[sustran] Re: Information on 'Bike Taxi' -" E pur si muove"

[J Krishnayya]

Dear Eric,

Thank you for the thoughtful note. I agree that motor cycles are a recent
mass phenomena which our understanding of "traffic" does not really
encompass.

Here in Pune, for example we have 40x the number of mc that existed 20 years
ago.

One possible innovative way of thinking about the role of mc is the fact
that they are used largely by working persons to get from home to workploace
with no stops (often a 15 km journey), or by college students. This might
constitute perhaps 70% of mc users.

Would it help if we created Large (Urban) Bus Stations, with attached
parking for mc (users would ride from home) from where express (ac?) busses
would go to interchange points in the Industrial areas (from where a feeder
bus system would provide frequent links to each plant), as well as to other
focal points such as colleges, "downtown" etc.  These Bus Stations would
have book shops, coffee shops, etc. Many of our long-distance bus terminals
already are like this, except that they are too crowded, wet, dirty, etc..

These bus stations could be leased or franchised to private parties who
might then compete to keep them attractive.

Just a thought.

J G Krishnayya
============== 
Prof J G Krishnayya
Executive Director,
Systems Research Institute
17-A, Gultekdi,
Pune 411 037
+91-20-2426 0323
geoconcept at vsnl.com
jkrishnayya at yahoo.com
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Eric.Britton at ecoplan.org; Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport
Date: 08/25/04 16:03:18
To: Sustran-discuss at jca.ax.apc.org
Cc: anil at environmentnepal.com.np; mmurga at compuserve.com; John
Whitelegg at phonecoop.coop
Subject: [sustran] Information on 'Bike Taxi' -" E pur si muove"
 
“A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” -- Sir Winston Churchill,
October 1, 1939.
 
These fine, instructive and yes! in the final analysis truly and
fundamentally puzzling exchanges in these last days bring me back to
something that I have been meaning to share with all of you for some time.
This is in part prompted by conversations on this topic during a recent
visit here of Dinesh Mohan here on the occasion of his role in the panel
presenting that important WHO report on traffic and injuries.  Since it also
touches on something that keeps coming up in my work, observations and
international exchanges. 
 
And since I have yet to get my arms around the issues, I would at least like
to share with you in the form of a handful of riddles, conundrums, and
puzzlements which I now put before you in my growing perplexity. And to
which you may have some answers. Or, better yet, paths toward answers.
 
1.      Is it too much to say that the massive introduction of low cost
(motorized) two (three) wheelers into the traffic stream in city after mega
city around the world is, in a phrase, CHANGING EVERYTHING IN THE DOMAIN OF
TRANSPORT POLICY AND PRACTICE ?
2.      Might it be that their diminutive surface areas (street-take,
parking-take) and behaviour in the traffic stream is totally out of line
with everything the transport and traffic planners ever learned in school
and have practiced in almost all cities of the world? (Among thousands of
anomalous examples one recent case from just across the Channel: the utter
inability (thus far) of the London Congestion Charging team to deal with
motorized two-wheelers in their scheme. And that’s just a (relatively)
simple case).
3.      Another anomaly that sets traditional transportation thinking in its
head: these buzzing belching flying creatures are creating situations in
which suddenly private transport (door to door, etc.) is both cheaper and
faster than public transport. Thus they are undermining the usual arguments
for subsidy to public carriers.  And of course the market, meaning that we
have more empty (or empty-ish) taxpayer subsidized buses. Ouch!
4.      And they (now we are mainly into what we are calling here ‘bike
taxis’ but much of this applies as well to all motorized cycles in cities)
are dangerous, dirty, uncontrollable, prone to corruption of divers types,
etc.
5.      And what about women, shoppers, children, the elderly, the infirm,
etc. who are not necessarily easy customers for these services? Do we simply
forget about them? (As we often have in the past.) 
6.      But . . .  in places of high unemployment. “Bike Taxis” and the like
offer income earning possibilities to poor young people (and where you
rather have them on a motorbike or throwing torches at Government House. It
is a choice after all.)
7.      From the usual formal planning and policy perspective in most places
at least, these gizmos simply do not exist.  (And yet if you look out on the
street, as Galileo said: e pur si muove
 which with your permission I will
translate to: “And yet they move”.
8.      And when they do (finally) come into the lagged sights of the
indolent policy makers (usually as a result of some kind of press wake-up
call), the knee-jerk reaction is all too often either (a) to ban them
(whereby all the problems conveniently disappear) and/or (b) to “control”
them. (But certainly not to understand them
 am I not right in this?)  Both
these reactions are, as we can see in city after city, not very productive
from the vantage of sustainable development and social justice, or even
simple systemic efficiency out there on the street.
9.      Should those of us who care about these things continue to leave
them in the hands of impatient administrators who decide one day to instruct
the police to toss all the becas into the ocean.  Or, more often, just to
stay under the desk and pretend that it does not exist and will go away.
10.  So where does this bring us?  To deal with this brave new world, should
we just throw away all the old transport dogmas and designs, and simply
rejigger the whole system around two wheelers? 
11.  Or can we continue to patch and band-aid here and there in city after
city and hope to  get good results?
12.  Or do we have to start to create a new multi-level Third World City
transportation paradigm with new classes of vehicles and street users to be
brought into the formal planning lens?
13.  Suppose for the moment that we limit our attention to all this from an
Asian perceptive. (We can then later take what we have learned and apply it
to the other parts of the world in which his new transportation paradigm is
emerging.)
14.  We are talking about HUGE NUMBERS.  And a process that is already well
engaged.
15.  Anybody mention Kyoto?
16.  Maybe a good starting place in this clearly much needed rethinking of
transport in cities is to step back and ask (as Dinesh suggested): WHAT IS A
STREET ANYWAY?
17.  Is it a place meant for cars? Are all streets in a city alike? Do we
need to have more gradations in terms of transport types to accommodate? 
18.  And what about the important non-transport functions of streets as
public spaces? As meeting places? As venues for peddlers, hucksters,
hawkers?  Places to rest or sleep? Uses that put in Jane Jacobs’ wonderful
words “eyes on the street”, public presence that act to temper violence and
personal attack? 
 
What I am trying to say that while cities around the world are de facto
reinventing transport, those of us who care should now get to work to
develop new paradigms, tools and visions of how all this newness can be
better understood and put to better use.
 
Are these things that we should be talking about here? And as part of this
seeing what we might do to increase consciousness of the issues at stake and
somehow, somewhere figuring out how to advance this important agenda?
 
Thank you for your patience.  And for your ideas.
 
Eric 
 
The New Mobility Agenda at http://newmobility.org 
The New Mobility Forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldTransport/
 
The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative 
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