[sustran] Negative thoughts on metro in general (and on from there)

[eric.britton at ecoplan.org]

With your permission I will make this brief.  I have a time problem these
days but I feel that it is important that we do what we can to put our heads
together to move to a wise and broadly shared set of views on this important
matter.

Building on the past contributions of the last days under this heading, and
lacking time to do it right and in full as I should like to, I shall have to
make do with a list of hasty bullet points which perhaps in due course we
can develop and refine into something more useful and perhaps more
convincing.  For now, this is the best I can do:

Before we get to metros or whatever though, first a triad of bottom line
points about transport in cities in the 21st century.

1. The first pillar of a viable 21st century city transportation system has
to be social justice.
a. Why social justice and not all the other stuff that they teach in
transport and economics courses?
b. Well, because social justice, got right, allows us (a) to maximize IQ
available to the community at large (our most precious source of wealth and
well-being) and (b) correspondingly reduce social tensions and the dangers
that they will inevitably lead to (for example, the happy world of gated
communities).
c. And incidentally, the social justice argument also takes us directly to
such things as clean air, low noise environments, etc.

2. The second is the acceptance that for reasons of simple geometry that
cars (private solo-driver cars above all) simply do not work in cities.
a. This means something that is on the one hand flagrantly simple and on the
other almost exactly contrary to the whole of the conventional wisdom and
policy of the past (which strove to _accommodate_ cars, which meant of
course supporting them in a whole variety of ways).
b. In 1980 or 1990 only madmen and visionaries (and the Swiss) said this
sort of stuff, but we now have abundant proof not only that this is 100%
true (proof which we have had, incidentally for many years indeed), but also
that this can be done very nicely indeed (and here I can point to Zurich as
one fine example. But far from the only one).
c. As things presently stand, this is still a message which is (a) a
minority view and (b) still basically confined to the leading edge in
Europe. It still has close to zero credibility in either the US or the Third
World.  (And the more's the pity.)
d. But this is already in the process of changing.

3. The third and last of this philosophical triad is our sound knowledge
that the problems of transport in cities have to be tackled above all on the
streets of the city, and not elsewhere.  Why is this?
a. Well, first because of the nature of the problem, a Parkinson's Transport
Law whereby experience has vividly and repeatedly demonstrated that traffic
in a city will expand to fill all available space.
b. So, if you build a new metro for, say one or several billion dollars, at
you will have at the end of the day is an expensive underground system that
costs you lots of money to run and which is full to bursting, while at the
same time up on the street all of the old problems remain and continue to
aggravate daily, thanks to Parkinson's Transport Law.
c. To resume: You have just spent a billion, you are condemned to keep
spending money like losing blood just to keep the thing working, AND you
have solved none of your problems.
d. Does this mean that we should get rid of all metros?  No, of course not.
But it does lead us to this bottom line conclusion on metros:  If you happen
to have one, well great. But if you don't, Third World city or other, there
are now a huge number of compelling reasons to give it a pass.
e. Goodbye new metros.

So... if you agree with this, I think the inevitable conclusion is that the
goal of transport policy now has to be that of concentrating on dealing with
the issues of mobility and access out in the open, which means coming to
grips with the challenge of reclaiming the street system and the rest of the
urban scape for a legitimately sustainable transportation system.  How can
we get the most sustainable bang per buck for our investments in the city's
transport system?

Let's see now.  We gotta somehow get most of the cars out.....  How do we go
about that?  We also know that mega investments in metros, urban highways,
large central parking facilities, etc. are almost 100% in the wrong
direction of what we need to attain.  On the other hand, the new information
and communications technologies are obviously going to be as critical as
concrete and steel was in the old days. So, what does this mean? What
happens next?....

I hope that we shall be able to take this further both in general and
perhaps in the context of the follow-up and lessons of the Bogotá Car Free
Day project, which, after all, just might be an interesting step in the
right direction.  Maybe.

In the meantime I invite you to tune into http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/
and join the discussions there are as well as here.  It might be that this
combination of the general and the specific may give us some good ideas with
much broader, and saner, application.

Thanks for bearing with me on this.  I look forward with real interest to
your critical comments.