[sustran] Re: "So much for green transport."

[Madhav Badami, Prof.]

Eric et al,

Indeed! Let me re-state my posting more precisely: Sadly, assigning a high value even for small time savings for car users, WHILE NOT VALUING RESULTING TIME LOSSES FOR OTHERS, and thereby swaying the results in the favour OF CAR USERS is more the norm, than heresy. Even more sadly, what this approach leads to in the long run is misery for all, including car users, as other modes become unviable, and people who have access to cars are compelled to use them even for trips for which cars are easily avoidable (this effect is in addition to the sprawl and longer commuting distances that you talk about, Eric).

Following this approach is bad enough in contexts in which the majority, even if not everyone, has access to cars. It is obscenely criminal in contexts in which the vast majority does not.

According to Ivan Illich, who was a philosopher (and not a transportation engineer), and therefore perhaps understood better, said in his classic Energy and Equity that motorized vehicles "create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all and shrink them for only a few"; automobile passengers become "consumers of others' time"; and finally, that motorized vehicles (and planning for them) "steal time from (poor) groups and reallocate it to usually richer groups".

Madhav

************************************************************************

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

Madhav G. Badami, PhD
School of Urban Planning and McGill School of Environment
McGill University

Macdonald-Harrington Building
815 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada

Phone: 514-398-3183 (Work)
Fax: 514-398-8376; 514-398-1643
URLs: www.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning
www.mcgill.ca/mse
e-mail: madhav.badami at mcgill.ca
________________________________________
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+madhav.g.badami=mcgill.ca at list.jca.apc.org [sustran-discuss-bounces+madhav.g.badami=mcgill.ca at list.jca.apc.org] on behalf of bruun at seas.upenn.edu [bruun at seas.upenn.edu]
Sent: 26 July 2012 10:27
To: Alok Jain
Cc: worldtransport at yahoogroups.com; NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; Sustainable Transport in the south
Subject: [sustran] Re: "So much for green transport."

Alok

No, it isn't heresy. It is standard practice for neoclassical
cost-benefit analysis. We may
think it is a bad idea, but it is quite common.

The way to criticize it so that the public understands what an outrage
it can be is to
compare saving 5 minutes for a wealthy business person's commute with
saving a full hour
for a poor person. If the rich person earns 12 times as much, then
according to this technique
saving the rich person 5 minutes is just as valuable as saving the
poor person a full hour.

Even worse, using this kind of justification for time savings promotes
sprawl. All evidence shows
that eventually time saved turns into longer commuting distance instead.

Eric Bruun



Quoting Alok Jain <alok.priyanka at gmail.com>:

> Initial feedback that I received was that this report was based on
> value of time judgements and assigns a much higher VOT for car users
> thereby swaying the results in their favour. This is obviously
> heresy. I will only know it once I have a sight of the full report.
>
>
> On 25-Jul-2012, at 8:24 AM, Karthik Rao-Cavale wrote:
>
>> So essentially the argument is that since Delhi has more car
>> traffic, the city cannot have dedicated bus lanes (no point going
>> into the argument of whether they constitutes  BRT or not. That
>> debate is futile and meaningless.)
>>
>> But I would like to see the weighting of bus and car trips in
>> CRRI's study. Their claims to expertise have no relevance to the
>> value judgments they made regarding the assignment of these weights.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Alok Jain <alok.priyanka at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The Delhi BRT Saga continues. Instead of fixing problems with BRT,
>> everybody busy pointing fingers.
>>
>> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/CRRI-explained-why-Ahmedabad-BRT-works/articleshow/15133172.cms?intenttarget=no
>>
>> CRRI explained why Ahmedabad BRT works
>> Rumu Banerjee, TNN | Jul 25, 2012, 03.46AM IST
>> Article
>> Comments
>>
>>
>> inShare
>>
>> Read More:CRRI|Central Road Research Institute|BRTS|Ahmedabad BRT
>> Works|Ahmedabad BRT
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> NEW DELHI: In its desperation to save its ill-conceived and poorly
>> executed BRT project, Delhi government is now shooting the
>> messenger. It has not only questioned the study conducted by the
>> Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) but also launched a scathing
>> attack on the institute itself.
>>
>> Falling back on its worn-out argument of a rich-poor divide, it
>> called car owners "arrogant" and accused those who conducted the
>> study of ignoring bus commuters.
>>
>> But berating car owners will in no way make the public transport
>> system any better - for that governance has to improve ? just as
>> launching a tirade against CRRI will not make a dent in the
>> organisation's reputation. CRRI director, Dr S Gangopadhyay, told
>> TOI: "CRRI has been researching on road and transport solutions for
>> decades. If anyone has questions about the methodology used for the
>> study, we will be happy to answer. Our report has used
>> international norms employed in such studies."
>>
>> Gangopadhyay's reaction comes in the wake of the government getting
>> stung by CRRI's finding that "no BRT" was the best option. It has
>> been promptly dubbed "anti-poor" by the government. It may help to
>> recall that the agency had been hired by Delhi government on the
>> suggestion of the court, which had rejected the transport
>> department's plan to hire RITES for the study. Incidentally, RITES
>> in a 2004 study of transport solutions for Delhi had recommended 34
>> BRT corridors. Preparation of the CRRI report, which is based not
>> only on a week-long experimental trial run but also on a series of
>> field surveys, culminated with a simulation exercise. The
>> simulation was of the traffic scenario on the 5.8km stretch in 2015
>> with and without BRT, keeping the existing traffic volume as the
>> base, factoring in an annual increase in traffic of 5-7%.
>>
>> The study found that doing away with BRT would result in a decrease
>> of 48% in travel time, and a substantial 61% decrease in delay on
>> the stretch. Compare this to the option of continuing with BRT,
>> which would result in a further increase in travel time of 13% in
>> 2015 as well as an increase of 15% in delays on the corridor.
>>
>> Sources said the surveys undertaken ? including user perception,
>> occupancy studies, pedestrian studies, passenger flows and
>> saturation flow studies ? show that BRT is not working at its
>> optimum at present. Said a transport department official, "There is
>> no denying that there are traffic issues on the stretch. Unlike the
>> Ahmedabad BRT, the Delhi BRT is after all an open corridor."
>>
>> It's a point that the CRRI report has also underlined. It observes
>> that the proportion of cars is almost 1.5 times that of Ahmedabad
>> on the motor vehicle lane of Delhi BRT, which contributes to the
>> lower journey speeds. This, says the report, is because the "width
>> of the available MV lane is only 7-8m in either direction of
>> travel". This width is less than the 10m width available for each
>> direction of travel before BRT was conceived.
>>
>> The report adds: "Since the Ahmedabad BRTS is a closed system, the
>> commercial travel speeds are much higher. The bus composition is
>> about 3% of total traffic in both cases. The observed average speed
>> of buses on Ahmedabad BRT section varies between 22-25kmph (CEPT
>> Ahmedabad) which is much higher than that of Delhi BRTS -
>> 13-15kmph)."
>>
>> The last fact seems to have been completely overlooked by Delhi
>> government, which has been citing the success of the Ahmedabad BRT
>> to continue with its floundering experiment.
>>
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>>
>
>


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