[sustran] Re: China straddling bus - a car-freindly bus?

[Lewis Thorwaldson]

Dear Sujit and others,

I agree with the basic premise that we need to focus on the true point of
our work, moving people and improving accessibility, rather than spending
all our time and money on congestion reducing schemes. However, I am not
sure I agree that this bus system is of the latter. While it does indeed
move buses out of the way of cars, and that seems to be how it is sold, the
actual grit of the concept is that it prevents the bus from being affected
by the cars without having to use additional ROW, which may not exist. Since
people are willing to put up with a lot of congestion, it is not going to
disappear soon, and buses will be stuck in it if we cannot find space to
give them a lane of their own. This technology gives them that. How is this
any different from building a subway, light rail or a dedicated bus lane? We
should definitely be focusing on policy to reduce auto use, such as pricing,
reduced parking, and all those things we already know about, but part of
reducing auto use is improving public transit options, and this is exactly
what this does.

Best regards,

Lewis Thorwaldson
National Transit Institute
120 Albany Street
Tower Two, Suite 250
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-2163
P: (732) 932-1700 x239
F: (732) 932-1707

From: Sujit Patwardhan <patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com>
To: Global 'South' Sustainable Transport <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>;
PTTF General <pttfgen at googlegroups.com>
Cc: William Ross <wr1408 at gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, 7 August, 2010 10:24:58 AM
Subject: [sustran] Re: China straddling bus - a car-freindly bus?

7 August 2010



This is just another idea to try and solve congestion without attacking the
root problem which is the ever growing number of personal auto vehicles. The
rate at which this segment can grow will make any "compatible solution"
(solution that does not have strong TDM) ineffective in less than 3-5 years.
Money would be spent but we would be as far away from the solution as we
currently are under our present car dominated vision.

Solutions exist even today - in form of cities with low personal auto
vehicle ownership (though they need far better public transport and NMT
facilities) and cities that have kept car domination under control like
Amsterdam, Copenhagen and many more. But strangely man is dazzled by
technological extravaganza, no matter how precariously we live today, in the
age of climate change, post oil peak and growing inequity around the globe.

If only we could grow up.

--
Sujit Patwardhan
Parisar,
Pune
India

www.parisar.org