[sustran] Public transport does NOT exclude people

[Brendan Finn]

In reply to Wendell's statement :

"Actually, public transport excludes a much larger percentage of the
people".

Public transport does NOT exclude people. It offers services to people
needing mobility (or access, let's not get caught in the semantics). The
extent to which it can meet the needs of the people in any given area can be
linked to :

a) The land use policies and activity location decisions (past and current)
b) The degree of regulation on the public transport provision
c) The extent to which public transport is allowed to meet the need
d) The degree of underpricing of private transport in terms of full societal
cost, and whether this is counterbalanced by financial support for public
transport
e) The culture of promotion of the car.

Thus, we find that in some countries the public transport serves the people
quite well, and in others it doesn't. In some countries, it USED to serve
the people quite well, and then it has been :

a) Starved of finances so that it deteriorates (e.g. republics of the Former
Soviet Union)
b) "Reformed" in a manner that destabilised the collective offer (e.g.
Santiago, parts of the UK)
c) Had its finances constrained so that it could not take on the growth
opportunities (e.g. Dublin)
d) Sidelined by a pro-car policy (e.g. Beijing)
e) Prevented from new initiatives to protect the incumbent operators

And, Surprise! Surprise! people turn to cars and the city planners respond.

Where public transport does not meet the needs of the people, I don't think
it is because public transport inherently excludes people.

Let me finish with three remarks :

1) With respect, in such debates, can we please consider the USA as just one
more country among the 250+ ? We can learn good and bad from it, but it is
neither the only way nor the state of all nations. "The few that don't have
cars" tend to be quite numerous in most parts of the world.

2) The difficulty for people without cars to access job opportunities
reflects the placement of business at locations easy to access by car, which
strongly reinforces the car dependency culture. But if we really want to
talk about exclusion, then it is the non-work journeys that are relevant.

3) Eric Britton remarks that "the real majority of all people should not be
driving". These are the many people who have once shown the core competence
to make a vehicle stop, go, turn etc., but have neither the spatial/traffic
awareness nor the self-control that can adequately manage the complex
scenarios they are undertaking. Perhaps some may be better drivers with
better tuition and stronger penalties.

I would suggest, however, that the real reason they continue to drive is
that society has effectively told them, "It's OK, we can live with the road
kill. Live the dream and buy a car." So they tell themselves, "I'm fine,
I've never (well almost never) had a smash I couldn't walk away from". Would
you be as happy to have such a motley crew acting as, say, your surgeon, the
button pushers at your local nuclear power plant, your defence lawyer, or
even your cook ?

When the large number of people who shouldn't be driving are finally taken
off the road, they'll be mighty interested in what public transport has to
offer them, and not just on a dial-a-ride basis with previous day booking.

Yours sincerely,



Brendan Finn.
______________________________________________________

Please note contact details as follows :

Address : 28, Leonie Hill, #02-28 Leonie Towers, Singapore 239227
Mobile : +65.94332298     Tel : +65.7340260   Fax/Tel : +65.7340412
e-mail :  bfinn at singnet.com.sg        Website  :
http://www.europrojects.ie/etts

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wendell Cox" <wcox at publicpurpose.com>
To: <sustran-discuss at jca.ax.apc.org>
Sent: 06 July 2001 06:26
Subject: [sustran] Re: a bias against drivers?


> Actually, public transport excludes a much larger percentage of the
people.
>
> Let us take the average American urbanized area of 1 million for example.
> Generally, the 95 percent or so of people with access to cars can get to
100
> percent of the jobs --- we could call this an Auto Employment Access Index
> of 95 - this means 5 percent are excluded. Auto competitive transit
service
> (let us say a 40 minute ride, nearly double that of the average auto
> commute) is available, on average, to less than 15 percent of jobs,
assuming
> the average downtown employment share of 10 percent. On the assumption
that
> 100 percent of the residences are within walking distance of transit (a
> highly optimistic assumption, since in Portland only 78 percent are), that
> gives us a Transit Employment Index of 15 --- this means 85 percent are
> excluded. Do the walk and cycle index and it wont even match that.
>
> With respect to the very few who dont have cars, perhaps the best approach
> is to follow the proposals of the Democratic Leadership Council, largely
> endorsed by President Clinton, that would implement financial incentives
to
> universalize access to autos. For those not able to drive, we should
provide
> good dial a ride systems.
>
> I suspect if you calculate modal Employment Access Indexes for European
> cities and for that matter affluent Asian cities, you will generally find
> the auto number considerably higher than the transit number. The
comparison
> will be less stark than in the US, Canada and Australia, but it will still
> be generally stark.
>
>
> DEMOGRAPHIA & THE PUBLIC PURPOSE (Wendell Cox Consultancy)
> http://www.demographia.com (Demographics & Land Use)
> http://www.publicpurpose.com (Public Policy & Transport))
> Telephone: +1.618.632.8507 - Facsimile: +1.810.821.8134
> PO Box 841 - Belleville, IL 62222 USA