[sustran] Re: car free day in Manila? Dream on

[SUSTRAN Resource Centre]

At 22:21 20/01/00 +0800, Ramon Fernan III wrote:
>For those of you who remember the letter that the Philippine NGO Sustainable
>Transport Network sent to Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman
>Jejomar Binay endorsing his proposal for a carfree day in Metro Manila,
>hereunder is his verbatim reply (and uncommented as well).

There is a very interesting development on this topic. Bogotá in South
America is to hold a Car Free Day on February 24, which is a Thursday!  A
number of European Cities have sponsored car-free days in recent years but
this seems to be the FIRST time that a major city in the "South" has given
this sustainable transport idea a try. Bogotá has about 7 million people.

A huge amount of information on this is at the Car Free Day Network page at
http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ - which is appropriate, since this site
was instrumental in helping to inspire the Bogotá authorities to do this!

BOGOTA NEEDS YOUR HELP AND WISDOM! The time remaining for preparation is
now very short and a Car Free Day is something that is not easy to get
right. Your ideas, counsel, cautions, etc are inviteed via the guestbook at
the web site or via the Car Free Day mailbox at carfreeday at egroups.com or
through the car free day discussion forum (via the web site).

Personally I believe that Bogotá is potentially well-suited to pull this
off. My reasoning is that I believe that the public transport system
already carries a high percentage of the passenger transport task. So
eliminating a large fraction of the cars from part or all of the city for a
day is not as drastic in Bogotá as it would be in cities where cars
dominate. Manila is similar to Bogotá in this respect - public transport
(buses, jitneys and urban rail) carries many more passengers than private
vehicles.  

So let's help Bogotá make its event a success. We can then tell the Metro
Manila Development Authority Chairman, Jejomar Binay, all about it and ask
him, "why not in Manila too?"

Thanks to Eric Britton for alerting me to this upcoming event.

Paul
A. Rahman Paul BARTER
Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia 
and the Pacific (the SUSTRAN Network)
P.O. Box 11501, Kuala Lumpur 50748, Malaysia.
TEL/FAX: +(60 3) 2274 2590
E-mail: sustran at po.jaring.my
URL: http://www.malaysiakini.com/sustran (under construction)

The SUSTRAN Network promotes and popularises 
people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport 
with a focus on Asia and the Pacific.