[sustran] Re: The Private Provision of Public Transport

Craig Townsend townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au
Tue Feb 5 11:39:21 JST 2002


Brendan and Sustran (apologies to those not interested!)

If you haven't already done so, I would suggest obtaining a copy of
Cervero, Robert (2000) Informal Transport in the Developing World, Nairobi, 
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat).  One way of 
obtaining a copy is through the UNCHS publications.

>Coming back to the original question, two areas which surely have 
>applicability in the developed cities :
>
>a) The use of river and canal transport in Bangkok, which offers fast 
>options to bypass the street traffic.
>

I agree that river and canal transport offers untapped potential for 
developed and developing cities. However, Bangkok certainly isn't a best 
practice. For much of the history of Bangkok, most movement was via 
waterway. However, the use of waterways has declined rapidly as extensive 
road building and rapid motorization began in the 1940s/50s. Due to 
difficulties in assembling land for rights of way required for road-based 
transport in such a dense city, and pressure from a number of sources to 
build roads, many of the canals were filled in and turned into roads. This 
practice continues, and the current governor who has no budget to spend on 
land acquisition has identified canals that can be used for expressway and 
rail rights of way (but the Thai government generally won't fund rail so 
just the roads will be built).  Consultants from many developed nations 
have included improvement of water-based transport in most plans for 
Bangkok, but it is not viewed as a viable option by local people and 
officials. Some increases in water-based services were made in the 1990s, 
but they appear to have declined since the late 1990s. It is also extremely 
dangerous (30 students died when one pier collapsed a few years ago) and 
physically demanding to board and reach the boats, and if you are splashed 
by the water it can be very uncomfortable and dangerous as the canals and 
the river are also the city's sewerage system. There are few residential 
and commercial activities close to the waterways, so it is not really 
faster for most trips.

>colective paratransit services in urban areas provide the 'intermediate 
>transport' layer which is missing in developed cities where the transit is 
>based on mass services - rail and big buses on fixed routes. Many car 
>trips just cannot be made by public transport because the local links are 
>missing. While the business model and the cost base may not be directly 
>transferrable, the market knowledge and organisational techniques may be.

Again, I would question whether the "techniques" in developing cities are 
relevant to developed cities - can you give me examples of  what you mean 
by market knowledge and organization techniques? (Maybe we should continue 
this discussion privately, Brendan) There are also successful examples of 
paratransit services in developed countries, including those "illegal" US 
services studied by Richmond. For example, TransLink, the transport 
authority for the Greater Vancouver region in Canada has a shared-ride 
custom transit system (HandyDART), operated by private agencies throughout 
the metropolitan area. The lift-equipped vans provide door-to-door 
transportation for mainly disabled and elderly customers with restricted 
mobility. http://www.translink.bc.ca

________________________________________________
Craig Townsend
Institute for Sustainability & Technology Policy
Murdoch University
South Street, Murdoch
Perth, Western Australia 6150

tel: (61 8) 9360 6278
fax: (61 8) 9360 6421
email: townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au
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