Human Transit

quotes of the week: cars vs buses in delhi

"Car owners are the creators of wealth. Do you realise that they get exhausted sitting in their cars due to traffic jams and they reach office completely tired? It affects their efficiency. Do you want them to perform less?"

-- B B Sharan, the chief petitioner opposing Delhi's
new on-street Bus Rapid Transit system, on
the grounds that it leaves less space for car traffic. 

"The problem of car users, who are in a minority, is being portrayed in the press as the people's problem. The fact is that less than 10% people in Delhi use private cars. More than 33% travel by buses and 30% walk to work."

-- Geetam Tiwari, a road safety expert and professor
at Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)

After months of drama, Mr. Sharan's complaint is being considered by Delhi's High Court.  

Note that even the professor is reluctant to note the obvious: that buses that are allowed to run quickly and reliably will be more useful, and thus likely to attract even more than 33% of travelers.  Unless, of course, you assume that class boundaries are absolutely rigid, with eternally fixed numbers of "bus-people", and that nobody changes their behavior based on utility.   With that assumption, you're stuck with a purely entitlement-based argument, still a very strong argument in Delhi but not the only one.

Side note:  Summing up the professor's percentages, it appears that some significant share of Delhi commuters are much-besieged cyclists, riding in immensely dangerous conditions.  The daily reality of the Delhi curbface is that vendors fill up pedestrian spaces, including any sidewalks/footpaths, forcing pedestrians as well as cyclists into traffic lanes.  Traffic in Delhi is often slow but always turbulent, with vehicles accelerating unpredictably to jump into perceived gaps in traffic. 

First photo:  BBC

the beginning of the end of car travel growth?

Melinda Burns in Miller-McCune profiles a new study with some surprising news:

A study of eight industrialized countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more cars and more driving — came to a halt in the early years of the 21st century, well before the recent escalation in fuel prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for car ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point.

The study is by Lee Schipper and my former colleague Adam Millard-Ball, both now at Stanford. Car ownership is slowing down too:

There are signs of saturation in vehicle ownership, too, at about 700 cars per 1,000 people in the U.S. — more cars than licensed drivers — and about 500 cars per 1,000 people in Japan and most of the European countries. Car ownership has declined in the U.S. since 2007 because of the recession.

It will be interesting to see how much car ownership rebounds as the US emerges from recession, which of course depends on when and how quickly that emergence occurs.  There are certainly some signals that the sustainable-urbanist alternative to car ownership -- urban life dependent on a suite of options including transit, cycling, walking, and car-sharing -- is holding its value through the recession better than car-dependent life is doing.  If so, we might never see car ownership rebound to the 2007 rate.

Car ownership is still rising in the developing world, of course, but Schipper doubts that can continue.

“My basic thesis is, ‘There ain’t room on the road,’” he said. “You can’t move in Jakarta or Bangkok or any large city in Latin America or in any city in the wealthy part of China. I think Manila takes the prize. Yes, fuel economy is really important, and yes, hybrid cars will help. But even a car that generates no CO2 still generates a traffic problem.

“Sadly, what is going to restrain car use the most is that you can’t move.”

Well, if developing-world cities weren't growing horizontally, creating new space for gridlock, I'd be more confident in that call.  But it's definitely encouraging. 

weekend distraction: colombian bus rapid transit

Commenter Adriana offers a feast of videos of Bus Rapid Transit systems in Colombia.  Not Bogotà's well-promoted Transmilenio, but a collection from smaller cities:

• A flashy video on Cali's El Mio ("Mine!") by Mauricio Alzate is a nice example of how all the techniques of marketing video can be applied to something as seemingly prosaic as BRT.  If you live in a wealthier country you my find this video easy to make fun of, but BRT can be transformative in a city that has known only a gridlock of collective taxis, pedicabs, etc., and this kind of flashiness has a role in building understanding and excitement about that.
• From Bucaramanga, a video on how using your new smartcard system correctly will help you win the approval of pretty young women.
  
  
• From Pereira, an informative nonflashy video showing how the BRT system looks from a driver's point of view, with little text boxes capturing the viewer's thoughts along the way.  This video is a good place to notice the South American preference for high-platforms with high-floor buses.  Most of the rest of the world prefers low-floor, partly because of inter-operability with ordinary street-running and also for ease of emergency exits between stations, as well as for the intrinsic qualities of vertical space within the vehicle.  So when you see a high-floor system outside South America you can be pretty sure that South American planning consultants have been there.

palestine: time to think about transit?

Can good planning help address the grievous problems of the Palestinian territories, including the challenge of conceiving its patchwork of lands as a viable state? My friend Doug Suisman, a Los Angeles architect in private practice, has been working on the problem for years, through a remarkable project called the Arc. The New York Times profiled it five years ago, and despite all the bad news from Israel and Palestine since then, the work has continued.  The idea is to have a plan for the urban structure and transport infrastructure of a Palestinian state, something that's ready to go when an independent state is created, and that can even be part of the run-up to independence.

As often in the developing world, a type of Bus Rapid Transit is a key early move, with rail further in the future.  The Arc's planners understand the need for a "Quick Impact" project that will show a transport benefit fast, and an intercity form of Bus Rapid Transit linking the West Bank's major centers makes sense if that's the objective.  Compared to the transport options today, even a compromised BRT would be a striking improvement.  

Doug recently updated me on this via email:

[W]e’re trying to keep awareness of the project high in hopes that the Obama administration’s negotiating team will see fit to incorporate the Arc into its diplomatic strategy ... . The 8-minute video is a quick refresher. You may be particularly interested in the short- to medium-term transit projects we have proposed: http://friendsofthearc.org/storage/arcdemoproj.pdf

Five years ago, proposing swift regional inter-city rail with connecting BRT service at each major Palestinian city – combined with medium density development along the BRT lines - may have seemed somewhat foreign for the region, but as you know in the interim Istanbul has opened 2 BRT lines, Amman is moving ahead pretty quickly with its own BRT system and impressive master plan, and Dubai opened its Metro with plenty of bus connections. Maybe transit and design can, after all, be part of the peace equation!

In some form it will have to be, so it's smart to be thinking about it now.