[sustran] Re: Final comment on MCs

[Pendakur]

I would like to hear from a mcycle family which has tow children in two 
different schools, wife and husband working different places, living in a 
large Indian city and ask how them how all this theory on SUSTRAN works in 
real life!!

Cheers from Vancouver.

Dr. V. Setty Pendakur
Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia
Honorary Professor, China National Academy of Sciences
Secretary,TRB-ABE90 and Director, ITDP

President, Pacific Policy and Planning Associates
702-1099 Marinaside Crescent
Vancouver, BC, Canada  V6Z 2Z3
Phone: 1-604-263-3576, Fax: 1-604-263-6493
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Todd Edelman" <edelman at greenidea.info>
To: "Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport" 
<sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 5:37 PM
Subject: [sustran] Re: Final comment on MCs


> Setty wrote:
>
>> Yes, people break the law, car drivers, mcycle drivers and also
>> pedestrians
>> and cyclists.  But that does not give the right to governments to ban one
>> or
>> all of thegroups from any location and decrease their mobility and
>> increase
>> their costs.  We need to be creative to produce solutions which convert
>> our
>> present urban structure into safe precincts for every one.  Those of us
>> who
>> have worked in Asia know that mcycles are family vehicles and they are
>> actually the cars of the middle income people.
>>
>> The issues are complex and I have yet to see a simple and universal
>> solution.  Whatever environmental rules we wish to abide by, they should
>> be
>> non-discriminant.
>>
>> Cheers from Vancouver.
>
> I simply disagree that mobility should be the goal. If mobility is the
> goal, then transport - and it could be any kind of transport - is the
> solution, and sometimes it means that the richer one is the bigger the
> negative effects their transport on others, and sometimes this is not the
> case at all.
>
> If access is the goal, which means bringing the things one needs closer to
> the person who needs it, the mobility is decreased, but quality of life is
> not.
>
> "Solutions which convert our present urban structure into safe precincts
> for everyone" should mean exactly that, conversion of the urban structure,
> not simply a different transport solution for the same urban structure.
>
> The "two-wheeled family car" is just a mobility tool, a transport
> solution. A better solution is to determine how to bring this family what
> it needs in the simplest, cheapest and most environmentally friendly way.
> This means a real conversion of the urban structure is more important than
> a modification of what moves inside the urban structure. Increasing
> access, with proxmity - not mobility - as the way to do it, automatically
> decreases discrimination, but it also means that the one cannot use a
> transport means which discriminates against a simpler, slower one. This
> means that walking is at the top of the hierarchy, bicycling is next,
> followed by public transport, followed by motorcycles and cars until the
> improvements of the first three make these last two unnecessary and
> unwanted and impossible.
>
> Their HAS to be a hierarchy. Any "solution" to allow pedestrians and
> motorcycles to share the same space will always be far less than perfect.
> Ideally the structure is made best for pedestrians, so everything else is
> less than ideal, and has to have less priority.  Eventually, when a
> motorcycle is not allowed, this does not mean increased discrimation
> against motorcyclists and car drivers, it means a decrease of
> discrimination against PT, cycling and walking.
>
> Access via proximity, rather than by mobility (alternatively: Access via
> proximity, rather than mobility via transport) needs to be a main goal for
> quality of life in cities (and elsewhere). This is what we need to start
> talking about, and this is what we need to tell others (politicians, "the
> people") about.
>
> - T
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Todd Edelman
> International Coordinator
> On the Train Towards the Future!
>
> Green Idea Factory
> Laubova 5
> CZ-13000 Praha 3
>
> ++420 605 915 970
>
> edelman at greenidea.info
> http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain
>
> Green Idea Factory,
> a member of World Carfree Network
>
>
>
> ================================================================
> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred, 
> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries 
> (the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus 
> is on urban transport policy in Asia.