[sustran] Re: Is Asia moving in the direction of restricting the use of private cars?

[Chris Bradshaw]

 > Guess who was the most vocal in calling for radical solutions: "we 
should not build more highways and we should control the number of 
cars", yes, it was the Assistant Minister for Environment from 
Indonesia. Change is in the air and we should cultivate it.

And part of that change is to consider a "step four" in the process of 
municipalities' consciousness in getting it right re: urban transport.

Rather than focus on the /use/ of cars, focus on their numbers in the 
city's population.  Cars are a problem, even when not on the road, 
especially if each car belongs to a single person who is motivated to 
get  value from his/her investment.  This suggests a different system of 
/access/ to cars.

Asian cities are already laid compactly out to support the "sustainable 
transportation hierarchy": 1) walking, 2) cycling, 3) transit, 4) MASC 
(metered access to shared cars*), and 5) private cars (OPOCO, 
one-person, one-car orientation).  All that is needed is for access to 
cars that are not private, but are part of private or public fleets.  
The charges for access can automatically build in time-of-day surcharges 
that will automatically encourage their use for ridesharing at peak 
times, and each minute the car is on the road or even in a parking 
space, fees can be charged and collected electronically.  Ownership fees 
should also be introduced (as I believe several Asian countries/cities 
now do).  Cities should find it easy to look at its current 
infrastructure and determine what the maximum number of cars it can 
handle, and then set this as a limit in its planning documents.

Besides MASC's ability to tackle the issues that "green car" agendas do 
not (road collisions, sprawl, congestion, obesity), it is especially 
good a tackling transporation inequity, a serious issue in emerging 
countries.  MASC can provide measured access to cars to all members of 
society, rather than allowing car-ownership to set the access bar too high.

Chris Bradshaw
Ottawa, Canada

* carsharing, taxis, car-rental, ridesharing