[sustran] Storm after the quiet

[eric.britton at ecoplan.org]

Farheen Mukri wrote on this date in the context of area licensing and road
pricing in Singapore:
"There is no ERP on Saturdays or Sundays and you can imagine the packed
roads esp on Saturdays, right in the heart of town. Maddening."

One can see the same thing in Bogotá, where there is a brilliant (if I may
say) car traffic limitation scheme that goes by the name "Pico y Placa" that
has the same effect. The system forbids the circulation of cars twice a
week, twice a day, from 7 A.M. to 9 A.M. and from 5:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M., in
agreement with the last number of the board of the vehicle (go to The
Commons and type "Pico" into the Search box and you'll find the original
references in both Spanish and English).

Now this system, simple as it may seem, has real, very noticeable impacts.
But then, one minute later, at 9:01, all hell breaks loose and the cars hit
the fan.  Same thing at the other end of the scale.  Apparently just like we
see in Singapore.

My question to the group is this: Is this not sufficiently interesting and
notable a phenomenon to somehow be of use to us?  Doesn't it show, prove,
something considerable and important?  Cannot we somehow use this clear
demonstration and knowledge to help us do better yet?

Perhaps there is already a whole corpus of strategic work in this domain
that is available and that I do not happen to have stumbled on.  If so, I
hope to see much more of it.   (When we have so few tools that seem to work,
we had better let no opportunity go unexploited.  N'est-ce pas?)

Eric Britton

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