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I’m all for putting more vehicles on our roads. As long as they’re coaches
George Monbiot, The Guardian
A better organised, more attractive network could get people around faster, save tonnes of carbon – and cost almost nothing
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….But few measures would go so far towards meeting [Sir Rod Eddington’s] goal of “improving the capacity and performance of the existing transport network” than persuading people to switch from cars to coaches. The M25 has 790 miles of lanes. If these are used by cars carrying the average load of 1.6 occupants, at 60mph the road’s total capacity is just – wait for it – 19,000 people. Coaches travelling at the same speed, each carrying 30 passengers, raise the M25’s capacity to 260,000. Every coach swallows up a mile of car traffic. They also reduce carbon emissions per passenger mile by an average of 88%. So one of the key tasks for anyone who wants to unblock the roads while reducing the real social costs of carbon must be to make coach travel attractive.
But how? When I take the bus from Oxford to Cambridge, I arrive feeling almost suicidal. First I must cycle for 20 minutes in the wrong direction, into the city centre. Then I sit on a chair designed to extract confessions, and wait. When, at last, the coach departs, it fights through streets designed for ponies. After half an hour it leaves the city. It then charts a course through just about every depressing dormitory town in south-east England. On a good day, with a following wind, the journey from my house to my final destination in Cambridge, a total of 83 miles, takes four and a half hours. The average speed is 18 miles an hour, about 50% faster than I travel by bicycle. By car you could do it in 100 minutes.
The reason for this misery is simple: the system is unbelievably stupid. It is a hangover from the time when coaches were pulled by horses, and were probably faster. A far better scheme has been proposed by a visionary economist called Alan Storkey.
Storkey’s key innovation is to move coach stations out of city centres, to the junctions of motorways. One of the reasons long coach journeys are so slow in the UK is that – in order to create a system that allows passengers to transfer from one coach to another – they must enter the towns along the way, travelling into the centre and out again. In the rush hour you might as well walk.
Instead of dragging motorway transport into the cities, Storkey’s system drags city transport out to the motorways. Urban buses on their way out of town, he proposes, keep travelling to the nearest motorway junction, where they meet the coaches. By connecting urban public transport to the national network, Storkey’s proposal could revitalise both systems, as it provides more frequent and more viable bus services for the suburbs.
(5 Dec 2006)
As Vietnam gets richer, locals trade bikes for cars
John Ruwitch, Reuters via Yahoo!News
…Vietnam is a country of motorcycles, and its streets pulsate with the flow of two-wheelers, from aging workhorses such as the Honda Super Cub to sleek new Italian Piaggios.
…But that is changing as motorcycle sales start to dip, while industry analysts say demand is expected to rise for cars…
…the country’s car market still has some way to go before the future that Lai envisions becomes a reality.
Vietnam’s annual per capita income is one of the world’s lowest at around $700, although that can rise to an average $2,400 in major cities. Car prices in the communist state are steep due to import tariffs of up to 90 percent and a consumption tax of 50 percent.
…Vietnam’s poor transport infrastructure, narrow roads and few highways are not exactly conducive to car ownership, Lai says. But the equation might change when Vietnam joins the World Trade Organization, probably by the year-end, and slashes high auto tariffs that industry experts say has kept demand down.
…At present, there are only 220,000 cars in the world’s 13th most populous country, and another 400,000 or so trucks and vans — that’s about one for every 135 people.
In Thailand, by contrast, with a population of 64 million, there is almost one vehicle for every three people. In the Philippines, with a population of 85 million, it’s about one car for every 20 people.
…He hopes Vietnam’s economy follows the model of China, where more than a decade of booming economic growth has driven car sales up by making them more affordable to many Chinese. In October, car sales in China, now the world’s second largest market, rose more than 28 percent to 410,000 units.
(4 Dec 2006)
So How about Public Transit?
Neal Peirce, Seattle Times
Where’s our mobility scenario? As the country adds its next 100 million people by 2042, what’s to save us from massive roadway congestion, incredibly long commutes and a degraded environment?
Increasingly, we resist new gas taxes and vote down referendums for more roads; instead, many people insist, “fix it first.” Privately financed toll roads? We react skeptically.
So how about public transit – new streetcar lines, regional heavy- and light-rail commuter lines? Polls show people strongly in favor – to get to work or to reach entertainment and stadiums – at least to ease other drivers off the roads. More than two-thirds of transit-related measures were approved by voters in last month’s elections.
…Yet, as expensive as new and expanded transit may be, the ultimate question isn’t money (indeed the federal government’s “New Starts” fund is swamped with 200 applications and shrinking dollars). Rather, it’s whether we have the will to reshape urban America in more compact, livable, energy-conscious ways. That means organizing regionally on multiple fronts:
• Champion transit-oriented development – new or expanded town centers and housing near transit stops, aggressively planned and zoned for high densities….
• Make transit stops beacons of living for America’s new millions. Already, the CNT reports, areas around stations support more race and income diversity, city and suburban, than the average neighborhood. But for new suburban stops, it is critical to assure moderate-income housing opportunities (employing devices such as inclusionary zoning).
• Inventory our millions of acres of “fallow” sites – brownfields, abandoned railyards, failed shopping-center sites. Then create strong incentives for owners to combine, recycle, redevelop them. …
* Do away with mandatory parking slots for new buildings – let the market decide. Discover transit opportunities in all sorts of settings. Along with rail or bus rapid transit at development nodes, encourage linear development along streetcar lines – a historic formula several cities are now reinventing. And work to convert auto-only, low-grade retail strips into tree-lined, transit-served boulevards.
* Focus on reducing auto trips for errands – they’re much more numerous than commute trips, studies show. To keep the cars parked, make “erranding” by foot or cycling much easier.
* Finally, and critically, we need fresh vision to associate compactness with lively and resilient towns, combating climate change and making us less dependent on foreign oil. We owe it to ourselves and our children – a new, highly relevant 21st century patriotism.
(5 Dec 2006)
