Reinventing Transport

Just how bad can walking environments get? Answer: Very bad , as demonstrated in " Where are we to walk ?" a 9 minute video from Pune in Maharashtra, India.  Parisar explains who was behind the film : The film was conceptualised and shot by Susan Michet, an American student intern during her time in Pune in May 2009. The Alliance for Global Education funded Susan's stay and work in Pune, Janwani provided the office space and infrastructure, while Parisar provided the inputs regarding the content of the film. We also acknowledge Hema Gadgil's contribution of her voice-over to the film. After watching the film, do you have any ideas for our Indian friends? What can turn this around? Do you know of a city where things got this bad but which has since created a walkable city? Do you see redeeming features of Indian cities that offer some hope and which can part of the solution? For more on (un)walkable cities in Asia (especially South Asia) see also: ...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Planning systems treat parking and toilets in very similar ways and for similar reasons (such as to deter people from 'doing it in the streets'). Is this just a funny observation? I guess it is quite funny but I also have a serious point. Planning toilets like we plan for fire-escapes, elevators and plumbing does work quite well ( mostly ). However, planning for parking like we plan for toilets is problematic. Below, I list ways that conventional planning does in fact treat parking and toilets the same. Then I highlight key differences which make planning parking like toilets seem like a very bad idea. First, a list of how parking and toilets are (conventionally) planned in very similar ways: Both are treated as an essential ancillary service that every building will need. It is usually assumed that no fee (or a token fee at most perhaps) will be charged. Remember, we are talking ...

Connecting you with web destinations that caught my eye recently.  From a public domain image at Wikimedia commons CityFix Mumbai on transport and the gathering monsoon season in an Indian megacity A wonderful Streetfilm on the Cycle Chic movement which has grown from the Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog Nate Berg at Planetizen on Johannesburg 'Persecution of the Pedestrian Majority' Transit (Klang Valley) analyses Malaysian objectives for public transport in the Kuala Lumpur region ( under the National Key Result Area ( NKRA ) targets) Econoblogger Felix Salmon hosts a fascinating debate on congestion pricing (with a New York focus) The Infrastructurist on a hi-tech corporate effort to help Ho Chi Minh City with its traffic problems The CityFix on South Africa's public transport improvements leading up to the football World Cup The CityFix again on NyayaBhoomi, a Delhi-based NGO that works for a better auto-rickshaw system in Delhi Coming event on ...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Donald Shoup's ' The High Cost of Free Parking ' points towards a profoundly different way of thinking about parking policy. It offers much more than just a nifty way to price on-street parking efficiently.  Conventional parking policy in action in New Zealand Yet, in real-world policy debates over Shoup's parking ideas most people seem to focus only on his call to price kerbside parking for 85% occupancy . That's a pity because his agenda is much more interesting than that. First, a recap on Shoup's parking reform ideas.  He is focused on cities that currently have a conventional suburban-style parking policy, with cheap on-street parking and every building required to have plentiful parking. He is based in Los Angeles and his focus is on American cities. His ideas are also obviously relevant to places like suburban Canada, Australia and New Zealand which have adopted...

Singapore's bicycle community has noticed that last week's agreement on the Malayan Railways (KTM) corridor could create a wonderful bikeway opportunity. So far, this angle has had no media attention. More on this at the end but first I want to reflect on the wider issues in the agreement. A few years back, in my geographer days, I wrote about the surface links between Singapore and Malaysia. These are both international transport and urban transport at the same time. After a long saga, the two countries have finally reached an agreement on several important cross-border transport issues.  At the time I studied this about 5 years ago, it was an intriguing tale and a case of remarkably problematic cross-border cooperation. I am glad that win-win resolutions look like emerging.  My 2006 paper on this ( pdf ; publisher site ) discussed three main aspects and the latest announcement relates to all three (as well as several other issues, such as cross-border taxis,...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Is $400 per month for season parking outrageous or reasonable? Well, it depends ... But what does it depend on? One suggestion: the price of a hamburger! This rule-of-thumb for hourly parking prices comes from Pete Goldin at the Parking World blog yesterday, citing Dr Adhiraj Joglekar, founder of the website driving-india.blogspot.com. Hmmm. I guess they are alluding, tongue-in-cheek, to the Big Mac Index from the Economist. This index uses burger prices to correct for differences in the purchasing power of money in different countries. But seriously, what is the right comparison? Purchasing power is obviously not the only issue here, since parking prices usually vary from place to place within every city. Prices range from zero in many suburban parking lots to 'expensive' in the city centre. But the last time I looked burgers were not free-of-charge in the suburbs. How about...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Parking on the door-step (literally) in Hanoi The space efficiency of motorcycles is important for many Asian cities. Traffic engineers usually assume that motorcycles consume about half the road space of a car. In other words, two-wheelers' PCU value is typically given as 0.5 'passenger car units' in heavy traffic. But motorcycle parking can usually squeeze in many more than two machines per car space. These Taipei scooters may be an extreme case. How do they get them in and out? For the forthcoming Asian cities parking study, we found motorcycle parking space norms of up to 10 two-wheelers per car space . Singapore’s parking standards specify perpendicular car slot dimensions and its minimum and preferred size for motorcycle slots. Together these suggest that between 4.6 and 6 motorcycle spaces take the same area as a car space (Land Transport Authority 2005). In India, motor...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] I asked the sustran-discuss list for responses to my post on park-and-ride being a bad idea . In response to the discussion so far, I tried to clarify some of my points. Here is an edited version. 1. My objection to park-and-ride is strongest when such facilities are within the dense urban fabric (such as 'inner city' areas). It is in these dense areas that the opportunity cost of space is highest. Most of the other uses of station-vicinity space will do much more to build public transport ridership than P&R. Many mass transit systems in developing Asia are, for now, limited to these dense/mixed-use areas. In most cases, they don't yet extend out into the newest 'suburban areas'. P&R seems least defensible in these high-density locations with high property prices. Yet it is still being implemented in various dense urban localities in Asia. The photos of Bangkok...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Park-and-ride facility at Chatuchak, Bangkok (This one is free-of-charge. And notice the institutionalised double-parking arrangement?) The idea that car parking should be provided at mass transit stations has taken root in Asia. The team that helped me investigate parking policy in Asian cities found active park-and-ride programs in Bangkok, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Singapore and Taipei. Park-and-ride facilities have been debated in Ahmedabad and Jakarta for their BRT systems. Delhi wasn't in our study but park-and-ride at Delhi Metro stations has been a hot topic there too. Interestingly, we found no government-sponsored park-and-ride in the Tokyo region, although there are private parking lots used in this way (without public subsidy) in the outer reaches of the metropolitan area. I doubt the wisdom of building park-and-ride in dense parts of Asia...

Recent posts by Robin Chase at Network Musings and Dave at Carsharing.US caught my attention for their expansive vision of car-sharing and its reach. Robin has a broad vision on sharing. It is a theme explored throughout her blog. In a recent post on innovation in transport policy, one of her key suggestions is to: Allow owners of private vehicles to accept money in exchange for renting out their own vehicle, driving other people in it, or accepting money from people ride-sharing. We need to recognize that sharing cars and maximizing the number of people using each vehicle and getting mobility satisfaction out of each car is vastly preferred over the current single owner status quo. Dave at Carsharing.US shows that part of Robin's agenda is already happening - under the name 'Peer-to-peer carsharing and car rental'. His whole post is worth reading but here are a few excerpts: What is peer to peer carsharing? It's traditional carsharing using privately owned ve...

[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 ...

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...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] On-street parking (and double-parking) in the Motijheel office district of Dhaka. Obviously the cars on the right are there all day. As I mentioned last year , I have been investigating parking policy in 14 Asian cities. The report, commissioned by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), should be out in a month or two. Over the next few weeks, I want to share some highlights. Yes, highlights. Don't laugh! Even I was surprised how much drama there is around parking. Basement in a commercial street in Dhaka signposted as 'car parking' (but there are stairs not a ramp and this space had obviously been used for shops before being demolished, presumably in enforcement action.) Newly motorizing cities in parts of Asia face some alarming predicaments over parking. For example, in South Asia it is common to find something like this: A commercial street is clogged with motor vehicles. Many ...

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. In 1999 and 2000, when I was living in Kuala Lumpur and working for the SUSTRAN Network, I collaborated with Tamim Raad to produce a little yellow book called "Taking Steps: A Community Action Guide to People-Centred, Equitable and Sustainable Urban Transport" . The old URL for downloading Taking Steps is now dead, so here is a new one, via google docs. You can view or download the Taking Steps book here . The aim of the book was to demystify urban transport (especially for civil society in Asia): The purpose of this guide is to introduce urban transport issues to a wider audience than just professional transport planners and experts. Many community organisations, journalists and decision-makers need to have some awareness of the basics of urban transport. This book tries to make it easier to find out those basics. Is the book badly dated? Not as badly as I had thought. I think I would handle various issues differently now. And...

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...

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?   Try Reinventing Parking. ] Ground floor living-room parking in Hanoi. I am busy starting up a very quick 13-city/country study of urban parking policy and outcomes around Asia. Maybe you can help? It is an exploratory study aiming to find out what parking issues are important in each place (so that follow-up research can dig deeper). The focus is mainly cars, but other vehicles are relevant too, especially motorcycles. I want to know about off-street parking AND off-street. I am keen to hear about residential parking AND work-based parking AND short-term parking at other places, like shops. A bit ambitious perhaps but I want it all. The study is also aimed at finding out if any of the major parking policy debates in Western cities are at all relevant anywhere in Asia. Can other places learn from how parking is done in any Asian cities? So, if you have a view on parking and how it works then please drop a comment...

Shared space street design is a fantastic innovation. But most excitement about shared space (or “naked streets”) seems to focus on the counter-intuitive phenomenon of “ safety through uncertainty ”. I think another important lesson from shared space has been neglected. A key benefit of shared space is that it expands the urban public realm. And this is done with little or no loss of transport utility. This point was emphasized by shared-space pioneer, Hans Monderman , but is often forgotten or under-emphasised. This "public space dividend" is also relevant to many more streets than shared space itself will ever be applied to. Many street-design innovations can yield such a dividend if they create spaces where speeds stay below about 30 km/h. This would allow a surprising amount of what we now think of as traffic space to become part of the low-speed public realm. How? I try to explain in an article, " Earning a Public Space Dividend in the Streets " ( pdf ), ju...

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?)

Fun, art and gleeful spontaneity in the streets feature in this delightful and inspiring 20 min talk. The playfulness here is not just in the streets but with the streets . Ted Dewan at euroGel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo . The potential highlighted here for life in streets is in total and utter contrast with the automobile dependent landscapes in my post below . Ted Dewan is the pioneer of ' road witching '. Towards the end of the video he makes some connections with David Engwicht 's 'mental speed bumps'. David also promotes safety through intrigue and uncertainty. Ted's talk also mentions the emerging possibilities of Shared Space . All of this is about reclaiming at least some of our street space as public realm again. It is about treating streets as places not highways. Do you think these ideas are relevant in the rest of the world, outside rich western cities? I think so. Hat tip to the wonderful How We Drive blog .