Reinventing Urban Transport

Shout about your frequent-service routes!

2009-09-19T21:10:00.006+08:00

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.
Obviously the important point here is the Metro-Netz definition, which focuses on the quantity and type of service -- promising local-stop service that runs very frequently all day and evening. Both buses and streetcars/trams can provide this service, and they encourage you to focus on the service, not the technology.

Human Transit calls Berlin's Metro-Nezt a Frequent Network brand.

Digging into Parking in Asia

2009-09-02T21:19:00.006+08:00

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 below! If you know of great studies or information sources then likewise, please do tell!

I am especially keen to hear tip-offs for parking policy or parking debate or parking phenomena in cities in the following places (since certain cities in each of these places are the case-studies for the project):

Bangladesh
India

Mainland China
Hong Kong
Taiwan
South Korea
Japan

Thailand
Malaysia
Indonesia
Philippines
Vietnam, and
Singapore (where I am based).

Slow spaces for a Public Space Dividend in the Streets

2009-06-07T13:53:00.003+08:00

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), just out in "Journeys" (the magazine of Singapore's LTA Academy), Issue 2, 2009.

In my article, I argue that all of the following street innovations can offer us a public space dividend:

various kinds of Traffic Calming
shared space (also called 'naked streets' or second generation traffic calming)
'Tempo 30' zones (or 'Twenty's Plenty' zones)
multi-way boulevards, as described in the Boulevard Book
slow-streets dedicated to vulnerable modes (such as 'bicycle streets' or 'fahrradstrasse' or Bicycle Boulevards and similar ideas)
some kinds of 'road diets'

A multiway boulevard section in Vienna. The access-way (left) and the median are slow-spaces and are part of the public realm. The higher-speed traffic lanes are just visible to the right. They are 'traffic space'.

"These innovations shift the boundary between public realm and traffic space, so that a surprising amount of what we now think of as traffic space becomes part of the low-speed public realm. In shared spaces and in other slow zones, such as Tempo 30 zones and bicycle boulevards, whole streets and intersections are converted to forms of public space. In multi-way boulevards, public realm includes everything from the building line to the outer edge of the central, high-speed traffic lanes. This newly expanded public realm serves local motor vehicle access, slow-mode movement, public space roles and sometimes some through-traffic (with low priority and at low speed). Only the high-speed traffic movement is excluded and kept within traffic space." (pp. 33-34)

I also suggest that this space dividend should be especially welcome in dense cities that are congested and short of public space. Such street designs should be well suited to Asian cities where a lack of space seems to make it difficult to create safe places for walking, cycling and for pleasant urban places.

In fact, Asian cities are full of "accidental shared space".

"The informal emergence of shared space street dynamics can be seen when pedestrians and/or slow vehicles dominate a street space, leaving motorists little choice but to proceed on a negotiated and cautious basis. This is common in inner urban streets of many developing countries (see Figure). It can be seen also on the narrow streets of Singapore’s Little India area. Such “chaos” is of course widely lamented, with pedestrians and other road users blamed for indiscipline. Moreover, at times of low pedestrian activity, traffic speeds do rise and crash risk and severity can become very high. However, the imposition of traffic-focused design in such places would often be a mistake. A better option for these streets might be shared space by design rather than by accident." (p.37)

An example of “accidental shared space" in Nanjing, China

Thoughtful new public transport ideas blog

2009-05-10T09:26:00.004+08:00

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?)

Playing around with streets

2009-04-04T10:24:00.005+08:00

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.

Automobile dependent landscapes

2009-03-05T18:50:00.005+08:00

If you haven't visited North America or Australia or New Zealand maybe you are puzzled about "automobile dependence" and wonder what the fuss is about. Here are a few GoogleMaps images that might help.

You can drag or zoom if you want to see the wider context or take a closer look.

The Henry Farm or Yorkland Boulevard area north of Toronto. Yes, even Canada has sprawl. And yes, most of what you see in the top half of the image is open-lot parking.

The eastern edge of downtown Atlanta. Giving cars easy accesss to the city centre requires this kind of thing.

In the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. It's the local shopping centre but do you think many would walk to it?

The high cost of cheap on-street parking - a vivid illustration

2009-03-03T22:24:00.002+08:00

So you think on-street parking is public property and should be free? Do you think local governments that charge for on-street parking are uncaring and money grabbing? Maybe you doubt that cheap on-street parking causes any problems?

Then please take a look at Bern Grush's vivid description of the "cruising for parking" in one specific trip and all the problems it causes.

The trip should have been 5km but searching for parking by driving in circles at the end made the journey 8.25km! And that is the least of the problems that Grush describes.

The image above is from the post at the Grush Hour blog and shows just that last part of the journey.

You couldn't ask for a better explanation of the need for performance-based pricing for on-street parking.

It's not BRT if it's not on the map

2009-02-26T08:09:00.000+08:00

TransJakarta Corridor 1 station and bus

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has a 'branding problem'!

Bus improvements of many kinds are being called BRT. This is muddying debate over BRT in many places. Bogota clearly has superb BRT. More and more cities do. But is Delhi's 'first BRT corridor' really BRT? Are Taipei's median bus priority lanes BRT? How about Jakarta's busways?

Walter Hook of ITDP has an interesting answer: It's not BRT if it's not on the map!

Here is the relevant quote from an interview with Walter on Streetsblog NYC:

A rule of thumb should be whether or not a map company would include the BRT system in a map of New York City. If it doesn't appear on any map other than as a standard bus route, then it has failed to enter the public consciousness as something above and beyond normal bus services.

I knew TransJakarta had succeeded when I bought a 2007 tourist map and it included a map of TransJakarta and its stations. The Orange Line in LA is on the ‘Mass Transit Map’ which includes the subway and light rail lines, and it's packed, so I think it's a success.

When I went to Taipei and asked about the BRT system, nobody knew what I was talking about. It wasn't on any map. That is a sign that it has failed. In reality, Taipei only has dedicated lanes for buses, and continues to inefficiently operate the same tired old buses on them. It really cannot be called BRT.

Is this a useful addition to the search for clearer definitions and terminology for BRT? See also Dario Hidalgo's efforts at the City Fix. He suggests the term, "Quickways" for high-end BRT systems.

Two problems, one solution?

2009-02-24T17:44:00.000+08:00

Problem 1: Is parking a hellish nightmare for your local business or shopping district? Do drivers complain that they can never find a parking space? Is the roadway clogged with honking vehicles searching for a parking spot?

Problem 2: And are the local public facilities in terrible shape? Are the footways cracked? Drain covers broken? Rubbish uncollected? Are the street plantings (if any) dying?

Does that sound familiar? Donald Shoup suggests a single solution to both of these problems:

Performance-based pricing (would solve Problem 1) with the revenues returned to the local area to be spent on solving Problem 2.

Shoup explains more in an article in the Feb 2009 edition of the Parking Today magazine: The Price of Parking on a Great Street

As I have said before, I suspect this policy would be perfect for many of Asia's cities. Can anyone suggest a city in Asia that might be willing to do a trial?

Here is an excerpt from Shoup's article:

Performance-based prices can balance the varying demand for parking with the fixed supply of curb spaces. We can call this balance between demand and supply the “Goldilocks principle” of parking prices: the price is too high if many spaces are vacant, and too low if no spaces are vacant. When a few vacant spaces are available everywhere, the prices are just right. After the city adjusts prices to yield one or two vacant spaces in every block (about 85 percent occupancy), everyone will see that curb parking is readily available. In addition, no one can say that performance parking prices will drive customers away if almost all curb spaces are occupied.

Suprise! Latin American cities are great at city-centre public realm

2009-02-18T15:58:00.001+08:00

Who knew? Many Latin American city cores have wonderful pedestrian zones that rival those of European cities in quality.

A new post by Barbara Knecht at Planetizen Interchange highlights the region's downtown pedestrian zones and its many Ciclovia (car-free Sunday's with certain roads closed to motor vehicles and opened to feet and non-motorised wheels).

In a recent trip from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile I traveled through Montevideo and Colonia, Uruguay; Rosario, Mendoza, San Juan and Cordoba, Argentina; Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, Chile. All ten cities had significant thriving downtown pedestrian zones. The smallest was perhaps 5 blocks in San Juan, the largest 30 blocks in Santiago.

Actually, I did know. The photos with this post are mine, taken in Puebla, Mexico.

LOS thinking is killing our cities

2009-01-30T13:41:00.006+08:00

LOS? Was ist LOS?

The traffic engineering concept of traffic Level of Service (LOS) is used to rate the acceptability of traffic flow on a road, using scores of A, B, C, D, E and F.

Try typing "LOS level of service traffic" and almost ANY country name into your favourite search engine. You will quickly see that LOS is very widely used.

OK but so what?

The problem is, LOS is a disaster when clumsily applied to cities. It is one of the key ways that traffic planners stumble into the habit of making motor vehicle flows their highest priority.

LOS is a key tool that blinds our decision-making processes to the possibility of having smarter goals such as those of the New Mobility Agenda, like accessibility, moving people and goods efficiently not vehicles, or making places great.

The San Francisco StreetsBlog has a wonderful series of articles by Matthew Roth on LOS thinking and its alternatives:

"There's a dirty little secret you should know about San Francisco: It's engineered first and foremost for automobility and will never be able to shed this bias if the traffic engineers are in the driver's seat wielding their traffic analysis tools like bibles. As long as the city continues prioritizing the use of transportation analysis known as Level of Service (LOS), you might as well burn our Transit First policy for warmth."

Image is from the first SF StreetsBlog article

Take a look. I am not sure I agree with everything about the alternatives being proposed. But this is an important debate.

And even though the articles focus on San Francisco, they are relevant to your city no matter where you are.

Reinventing Paris streets

2009-01-19T21:16:00.006+08:00

Four decades ago, French leaders wanted to remake Paris to suit the needs of the car.

But in recent years, Paris has been reclaiming its streets for life's rich pageant, not just motor traffic.

This Streetfilm (from the Livable Streets Network) offers a wonderful visual tour of Paris's traffic-calming efforts. You will need a flash plug-in to see it.

The whole archive of Streetfilms is well worth a good look.

A great time to end fuel subsidies

2008-11-30T20:32:00.006+08:00

Many countries control the price of motor fuels.

This got their budgets into deep trouble in the first half of 2008. The high price of oil caused massive budget blowouts. Malaysia, Indonesia, China and India among various others faced the politically painful necessity of raising gasoline and diesel prices or face deep budget cuts.

Yes, the parking lot is Giant too!
Cheap fuel, cheap cars and cheap parking have helped create a
remarkably car-dependent landscape in Malaysia's urban areas.

But what should these countries do now that the price of oil is way down near US$50 per barrel? Unfortunately some are cutting fuel prices again. The Indonesian Government will cut the price of gasoline from Rp6000 to Rp5500 per litre on Monday. India probably will in late December. Malaysia has already cut the price four times since its big June price rise.

Isn't this a bit short-sighted? We all know how hard it will be to raise prices again if (or when) oil prices rise again.

Would it not be smarter to take this golden opportunity to end these unwise price controls? Now seems like a relatively painless moment to shift to letting gas prices rise and fall with the global price of oil. Then next time the price rises and people start to scream, DO spend money to help the poor who will be hurting, but please DON'T control fuel prices again.

I do realise that this would not eliminate political pain if oil prices go up. The politics of fuel prices are nasty. But they are especially nasty if the prices are a government decision and not a market phenomenon.

So is this change happening yet? There are strong signs that it might be!

Malaysia seems set to shift to a 'managed float' system for fuel prices. Confusingly, it has also promised a RM0.30 subsidy but there is talk that this may be made to only kick in 'when necessary' (when oil prices are high). An announcement next week may clear up the confusion. I have argued before that fuel subsidies are a bad idea but a subsidy with floating prices is maybe not quite as pernicious as a fixed price I guess.

China was also reported last week to be considering some kind of managed float for fuel prices. But only so long as oil prices stay below some threshold, such as US$130 per barrel.

[Update: I now notice that Indonesia is thinking of doing the same.
"In the future, we expect (subsidized fuels) to follow (the market prices) automatically up to certain ceilings (prices)," the ministry's head of fiscal policy, Anggito Abimanyu, told reporters.]

[2nd update: Armin Wagner of GTZ recently wrote a short discussion paper on exactly this issue: "EXPLOIT FALLING MARKETS: a contribution to the debate on fuel pricing mechanisms". It was written as part of GTZ's International Fuel Prices Survey process. It is available for download via HERE. Thanks Armin!]

From fuel taxes to 'pay as you drive'

2008-11-01T08:58:00.002+08:00

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 be a great pity if the mechanisms chosen for mileage-based user charging cannot exploit other important spin-offs as well, while still protecting privacy.

Exploiting all of the spin-offs could amplify the benefits and make "Pay as you drive" (PAYD) charging more cost-effective.

Any distance-based charging mechanism should be flexible enough to ALSO:

allow for performance-based parking pricing and handle per-minute parking pricing (see Grush)
help with PAYD Insurance applications
allow registration fees or 'road taxes' to be turned into PAYD fees
charge differentially for driving at different times and different places (and hence provide for congestion pricing)
provide for reliable measurement of total vehicle mileage, so that distance-driven can become a reliable part of vehicle depreciation calculations and reduce odometer fraud in the used vehicle market
even allow time-of-purchase taxes to be 'variabilised' if necessary (as I argued in a paper - see here for publisher site and here for pdf preprint - this would allow such fees to send their usual signal to vehicle buyers but would prevent them adding to fixed costs by turning them into a variable cost).

If I am not mistaken, there are technologies already out there (ask Bern Grush and Robin Chase) that could do these things AND still ensure privacy. The Iowa system may also have these features, but I am not sure. Can anyone confirm?

Bus systems that work

2008-10-24T08:19:00.003+08:00

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 the engineering. Maybe more important!

It is hard to get people to focus on this but better understanding of the key choices would save most cities a whole lot of trouble. Certain ways of regulating and organizing a bus system can set the scene for long-term success. Certain other ways are dead ends that work well only if you have a large number of captive users, who have no other choice.

Take a look at the categories below.
They are from a recent paper I wrote on this [Update: It is called "Public Planning with Business Delivery of Excellent Urban Public Transport" published in Policy and Society, vol. 27, no. 2, 2008. See a preprint pdf here and here is the journal's link].

Which one fits your local bus system best? Do these categories work for your city? Feedback is welcome, since this typology is a little different from the usual approaches.

Public monopoly:
Services are owned, planned and operated by a publicly owned enterprise. Strangely enough, this is the option that is still most common in the United States (despite the fact that 'socialism' is a dirty word there). An urban region may have several of these state-run operators. In theory at least, the state takes total responsibility for the outcomes here and there have been successful state-run bus systems. However, good intentions do not always lead to strong and ambitious systems.
Proactive planning with service contracts:
Services are planned by a state agency, so the public sector takes primary responsibility for the planning of the network and for many of the service outcomes. Nevertheless, operations are procured from independent businesses (either private or state-owned) under service contracts (which can be issued via competitive tendering). In the most strongly planned systems, the state agency collects fares and pays operators for bus service provided, sometimes in combination with other incentives payments. Examples include Helsinki, London, Seoul (since 2004), and increasingly many others. Singapore appears to be headed in this direction too - something that I had called for (pdf). Unless I am confused, Indore in India may even be an example.
Area franchises (well regulated):
Operators are given the right to serve a whole area but with some obligation to do so in a comprehensive way and to meet service standards in return for exclusivity and discretion over many tactical details of service. Responsibility for outcomes is shared between the operator and the state. Hong Kong, Singapore (until 2009) and many Brazilian cities seem to have such systems. There is often no competition (or there may be competitive tendering sometimes) but effective regulation can help achieve a reasonably effective system.
"Passive" route franchises:
Operators are given the right to serve routes, usually with some simple service obligations and at least some exclusivity. Unfortunately, with this approach the public sector often takes little active responsibility for outcomes. The network often ossified into a set of moribund, long-established routes that no-one has an incentive to reform (or is willing to risk changing). Regulation tends to focus on fares and on protecting incumbents. This option gives the worst of both worlds - competition is prevented but it lacks the benefits of effective regulation or proactive planning. Buses in many Malaysian cities and Seoul's buses before 2004 are examples. Kuala Lumpur's RapidKL and Rapid Penang in Penang seem to represent recent attempts to shift to Option 3 but unfortunately only partially, without sufficient exclusivity.
Deregulation:
The state has little direct influence over service outcomes. Almost always, it is the vehicle rather than the route that is the subject of licensing. The most extreme form of deregulation involves vehicle licensing with little or no barriers to entry or exit. Simple quantity limits may be added to this, but still with no obligation to provide service. Jeepneys in the Philippines are an example as are South Africa's 'taxis'. Effective deregulation may also exist if franchises lack exclusivity or allow for sub-contracting, as in Bogota's buses outside its Transmilenio system. Outcomes with deregulated public transport in cities have generally been disappointing. The number of cheerleaders for deregulated urban public transport has nosedived in recent years.

I have argued that Option 2 is catching on and seeing lots of success, especially when combined with ambitious efforts at network integration. Of course, planning is no guarantee of bus system success (as many public monopolies show).

But success with urban buses is certainly elusive without strong planning. Options 4 and 5 are serious mistakes. The era of a strong push for deregulation of bus systems seems to be over.

Places worth loving (and protecting from traffic)

2008-10-05T15:50:00.003+08:00

What is "success" in urban transport policy?

A common answer used to be "keeping vehicles moving and avoiding traffic jams".

But by now, most people involved with urban transport realise that "keeping the traffic moving" is NOT a useful goal.

Mobility, especially mobility for vehicles, is just a means to other ends. It should never be seen as an end in itself. If we make preventing congestion our goal, we are confusing ends with means.

OK. So what is the real goal of urban transport planning then?

Most of us tend to answer "accessibility"! Planning for accessibility involves trying to make it easy to REACH the things we want to (like contacts, services, goods, jobs, education).

This seems like progress. Here we have a much more coherent purpose for transport planning, right?

Unfortunately, accessibility doesn't seem to excite many people. Despite decades of lip service to accessibility planning most cities still have way too much traffic-focused transport policy.

Everyone seems to agree that accessibility is the real objective. But in practice, speeding up the traffic is what most urban traffic agencies work at hardest.

What are we doing wrong? Maybe accessibility planning seems too abstract and difficult to explain? It is hard to put into practice. Accessibility has defied efforts to measure it in practical, action-oriented ways.

The magic of great places

I wonder if PLACEMAKING offers a more compelling way forward than accessibility.

I have been excited about this since I heard Fred Kent and Kathy Madden, of Project for Public Spaces, speak at the World Cities Summit in Singapore earlier this year. I think they are onto something very important.

"A place worth loving" trumps traffic focused planning much more powerfully than the abstract idea of accessibility.

Cities that have done most to tame traffic tend to be blessed with places worth protecting. The historic city centres in Europe fit this bill. Rebellions against expressway building emerged when road projects threatened much-loved neighbourhoods in American cities from the late 1960s or Australian or Japanese cities in the 1970s.

Project for Public Spaces is working on bringing a placemaking perspective into US traffic engineering with catchphrases including 'context-sensitive design' and 'streets as places'.

I don't think placemaking replaces accessibility planning or proves it wrong. I think it gives access thinking a tangible and compelling focus to rally around.

The transforming power of these ideas shines through in this 10-minute StreetsFilms interview with Gary Toth the Senior Director of Transportation Initiatives with the Project for Public Spaces.

For those of us outside North America this video also offers some lessons on avoiding the mistakes that took the USA so far down an automobile dependent path.

How do those Dutch do it?

2008-10-01T21:50:00.001+08:00

You probably know that the Netherlands has lots of cycling. They sure do! An amazing 27% of ALL trips* in this rich country in 2005 were by bicycle.

Riding in the Netherlands is also remarkably safe.

Safety in numbers (from "Cycling in the Netherlands", p.13)

So what is their secret?

How did the Netherlands get to be such a cycling paradise? There are several rather unhelpful theories.

"It is a flat country": No doubt this helps. But there are plenty other comparable flat places with much less cycling.
"The Dutch have a long-standing 'bicycle culture'": Certainly they do. But is this a cause or an effect? So did many other countries at some point in the 20th century. Yet most of them somehow lost their 'bicycle cultures'.
"They have good weather for cycling": I hear this when I talk about cycling in hot and sticky Singapore. But I suspect this theory is only popular among people who have never spent any time in a damp and windy Dutch winter.

A recent publication from the Netherlands might help.

"Cycling in the Netherlands" (pdf) is an easy, non-technical read and is visually very striking.

One of its key aims is to share with the rest of us the lessons learned from decades of experimentation with bicycle policy by various Dutch agencies and local governments.

Based on the frequent requests for information from policy-makers, politicians and NGO’s from all over the world, we decided to produce a comprehensive brochure about cycling in the Netherlands, giving an actual overview on the results and findings of relevant studies and experiences.

I also highlighted the document recently on the Cycling in Singapore blog.

So what CAN the rest of us really learn from Dutch bicycle policy?

Probably we can learn many things. But here is one key conclusion from the report ... bicycle policy works!

A direct link is visible in the Netherlands between bicycle policy and bicycle use. In the first place, good bicycle facilities are simply a necessity to facilitate the many cyclists. These good bicycle facilities keep bicycle use high and continue to grow. (p.6 Foreword)

... a consistent approach by Dutch policy makers to the bicycle has had a demonstrable effect. Municipalities which have had a focused bicycle policy for some time have a higher bicycle share than other cities. Traffic safety has also benefited from the bicycle policy. (p.19)

* the data cited at the top of this post was from the Cycling in the Netherlands report (p.9)

[Update: a new website, Fietsberaad, will also be of interest for Dutch bicycle policy insights. This is "the brand new international website of the Dutch Fietsberaad (Bicycle Council), the expertise centre for cycling and all related subjects. This English website provides access to the most up-to-date information, the main facts and the best examples from the Netherlands and other countries."

BRT Dos and Don'ts (Part One)

2008-09-28T23:00:00.003+08:00

Is your city considering Bus Rapid Transit? If so then you are in fine company.

As more and more cities implement BRT, we are gradually learning what works and what doesn't.

DON'T put your BRT in an outer lane by the curb
Much more than median lanes, curb-side lanes are prone to delay from turning vehicles and stopping taxis and to conflict with bicycle users. So ...

DO put BRT in the median location
It simply works better in most circumstances.

DO have lots of doors ... and make them wide ones
Walter Hook of ITDP says that the "size and number of doors is more important than bus size" for speed and capacity of your BRT system.

Jakarta's BRT has boarding problems

DO have level boarding of the buses
Having no steps up when boarding makes for speedier boarding and universal accessibility.

DO have prepaid boarding in stations
This also speeds up boarding.

DON'T skimp on pedestrian access to the stations
Some people think this is only an issue for median BRT lanes. Wrong! Either way, passengers need to cross the road safely. As I have explained before, regardless of where in the street the BRT is, someone making a round trip will end up crossing the whole road to finish their journey. Delhi's BRT is one that has faced disinformation on this issue.

DON'T put your first BRT where buses face no traffic delays
Walter Hook of ITDP points out that Beijing's first BRT route made this mistake. There is physical separation on sections with no congestion but no physical separation where there is congestion. So when we factor in the new need to transfer, the BRT system actually increased passenger travel times rather than decreasing them! So ...

DO put your first BRT corridor where buses are severely slowed by congestion
... so that BRT really makes a difference and so the speed improvement will be dramatic.

DO put BRT in corridors with lots of buses
If a corridor has a huge number of buses contributing significantly to congestion then a closed BRT that replaces all of those buses can improve speeds for everyone. This is very often the case in Latin America, where bus congestion has been common.

Mexico City's Metrobus BRT replaced large bus and minibus flows.
Fewer buses, higher system capacity.

DON'T plan an under-capacity system
If patronage is likely to grow then planning your system with inadequate capacity can be a mistake. Jakarta's Busway is an example of a system designed with relatively low capacity but which already needs much more, especially at interchange points. Jakarta's BRT buses have only one door, causing delays at all busy stations.

DO design for buses to pass each other at stations
This can make a huge difference to the capacity of the system. If space is tight, there may be a space-saving design that can achieve this.

Acknowledgement: Most of these tips are adapted from ITDP's work, and especially from a photograph-rich presentation by Walter Hook (pdf here). ITDP's BRT Planning Guide is a vital reference. Any mistakes are mine.

Everything you wanted to know about sustainable and equitable transport worldwide

2008-09-19T15:14:00.006+08:00

Well almost ... especially if you are interested in Bus Rapid Transit or Non-Motorised Vehicle/Bicycle planning for cities in developing countries.

For a long time I have had a lot of respect for the work of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) which works on almost every continent to promote and provide technical assistance on 'sustainable and equitable transportation'.

I just noticed that ITDP's Information Center has been expanded and improved since the last time I looked. It contains a wealth of reports and resources in a number of languages. Just about every report ITDP has ever done seems to be there now.

Some recent highlights include:

Vienna's livable streets in photos

2008-09-17T12:53:00.009+08:00

Vienna has been a pioneer of 'livable streets' policies since the early 1970s.

In July, I was lucky enough to visit Austria for a conference (where I presented a paper on 'car possession'). So here are some photos from my explorations of Vienna's public transport, bicycle facilities and pedestrian environment.

Hover mouse near top of slideshow to control speed or pause.

Click on an image if you want more information about it.

Update and addendum: The following quote from the indomitable Prof. Hermann Knoflacher might help you appreciate the photos:

In the early seventies a new transport plan for the city centre was developed (Knoflacher 1970) converting most of the streets in the city centre into pedestrian areas. This was realized in 1972 and since then the city centre of Vienna became an attraction for the region and for the country; it has become a global attraction and a global heritage. Two-thirds of the people coming into the city centre use the public transport, or come as pedestrians and cyclists. Since Vienna had no cycling tradition it had to be developed from scratch. Due to sound scientific research the city established a cycling department which built more than 800 kilometres of cycle tracks during the last twenty years. Today Vienna is one of the most famous cycling cities. Cycling brings money into a city, it makes the city attractive, it gives people health and is an excellent, cheap urban mode of transport.

Prof. Knoflacher with his famous gehzeug (or 'walkmobile') which he uses to illustrate the space consumption of cars, even parked ones. Photo uploaded by Muhwiki at Wikimedia Commons.

World Urban Transport Leaders Summit 2008

2008-09-17T12:11:00.007+08:00

Singapore's LTA Academy has asked me to give a plug for this forthcoming event.

LTA Academy, Singapore, is organizing the inaugural World Urban Transport Leaders Summit from 4 to 6 November 2008 in Singapore.

This first of its kind high-level global summit is exclusively for top policy makers, transport chiefs, industry leaders, senior management of international organisations, and leading academics and transport professionals from around the world.

There will be no registration fee (delegates will make their own travel and hotel arrangements) and participation in the summit is by invitation only.

Visit the LTA Academy's Summit Website for more information or if you wish to be considered for participation.

New transport innovations blog

2008-09-12T13:31:00.003+08:00

A new blog on transport innovations has appeared.

SMART's Inspire Mobility blog started in June. It is billed as "the official on-line innovations library of SMART (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation) at the University of Michigan".

The blog depends on contributions from readers, so head over there if you think you have a transport innovation to submit.

What is SMART? More information here. It also has a lively series of events and speakers and a useful e-newsletter.

I like their 'five themes' approach to 'sustainable transportation'. The diagram above is from the SMART website here.

Should we (can we?) make our cars dispensible?

2008-09-04T12:29:00.004+08:00

It's interesting to see the ideal of universal car ownership gradually eroding.

Don't believe me? There have been several books in recent years along the lines of "Divorce your car!" and "How to live well without a car". The rise of car-sharing has prompted some to see it as a potential alternative to car ownership. The car-free housing movement seems to be gathering pace and entering the mainstream of real estate development in certain places. Meanwhile, Shoupista parking policy reformists are increasingly questioning parking entitlements, including (gasp!) residential parking entitlements. Even William Ford Jr. of Ford Motor Company seems willing to contemplate a future in which cars provide a service rather than being primarily a product.

So more and more people seem to be asking the question, 'are our cars dispensable' or 'could we make our cars more dispensable?' But maybe a more positive way to ask the same question is, 'can we make our relationships with cars more "provisional"?'

I've been thinking hard about these (and related) issues for a couple of years now, and one of the results is a draft paper which I presented at the TDM2008 symposium in July. The draft paper is here. And the poster presentation is here.

Here is the abstract, which should give you the flavor of my arguments:

CAR POSSESSION AS PROBLEMATIC FOR URBAN TRAVEL MARKETS

The way cars are possessed has not had the close attention it deserves. The primary way of gaining access to cars has been assumed to be via owning one. Possession has thus been taken for granted, preventing us from seeing it as possibly problematic.

However, the link between car use and car possession is eroding, in both practice and in theory. High mobility had been widely assumed to require a car but it has recently become possible to envisage excellent mobility through an integrated package of services and modes, including convenient access to cars, without needing to possess one. This reveals possession (and its sharp contrast with being car-free) as a source of ‘rigidities’ that inhibit active choice making in travel.

Previous work is drawn upon in order to explain the main sources of these possession-related rigidities, which are grouped into two categories: reversible effects (‘stickiness’) and difficult-to-reverse effects (‘invasiveness’).

The paper thus builds a case for seeing car possession, the way it works, and its contrast with non-possession, as problematic for travel markets and for TDM policy. Possession-related effects are shown to be more wide-ranging and interesting than is generally appreciated.

Cars themselves are not seen as the problem so much as the ways in which we possess them. This focus on possession-related rigidities opens a possible policy agenda, focused on reducing such rigidities (or, equivalently, making our relationships with cars more ‘provisional’).

There has been a widespread taboo against devoting policy attention to car ownership but the policy possibilities here address both sides of the car possession divide and go well beyond merely constraining possession.

This diagram (from the TDM2008 poster) illustrates possible policy implications of the arguments in the paper (these need work).

If this has whet your appetite on this topic, a number of my previous blog posts relate to these issues and also link to other people who are thinking along these lines:

Chris Bradshaw's ideas on scaling up "Metered Access to Shared Cars" (among other things)
My OpEd "Make Not Owning a Car the Smart Choice" for a Singapore audience (pdf)
A bright future for carsharing?
An item on the 'stalling' of car ownership in Japan
PAYD (pay as you drive) insurance as a way to 'variabilize' a cost that is usually a fixed cost, and hence make use of one's own car more 'provisional'

Furthermore, a number of elements of what Eric Britton calls the 'New Mobility Agenda' resonate with these arguments.

Planning is key to public transport excellence (but by all means delegate operations to businesses)

2008-09-02T16:43:00.019+08:00

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 Magazine (see April 2007 edition).

I recently finalised a paper that reviews this phenomenon (pdf here). It concludes:

This story presented here seems to be one of an industry successfully discovering the appropriate role for the public sector. It would be misleading to imply that there are no more problems nor dilemmas. Nevertheless, I have drawn attention to the fact that many recent success stories in urban public transport have been associated with strong public sector planning and control, either ongoing or reasserted. For many, this has gone hand in hand with both competition (for the market) and a role for political deliberation and accountability mechanisms. This ambitious public sector planning has involved the creation of dedicated agencies that have been empowered to coordinate the system at a metropolitan scale. The most successful cases have devoted their ability to do proactive planning to seeking excellence via ambitious levels of network integration.

In the West, a shift towards this model is often seen as ‘privatisation’. However the international and historical perspective provided in this chapter reveals that proactive planning with service contracts should be better understood as a retreat from deregulation. More generally it is a response to the poor results seen whenever the public sector fails to take responsibility for overall system outcomes, such as under passive approaches to franchising. Recent European Union directives will give the model of proactive planning with service contracts a further boost in Europe. It will be interesting to see if it can also succeed in North America where such reforms have so far been very limited.

Questions of pathways were also addressed. Although some had suggested that public monopoly may be a necessary intermediate step for developing cities, we have in fact seen a surprising range of cities taking more direct paths towards this effective combination of public and private roles.

The question remains of how widely 'proactive planning with service contracting' can be applied, especially in the South. This review suggests that it may be possible in more developing country contexts than has previously been assumed. It will be important to watch those cities in the South that have adopted this model. Most of the cases discussed here were in middle-income or high-income contexts with reasonable prospects for mustering sufficient institutional capacity. However, we have also seen that this approach is now spreading to India where the case of Indore seems promising. However, it is not yet well documented. Indore’s bus system, and other Indian cities that may emulate it, will need to be studied to see if this model will prove to be an enduring and successful one for such low-income contexts. This would have important implications for public transport across the South.

Comments on the paper are welcome.

Bogotá's BRT 'warts and all'

2008-06-29T18:09:00.001+08:00

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 Peñalosa, 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 attention of those who might copy the Bogotá example. ... There is a real danger that 'Transmilenio' will stagnate as its popularity declines and as demands for a metro increase. Given the strengths of the system that would be something of a disaster and, most certainly, not in the interests of the poor.

Some of the most compelling points in Gilbert's account focus on the power plays in Bogotá's public transport industry. A key feature of Transmilenio is its total transformation of the bus industry structure and regulatory arrangements. However, this transformation has been happening one phase at a time and huge swathes of the city have much the same kind of bus system they had before.

Gilbert highlights the ongoing battle with the 'traditional' bus industry as central to the dangers facing Transmilenio.

Winning over a portion of this chaotic industry has always been one of the most amazing things about the Bogota's BRT system's early successes. However, it now seems that this involved overly generous conditions for the operating companies. There are now increasing calls to 'democtratize' the ownership of the system.

The power of the 'traditional' bus industry outside the system also remains very strong, both as direct competition to Transmilenio and as a set of lobbies opposed to its further expansion. Gilbert alleges that the new Mayor and his political party have close links with this transport lobby.

This is a helpful but sobering addition to the literature on Transmilenio. It highlights that transforming public transport in Bogotá remains an unfinished task. It also reminds us that the visually-striking engineering on the streets is not even half the story.

Formal reference: Gilbert, Alan (2008) "Bus Rapid Transit: Is Transmilenio a Miracle Cure?", Transport Reviews, Volume 28, Issue 4 July 2008, pages 439 - 467