[sustran] electric rickshaws

Heckler bayk at quickweb.com.ph
Wed Jul 11 11:52:30 JST 2001


The recent spate of postings has been "interesting" even if it did fill up my mailbox that I now have to sweep clean. But on to a more practical matter -- I'm resubmitting an earlier query to which I received no responses so I am restating it in the hope of eliciting some feedback.  Most of you are probably familiar with the pollution effects of motorized rickshaws that one sees all over Asia. The Philippine versions use two-stroke motorcycles burning up a low-cost mixture of gasoline and oil that sends clouds of emissions and tons of pollutants daily. I would like to know if there are people on the list with practical experience in converting these vehicles to low-polluting ones. (Of course the ideal would be to replace with pedal powered rickshaws and to encourage more walking and cycling but let's say that's not an option at this point for various reasons.)  There is a clean air campaign for Metro Manila funded by the ADB and some people there are saying to replace the motorcycles with the four-stroke engined variety for less pollution. It seems to me that even in the short-term the better option would be to replace them with electric rickshaws. What are the issues we should be looking at? There is no local manufacturing of e-vehicles at the moment and the cost of these vehicles seems to be a big point against them (based on that article from India where they''ve already commercialized them) or is it? Is this why e-vehicles are doing poorly in India? There was also news last year about doing converting rickshaws in Bangkok and I was wondering what happened to that. Relatively low income people own and operate these rickshaws and use them as their primary means of livelihood. Is this even a viable option or would another stragety be better?

Thanks in advance for any practical feedback.

By the way, in response to Tongchai's query -- our laws don't cover bicycles as vhicles specifically so it's a live and let live situation. I now wonder if legally they are covered in the same way that pedestrian rights are covered (as in the UK case that's been pointed out here) but I'm no legal eagle -- for example, what happens when there are conflicts and during accidents? This is also a question we've been occasionally stumped by in our local advocacies.
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