[sustran] Re: A Manifesto for Sustainable Transport

bruun at seas.upenn.edu bruun at seas.upenn.edu
Sun May 30 04:35:37 JST 2010



Very good except for what I consider to be a cheap shot:  "...... ?  
with expensive metro systems thrown in for good measure."

> The author goes on to make the statement: "Dense, mixed-use,  
> walkable urban spaces are recognized the world over as the most  
> creative and dynamic environments." Metros facilitate this kind of  
> environment and don't belong in the same sentence as the auto mode.


Eric Bruun


Quoting Ashok Sreenivas <ashok.sreenivas at gmail.com>:

> You might like this piece posted on the U-Penn site on "India in
> Transition".
> Disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.
>
> http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/iit/rajan
> A Manifesto for Sustainable Transport
> Sudhir Chella Rajan
> 05/24/2010
>
> A specter is haunting India; a specter of clean, safe, and affordable access
> to goods and services for all. Policy makers find themselves at a cusp, not
> quite sure whether to follow the model of automobile-dominated urban
> development that characterizes twentieth century North America, or to look
> at contemporary cities in Northern Europe instead, where pedestrians,
> bicyclists, and users of public transit are given far greater priority than
> car drivers. The former approach, while familiar and congruent with the
> popular notion that modern human progress is equivalent to increasing levels
> of car ownership, is patently unsustainable. The latter, on the other hand,
> seems strange and out of sync with middle class aspirations, although
> evidence of its superiority in terms of economic, social, and environmental
> benefits remains very compelling.
>
> For established interests, including motor vehicle manufacturers, petrol and
> diesel suppliers, road contractors, traditional transport engineers, urban
> planners, and the urban elite, the favored approach is motorization,
> suburbanization, and highway development ? with expensive metro systems
> thrown in for good measure. Yet, on the street, a movement is already
> gathering steam to shift the transport paradigm from *mobility* per se to *
> access* to goods and services. That, in turn, implies the continuation of
> mixed land-uses but with the additional improvement of infrastructure for
> walking, bicycling, and public transit ? especially buses ? for their
> flexibility and affordability. Which argument will gain salience remains to
> be seen; while recent considerations such as climate change and oil security
> seem likely to tilt the balance toward improving access against personal
> mobility, in the short-term, pressures to lock in commitments for
> motorization continue to be very strong.
>
> The access movement in transport is the result of an epiphany that what
> people need most of all is painless access to workplaces, schools,
> hospitals, grocery stores, entertainment and so on, and that personal
> transport is only one among many ways to achieve this goal. With severe air
> pollution, crowded streets and appalling rates of fatal and debilitating
> accidents, it is no surprise that keeping jobs, goods, and services within
> easy proximity is what matters most to ordinary people. Even among the
> middle classes, there is widespread awareness of the unsuitability of
> widespread car use in Indian contexts. Our cities have developed over
> decades and centuries in such a fashion that shops, homes, and many
> workplaces are still largely within walkable distances of one other, except
> that walkability itself has recently come under threat by the
> ?automobilization? of urban space. More than half of passenger trips in most
> Indian cities, including large ones like Mumbai, are for distances of less
> than five kilometers, which can ideally be traversed on bicycles and on
> foot, but which is now possible only at great risk of collision with faster
> moving vehicles. Urbanites are frequently displaced from sidewalks and the
> narrow sides of the road for cycling as a result of a frenzy of activity to
> create more room for the car, or are forced to rely on buses that are
> polluted, dangerous, and overcrowded.
>
> The response to these challenges appears in many forms and across social
> classes. It is evident in the protests of poor cycle rickshaw drivers in
> Delhi who are seeking the right to earn livelihoods on the streets, as well
> as the activism of celebrities such as the actor Salman Khan promoting ?Car
> Free? days in Mumbai. It appears as the recovery of road space for public
> transport in the form of Bus Rapid Transit experiments in Ahmedabad, Delhi,
> and Pune, with many more cities in the offing, to great effect and at
> extraordinarily low costs. It can be detected in the newfound interest even
> among mayors and administrators in cities such as Chennai and Pune to revive
> bicycling. It is also evident in urban protests all over the country around
> issues of land-use, access to water, sanitation, and habitat, where it is
> clear that urban policies favoring the elites, such as road building and
> slum evictions, reduces access to existing services and also shifts
> resources for improving them as a result of distorted government priorities.
>
>
> On the other side, lobbyists continue to peddle the notion that the
> ever-increasing use of personal vehicles, and the associated ?freedom? for
> auto-mobility, is a basic human right, one that is only impeded by poverty.
> They do not like to be reminded that Europeans ? particularly the Dutch and
> the Danes ? are quite happy to abandon the car and find their freedom on
> bicycles, on foot, and on public transport, in spite of their inclement
> climate compared to most Indian cities. Most significantly, what remains
> unstated is that private vehicles serve only a small fraction of the
> population that do not pay the full costs of occupying the road, polluting
> the air, draining precious foreign exchange by guzzling imported oil,
> causing accidents, and destroying ecosystems. It is the poor who engage
> sustainably with urban space and subsidize others by walking or cycling for
> short trips and taking public transport to cover longer distances, and
> utilizing every opportunity available to consume locally available goods and
> services.
>
> In fact, it is also increasingly clear that the transport and access
> challenge affects not just the poor but most citizens, as well as
> policy-makers. Indeed the solutions offered by the access movement can
> address concerns as varied as asthma and other respiratory diseases,
> childhood obesity, climate change, community blight, diabetes, fiscal
> deficits for local and state governments, hearing loss, loss of life and
> limb due to accidents, petroleum dependence, rising land prices and
> transport costs, road rage, and sprawl. For instance, a recent study in the
> *Lancet* co-authored by Geetam Tiwari from IIT Delhi and Stephen Woolcock
> from the London School of Economics, suggests that even modest improvements
> in pedestrian accessibility and the provision safe bicycling routes in Delhi
> can generate significantly higher carbon reductions and greater health
> benefits from cleaner air and the reduced likelihood of accidents than
> technological improvements for motor vehicles. Similarly, obesity and
> diabetes are on the rise in cities as a result of sedentary lifestyles, a
> phenomenon that can surely be put under control if urban areas were
> friendlier to walking and bicycling for children and adults.
>
> Dense, mixed-use, walkable urban spaces are recognized the world over as the
> most creative and dynamic environments. The mall-like recreations of these
> spaces are already perceived as being *passé* and gaudy and a poor
> substitute for the real thing. From Curitiba to Copenhagen to Istanbul, the
> notion of livable streets ? an old Indian concept that once characterized
> cities as different as Benares and Tanjavur ? is now the new mantra of smart
> urban design. Policy makers may want to take note of the dark side of
> developers?
> interests to create gated communities in exurbs and flyovers in order to
> connect them to exclusive commercial and industrial centers, so that the
> wealthy never have to come into contact with the old city centers and the
> poor who live in them. The scenario that would then unfold would be more
> stark than that portrayed in dystopian films like *Blade Runner* or *District
> 9*, generating the expansion of apartheid urban spaces that are already in
> existence, in which a small segment of society traverses freeways in
> air-conditioned vehicles and remains completely isolated from the parallel
> world of an underpaid workforce that provides them their services, who are
> in turn forced to navigate large spatial distances at great difficulty and
> personal risk. The choice is clear: if sustainability and the preservation
> of community life are important, then the voices of the access movement must
> be heeded.
>
> *Sudhir Chella Rajan is a Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and
> the Coordinator of the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability at the Indian
> Institute of Technology, Madras.*
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