[sustran] Re: Is park-and-ride a bad idea for Asian cities?

Zvi Leve zvi.leve at gmail.com
Thu May 13 22:46:06 JST 2010


In my opinion, Park & Ride should only be considered a temporary stage of
development, unless it is provided within the context of much denser
development (ie muli-level parking with other intense land-uses). Massive
parking lots surrounding a single mass-transit node is not "development" -
it is anti-development! Would you enjoy walking across this beautiful
parking lot <http://www.flickr.com/photos/zvileve/4600137869/> to get to the
equally beautiful light-rail station? In the scorching heat? Most of the day
these lots are filled with cars and at night they completely empty. This is
just not sustainable.

Why not develop some *quality* commercial and service points in close
proximity to the station, plop down four big towers on top (two residential,
two for offices) at each corner to act as 'anchors'  and create a vibrant
activity node which will have demand for mass-transit throughout the day. I
appreciate thta the trends in most of these "newly motorizing" countries is
away from anything that reminds people of density ("I have made it - I have
my car"), but there are other forms of "development" which might even be
sustainable.....

There is an interesting article in a recent issue of the journal Mobilities
by John Rennie Short and Luis Mauricio Pinet-Peralto about the epidemic of
traffic accidents in cities in the "developing" world. The name is very
appropriate (the "no accident" part) - No Accident: Traffic and Pedestrians
in the Modern City<http://prod.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a917906422&fulltext=713240928>
.

Good luck selling that argument....

Zvi


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