Reinventing Transport

Jakarta's urban transport problems are epic and this metropolis of 24 million people seems an unlikely place to look for lessons, except maybe cautionary ones. But Yoga Adiwinarto, ITDP’s Country Director for Indonesia, wants you to know there is progress. In fact, there are lessons for other large cities in middle-income countries to learn from. Yoga and I discussed urban transport in Jakarta for Reinventing Transport episode #14.  Click here to learn how to subscribe to this podcast. Here are highlights of our conversation  I asked Yoga to 'paint a picture' of Jakarta, urban transport challenges and what it feels like to move around the city. [1:45] The challenges are huge but there have been improvements, to public transport for example. [6:58] The TransJakarta BRT started well in 2004, faced a very rough patch about five years later (a series of buses even caught fire!). [8:30] Among many other things, ITDP Indonesia has been helping Jakarta improve ...

Singapore's National Day is this week (9 August). So I decided to share Singapore's urban transport story - or my slightly  unusual take on it .  It is   a unique city in various ways but its urban transport policies are well worth your attention even if you don't live in Singapore. This is a warts-and-all version of the story, and it is my own view, not any kind of official one. It's also a little wonkish in parts. [Hi all you policy wonks!] But I hope to keep your interest with some surprising twists, such as: Why was the bus-only public transport system in an awful state by the early 1970s? If the buses were awful in early 1974, how was Singapore able to impose drastic increases to the cost of motoring in 1975? You will have guessed that the buses must have been drastically improved in 1974/75. But how was that achieved? Singapore urban transport enjoyed success through the 1980s and 1990s but its core social bargain (cars for the rich; decent but bas...

The US has started trials for distance-based charging mechanisms aimed at ultimately replacing the gasoline tax. Motorists in several US cities are being recruited to try out a new mileage-based road user charge system . The Public Policy Center of the University of Iowa is leading the trial. This is very good news (although I realise this trial is only the first step in a very long process with no gurantee of political success). Smart folks like Bern Grush and Robin Chase have been calling for usage-based pricing for a long time and pointing out that motor fuel taxes are gradually failing us. The Netherlands, Singapore and the UK apparently have plans for distance-based charging too. Germany and Switzerland already charge heavy vehicles based on distance and weight. There are spin-off opportunities here. I hope they don't get missed! It would be natural for people to be suspicious about having 'extras' that piggy-back on a new user charging system. But I think it would b...

Linking expensive gasoline with city-friendly transport. Cartoon via Streetsblog and Robert Ariail / The State . It is tempting for advocates of green transport (and some economists ) to gloat about high oil prices. It is perfectly understandable to see some glee from critics of automobile dependence as rising fuel costs undermine the economics of places planned around cars and start doing the job of the eco-taxes that should have been in place already. (For a comedy twist on wishful thinking and oil see this video of James Howard Kunstler on the Colbert Report ) But we need to be alert to dangers here too. Please don't assume that high fuel prices will rescue cities from traffic. Oil at $200 per barrel will not automatically bring about a livable streets renaissance. Here are some dangers of escalating fuel prices if your focus is a less car-focused urban transport policy Rebound . Motorists may reduce fuel costs without reducing driving much. Sure, they are already driving...

Traffic on Kuala Lumpur's Federal Highway I wrote before about the chicken-and-egg issues of road pricing and improvements to public transport. I mentioned Kuala Lumpur's long history of regularly proposing travel demand management (TDM) and but then forever putting it off, while waiting for the public transport system to be 'complete'. As I said in that earlier post, they are still waiting. Well, right on cue, here we go again! This is from Malaysia's New Straits Times: Area road pricing proposed for KL city By Azira Shaharuddin 2008/05/28 Motorists may soon have to dig deeper into their wallets to enter and move within the Kuala Lumpur city centre. If what is proposed in the Draft Kuala Lumpur City Plan 2020 is approved, motorists entering busy and usually congested roads will be charged a ‘user fee’ as part of an area road-pricing (ARP) scheme. Under the scheme, motorists would have to pay varying prices during set operation periods each time they pass ...

Jakarta's core corridor with both TDM and BRT. Neither is perfect but both are steps in the right direction. The green sign reads "zone for cars with three occupants or more" and refers to the so-called Three-in-One policy. Hundreds of growing cities across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are motorizing rapidly. Unlike large Western or Japanese cities when cars first flooded them, today's developing cities are mostly facing this onslaught without the safety valve of a large pre-existing rail-based mass transit system. This makes traffic growth a huge challenge. Most are trying to expand roads and to build mass transit but can't keep up with demand that is exploding. Meanwhile workhorse bus-based public transport deteriorates, due especially to traffic delays. Slowing down the rate of traffic growth seems essential. But transport demand management (TDM) policies, such as congestion pricing or increased parking fees, tend to be difficult to sell poli...