branch causes

Earlier this year, New York City launched an initiative to cut traffic congestion. Drivers that entered lower Manhattan's Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ) would pay up to $9 per day. The exact price changed depending on when they drove in. They would only pay once per day. Jeremy Hinsdale of the Columbia Climate School reports the effects were immediately clear. A month after launch, the area saw 1M fewer vehicles. Travel time through the CRZ improved between 10% and 30%. Bus ridership on the weekend increased by 20%. Subway ridership increased by 7.3%. The tax itself will raise $15B for New York City's subway system, the MTA.

A knock-on effect is a term that describes when something happens as a result of something else. It could be good or bad; planned or unexpected; they may not even feel related to each other. The knock-on effects of congestion pricing were dramatic. In the first 12 days of congestion pricing, crashes and injuries dropped by 50% in the CRZ. In London, where congestion pricing began 6 years ago, some pollutants fell by a quarter—not just in the zone itself, but across the entire city! The benefits of these zones go even further. A study of global Low Emission Zones (LEZ) and CRZs found that people in them saw their health improve. Their risk of heart disease and lung disease, even lung cancer, all dropped. Noise pollution rates also dropped in these areas. Benefits we may not have expected are still trickling in for congestion pricing. To which I ask: how do we do this everywhere?

unforeseen knock-ons

Low emissions is fantastic, and support for them appears to be growing. That's not my main interest, though. I read the above and I see the work of a powerful coalition of community interests and organizations. Look at these organizations!

Environmental and conservation groups are there, of course. But so are transit riders, transportation engineers, Brooklyn residents, architects, and more. This might be greedy of me, but in retrospect, couldn't that coalition have been even bigger? What if they invited people concerned about heart and lung disease? Could they have recruited people who knew that noise pollution causes stress? Or insurance companies and health institutions concerned about costs of care?

Most of us know that solving root causes are the only way to fix the problems we see in the world. You can't stop at treating the symptoms, you have to cure the disease. But roots that run deep will have many branches. We may be aware of the root cause of our own problems, but who else shares that root cause? How do we find them? To be honest, I don't know yet. I have some ideas here that I'd like to explore in future posts.

Reverse engineer root causes. What are the upstream effects of the root causes we see? People who talk about root causes often bring up the "5 why's". This is an technique learned in the early days of Lean Six Sigma. You describe a problem, then ask why it happened. Then you ask why that happened. And so on, until you get to the supposed root cause of the problem you described. I think each "why?" might reveal other people or groups harmed by that same problem. Some of them might want to solve our root cause as much as we do.

Research knock-on effects in other areas. Form bonds between groups working on these effects in your area. CRZs existed in other cities before Manhattan got theirs. What could we have learned from those cities' knock-on effects? Could early data be enough to persuade groups that don't think your cause has anything to do with theirs? Could we make alliances between groups that may never have thought to work together?

Talk about branch causes like conspiracy theories made real. People love conspiracy theories these days. What if they knew about the forces that conspired to stop the Covid vaccine from being free? Would it shock them to learn that those same forces are also the reason they have to work when they're sick? The difference here is that we can show the branch causes that all connect to the same root. Nobody has proven that vaccines cause autism. What we can prove is that influencers make money when they claim vaccines are unsafe. What else could we link to the erosion of public health and healthcare?

durable coalitions

It's not enough to start linking distinct groups into fragile or directionless alliances. We have to put that movement to action as soon as they're formed. We can be adept with our messaging without falling for the sleazy triangulation of the 1990s. We can talk about a core issue and then draw meaningful lines to a constellation of other related issues.

These days it feels like we need mass movements to do pretty much anything. That still may not be enough to face off against systemic problems at the national or global level. It could be enough in a city, like it was in New York. Like it could be in Boston, or Seattle, even for issues happening in wherever you call home.