? It's because that travel patterns are much less stable than you might think. Each day, people make new decisions, and people change and the world changes around them, and each day all of these decisions are sort of nudged ever so slightly away from rush hour car driving in a way that people don't even notice. They're not even aware of this themselves.
Ako je to vlastne možné? Pozrime sa na to inak. Kto sa zmenil? Tých 20 % vodičov, ktorí zmizli, bolo určite nespokojných. Kam išli? Ak toto pochopíme, možno zistíme aj to, prečo sú ľudia s poplatkami spokojní. Spravili sme obrovský prieskum s dopravnými spoločnosťami a snažili sme sa zistiť, kto sa zmenil a kam zmizli. Ukázalo sa, že ani oni nevedia. (Smiech) Z nejakého dôvodu sú šoféri... sú presvedčení, že jazdia rovnako, ako predtým. Ako to je možné? Dôvodom je, že ľudia necestujú stále rovnako. Každý deň sa ľudia rozhodujú inak a menia sa. Svet okolo nich sa mení, každý deň. Každý deň sa ich rozhodnutia o tom, ako sa vyhnú dopravnej špičke nepatrne menia tak, že si to ani nevšimnú. Vôbec o tom nevedia.
And the other question, who changed their mind? Who changed their opinion, and why? So we did another interview survey, tried to figure out why people changed their mind, and what type of group changed their minds? And after analyzing the answers, it turned out that more than half of them believe that they haven't changed their minds. They're actually confident that they have liked congestion pricing all along. Which means that we are now in a position where we have reduced traffic across this toll cordon with 20 percent, and reduced congestion by enormous numbers, and people aren't even aware that they have changed, and they honestly believe that they have liked this all along.
Čo ešte zmenilo ich zmýšľanie? Kto zmenil ich názor a prečo? Spravili sme ďalší prieskum a chceli sme zistiť, prečo ľudia zmenili názor a aké skupiny obyvateľov to boli. Keď sme spracovali odpovede, ukázalo sa, že viac ako polovica z nich verí, že svoj názor vôbec nezmenili. Sú presvedčení, že od začiatku poplatky podporovali. Znamená to, že sme sa ocitli v situácií, kedy je vďaka poplatkom na cestách o 20 % menej áut a došlo k obrovskému zníženiu dopravných zápch. A ľudia si ani neuvedomujú, že sa zmenili. Úprimne veria, že vždy poplatky podporovali.
This is the power of nudges when trying to solve complex social problems, and when you do that, you shouldn't try to tell people how to adapt. You should just nudge them in the right direction. And if you do it right, people will actually embrace the change, and if you do it right, people will actually even like it. Thank you. (Applause)
Ľudí stačí iba postrčiť a pomôže to pri riešení spoločenských problémov. Pritom by by sme nemali ľuďom hovoriť, ako sa prispôsobiť. Mali by sme ich iba postrčiť správnym smerom. Ak to urobíte správnym spôsobom, ľudia zmenu prijmú a dokonca sa im aj bude páčiť. Ďakujem. (Potlesk)