[sustran] Haitian Streets after the emergency: Introduction to an Informal brainstorm

[Eric Britton]

Haitian Streets after the emergency: Introduction to an Informal brainstorm

*	Comments invited to editor at worldstreets.org   to the group via
NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com :
*	References:  Oops. Your help invited to prepare a good list here.
Our own  print materials are for the most part old, and in large part look
at what can be done with bicycles. Anyone who may have more good up-to-date
references will be more than welcome to share them (with URL). 
*	World Streets MsF article of 17 Jan. http://tinyurl.com/yghn6xf 

What is this:
I would like to brainstorm on this with whomever out there may want to pitch
in. The working notes assume some familiarity with city transport conditions
in very poor countries. I attach a first good note just in from Dave
Holladay of Glasgow which to my mind certainly belongs on our final idea
shortlist.

Just to be sure that we have our future street work in the big picture, I
also attach below some notes that appeared in yesterdays' positing to World
Streets in support of the Medecins sans Frontières brave work to deal as
best possible with the emergency. As with the following, there are intended
merely food for thought and for comment, discussion and improvement.  In an
attempt to get a running start on what needs to happen on the streets of
Haiti's cities. 

 Here to get us going are my first imperfect thoughts. 

1.	Keep it simple. (Not least because there is a lot there they can
work well with)

2.	Work with what you have. Don't try to get fancy, expensive or
introduce  a lot of new infrastructure. 

3.	Don't fix what is already working pretty well (i.e., once you have
fully understood, we then work with what we have and figure out how to make
the best of it –which is we get it right will be very good indeed.

4.	Strong Points: Here are the strong points that should NOT be
shouldered aside in any ill-considered attempt to "modernize" or otherwise
follow the dominant western mobility model. 

a.	Congestion: Heavy density on many streets forces traffic to go slow
– That's perfect. Do what is needed to keep it slow and safe

b.	Confusion: Highly varied mixed use – Walkers, Animals, bikers,
peddlers, street life, motorized two wheelers, buses, taxis, vans, trucks –
keep it mixed (and keep it slow and safe)

c.	Danger: Taxis, Tap-Taps, buses, trucks, motor bikes  as public or
shared transport providers – There is a lot out there and it is carrying
many people every day. It may be unsafe, dirty, dangerous, polluting chaotic
and at times life threatening.  But one way or another it accomplished an
important job every day and the city and the people would be badly deprived
of these lively services if they were to be swept away. Keep it, improve it
and give attention to making it better in all these key areas (and bear in
mind that you can't do it all overnight).

5.	Firing order: Favor, protect and support in this order:
a.	Pedestrians (targeting above all safety and comfort for women and
children walking to school)
b.	Bicyclists (non-motorized)
c.	Peddlers and other street people
d.	Shared transport providers (taxis collectives, small buses,
Tap-taps, etc.)
e.	Local delivery services
f.	Parking (i.e., none for cars)
g.	Cars – do what is needed to provide high quality mobility without
favoring or supporting individual car ownership (in cities)
h.	Community participation in system design and policing
i.	Enforcement 
			
6.	Dave Holladay comments on role of bikes:
a.	In the UK the Postal service runs around 40,000 bikes, and a 7 year
renewal cycle means that about 6000-7000 bikes are replaced every year. Many
go out to Africa through various routes. The French postal service also uses
sturdy cargo carrying bikes - what happens with their renewal programme? 

Could we perhaps divert the postal service workbikes that are being renewed
out to Haiti? 

Work bikes tend to be a) robust b) have drum brakes and c) of relaxed
geometry which in turn makes them easier to ride with flat or no tyres.
Unlike a motor vehicle sent as 'aid' the bike requires no further import of
fuel (and consequent need to secure the bunkering facilities) and can carry
almost 20 times its own weight, as well as packing to a high density in a
shipping container - you get a far greater transport capacity from a
container filled with bikes than one with 1 or 2 motor vehicles.

Bikes can also help to resolve the local unrest by giving the people wanting
aid to be delivered a role in its delivery, and if you can accept some
'leakage' the bikes will filter in to driving the local economic recovery
moving people and produce around. 

If you need mechanics then recruit from the youth-bike projects which have
won back kids from a route into delinquency - offer them a trip to help
Haiti - an adventure with hard work but guaranteed to deliver a 'lifetime'
memory.

Dave Holladay, Glasgow

PS  The other issue I noted was the dependence of portable power generation
on imported fuel. Baxi make a Sterling Engine-powered unit and as this is an
external combustion engine it can use any source of heat which can be
focussed onto the right part of the cylinder(s), an so it can generate power
as long as you have something to burn.

	
II. What we intend to do once the emergency has been met. 
(Notes from
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/01/we-support-medecins-sans-front
ieres-in.html)

The goal of this section is to make sure that we keep our target area in the
necessary broader context:

The importance of safe streets: No city, no place in the world can hope for
a fair future if it does not have safe streets that work for people in their
day to day lives. Streets are the circulatory systems of our cities, They
are not "roads" which tend to be treated as more or less isolated conduits
down which we try to channel as many vehicles as fast as possible. No
streets are rather highly idiosyncratic, hugely varied human spaces in which
people move and mill around but also do a lot of other things as well. Roads
are for vehicles, streets are for people. We do streets.

But in their rightful place: We all know the old one that to a man with a
hammer all problems look like nails. So of course we have to make sure that
all that we think is important is properly understood in the broader context
of the needs and priorities of the people in that place. Alanna Hartzok of
Earth Rights Institute sent us this morning their list of priorities for
rebuilding Haiti. Putting on my hat as an development economist, let me
share with you my own revised read of the situation. 

The overall priorities as I see them then, in some kind of rough order . . .

		1. Public safety
		2. Potable water
		3. Access to basic food supply
		4. Sanitation
		5. Habitat
		6. Safe streets 
		7. Appropriate transport (affordable, clean, available to
all, sustainable)
		8. Low cost first-line health care
		9. Public schools for all
		10. Reforestation

And not even one nanometer behind these:
		1. Land reform
		2. Agricultural fields (rice and root crops) and appropriate
technology 
		3. Transparent public finance 
		4. Wind and solar energy
		5. Dairy farms (goats, cows)
		6. Cotton and hemp fields for fabric and building material
		7. Mangosteen, mango, pineapple, papaya, trees
		8. Nut trees/ coconut trees, ground nuts (peanuts)
		9. Cooperatives.
		10. Small industries
	
	Debt Forgiveness: A critical step to help Haitians build a better
tomorrow will be to convince global creditors to cancel Haiti’s $890 million
international debt. This I believe should extend to all debts held by the
poor. After bailing out the biggest banks on the planet we are not talking
about huge numbers here. Doing so will help make sure that every possible
future dollar goes towards rebuilding a stronger Haiti, not to servicing old
debts. 
	
	United Nations Trusteeship Council: To all of which I have to add a
much stronger role on the part of the much-neglected Trusteeship Council
which needs a far more aggressive mandate for overseeing the next ten or
twenty years in democracy and peace. In many parts of the world we have for
far too long been fooling ourselves about the importance of that trip to the
polls as a guarantor of democracy. The facts speak for themselves. True
democracy requires a full stomach and a safe walk to the polling place. And
there are times in life when we all can use a little help from outside.
	
	International Partnerships for Sustainable Transport: And in this,
our partial bailiwick, I hope that our collaborators around the world will
now turn their eyes and hearts toward Haiti, not only for a bit of help from
our wallets today but more actively in the months and years ahead. Already
and in part in reaction to the great chaos that soured COP15 in Copenhagen
last month, a broad range of groups and programs are already beginning to
get together lay the base for more effective international collaboration in
our field, and World Streets is but one small example of this. The OECD's
International Transportation Forum
<http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/>  is also an important force
for international collaboration and support. The new International
Partnerships for Sustainable Transport (http://slocat.net/) already groups
brings together come fifty of the most active international, bi-laterals,
NGOs and other actors in our field. Others are emerging and hopefully will
be regularly introduced and tracked in the pages of World Streets.

Read World Streets Today at