Reinventing Transport

Many cities strive for better public transport. But too few do enough to improve their BUS systems. For Reinventing Transport this time around I discussed bus improvements with  public transport planning veteran,  Colin Brader of ITP.   Colin has worked on numerous public transport projects around the world and is one of the authors of the 2019 EBRD report, " Driving change: reforming urban bus services ". A key point in our discussion: Cities need bus reform champions. We will see that one even has a bus improvement "heavyweight". Scroll down for highlights of our conversation or listen with the player below. Click here to learn how to subscribe to this podcast. Yangon bus stuck in traffic. Yangon has made drastic bus reforms recently. Colin Brader  is the founder of the  UK-based international transport consulting firm, ITP , and is currently ITP’s Chairman. For more than 2 decades he has worked through ITP on projects that have tran...

If you care about promoting public transport, you need to understand the key choices about organising and regulating it. These choices shape the industry and they really matter. This is NOT just about privatisation versus government operation. It is more interesting than that. This edition of Reinventing Transport shares the key alternatives and gives a sense of what's at stake. The focus is buses but most of the ideas also apply more widely. Click here to learn how to subscribe to the podcast. You can either read the article below or listen to the podcast episode  (use a podcast app or the player at the beginning of this article or click HERE ) . This is just the basics, not a deep dive. If you want more gory details, then follow the links right at the end of the article. It may seem dull but bus regulation is important! [1:29] The regulatory framework sets how decisions get made and who makes those choices. It makes a huge difference for things you care about ...

What if I said your city could have better public transport without more funding or higher fares? Does that sound too good to be true? Reinventing Transport this time is a basic explainer for the idea that public transport networks are often improved by being simplified. It can be a low-cost step to a better system.   If people in your city face long waiting times for buses, there might be too many bus lines. A simplified network may offer better service. Does that sound intriguing? Or maybe this issue is old hat for you. Either way, I hope you will get something from listening to the episode or reading the article below. The basic idea Imagine a town with 100 buses. And suppose the town has 25 bus lines. There would be four buses for each line. But suppose the town simplifies its bus network down to just five lines. Now there are 20 buses per bus line.

This post is to share a presentation on Singapore's Public Transport policies which I gave in Seoul in September. This is my own take on the story, not any kind of official narrative. I took a rather long-term perspective, going back to the 1930s and emphasizing important changes in the 1970s. It is also a 'big picture' view. But some of the current debates are also there. If you have any interest in Singapore's public transport story, then take a peek and let me know what you think. Public Transport Policy in Singapore (a long view) from Paul Barter If you can't see the embedded slideshow above, then try clicking  Public Transport Policy in Singapore (a long view) .    By the way, Singapore has had a busy year of transport and urban planning announcements. Early in the year, there was the controversial Population White Paper . That was followed closely by the Land Use Plan  (basically the latest Concept Plan, Singapore's strategic plan that c...

Update:   I appeared on a panel discussion of this topic on the Talking Point program on Channel News Asia TV. The full video can be viewed HERE (for a few months I think). It is the 21 - 03 - 2012 episode . Singapore's Budget 2012 announced a large funding injection into the bus system. This has caused   much   debate . I felt the need to write something to explain that I see a wider importance in the announcement. The initial Government explanations have focused on the need to improve bus services while we wait for the MRT system to grow further.  But I think the funds should be used strategically to enable two important reforms. In fact, I suspect that this may be the intention, although it has not yet been clearly explained. So, with some trepidation (it has become a hot political issue since I started writing it), I submitted an Op Ed to the Straits Times. It appeared in the ST Review section on Thursday 1 March.  Subscribers to the Straits Ti...

I am impressed by the rise of public transport advocacy in Malaysia, especially a group in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area called TRANSIT . I am sure recent Malaysian legislation to set up a Public Land Transport Commission must owe something to TRANSIT's efforts. Malaysian public transport policy has often been woeful but these reforms look promising. TRANSIT's detailed and critical analysis is a good starting point for understanding the changes. Their website is rich with information on Malaysian urban transport. For several years now, this energetic group has been persistently pushing for better public transport priority, planning and budgets. Their attention to less sexy issues like regulation and institutional reform is also impressive. I can see an enormous improvement in the level of public discussion on public transport policy in Malaysia since I lived there in the late 1990s. Much of the credit must go to the advocacy groups like TRANSIT (full name: ‘The A...

Does your city have any public transport routes that guarantee high-frequency throughout the day? Are they metro/subway routes? Are some on buses? If any of those services are bus routes, are they highlighted as special, or do they seem like any other bus service? The Human Transit blog highlights the importance of being very clear which routes have high-quality, frequent service (regardless of technology): Berlin, for example, presents its system this way: Rapid transit, consisting of U-bahn and S-bahn. (These have numbers starting with U or S. Both are fully grade separated rail transit. ... ) Frequent local-stop transit, called the "Metro-Netz." Metro-Netz service is identified by a route number starting with M, and this supposedly guarantees service every 10 minutes or better for 20 hours a day. Metro-Netz service can be either streetcar or bus. Less-frequent local-stop transit, which is identified by a route number without an initial letter. Obvio...

If you are interested in public transport excellence please check out the new Human Transit blog. It is written by long-time transit planner Jarrett Walker. He has shone in his first 2 weeks of blogging so far. Here are a few highlights: Unhelpful word watch: to transfer (he prefers 'to change') Transferring can be good for you, and your city (Don't believe it? See if Jarrett can persuade you.) Be on the way! (aimed at urban planners especially) Chicken, egg (can transport be discussed as a 'standalone' topic?)

Buses may not be sexy (least of all Delhi's buses like the one above). But most cities desperately need to improve their basic bus systems. And I am not talking about Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) this time. No matter how much BRT you put in, neglecting the basic bus system will undermine your efforts. Jakarta is finding this. The same goes for urban rail systems. These work best when complemented and fed by a good bus system. Seoul realised this in 2004. Unable to expand its subway, it turned to bus improvements for a dramatic boost to its system. Maybe the only thing less sexy than a bus is bus regulation! But if you care about public transport it is time to get interested in regulatory questions like these : Who should plan the system? Who should own what? What roles are best for the public sector? What roles are best for businesses? How should they be rewarded? What kind of competition works for city buses? Getting the regulatory framework right is at least as important as th...

Vienna's public transport is an example of excellent integration and planning I have long been interested in public transport systems in which a public agency takes responsibility for the excellence of a highly integrated system. This interest was provoked by Felix Laube's explanations of Zurich's public transport system and by Paul Mees' excellent book, 'A Very Public Solution'. I am also interested in the growing trend for such agencies to often delegate operation of most services to business enterprises under service contracts , often with competitive tendering. Examples that I have blogged about include Seoul and Bogotá but many others are moving in the same direction, such as various Scandinavian cities, Adelaide in Australia and London famously. Even Indore in India has created a much-praised bus system with a similar regulatory approach. This year, Singapore announced a shift in this direction too, something which I called for in an OpEd in Ethos Magazi...

A stop on Calle 19 of Bogota's Transmilenio BRT system. Photo by Kinori, taken 10 July 2004. Via Wikimedia Commons. A new journal article provides a sympathetic but 'warts and all' examination of Bogotá's celebrated (and much emulated ) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, Transmilenio, and the dangers that it is now facing. Fresh from hearing former Bogotá Mayor, Enrique Peñ alosa , speak at the World Cities Summit in Singapore last week, my interest was piqued. The article , "Bus Rapid Transit: Is Transmilenio a Miracle Cure?", is in the July edition (vol. 28, issue 4) of Transport Reviews journal (paywalled, sorry). It is by geographer and expert on Latin American cities, Alan Gilbert of University College London. The abstract explains: ... The article describes its main characteristics and applauds the improvements that it has already brought to urban transport in Bogotá. Naturally, the system is not without its flaws and these need to be drawn to the attenti...

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...