Reinventing Transport

The shared space (or 'naked streets') approach to street design was developed in the Netherlands right? The late Hans Monderman was the pioneering hero who extended it to some surprisingly busy roads and intersections, correct? And it has been popularised and applied in the UK and elsewhere by Ben Hamilton-Baillie , hasn't it? Or did shared space emerge in Japan? In a recent Ecohearth post explaining the shared space idea , Dawn Marshallsay includes this sentence: It could be said that Tokyo led the way, as most of its roads follow the shared-space principle, although they were not purposefully designed to reduce accidents. Actually, it is mainly small side-streets that are like that, not most roads, but you get the point. Here are some examples photographed during my short visits to Japan. (Scroll down for more discussion after the pictures) Near Fukuoka airport and a subway station. Near Tokyo University and Ueno in central Tokyo. In Nishitokyo City, ...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] I left a comment at PT's Parking Blog in response to this John Van Horn item and its first comment . My comment ended up quite long. I think it is worth cross-posting here. I have been looking into parking policy around Asia. A report on it should be out next month (with luck). It is true that Mumbai and Delhi have parking chaos and are now trying to follow the conventional suburban parking policy approach of minimum parking requirements with buildings. Dhaka, with car ownership below 50 per 1000 people, is doing the same. In a situation like that, is it really a good idea to force building managers and all of their customers to subsidize the parking of the tiny elite? So far, it is not working very well (see http://reinventingtransport.blogspot.com/2010/04/parking-dramas-in-south-asian-cities.html ). Off-street parking does not magically suck cars off the streets if the streets are easy and...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] I am planning more posts on the Asian parking study I have been doing . But the technical details and policy debates can wait. First, some curiosities. A few days ago it was the parking predicament in South Asian cities , such as Dhaka or India's big cities. Today: Japan's coin-operated parking lots. Park a car at a coin-operated parking facility and a metal plate automatically rises to trap the vehicle (see photo below). Later, you pay into the machine (with coins, notes or prepaid card) to release the vehicle. No staff required on site. The photos above are of the same lot in Ueno (central Tokyo). Daytime price: 200 yen for 20 minutes (around US6 per hour) which seems to be the norm in inner Tokyo. Coin parking is a common use of small vacant lots. And Japanese cities have many small vacant lots (especially since the 1990 property crash). Some coin-operated parking lots are ...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Shibuya in Tokyo. 'Bicycle pollution'? You may be familiar with the argument that car-sharing helps reduce pressure on parking space. You may also be aware of the meteoric rise of interest in bicycle sharing schemes, with Barcelona's Bicing and Paris' Velib the most famous. This article from Japan connects bicycle sharing, which is on the rise there too, with parking issues. But the parking problems addressed are with BICYCLE parking not car parking. Cycle-sharing schemes reduce parking violations, raise profits The Yomiuri Shimbun (May. 19, 2008) OSAKA--While bicycle-sharing schemes are becoming common in urban areas as more importance is placed on the environmental and health benefits of cycling, such schemes are also seen as an effective countermeasure for the illegal parking of bicycles. At a condominium in Konohana Ward, Osaka, which was completed in October, each of the...

Who needs a car? I take statistics like this with a grain of salt, but apparently Japan's population of cars and motorcycles has just followed the human population by declining for the first time since records have been kept. Reports said that the February total was 0.2% lower than a year earlier. With more than 600 per 1000 people, there are still a lot of motor vehicles in Japan. But it is interesting that this news came on the same day that Japan's economy was reported to be growing at a faster-than-expected rate . This reminds me of reports in January that Nissan is worried about the declining Japanese interest in cars. This was put down in part to economic uncertainty and a rapidly ageing population. (here is another comment on that report) Even more interestingly, Japan's young people in particular are apparently less interested in owning cars than recent generations. A survey last year of 1,700 Japanese in their 20s and 30s by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan...