[sustran] (long) final version of letter to WBCSD Mobility 2001

[mobility]

Dear folks,

The following is the final version of the letter we sent to the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development on their Mobility 2001 report.
I sent it to their steering committee and sponsors, as well as to a few of
the authors.  Thanks to those of you who gave feedback.  It was a real slog
to read, no question, but I think there might be something to be gained from
initiating a real dialog w/ these guys.  I
have not heard any response from them.   If I do I will pass it on.

best
walter


TO: The World Business Council for Sustainable Development Mobility 2001

Project
FROM: Dr. Walter Hook, Executive Director, Institute for Transportation and
Development Policy, on behalf of the UN NGO Caucus for Sustainable
Transportation
RE: Mobility 2001 Report and Next Steps
DATE: December 13, 2001

On behalf of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy
(ITDP) and the UN NGO Caucus for Sustainable Transport, we would like to
pass on our comments to your Mobility 2001 Report.   We have asked the
members of our Caucus to read and comment on the report and we have
tried to represent below a fair summary of these comments.   The
comments received addressed the process by which the report was prepared,
and the nature of the report, as well as the contents.  As the
project is ongoing, we also asked people to comment on the utility of a
next phase from their perspective.   Though we were quite suspicious of
a major assessment of transportation funded by automobile and oil companies,
our readers had relatively minor quibbles with the contents of the report
and did not feel it was heavily biased.

Comments on the Nature of the Report and the Procedure by Which it was
Developed

The purpose of the report, according to its text, was to be "assessment not
prescription." "Several member firms of the WBCSD decided to "take the
pulse" of the world's mobility at the end of the twentieth century. They
wanted to know just how mobile people and goods really were in various
regions; how this mobility was changing; and the extent to which
mobility was threatening to become unsustainable."   As such, "In
conducting this study, we have made choices between breadth and depth of
coverage that we hope will provide the reader with a sense of the critical
issues without overwhelming detail."

Given that the WBCSD dedicated significant resources to this effort, and
may dedicate further resources, many commentators questioned whether such a
'taking of the pulse' was really necessary, and if so, who the intended
audience might be.

In the words of one commentator, "Recent work by the World Bank's Urban
Transport Unit, UNCSD, UNDP, UNCHS, UNECE, EU Third Ministerial Conference,
Delft Declaration on Low-Cost Mobility in Africa, Amsterdam Declaration of
Velo Mundiale, and the World Resources Institute have all
covered these same issues but with far more depth and relevance.   Why
has the WBCSD spent such a large sum of money on a study that adds so little
to the current debate on transport's future?  Was this the best use of the
funds?"

If the aim was to be the single source of information on this topic accessed
by the 'general public,' then I would think that a more 'popular' style
would have been in order. The writing was rather too scholarly and the press
releases rather too uninteresting to attract
much of a popular audience.   More sophisticated readers, meanwhile, are
likely to doubt the credibility of large sections of a document paid for
by the oil and motor vehicle industries, and are likely to rely more on the
publications of the institutions listed above.

The second objective of the report was that member companies "wanted to
understand how companies like theirs might help assure that mobility is
sustainable.   They had a real stake in the question because...their long
term survival depends on mobility being sustainable."

If the intent was mainly to inform the auto and oil industry itself on the
likely future of mobility trends, one wonders why the WBCSD did not simply
rely on several other recent efforts to do much the same thing. Most notable
would be the World Bank's Urban Transport Strategy (and its
numerous background papers) their earlier Sustainable Transport: Lessons
for Policy Reform, the Global Initiative on Transport Emissions' background
paper for CSD 9, the UNDP's Draft Transport Policy, the World

Resources Institute's Future of an Urbanizing World, the OECD's Urban
Travel and Sustainable Development, just to mention a few.   All of
these documents also tried to 'take the pulse' of the current status of
mobility around the world, and some of them are based on far more primary
data.

This report would have been far more useful if its sponsors had recognized
up front their relative strengths and weaknesses as a credible source of
information,  and strengthened on those areas where their corporate base
gives them privileged access to certain types of information.  Furthermore,
it would have been very valuable to know the range of corporate opinion
regarding a large number of national and international policy measures.

For example, one might be ready to believe the motor vehicle sales data for
developing and developed countries in a report sponsored by several motor
vehicle manufacturers, because we would turn to them for this sort
of data in any case.  These corporations should know better than anyone the
projection for the sale of private motor vehicles in the developed and
developing world, the types of vehicles that are selling.  They should have
more sophisticated methodologies for predicting these vehicle sales trends.
It would be interesting to know what these methodologies are, their area of
uncertainty, etc.  They should know better than anyone what companies are
going to be moving heavily into which markets (like Chinese motorcycle
exports to Asia, for example). They should have informed opinions regarding
how motor and non-motor vehicle sales figures might be affected by India and
China joining the WTO, the impact on sales of globally recognized tailpipe
standards, and the range of corporate opinion on a permanent phase out of
two-stroke engine motorcycles or leaded gasoline.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of profits that international
construction companies plan to make from building highways
overseas.   Your companies should also have informed opinions about the
likely market penetration of various alternative fuel vehicle options, such
as hydrogen, electrics, CNG, hybrids, electric bicycles, etc.  You should
have valuable corporate experience in marketing such alternative vehicles.
You should know what would be the impact of tightened CAFÉ standards or
global CAFÉ standards on annual motor vehicle sales and fuel consumption.

Similarly, as many oil companies were on the steering committee, it would be
interesting to know the existing range of opinion within the oil industry
regarding long term oil prices.  This report relies on the International
Energy Agency and US Department of Energy data.  Does the industry believe
these estimates, the more gloomy prognostications of more skeptical experts,
or do you have your own independent corporate analysis?  Since numerous
variables affect these estimates, and your member companies must have
considerable information regarding many of these variables, how much
credence to you place in these projections? What will be the impact on
vehicle sales if these figures shift significantly?  What will happen to
developing countries if fuel prices are on the high end, rather than the low
end, of the estimates?  What has been Ford's experience, for example, with
its Think Mobility
program?   What can DHL or Fedex or Wal Mart tell us about how freight
logistics can be reconfigured to reduce aggregate freight emissions? What do
they believe the impact of growing internet sales will be on these trends?

In the absence of clear projections on oil and auto sales, or with clear
projections that show that oil and auto sales will continue to grow at a
brisk pace for the next two or three decades, is anybody going to seriously
believe that your corporations are likely to make any significant change in
your corporate investment strategy?

On the other hand, if oil supply really is likely to become very constrained
in the next twenty years, or political pressure on greenhouse gases
tightens, what will happen?  Perhaps those companies sitting on huge long
term concessions will become extremely rich as the global vehicular systems
are unable to adjust sufficiently rapidly to the changing supply conditions.

On the other hand, those energy companies which are able to corner the
market on supplies for more sustainable alternatives (like hydrogen or
natural gas), perhaps they will have a leg up.  Obviously Shell and BP are
exploring alternative energy sources.

Perhaps this information, being market relevant, it secret, and hence was
not disclosed to the writers of the report.  If so, perhaps there is
a lesson here.  Perhaps your corporations really do have a significant stake
in sharing information in order to get a clear picture of the future to
protect your investors, and a certain amount of your own secrecy is becoming
dysfunctional.

In other words, the report does not seem to build on the informational
strengths of the member companies of the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development itself.

It would also be useful to pushing forward policy reform measures if the
report told readers about the range of opinion regarding such policies among
its member companies.  For example, would all the WBCSD member companies
agree to a global phase out of leaded gasoline?  What about minimum tailpipe
emission standards, such as at least Euro II?  What about fuel specification
standards?  What about ambient air standards, fuel efficiency standards,
vehicle design safety standards, road design standards, etc?  Having a
clearer range of corporate opinion on these numerous policy issues would
help clarify the extent to which these corporations could be allies in the
fight for sustainable transport, or the extent to which their corporate
interest is to fight measures which most of the world believe are critical
to long term sustainability.

If the intent was to issue a report representing the baseline facts of
transport system changes and sustainability, then the process by which the
report was prepared becomes critically important.

If this was the intent, at least incorporating the extensive feedback the
WBCSD received during its numerous  Stakeholder Forums in the development of
the study would have been important.  However, there seems to be little
relation between the inputs given during the Stakeholder Forums and the
final contents of the document.  This gives the impression that the forum
events were merely a guise of stakeholder participation and not a true
representation of inclusiveness.

Several commentators also felt that for the study to be really credible as a
consensus document, the steering committee supervising the report needed to
be selected carefully from respected professionals, NGOs, and relevant
interest groups.  This body would also need gender balance as well as
regional balance, (first world/third world, Asia, Latin America,
etc).  One could also make an argument that it should be chaired by
technical experts whose impartiality and knowledge were largely respected by
most academics and practitioners in the field, and this body would need to
be independent of the funders in terms of the ultimate contents of the
report.

Rather, the process of the report's preparation was controlled by the
corporations funding the research, and the work put out to contract.  As
such, the report reflects many of the strengths and weaknesses of the
contractors.

A number of other forums would have been more appropriate if the document is
truly to be a consensus opinion on the state of mobility around the world.
The transport sections of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, the various documents emerging from the United Nations
Commission on Sustainable Development's Meeting #9 on Transport,
the Global Plan of Action for Habitat II, and the relevant provisions of
Agenda 21, most closely represent the level of consensus on these issues.
Other forums which are not representative in that they largely exclude NGOs
and other stakeholders from their steering committees, but nevertheless have
a high level of technical sophistication upon which to
base some sort of a consensus document would include the Global Initiative
on Transport Emissions under UN DESA and the World Bank, the Global Road
Safety Initiative under WHO and the World Bank, the Regional

Air Quality Initiatives also coordinated by the World Bank, and the Shell
Center for Sustainable Mobility's emerging program.  All of these
initiatives have held stakeholder dialogs, conferences, and other forums
involving stakeholders in a manner similar to the WBCSD Stakeholder
Dialogs.   Needless to say, we have all been to a lot of such meetings
recently.

Recommendations for Next Steps

We understand that not all of the funds allocated to this project have been
spent.  It would be inappropriate for us to tell you how to spend your
money, but for what it is worth we would like to recommend the
following:

a. Coordinate your activities better with other institutions more
established in the transport field, such as the World Bank and its various
programs, other IFIs, UNCHS, UN DESA-GITE, OECD, etc.  You are re-inventing
the wheel here with many of your dialogs, papers, and seminars, which is a
waste of your money.

b. Think harder about how a private-industry sponsored initiative, with the
strengths and weaknesses that this implies, will fit in with other
institutional efforts.  Publications should be focused not on being
comprehensive but rather on those areas where 1. your companies have access
to better raw data than anyone else, (oil and vehicle markets, markets for
alternative vehicles, sales of public transit vehicles, etc.) 2. your
companies are speaking with one voice on policy matters that we can site as
the position of industry,

c.  Consider doing fewer studies and papers and implementing instead more
pilot projects and venture capital funds where the impacts will concretely
help people or make systems more sustainable.  We would love it if a major
motor company started investing in bicycles and busways in
developing countries, for example. It would make international news and
would be nice to have more powerful private sector partners.   Real
estate industry partners on the redevelopment of historical town centers
in developing countries with major cultural assets like China and Industry
would generate huge publicity and goodwill, much more than a paper that
nobody is going to read.

d.  If you are going to spend the next phase projecting or predicting the
future, you will need to take extensive care regarding the process
by which this 'vision' or 'visions' are generated.   You will need to
draw on the best visionaries in the field, not a single consulting firm or
two.  You will need to rely on your own corporate visions of the future, and
not farm the task out to consultants.  You will need to maintain credibility
by incorporating the opinions of people who's vision of a sustainable future
may be diametrically opposed to your corporate interest.  If you don't do it
this way, nobody is going to take it seriously other than as a piece of
objectionable propaganda.

Comments on the Content of the Report

-----General Comments

Generally, the report covers an enormous range of issues in a generally
even-handed and non-ideological way (with a few glaring exceptions). While
there is not much information that will be new to experts in the field, (one
commentator said it was 'an awfully old fashioned and predictable report), I
think everyone will learn something from the report, and by and large the
information seems trustworthy.

In the criticisms below, we have focused mainly on those areas where we took
exception.  The bulk of the report has accurate information and many of the
points we agree with.  Perhaps we should have stressed some of those areas
of agreement more, but time does not permit.

However, some of the 'process' issues that were raised above find reflection
in our criticisms of the contents of the report. For instance, the study
seems to have largely ignored the points raised in several of the
Stakeholder meetings where the nuances between the goal of 'mobility' and
'accessibility' were extensively discussed by the participants.

For example, the article appears to be written mainly by Americans with a
fairly American world view, particularly the introductory and concluding
chapters, and those dealing with developing countries.  A preponderance of
the data is from the US, and the interpretation of this
data is thus rather US in orientation.  Similarly, its understanding of
urban sprawl as driven by car-owning middle class suburban flight from
cities is very US-oriented.  However, the historian Kenneth Jackson, (who
the report quotes) made the very specific point that the US is quite
exceptional in the degree to which it was the middle and upper class, rather
than the poor, which suburbanised.  In developing countries, it is almost
inevitably the paratransit-dependent poor who are suburbanising due to a
shortage of more accessible and affordable low income housing.

With a very American view expressed everywhere except in the developing
country chapter, one is left with the impression that in developed countries
automobile dominance of transport systems is irreversible and even
desirable, and problems related to this mode of travel must be mitigated
primarily through technical solutions.  By contrast, the developing country
section has a more integrated approach (public transit and non-motorised
transport are given greater emphasis and importance).  The juxtaposition of
these two presentations seems to imply (perhaps unintentionally) that the
developed world will merely continue with its unsustainable consumption of
non-renewable resources and the generation of greenhouse gas emissions,
while the developing world can try using bus rapid transit, bicycling, etc,
until they are rich enough to afford cars.

Typical of this problem is the treatment of Bus Rapid Transit.  The study
also focuses largely upon rail and air options.  With the exception of a
brief discussion on page 4-21 and brief descriptions of Bogota and Kunming,
Bus Rapid Transit is only lightly mentioned, especially in the
developed-nation context.  This emphasis seems a bit amiss given the recent
rise of Bus Rapid Transit as an economically attractive alternative to
quality urban transport in both the developed and developing world.  The
lessons from cities like Curitiba and Quito have now spread to other parts
of the world with impressive Bus Rapid Transit systems in Bogota, Kunming,
Ottawa, Brisbane, and a host of European and US cities.  The US FTA in fact
has now placed Bus Rapid Transit at the core of its public transit efforts.
The relative absence
of this option in the developed nation context is a glaring omission.

-----Comments on Introduction and Conclusion

The Introduction is by and large inoffensive, if not terribly inspired, but
some items were offensive to sustainable transport advocates.  We have
pulled out quotes that we find the most ideological and the weakest
grounded in fact.

"Privately owned motor vehicles are typically the most flexible means of
providing mobility"

While the report qualifies this statement with the fact that many cannot
afford such vehicles, this generalization seems to ignore the fact that the
conditions under which privately owned motor vehicles are the most flexible
means of providing mobility are highly specific, and these conditions are by
no means universal.

For example, in China and India, (i.e. at least 2/5 of the world's
population), in urban areas it is extremely difficult to park a
privately-owned motor vehicle.  In such conditions, commercial motor
vehicles (taxis, bajaj, etc.) and in some cities bicycles are the most
convenient way to travel.

This statement also ignores the growing importance of inter-modal travel.
In Tokyo, for example, a private motor vehicle is virtually useless for
commuting reasons, also because of parking and congestion. By far the most
flexible means of travel in Tokyo is walking or bicycling to a railway or
subway, taking the railway, then walking or bicycling on the other end.

This statement ignores the degree to which traffic congestion and/or parking
constraints have made automobile travel inconvenient in many
major cities.   Most traffic experts would agree that a flexible system
is one which optimizes the passenger's choices about how to make a trip in a
manner that covers the trips full cost, providing the maximum number of
trade offs between convenience, cost, risk, status, comfort, etc.  The most
flexible system is not one which makes automobile travel universal.

[Developing country cities] "house and transport too many people, on
insufficient numbers of poorly maintained roads and rails, and generally
lack the money and institutional vigor to fix the problem."

This comment is objectionable on a number of levels.  It is offensive to
many skilled technical people from developing countries, some of whom have
been important innovators. Many developing country cities, like Curitiba and
Bogota, have done a far better job than Houston or Los Angeles in fixing
transport sector problems.

Furthermore, it implies that the problems are a)overpopulation,
b)insufficient roads,  c) poverty, and d) ignorance.

There exists no accepted mechanism for determining the 'sufficiency' of a
road network nor an appropriate urban density or total urban population.
Does Shanghai have too many people?  Then why not New York
City or Tokyo?   Does Kuala Lumpur have too few roads?  Japan, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and many other countries  have managed to
produce higher levels of per capita GNP than the US, with a fraction of the
level of road infrastructure.

Maybe developing country cities would be better off taxing private car use
heavily or simply restricting private motor vehicles, leaving the remaining
road infrastructure free for public transit users, bicyclists,
and trucks.   Maybe they would still need more roads, maybe not, but
since there is no agreed upon methodology for assessing the 'optimal' level
of road infrastructure, outlining such a methodology would be more
useful than such simple-minded blanket statements.

The text box "Why Public Transit Loses Market Share: A Primer on the Power
of Desirable Mobility Characteristics"

This text box was clearly bating sustainable transport advocates.  It offers
the starkest and most ideological policy position within the document, and
is out of keeping with the relatively more balanced and neutral tone of the
rest of the study.  It does at least gives us a coherent viewpoint, and
something to sink our teeth into and say, aha! I knew big oil and auto
companies would not be objective!

Its basic point is that the downward trend in conventional public transit
use is "nearly universal", and the reason for this trend is not any
pernicious conspiracy theory, but simply the general superior convenience of
private motor vehicle travel. "The majority prefer automobiles above all
other means of transport."  It further posits that
passengers "move to faster means of transport as incomes rise."  This is
mainly due to reduced travel times and out of pocket costs.  Public transit,
which is seen as less convenient therefore inevitably declines.  The
prognosis for the developing world is that it will follow
inexorably the path set by the first world in the growing dominance of
private motor vehicle use.

This old modernization-theory axiom is a typical example of converting a
general trend into an iron law of nature. While the observation that transit
use declines and motor vehicle use increases as incomes increase
is broadly true, there are two exceptions.  One is cities which have
implemented extensive bus rapid transit systems. The other is cities which
have implemented congestion pricing schemes or area licensing schemes.  In
both types of cities, public transit use has risen upon implementation and
then remained roughly constant in terms of modal
split over a large number of years.   In many parts of the world total
public transit use is increasing but not as a share of the modal split.

The axiom above is thus an insufficient basis for a predictive model because
there is enormous variation in the level of motor vehicle use between
countries of the same per capita income, and this variation is of a
sufficient magnitude to render the conclusion meaningless without further
specification of additional variables. The most important of these being
urban density and public policy (and all those factors that affect these two
variables).

If an extremely rich country like Singapore can be a dramatic outlier, then
public policy and urban density can completely change the projected
level and utility of private motor vehicle ownership and use.   As such,
the underlying axiom is valid but needs to be significantly qualified.

"Highway infrastructure needs to be increased," though "it is not possible
to build our way out of congestion."

This statement, which is made about both developed and developing countries,
reads like a political compromise rather than any objective
assessment of needs.   Again, what criteria have been used to come to
this conclusion?    There is an enormously complex economics literature
on optimization of the level of investment into new roads.  Certainly, a
very strong case might be made in many countries that highway infrastructure
should not be increased at least until a backlog of unmet
maintenance needs are first addressed with available resources.  Some
countries in Africa do not seem to be able to properly maintain the level of
road infrastructure they already have, and building more roads would only
increase this fiscally unsustainable maintenance burden.

Second, the question of whether more highway infrastructure is needed is
difficult to isolate from the question of the level of road user fees and
how this infrastructure is paid for, and by whom, or whether the external
costs generated by the current users are already being covered by fees or
not.

To much of the world, surely it looks like the US has enough roads. Some
cities like Milwaukee and San Francisco are actually removing roads.  Should
the rest of the world pay, with flooded coastlines, for the luxury of US
drivers to continue to generate greenhouse gases?


"Fuels derived from petroleum (crude oil) now account for more than 96% of
all the energy used in transportation."

"Production of CO2 goes hand in hand with the consumption of energy if the
source of power is a fossil fuel.  Where power is produced from other
sources (for example, hydro-electric or nuclear), CO2 production is minimal.
Presently, the only forms of transport that are able to use
such clean power on any scale are public transport vehicles in countries
such as Switzerland, Norway, and France that produce large amounts of
electric power using hydro or nuclear energy."  1-12

"Transportation not only requires a great deal of petroleum, it needs very
little energy other than petroleum."  p. 1-14

While oil is clearly the most important transport energy source, this
statement ignores the critical role that human powered transport plays in
the world, the fuel for which is food, and the sustainability of which will
be determined by the sustainability of the agricultural system.

In much of Africa, 70% of  freight is moved by headloading, and in countries
like India and China an absolute majority of urban trips continue to be made
by non-motorized means.  The human being is the most
efficient engine available, and the possibilities for increasing both the
efficiency and the role of human-powered transportation systems on a
global basis represents a significant hope for long term sustainability that
has been all but ignored by development agencies and investors.  It
is not surprising that this fact would also be downplayed or ignored by a
report issued by motor companies.  Many of the statistics listed in the
report exclude non-motorized travel, though the text mentions it
extensively.

By ignoring many well known solutions to reducing aggregate motor vehicle
travel, the report concludes that reducing dependence on fossil
fuels over the next two decades is virtually impossible.   This is in
danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 "So mobility, both the amount of travel and the manner in which travel is
undertaken, provides more than mere accessibility." (p. 1-3)

This statement is a somewhat mistaken reading of the long-standing debate
about whether the goal of travel is 'access' or 'mobility'. While something
of a semantic quibble, the main reason sustainable transport advocates have
focused on 'access' is that 'access' can be improved by co-location of
activities, whereas focusing on enhanced mobility seems to preclude such
options.  Arguably, people want 'access'
to the public sphere, of which a highway is one such form, in order to
compete with others for 'status.'  Thus, even this 'mobility for its own
sake' could be cast in terms of 'access.'   If people could not 'access'
the roads, they could not show off their vehicles.

"Reducing the cost of various types of motorised vehicles is one such avenue
of improvement."  (p. 1-9)

While a certain amount of technological innovation in the motor vehicle
industry is likely to continue to reduce the real cost of motor vehicle
production, with certain benefits, the real issue is whether the powers of
the state should be in any way used to reduce the price of motor vehicle
travel.  Given the highly polluting and congesting nature of this product,
as well as its use exclusively by higher income groups in developing
countries, would argue strongly against subsidization of any kind.

The section on "conventional emissions" (p. 1-9 - 1-11) merely provides a
bit of descriptive background on the types of pollutants and a few
end-of-tailpipe solutions to combat the problem.  Missing from this
discussion is the extensive epidemiological and other technical data
collected directly linking such emissions to health impacts.  The study
should mention the work done by the Harvard School of Public Health (Carl
Pope et al.) that has quantified mortality and morbidity rates due
to vehicle emissions.  Yes, the study is merely a brief summary of transport
issues, but in this case the omission of the relation between emissions and
serious health impacts harms the study's overall credibility.

The section on noise pollution cites end-of-pipe type options such as noise
barriers and tire tread designs as a solution to the problem. Perhaps a more
effective solution would be rerouting of noisy traffic through careful
traffic management, as well as the promotion of public transit and
non-motorised modes, which would reduce noise causing traffic volumes.  A
case study of how Berlin ensured all districts complied with the noise
standards would have been instructive.  In the developing world, the
development of standards, testing, and enforcement
for noise impacts from 4-wheel and especially 2-wheel vehicles would be a
very effective improvement.

By selectively citing road accident deaths in only Western Europe and the
United States, the study tends to understate the problem.  The WRI estimates
global road deaths in the area of 500,000 to 750,000.  Other WHO studies now
indicate the figure is likely to be 1.17 million a year or more, as many
accidents go unreported, or people die after suffering in the hospital for a
long time.

Chapter II

"People tend to increase the distances they travel roughly in proportion
to increases in their incomes, particularly as they start to access faster
modes."

This is true mainly because of air travel.  At the urban level, many people
will pay for more accessible locations as their incomes increase,
as their value of time increases.   There are many cities around the
world, from New York to Paris to Rio de Janeiro where the rich gentry still
live in central urban areas within walking distance to their jobs.

"Although the total distances travelled increased over the last 25 years,
...the time spent travelling remained roughly constant over many different
time periods."

There is insufficient data to support this sweeping generalization. There is
no reliable aggregate or disaggregated data on time spent travelling in
developing countries where household surveys have usually
never been conducted or haven't been conducted in recent decades.   This
seems to be true of US data up to 1990, but I believe 2000 data
indicates time spent travelling is increasing in absolute terms.   Some
OECD studies also indicate travel times are increasing in Europe, and our
impression is that travel times are increasing in many megacities do
to worsening congestion driven by motorization.

"People in industrialized regions spend roughly 11% to 16% of their
disposable income on travel, regardless of the average daily distance
travelled...Japan is the exception at 7% to 8%."

The range here is far more interesting than the generalization.  The US,
according to some analysis, uses more like 22% of disposable income on
travel if broadly defined, and in Japan its only about 10% if similarly
defined.  This difference seems to correlate with the level of auto
dependence.  Some authors have posited a relationship between this
observation and the differences in gross domestic savings rates.   The
determining factor may be housing costs and food costs.  Some further
analysis here would be very interesting, and a wider data set from
developing countries.

"Implications for the Future: In the earliest years of industrial
development, bus and bicycle travel increased to supplement walking and
animal transport.  With further development, automobiles began making
inroads to the extent that money and traffic would bear."

This oversimplifies transportation history to the point of doing a major
disservice.  Rail-based modes of urban and interurban travel well predate
bus and sometimes predate bicycle and even rickshaw travel in most parts of
the world.  Bicycle use fell, then rose again in many countries like Japan,
Germany, the Netherlands, and even the US by some measures since the 1970s.
Bike ownership in many countries tends to increase (or decrease, as in
Africa) at roughly the same pace as motor vehicle ownership in many
countries.  This variation in historical experience is far more interesting
than the broad and mostly incorrect truism above.  If these are implications
for the future, certainly the increase of air travel is hard to argue with,
so long as fear of terrorism does not remain a permanent state of affairs.

Some items that were interesting and unknown to some of us:

Energy consumption of fuel processing and distribution accounts for 15% of
transport sector energy use.

Most natural gas is used for compressors in oil pipelines.

Release of raw methane from natural gas into the atmosphere is 21 times
worse for global warming than once it is burned.

Natural tar deposits as a potential fuel source with reserves almost the
equivalent of Saudi oil.

Chapter III The Developed World

"Metropolitan areas have spread out..."

While generally true, there are some surprising signs of increasing urban
densities in some Western cities.

"On an individual basis, these trends have been driven by a strong
aspiration of city dwellers toward both lower-density living and increased
personal travel as their incomes increase in real terms."

This over-simplification of the causes of urban sprawl is singularly
unenlightening. There is no question that people are choosing to live where
they are in fact living, but this tells us absolutely nothing. The
more interesting question is why they are making these choices. Resorting to
'cultural' explanations is a dead end unless addressed by
serious cultural anthropologists.   Clearly, as economists would tell
us, prices have a lot to do with it.  The differences in the quality of
urban services, particularly schools, also have a lot to do with it. Given
the enormous level of distortion of market prices by government involvement
in the provision of urban infrastructure and public services, not to mention
non-location sensitive regulatory regimes for pricing in electricity,
telecommunications, and postal services, and local government zoning
regulations used to prevent the densification of
high income inner suburban communities, saying that people are driven by
a strong aspiration for low density living is simply a way of trying to
avoid the question of why people chose to live where they do.

"public transport needs significant public subsidies to operate."

While there are many good reasons for subsidizing public transport, some
lines in almost all cities achieve full cost recovery, and some entire
systems could achieve full cost recovery if services were cut and prices
increased.

Putting this in the context of a discussion of the level of subsidization
for road transport, which varies widely between developed countries, would
also be appropriate.

General

Otherwise, there is much in this section we agree with or find
unobjectionable. Information on the City Car was interesting, as this is
the sort of thing your companies should know about.  Curious that your
generally supportive of fuel taxes, congestion pricing, traffic demand
management, that you recognize induced demand, only qualifiedly support
highway expansion.

Definitely there is not enough about bus rapid transit systems which are
rapidly emerging in developed countries as an important low cost
alternative.  Also, some of the Fast Tram options, like in Zurich, are
attracting a lot of international interest.   Most of the "Fast" in the
Fast Tram comes from traffic signal prioritization.

Disappointing that little is mentioned of the recent dramatic changes in
Ireland, England, and many of the Nordic Countries restricting big box
retailers and out of town retail development.

Also comparatively little mentioned about innovative parking control
schemes.

Perhaps some reference should be made to the OECD Sustainable urban
transport program.

Chapter IV: Personal mobility in the Urbanized Regions of the Developing
World

"cities of the developing world are growing and motorizing so rapidly they
have not had the time or the money to build new infrastructure or to adapt
to new technologies.  The cities house and transport too many people, on
insufficient numbers of poorly maintained roads and rails, and lack the
money and institutional vigor to fix the problem."

See comments from similar quote in Chapter I.  Casting the access problem in
this way presupposes a set of conclusions or solutions which may in fact be
sub-optimal.

"motorization provides improved individual mobility, but the rapid pace
often overwhelms infrastructure, urban structures, and institutions."

Is individual mobility really improving with motorization?  If aggregate
travel times are increasing, which I would guess they are in many
developing country megacities, this statement is false.   Motorization
is undermining individual mobility.

This sentence accepts the inevitability of US-style motorization in the
developing world, and casts the problem for developing countries as
primarily an issue of public infrastructure keeping pace with this
motorization.

We would cast the problem differently: developing country megacities have
already been developed with very high population densities.  At those
densities, a transition to a transportation system dominated by private
automobiles is nearly physically impossible or would involve such enormous
social and economic costs as to be undesirable to most societies.  Chinese
cities are already facing near gridlock with motor vehicle fleets 1/50 of US
levels despite the most rapid expansion of road infrastructure the world has
perhaps ever seen, at over 9% a year in southern Chinese provinces.

What appears to be emerging are systems very heavily dominated by
motorcycles and a variety of taxis and paratransit vehicles, with a growing
number of cities implementing bus rapid transit systems.

"Shanghai is evolving from a densely populated city with one predominant
core to a less compact urban areas with multiple centers."

This is an oversimplification of what is happening in Shanghai and other
Chinese cities, and may be wrong.  Density of employment and population in
the urban core is actually increasing in Shanghai and some other Chinese
cities, and may be increasing overall.  If the density fell it was mainly
because of annexation of adjacent low density areas.  The density in these
outlying areas is also increasing.

"road revenues in Santiago are implicitly used for income redistribution,
serve as a proxy for transport external costs, and/or show a general
under-funding of investments in road maintenance and new construction."

This quote from Zegras and Gackenheimer raises without answering a critical
debate within the transport field, namely, to what extent should revenues
taken from road users be re-invested back into new infrastructure, and is
there an 'optimal' level of road investment. This question turns out to be
exceptionally complicated.  At the outset,
there is a deep split between Neoclassical Economists and NeoKeynesian
economists about whether 'investment' per se can be 'optimized.'
Neoclassical economists tend to take the existing level of savings (and
hence by definition investment) as a given and hence by definition 'optimal'
as it results from the inherently 'rational' decisions of individual
investors and savers.  NeoKeynesian economists, by contrast, see the level
of investment as a critical variable heavily influenced by
public policy, and would tend to take the position that the higher level
of aggregate investment, the better from an economic point of view. This
debate is further complicated because the investment decision in this case
is being made by the government not private investors.  As roads are almost
the paradigmatic public investment encouraged by Keynesians, from their
point of view building more roads is always a good idea, for macroeconomic
reasons, almost irregardless of the effect these investments might have on
urban form, urban efficiency, air pollution, etc. Transport and urban
economists involved in debates over marginal cost pricing have been
reluctant to state that all revenues from road pricing should necessarily be
re-invested back into transportation infrastructure.

Just as the owner of a private company will not necessarily reinvest his
profits back into the same company, but might consume them or invest them
into some all-together different company if there is the chance for
greater profits elsewhere, so too should the state take its revenues and
invest them where it will maximize the public good.  It is not possible to
state that investing in roads will by definition be the best way to maximize
the public good.

In the hypothetical world of fully internalized social marginal cost pricing
imposed on road users, the decision regarding whether or not to invest
revenues above ongoing maintenance into road capacity expansion cannot be
determined in isolation from other possible important uses of that money.

 As the World Bank has pointed out, because fuel taxes are relatively
progressive, are easy to collect, and encourage energy efficiency, there
are solid reasons for taxing fuels above the level needed for transport
sector investment, and while a strong case exists for earmarking funds for
road maintenance, the case for earmarking for roads in general is very weak.

General Comments

It should also be pointed out that fuel prices are in fact heavily
subsidized in some of the most populous countries on earth, with long term
ramifications for the rationality of fuel prices and the resulting transport
systems that they inspire.

The comments that the level of bicycle use is a 'cultural' issue, while the
level of car use or the prevalence of Wal Marts are somehow not 'cultural'
is unfair.  Rather, it could be said that the bicycle industry is too weak
to overcome cultural resistance to their adoption, whereas the auto and
mega-malls are sufficiently rich to overcome considerable cultural
resistance to their large scale introduction. Cars were no more a part of
Javanese or Chinese or Arabic culture 100 years ago than were bicycles to
Islamic African cultures.

The process of motorization in developing countries is cast mainly as the
growth of private cars and motorcycles.  It should be mentioned that
in India and China the motorization process is primarily taking the form
of taxis, not private cars.

Should be mentioned that China is in the process of building 9 metros, and
some are quite far along.

Should mention that sprawl in developing countries is not so much a result
of motorization as a result of a low income housing crisis.  The
polarization of incomes in transition economies is also a factor.

Chapter V: Intercity Travel

General Comments

The data presented is disproportionately from the US.  The OECD Sustainable
Transport study data is much broader.  Agree that this makes
sense for question of telecommunications and generally agree that major
impact of telecommunications revolution is to complement or increase travel
rather than reduce it.

Discussion of rail in the developing world should make a greater effort to
identify where heavy intercity rail makes sense, and identify trends.
Intercity passenger rail travel in Indonesia, the fourth most populous
country, is growing rapidly, and the island of Java with high population
density would tend to lend itself to intercity rail travel. Rail systems in
China are also expanding and modernizing. Lack of modernization of the rail
systems in India, Russia, CIS, CEEC a clear
issue.   Intercity passenger rail not important in Africa and much of
Latin America.

Virtually no mention of the deregulation of international rail transport
in Europe, which is perhaps the most important transition in rail in recent
history.

Discussion of the rapid growth of air travel is certainly valid and likely
to continue but there is no mention of the degree to which this is being
driven by huge subsidies from governments for both airport construction and
the purchase of aircraft from the EU and US government
which is no doubt exaggerating demand.   Also the fact that airways
largely evade fuel taxation not mentioned.

Chapter VI: Freight travel

This particular section was disappointing and singularly uninspired, and
suffered heavily from a US world view.  Almost no mention was made of
growing truck-rail integration in Europe, particularly in ecologically
sensitive areas like the Austrian and Swiss Alps.  Also ignored, other than
the small text box on boxed lunch delivery in Mumbai, was the fact that
freight in Africa is not predominantly moved by truck; 70% is moved
by women headloading, another large part is moved by pack animals.  A
sophisticated analysis of freight systems in developing country would
indicate that while it is cheaper and cheaper to ship something from one
side of the planet to another, it is increasingly expensive to make the last
tiny link in the distribution chain.  For this reason, Coca Cola and a host
of other companies are increasingly relying on bicycle-based delivery
services in many developing countries.  DHL and UPS are using human powered
delivery in London and Stutgart, and the postal service has long relied on
human powered delivery.

As in the previous section, the review of the deregulation of European rail
policy and its likely impact on the competitiveness of the rail industry,
was minimal.

Also, little was mentioned about the likely impact of internet-based sales,
the recent trends with Just-In-Time production in Japan, and a host of other
much more interesting issues which might provide more clues to what to
expect in the next century.

Certainly, the continued increase in air freight is likely, but again the
sustainability issue was separated from the cost recovery and subsidy issue.




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