Reinventing Transport

"Our road users lack discipline!" is a lament I hear often, especially in developing countries. For example, differing views over road-user discipline have played a big role in the problems of Delhi's BRT project (try googling Delhi BRT discipline ). Alas, respect for most traffic rules depends on consistent enforcement. It would be nice if all traffic rules commanded so much respect that they did not need to be enforced. But unfortunately most important traffic rules fall outside our internal moral codes. Even the rules with serious safety implications, like speed limits, do not seem like an ethical issue to most people. So without enforcement, many people ignore traffic rules. Singapore's bus lanes are no exception. Singapore, for example, is finding the need to beef up its enforcement of its bus lanes. Bus lanes are actually not the toughest enforcement issue in urban transport but they are an important one, despite their humble image. Soon, Singapore will join ot...

High oil prices seem to be traumatizing societies that have become accustomed to cheap fuel. Some of the noisiest pain seems to be in the United States. Pleas for relief have been a prominent response. But rising fuel prices are also prompting more interesting responses. Here I highlight a few from the North American blogosphere. Robin Chase has some wise words at her Network Musings blog against subsidizing gasoline. She uses Indonesia as a cautionary tale. As it stands now, we are already experiencing a gas tax holiday, every day of the year. Our gas taxes have 42% less buying power today than when established in 1993, which is why our road infrastructure is in such sorry state of disrepair. Imagine trying to keep your own life in good working order with 42% less buying power. And indeed, filling up the gas tank is taking a significant bite out of the average family’s household budget, and is forcing difficult choices among those with the lowest incomes. Is subsidizing the answe...

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...

Imagine a future where most of us have easy access to cars whenever we want but few people have a car of their own. Does that sound horrifying or wonderful to you? Chris Bradshaw is an imaginative thinker about urban transport. A retired planner form Ottawa in Canada, he has long been an advocate for pedestrian rights. More recently, he has made car-sharing a passion. Bradshaw's vision for the role of carsharing is ambitious and striking. He envisages a future in which having a car of your own becomes the exception. The normal way to get access to a car would be through what he calls MASC, or 'metered access to shared cars' . This would make car-sharing, taxis and car-rental much more central to urban transport policy making than they are now. [Note: Carsharing enterprises are sometimes called car-clubs or car co-ops but don't confuse carsharing with ride-sharing or car-pooling.] He explains his ideas in a paper entitled, 'How Carsharing Can Reduce the ''D...

It has been a dramatic week. Last week I wondered if the Delhi BRT project would be given a chance. Well, the initial BRT corridor does seem safe, for now at least. Today, Delhi's Chief Minister was quoted as announcing that the initial BRT corridor project will continue but that further expansion of the BRT network is on hold until this part is made to work properly. This is according to early reports (such as this and this ) of the result of the meeting today that was called to decide the immediate fate of the project. The Times of India coverage has been especially hostile and this continued throughout the week. This included new vicious attacks on the credibility of the IIT-Delhi academics, Geetam Tiwari and Dinesh Mohan. By mid-week the project seemed to be under siege from all sides and few would have predicted a reprieve at that time. However, by Friday, enormous efforts at enforcement and to correct signal problems were reported to have eased the delays and reduced th...

{Update 26 April: Delhi's BRT seems safe for now } Bad press and teething problems seem to be putting Delhi's ambitious BRT plans in danger. Map of BRT proposals from TRIPP, IIT-Delhi Delhi's BRT pilot phase has entered a trial period since Sunday. The first 5.6 km is due to start formally on 1 May. Unfortunately press coverage of the project continues to be extremely hostile. Reading some of the articles on this in the Indian media one could be forgiven for thinking that Delhi's entire congestion problem is caused by 5.6 km of busway. All this looks worrying for Delhi's BRT. If politicians cave in and abandon the project now it would be a huge setback for public transport in India. A hasty, low-quality start in Pune didn't help either. Ahmedabad's BRT which is under construction is aiming at a much higher standard of BRT implementation than any other Indian proposal so far. It has benefited from technical assistance from ITDP . But I fear even that project...

The Freakonomics guys have just given Pay As You Drive (or PAYD) insurance some much-needed publicity. Also called 'distance-based insurance', this turns motor insurance payments, which are usually a fixed cost, into a variable cost. This makes it possible to save money by driving less. They write in their April 20 column in the New York Times Magazine . Imagine that Arthur and Zelda live in the same city and occupy the same insurance risk pool but that Arthur drives 30,000 miles a year while Zelda drives just 3,000. Under the current system, Zelda probably pays the same amount for insurance as Arthur. While some insurance companies do offer a small discount for driving less — usually based on self-reporting, which has an obvious shortcoming — U.S. auto insurance is generally an all-you-can-eat affair. Which means that the 27,000 more miles than Zelda that Arthur drives don’t cost him a penny, even as each mile produces externalities for everyone. It also means that low-mileage...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] If the topic of parking pricing makes you yawn then think again! This is a hot topic in urban transport policy at the moment. Lately, I have been asking students and training groups these questions about on-street parking: What is the right price of kerbside parking in a busy shopping street in a city? And how can we tell when we have the wrong price? I have tried this with three groups so far. With a little prodding they agreed that ( if pricing is to be the main mechanism to encourage turnover): The price is too low if there are no empty spots, so most motorists take a long time to find a vacant parking place. The price is just right if there are just enough vacancies so that most people can find a park very quickly (zero search time). And the price is obviously too high if a large number of vacancies can be seen. They were actually working out for themselves (with a little guidance) ...

The regular e-newsletter from the Institute of Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) highlights the development of BRT in China in its March 2008 edition. ITDP China has also set up a China BRT website with all the latest developments. BRT in China. This example is in Changzhou. More photos of BRT systems in Dalian, Changzhou, Chongqing, Beijing, Hangzhou, Kunming and elsewhere are available at the urban transport photo library at www.itdp-china.org

Cheap motorised two-wheelers have long been ubiquitous in various Asian countries. Now their numbers are surging in Africa too. Taiwan was apparently the pioneer of mass motor scooter ownership and use in the 1970s. Scooters lined every footway in 1996 when I visited Taipei. Today Vietnam's cities are the undisputed motorcycle capitals of the world. The volume of motorcycle traffic in Vietnamese cities is astounding! Ho Chi Minh City = Motorcycle City Motorcycles are also significant in (among others) Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, parts of China, and increasingly India. We have seen in Asia that motorcycles can be both highly problematic and a boon for people who sorely need better mobility. The dilemmas often create ambivalence, which is reflected in the diverse policies seen in Asian cities. Some welcome and accommodate motorcycles (as in Malaysia) while some seek to limit or even ban them (as in some Chinese cities). Vietnam's large cities have recently been tryin...

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about Delhi's BRT project. Now I do realise that this project may not be a perfect example of the well-proven BRT genre. But some of the arguments being thrown up against it are pure nonsense. One foolish claim is that median-BRT will force bus users to cross more streets, or more lanes of traffic. This is suggested for example, by an anti-BRT article in India's Pioneer newspaper on November 7, 2007: The most disconcerting aspect of the lunatic HCBS idea is the placement of bus stops in the centre of the road in those sections where the bus lanes run down the middle. ... When the scheme becomes operational, passengers will be required to cross the road on either side to access the bus stop. In the best of times, this stretch is marked by unruly motorists/scooterists and even more unruly pedestrians. Once they are legitimately given the right to scamper across the road, the ensuing chaos can be easily visualised. Gosh. I don't know wh...

{Update: this blog now has a more recent - 22 April- posting on Delhi's BRT } A backlash against BRT has been hitting Delhi. Delhi's BRT, or High Capacity Bus System (HCBS) as it is often known in India, has been facing a barrage of vitriolic newspaper attacks. These have included quite vicious assaults on the credibility of IIT Delhi academics, Dinesh Mohan and Geetam Tiwari, who have championed and helped design the system (if you follow the link, click on 'urban transport') . Anti-BRT headlines have included: 'Experts' order serial rape of Delhi roads (in the Pioneer) Will somebody wake up to stop this HCBS madness? (Pioneer) Buses Hog Space, Cars Squeezed Out (Times of India, Nov 16, 2007) Unfortunately, it appears that these and similar attacks have now drawn a political response. Yesterday, the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, was reported (somewhat triumphantly by the Times of India) to have halted further BRT development beyond the initial co...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information? Try Reinventing Parking. ] Urban Transport News links to some troubling parking news from Guangzhou in southern China. Guangzhou • 50,000 new parking spaces for Guangzhou • 2/19/2008 • China Daily • Parking Wang Dong, director of the Guangzhou urban planning bureau, said the local government plans to build large-scale parking lots at key stations to give motorists better access to the metro service and downtown destinations. "We will increase the total number of parking spaces in the city by 150,000 between now and 2010, with 50,000 coming this year," Wang said. In addition, Wang said the urban planning authority has introduced a new ruling that stipulates all new property developments must provide one car parking space for every 200 sq m of residential accommodation. The first part is about 'park and ride' at urban rail stations. More on that ano...

Here I am starting a new blog on urban transport. It is the successor to my older, now-dormant effort at Urban Transport Issues Asia . I am starting over because I don't want to be limited to Asian cities. Why the name 'reinventing'? One reason is that I see a wave of innovation breaking and opening up important new possibilities to be seized. These are interesting times to be thinking about urban transport policy. More soon.