[sustran] Motorcycles and sustainabile transport in the Third World

Postmaster at ecoplan.org eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Tue Apr 11 19:26:49 JST 2000


Further to the numerous and most interesting (and in many ways quite
discouraging) communications that we have had on this topic in the last
months, I would like to share a few thoughts with the group, in the hope
that it might open up a line of discussion and eventual action.

The motorcycle side of things is certainly a monster problem area when it
comes to making transport in cities sustainable in which the twain most
definitely does not meet. And furthermore, it is one to which I think we
have not yet seen enough focused attention in policy and practice circles.
At least not on this side of the world.

Thus, when we go about building up sustainable transportation strategies in
cities here in, let's call it, the West, we are of course aware of
"two-wheelers" -- but most of this usually takes the form of trying to
figure out how we can get better at providing safe mobility for people on
bicycles. Indeed our sustainable transportation paradigm in the West calls
for more, and hopefully a lot more, people in bikes. That's part of the S/T
gospel and entirely unquestioned as a laudable objective. And when we get
around to motorized two-wheelers at all in our (relatively) cozy contexts
here, it is usually with reference to some specific focused issues of safety
(wear helmets, drive better, etc.) and, in a few places, noise. And that's
it.

But as we read all these reports from our colleagues and media articles from
the Asia/Pacific region, I am once again reminded of the huge and critical
differences in this respect. And while I have lived and worked in Third
World cities, one tends to forget... or at least I do.  Of course we are
aware that the basic problem set that faces our planners and policy makers
in Zurich, San Francisco and Bilbao is very different in many respects from
those of KL, Manila or Bangkok. But this fact of mega-dependence on
two-wheelers on the one hand -- further compounded by the prodigious rate at
which motorcycles are now replacing human powered vehicles all over the
place (whoosh!), and shift the whole new universe and scale of transport and
environment related problems and issues that it brings in its wake... all
makes it painfully clear that problem solving in your cities is going to
require a whole new tool kit from that we have managed to build up thus far
here in the West.

So, here is the reality of the situation we face on April 11th, 2000. On the
one hand the leading edge of sustainability thinking and practice until now
has been here in Europe (with a bit of help from our friends in North
America, though more often in theory than in practice), and while the
toolkit is not as yet complete nor altogether 100% adequate for all the
challenges we face here on this side of the world, it is nonetheless picking
up momentum and beginning to do a pretty good job in a growing number of
towns and cities. All that's well and good, but certainly no grounds for
complacency or self-congratulation.

Then there is the other reality. The problems and scales of the cities of
the Third World, which are one or two orders of magnitude more challenging
in just about any sense than anything we have had to deal with over here -
which leads me to propose that we most probably have to get to work now to
development a sustainable transportation philosophy and toolkit that is
going to be apt and sufficient in the face of these challenges.

Consider the example of our recent car-free day project in February in
Bogotá. By many measures, it was quite a success. We managed to take
something like 800,000 cars off the street and that, warts and all,
accomplishments some truly laudable and useful results (see @World Car-Free
at http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ for details) . But when it came the
motorcycles.... well, for them we did nothing. Zero.  Now in the case of
Bogotá, that represents a real oversight but still one that is not so
overwhelming that it would essentially negate the purpose of the whole thing
we were trying to do.  So I continue to be a real proponent of car free days
as a useful tool and stepping stone toward sustainable transport, in certain
contexts at least.

But if we think of a car-free day in a place like Ho Chi Minh Ville here in
the year 2000, what a poor joke it would be there.  And that is only one
example which I take based on personal experience. If we get the private
cars off the streets of cities like this, what would we have accomplished?
Not a whole hell of a lot.

Ditto for carsharing (terrific tool though it is). Ditto for most of what
goes by the name of traffic calming. Ditto for metros. Ditto for ITS. Ditto
for letting technology and the market take care of the problem.

This is not to say that "Sustainable Transport - Mach 1" as we might call it
has no lessons or tools to propose. We have indeed learned a lot in the
process and much of this can indeed find useful application in the new and
greatly expanded toolkit for Third World cites that now has to be built up
and put to work. But what is needed stretches way beyond all that.

So, I guess that we have to get back to work on the sustainable transport
paradigm, and start to develop a toolkit that is going to make sense and be
useful in these other contexts.  And what better place to begin to do this,
than right here on good old Sustran.




Eric Britton

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