[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Redesigning Urban Transport

[Bill Totten]

by Lester R Brown

Earth Policy Institute (July 09 2008)


The world's cities are facing unprecedented problems. In Mexico City,
Tehran, Kolkata, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the
air is no longer safe to breathe. Respiratory illnesses are rampant. In
the United States, the number of hours commuters spend sitting
frustrated in traffic-congested streets and highways climbs higher each
year. In response, forward-thinking city planners are seeking ways to
redesign cities for people not cars. They have begun to realize that
urban transport systems based on a combination of rail lines, bus lines,
bicycle pathways, and pedestrian walkways offer the best of all possible
worlds in providing mobility, low-cost transportation, and a healthy
urban environment.

A rail system can provide the foundation for a city's transportation
system. Rails, either underground or on the surface, are geographically
fixed, providing a permanent means of transportation that people can
count on. Once in place, the nodes on such a system become the obvious
places to concentrate office buildings, high-rise apartment buildings,
and shops.

Some of the most innovative public transportation systems, those that
shift huge numbers of people from cars into buses, have been developed
in Curitiba and Bogotá. The success of Bogotá's bus rapid transit (BRT)
system, TransMilenio, which uses special express lanes to move people
quickly through the city, is being replicated not only in six other
Colombian cities but elsewhere too: Mexico City, São Paulo, Hanoi,
Seoul, Taipei, Quito, and several cities in Africa. In China, Beijing is
one of twenty cities developing BRT systems. Even industrial-country
cities such as Ottawa, Toronto, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and - much to
everyone's delight - Los Angeles have launched or are now considering
BRT systems.

Some cities are reducing traffic congestion and air pollution by
charging cars to enter the city, including Singapore, London, Stockholm,
and Milan. In 2003, London adopted a GBP 5 ($10) charge on all motorists
driving into the center city between seven am and 6:30 pm, immediately
reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Within a year, bus
ridership increased by 38 percent and delays dropped by thirty percent.
In July 2005, the fee was raised to GBP 8 ($16). Overall, since the
congestion charge was adopted, car and minicab traffic into the central
city has dropped 36 percent, while bicycle traffic has increased by
fifty percent.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who was elected in 2001, faced some of
Europe's worst traffic congestion and air pollution. He decided traffic
would have to be cut forty percent by 2020. The first step was to invest
in better transit in outlying regions to ensure that everyone in the
greater Paris area had access to high-quality public transit. The next
step was to create express lanes on main thoroughfares for buses and
bicycles, thus reducing the number of lanes for cars. The third step was
to establish a city bicycle rental program that by the end of 2007 had
20,600 bikes available at 1,450 docking stations throughout Paris.
Accessed by credit card at inexpensive daily, monthly, or annual rates,
the bicycles are proving to be immensely popular. At this point Mayor
Delanoë is well along on his goal of cutting car traffic by forty percent.

The United States, which has lagged far behind Europe in developing
diversified urban transport systems, is being swept by a "complete
streets" movement, an effort to ensure that streets are friendly to
pedestrians and bicycles as well as to cars. Many American communities
lack sidewalks and bike lanes, making it difficult for pedestrians and
cyclists to get around safely, particularly where streets are heavily
traveled. This cars-only model is being challenged by the National
Complete Streets Coalition, a powerful assemblage of citizen groups
including the Natural Resources Defense Council, AARP (an organization
of 38 million older Americans), and local and national cycling
organizations. This coalition has aggressively lobbied for "complete
streets" policies, which are now in place in fourteen states and forty
metropolitan areas, cities, and counties. In early 2008, Senator Tom
Harkin of Iowa and Representative Doris Matsui of California each
introduced national "complete streets" legislation in the US Congress.

Countries that have well-developed urban transit systems and a mature
bicycle infrastructure are much better positioned to withstand the
stresses of a downturn in world oil production than are countries whose
only transport option is the car. With a full array of walking and
biking options, the number of trips by car can easily be cut by ten to
twenty percent.

The bicycle has many attractions. It alleviates congestion, lowers air
pollution, reduces obesity, does not emit climate-disrupting carbon
dioxide, reduces the area of pavement needed, and has a price within
reach for the billions of people who cannot afford an automobile.

Few methods of reducing carbon emissions are as effective as
substituting a bicycle for a car on short trips. A bicycle is a marvel
of engineering efficiency, one where an investment in 22 pounds of metal
and rubber boosts the efficiency of individual mobility by a factor of
three. On my bike I estimate that I get easily seven miles per potato.
An automobile, which requires at least a ton of material to transport
one person, is extraordinarily inefficient by comparison.

The capacity of the bicycle to provide mobility for low-income
populations was dramatically demonstrated in China. After the reforms in
1978 that led to an open market economy and rapidly rising incomes,
bicycle production and ownership started climbing. The surge to 500
million bicycle owners in China since 1978 provided the greatest
increase in human mobility in history.

Many cities are turning to bicycles for various uses. In the United
States, nearly 75 percent of police departments serving populations of
50,000 or more now have routine patrols by bicycle. Bicycle messenger
services are common in the world's larger cities simply because they
deliver small parcels more quickly than cars can and at a lower cost.

The key to realizing the potential of the bicycle is to create a
bicycle-friendly transport system. This means providing both bicycle
trails and designated street lanes for bicycles. Among the
industrial-country leader	s doing so are the Dutch, the Danes, and the
Germans. The Netherlands has incorporated a vision of the role of
bicycles into a Bicycle Master Plan. In addition to creating bike lanes
and trails in all its cities, the system also often gives cyclists the
advantage over motorists in right-of-way and at traffic lights. Roughly
thirty percent of all urban trips in the Netherlands are on bicycle,
compared with one percent in the United States.

Both the Netherlands and Japan have made a concerted effort to integrate
bicycles and rail commuter services by providing bicycle parking at rail
stations, making it easier for cyclists to commute by train. In Japan,
the use of bicycles for commuting to rail transportation has reached the
point where some stations have invested in vertical, multi-level parking
garages for bicycles, much as is often done for automobiles.

The combination of rail and bicycle, and particularly their integration
into a single, overall transport system, makes a city eminently more
livable than one that relies almost exclusively on private automobiles.
Noise, pollution, congestion, and frustration are all lessened. We and
the earth are both healthier.

_____

Adapted from Chapter 10, "Designing Cities for People", in Lester R
Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W W Norton
& Company, 2008), available for free downloading and purchase at
www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch10_ss3.htm


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