[sustran] Banning NMT (Rickshaw) on roads of Dhaka city

[ecopl at n.adsl]

Before trying to make a specific contribution to this most interesting
exchange on the situation in Dhaka, I would like first to offer a rough note
with what I hope may be some useful perspective against which I think these
discussions and decisions could be most usefully advanced on this fine
forum.  First a big step back:

= = = = = =

THE KING IS DEAD:

Once upon a time, not all that many years ago, there was a particular way
that many people had of thinking about how best to get about in cities which
by and large dominated just about all the decisions that were made and the
actions that shaped the transport systems of just about all of our cities.
Looking back on the process and results with a bit of perspective, we can
perhaps refer to this as the "20th century city transport model".

There were a few quite interesting things about that model and the kinds of
situation that it brought about in all those many places where it was put
into practice.  The first was that, having dominated the choir of the expert
community early on in the process, it came to be generally accepted as the
only responsible way to do things.  The second is that as the decades passed
and more and more people and places got involved, it gradually was able to
take on the patina of being ever more "scientific", with the results that
the ever more elaborate structures of analysis that were applied worked to
render the conclusions and recommendations ever more difficult to question.
The third is that lurking beneath the "rational, informed, scientific"
overlay were a certain number of fundamental implicit assumptions, that were
rarely questioned by the main practitioners and decision makers.  The
fourth, last and most surprising of all was that almost nobody seemed to
realize that in the final analysis it was not the real human needs of the
place in question nor the science that were driving just about all the
decisions being made in the sector, but all those hidden, unacknowledged
assumptions.

Without wishing to take on the task here of trying to exhaust the longish
list of these implicit assumptions, I think it fair to point out that
central among them was the shared belief that a private car-based transport
system central the central element in the formula for success.  In lock step
with this assumption was the broadly accepted belief that for those who
could not have access to their own cars (usually assumed to be a minority),
the necessary response was to build a "public transport system" for the most
part based on large vehicles, centrally managed and ever more
technologically enhanced, that were somehow going to do the job for the
rest.  (Central to this last, was the shared belief this was of course the
"second class" component of the city mobility system which at best was
handled on the basis of 'kind paternalism' thinking of the indulgent (car
owning) upper classes and decision makers.)

The old model was, we have to admit, a very American creation, not
surprising of course given that country's role as the birthplace of the
world car industry and all its assorted companion businesses and interests.
But here too we have to be a tad sophisticated and recall not lonely that
the model was American in its principal origins, but that it was fully and
vigorously promulgated by the US-influenced leading edge of the
international aid agencies (notably of course the World Bank) as well as the
associated consultancy, research, supplier and trade groups who collectively
came to shape the main thrust of policy and practice in the sector.  (This
was not, it needs to be noted, so much a conscious conspiracy ,as what
Hannah Arandt so well called "a study in the banality of evil")

Our first obligation in this respect should be to make a genuine attempt to
be lucid in the face of the realities that are out there on the streets of
the world's cities for all to see (and smell and suffer and feel).  The
first has to be to have the maturity and balance to accept that the 20th
century model is marked by its overwhelming irresponsibility from a broader
public policy perspective, and for its failures.  This model not only has
been a catastrophe for virtually all of the Third World cities, but it has
also rent enormous havoc on our cities in the States, where in city after
city it has led to a situation wherein the central cores have been
calamitously gutted and where the majority of our citizens are forced to
live in a situation of truncated access simply because their daily needs are
far from best served by the car-based system.

Which brings us today right smack up in front of the problems and the
options that we have in making transport policy and decisions in the Third
World cities, where the issues are in almost all cases in stingingly high
relief.  Take the mega-city of your choice - Santiago, Sao Paulo, Bangkok,
Lagos, Cairo, of whatever -, consider the issues and the priorities, and
then reflect on the inevitable implications of about any investment or
policy that will come out of the old model.  And what do you get?  Simple!
No matter what the old model tells us to do, the inevitable result will be a
situation that will quickly become radically worse than the point of origin.
The engineers' lovely new urban highways are quickly going to break down
with the new traffic they generate.  All those parking structures are going
to being in yet more cars and traffic.  That new metro project is going to
tie up the city in traffic and debt for many years before coming on line,
and even then will cater to no more than a few percent of the region's total
mobility requirements.  And what is perhaps worse yet, will lock in the
unsustainable patterns of long distance daily transport.

Put in others words, it is clear for all to see that the old model left us
with a situation where today just about all of the most pressing problems we
face in the sector are in fact and quite precisely the result of someone's
old solutions.  And so, if we accept that, what next?

Well, the first step has to be our collective realization that the old model
is more than broke and that we once and for all have to abandon it and leave
it behind us.  As the poet Robert Frost put it so well years ago : "No more
to build on there".  We have to look elsewhere and not just for some
fine-tuning and band-aiding but for an entirely new approach to the issues,

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN:

The good news is that new model is now coming into sight, and what we now
need is to encourage a massive shift in the highest and farthest reaches of
the transport policy community around the world to get to work on it - the
21st century model for transport in cities.

There are of course many precursors for it.  Over the last twenty years
there have been a growing wave of innovations and new ways of doing things
that constitute important elements of the new model that is so badly needed.
In parallel there have been examples of strong pattern breaks in a growing
number of European cities where the role of the car (and the proportion of
the urban space dedicated to them) is being consistently and wisely reduced,
where much greater emphasis is being given to new ways of getting people
around in groups, where provisions are ever more wisely for safe and
efficient non-motorized transport, where better clustering of activities is
being encouraged so as to reduce the need for unnecessary movements, and
where technology is beginning to be harnessed to be the partner in the move
to a more sane, efficient and equitable non-car based system.

And in the Third World we are seeing signs of the needed new approaches, of
which one of the most oft-cited is the Curitiba system, which has its firm
base not so much in the technology and the technicity of their busway
system, but in the underlying commitment to a fairer and better mobility
deal for all of the city's citizens.  There are other examples of course,
but the fact is that for the most part until recently most of the Third
World cities have continued to be victim to the old model.

But if we are looking for one outstanding example of the sort of new
systemic thinking that needs to be brought together within the new transport
model, we can turn to the recent events in the city of Bogotá, where only
last Sunday, and for the first time in the history of the Third World, the
citizens of the city went to the polls to approve a policy of removing all
cars from the city's traffic stream in deliberate steps, beginning already
today and gradually extending it to completion by the year 2015. If you want
to know more about this most important development, you can find a
comprehensive base of information and background on the "Vote Bogotá 2000"
site at http://ecoplan.org/votebogota2000/.

My point here, dear friends, is not to try to sell any of you on the Bogotá
experience per se, as to draw your attention to the implications of these
events as quite possibly a major turning point in terms of transport
thinking, policy and practice in cities - quite possibly the most important
single landmark event of the last half century or more.  It is not that the
Bogotá model is as yet complete, nor that it cannot be improved in a number
of its parts.  But it is clear, it is already and work, and it is out there
for all to see, judge and, if they wish, make use of and build on.

These and a few other underlying factors combined to create a truly
remarkable situation that surely we should be taking the time and care to
note, both in general and in the context of this discussion of rickshaws in
Dhaka.  If you look at the issues through this new lens, it changes
everything.  Does it not?

Eric Britton

P.S. Criticism and comment is invited on the above.  If you wish to do so,
may we ask that you also copy your comments to carfreeday at egroups.com, so
that they can be share with the World Car Free program as well.  Thank you.




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