From patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com Mon Feb 2 14:37:30 2015 From: patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com (Sujit Patwardhan) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2015 11:07:30 +0530 Subject: [sustran] Re: Kirit Parikh in the Indian Express Pune - 2 February 2015 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Do read this article. Kirit Parikh in the Indian Express 2 Feb 2015 http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/do-the-smart-thing/99/ Also attached -- Sujit -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ? *Parisar* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sujit Patwardhan patwardhan.sujit@gmail.com sujit@parisar.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yamuna, ICS Colony, Ganeshkhind Road, Pune 411 007, India Tel: +91 20 25537955 Cell: +91 98220 26627 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Parisar: www.parisar.org Mudra: www.mudraweb.com Behance Page: https://www.behance.net/mudraweb --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: Kirit Parikh_Do the smart thing_Smart Cities_2Feb15.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 49209 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20150202/3e122213/KiritParikh_Dothesmartthing_SmartCities_2Feb15-0001.bin From yanivbin at gmail.com Mon Feb 16 04:16:46 2015 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:46:46 +0530 Subject: [sustran] The war on cars is winnable: lessons from Singapore, Chennai and beyond Message-ID: http://scroll.in/article/703874/The-war-on-cars-is-winnable:-lessons-from-Singapore,-Chennai-and-beyond The war on cars is winnable: lessons from Singapore, Chennai and beyond Why the world might narrowly escape a future of gridlock. Carlin Carr Today ? 10:45 am 2.2K Total Views | Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/AFP On the 14th day of the eighth month in the Year of the Tiger, Beijing traffic came to a standstill. It was a drizzling evening the day before the 2010 Harvest Moon Festival , the second-biggest holiday on the Chinese calendar, and the city was in a celebratory mood. Colorful lanterns, snarling dragons and paper-mache warriors lined roadside stalls. The 3,000-year-old festival traditionally gives thanks to the moon in hopes of a plentiful harvest. On this evening, however, commuters cared less about the natural bounties. Their concerns were focused on the metal-on-metal gridlock that clogged 140 roads for more than 1,000 kilometers , the equivalent of a traffic jam running from Boston to Philadelphia, then back to Boston again. Even well-worn Chinese commuters had had enough. The month before, the 110 expressway from Inner Mongolia into Beijing had also jammed . Hours turned into days and, by the end, the route was impassable for nearly two weeks. Drivers, many of them truckers avoiding checkpoints on an alternate route, were seen wandering the highway in search of water and cigarettes. Makeshift stands with instant noodles and snacks sprouted up along the stretch of deadlock. Drivers bucket-bathed alongside their vehicles. The traffic jams of 2010 were so mind-bogglingly huge that they seemed to represent some sort of tipping point, the beginning of an era in which congestion now threatened China?s very ability to function. As it happens, 2010 *was* a milestone ? the year of the traffic jam was also the year that the world?s one billionth car hit the road , most likely somewhere in mainland China. It was the year that China?s car sales leapt from the previous year?s by a whopping 27%, and the year that Chinese consumers bought half of all the vehicles sold in the entire world. While China?s explosion in car ownership was the most conspicuous, other developing countries were on their own car-buying binges, most notably India, which saw an 8.9% rise in car ownership that year. Globally, car sales rose by 3.6%, the largest increase in a decade. In 2010, 73.2 million new cars rolled out of dealerships. The dangers of all this motor vehicle growth are obvious. In addition to causing crippling traffic jams, cars are now the world?s fastest-growing source of CO2. A recent study found that transportation in cities accounted for about 2.3 gigatons of CO2 in 2010, almost one-quarter of all urban carbon emissions. If those trend lines hold, cars will soon outpace all other causes of climate change, and like climate change, the world has a certain window of time to stop car growth before it?s too late. Because despite the apocalyptic traffic jams, car ownership in developing countries is still very low. While the U.S. has nearly one car for every person, in China, only one in every 17 people owns a car. In India, it?s one in every 56. That leaves a sobering amount of room for growth. As those countries? middle classes mushroom, the share of car owners will skyrocket. And once all those people decide to adopt a car-based lifestyle, car-oriented development will be far more difficult to stop. Which is to say, if Asia wants to dodge a future of total gridlock, it needs to find a way to change its trajectory of rapid car growth, and fast. To do this, the continent can look to cities within its own borders. To be sure, certain Asian cities are drowning in private vehicles. But others are battling the onslaught with remarkable success. Japan put the brakes on its initial post-war car boom, realising early on that with limited space and no domestic oil, mitigating cars was a matter of national importance. Singapore found itself in a similar situation when its residents began growing wealthy in the 1970s and ?80s. Crunched for space, the city-state pioneered the world?s first congestion charge and has managed to keep car use impressively low. With smart regulation, savvy economics and cultural mindset shifts, these cities have proven that economic growth and a burgeoning middle-class needn?t translate into a traffic nightmare. The key is a thoughtful mix of ?carrots and sticks?: provide reliable, efficient mass transit, and jack up the cost and hassle of using a car until it?s not worth it. Countries don?t need huge amounts of wealth to create viable alternatives to cars, nor is a low-income population the only thing that can minimise car use. Whether India and China follow the traffic-mitigating leads of Singapore and Japan will have vast implications for how those countries fare in the coming century. *Defeated in War, Triumphant in Transit* Ultramodern Tokyo wasn?t always thus. In the early 20th century, as the U.S. was laying the track for its first subway systems, the Japanese were still relying on horses. In a rush to catch up to the West, the Meiji Era set out to transform the country from an isolated feudal outpost to a modern technological society. During this period, developing new transport methods topped Japan?s to-do list. The country built a network of modern rail and road systems to connect an urbanising nation. But the Allied bombings of World War II sent the Japanese back in time. By 1945, infrastructure was in such a sorry state that workers were commuting over vast distances on bicycles . Soon after the war, however, the country?s development kicked back into high gear. Led by Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda in the early ?60s, Japan embarked on the fastest modernisation effort in the history of the world. Through innovative public financing schemes and economic policies ? including an audacious income-doubling plan ? Japan would match and ultimately surpass the transportation achievements of the world?s largest superpowers. The transformation wasn?t just technological, it was cultural. Now, rather than the simple rural life, middle-class Japanese were working to keep up with the Tanakas . Families dreamt of attaining the ?three K?s?: *k?r?, kar? terebi, k?* (air conditioner, color television and car). With a newly wealthy population clamouring for the latest manufactured goods, the government saw the most expensive of these goods as the key to unlocking an economic boom. To encourage more people to buy cars, Japan went on a road-building frenzy. Bridges and highways materialised overnight. Gun factories were transformed into automobile plants. In 1956, only 2% of the country?s roads were paved. The Japan Highway Public Corporation was formed to change all that. In the 1960s and ?70s, road building absorbed an astounding 40% of all public works spending. At the same time, manufacturers and banks introduced extended warranties and auto loans, all of which allowed more and more households to buy a car. But then something unusual happened: The government looked a few decades into the future and realised that encouraging the public?s obsession with cars, while a powerful short-term economic stimulus, was a dangerous and unsustainable plan for a country with no domestic oil and little space to expand. There was also the simple fact that financially strapped post-war Japan just couldn?t afford to sprawl , with suburbs ? and all the many layers of infrastructure that accompany them ? being too expensive to build and maintain. The 1964 Olympics provided the pivot point toward a major mass transit buildout. The 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo were the first that had ever been held in Asia. It was a huge opportunity to not only invest in a series of massive public works projects, but to gear those projects in a direction that would show the world how far Japan had advanced since losing the war. The Shinkansen became the centerpiece of this display. Just 10 days before the Olympic torch entered Tokyo, the world?s first high-speed train, the Tokaido Shinkansen, sped at 210 kilometers per hour from Tokyo to Osaka in less than four hours, a trip that previously took seven. ?When it opened, the Shinkansen ? was a sign that Japan was starting to advance technologically very quickly and modernising very quickly,? says Christopher Hood, author of *Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan*. ?As part of the process of everything else that was going on during this time in terms of having the Olympics and Prime Minister Ikeda?s income-doubling plan, it just gave the Japanese that little bit of extra swagger and confidence, which clearly they had lost as a result of losing World War II.? Japanese and the world alike were dazzled by the sleek, powerful rail system, and rail networks and urban metros became the focus of major investment. While the U.S. was doing everything possible to encourage car culture, Japan began speeding in the opposite direction, making cars more expensive and annoying to use, and pouring piles of money into transit. Today, the country that makes the world?s bestselling car, the Toyota Corolla, has done an outstanding job of discouraging its own residents from driving it. In Japan, you may be able to afford to buy a car, but using it costs a fortune. First, there?s the compulsory 60-point safety inspection, called a *shaken*, required every two years. The inspection has been in place since 1951, and can set owners back anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000. The exhaustive test inevitably turns up multiple failures, which then cost even more to fix. The shaken also comes with a compulsory insurance and a weight tax. The endless circle of tests, fixes and fees is a perpetual source of grumbling in Japan. Hefty tolls are also a deterrent. Every part of Japan?s highway system is tolled at an average of ?24.6 (21 cents U.S.) per kilometer, compared to ?10.8 to ?13.45 per kilometer in France and ?7.01 in Italy. Driving America?s vast interstate highway system, by contrast, is mostly free . Bridges in Japan are even more expensive. The Akashi Kaikyo suspension bridge, the longest in the world, charges drivers $25 U.S. to cross. Thanks to measures like these, Japanese drive less than a third as much as Americans do. The average American clocked 14,000 kilometers behind the wheel in 2008. The average Japanese drove just 4,000 kilometers. Heavy taxes and fees on car usage as well as more densely planned cities in Japan have sent the country in a vastly different direction than the car-dependent U.S. *Straphangers in Prada* When Japan stormed onto the scene as a major world power in the 1980s, Singapore was only just ramping up its economic ascent. When it gained independence from British rule in the 1960s, it was described by one visitor as a ?poor little market in a dark part of Asia.? Today it?s a slick, affluent hub for international finance. Over the course of a few decades, this small, sovereign city-state just north of the equator has seen GDP per capita grow to be ?comparable to the United States and exceeding most Western countries.? cont,............................ From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Feb 24 15:46:42 2015 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2015 12:16:42 +0530 Subject: [sustran] City buses cannot go green : BMTC in the red Message-ID: http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/BMTC-in-the-red-city-buses-cannot-go-green/articleshow/46336112.cms ? BMTC in the red; city buses cannot go green By Suchith Kidiyoor, Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Feb 23, 2015, 04.00 AM IST [image: BMTC in the red; city buses cannot go green] *The cash-strapped corporation claims it lacks the government's support to induct CNG buses into its fleet, even as it continues to be a leading contributor to rising pollution levels* After clamouring about cutting emission levels by procuring CNG buses, the "environment-friendly" Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has now done a volte-face and decided to put its green proposal on the backburner citing financial constraints. "CNG is turning out to be an expensive affair, it is something that the BMTC is not in a position to afford at the moment," a BMTC official said on condition of anonymity. BMTC, which has over 5,500 buses in its fleet, has directed the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) not to carry out any physical work of laying pipelines or building infrastructure at two bus depots - Sumanahalli and Hebbal - till a final decision is taken on the issue. "The induction of CNG buses cannot happen without financial help from the government. We had identified two depots, Hebbal and Sumanahalli, to set up the infrastructure. But now we have asked GAIL not carry out any physical work in the area as we are seeking direction from the government," MD of BMTC Ekroop Caur told Bangalore Mirror. As per the previous plan, the BMTC was supposed to procure 271 CNG buses. The corporation had even issued tenders for the procurement. However, that may not materialise as the procurement of 271 buses would cost the corporation around Rs 216 crore - each CNG bus costs more than Rs 84 lakh. Transport minister Ramalinga Reddy had recently said that the BMTC has incurred a loss of Rs 49 crore due to operational costs and increase in the salary of employees. At present, the BMTC is operating around 6,700 buses and planning to procure 500 new diesel buses. A few months ago, the BMTC tried to procure an electric bus but that plan was also shelved as the cost of the bus was close to Rs 3 crore. The Karnataka High Court had recently rapped both civic authorities and the state's pollution control board for not doing enough to curb the growing pollution levels in the city. BMTC had even told the pollution control board that in future it would induct CNG buses. Chairman of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) Vaman Acharya, speaking to Bangalore Mirror, said that induction of CNG buses and converting the existing fleet to CNG was desperately needed. "The air pollution level has reached alarming levels. It is more than permissible limits. Induction of CNG buses will definitely bring down pollution levels. Though the BMTC has agreed to induct CNG buses it has a long way to go. I believe if the court comes out with an order on the matter they will show urgency in implementing the project." The chairman said BMTC's city buses are one of the major contributors for increasing air pollution. "Earlier we had asked them to scrap the Tata-Marcopolo buses as the emission rate was very high. We have also told them that in the Transit Traffic Management centres passengers are breathing poisonous air as the emission level is so high. The buildings are poorly built and there is no space for air to disperse. BMTC is yet to take action on our recommendations," Acharya said. *HOW EXPENSIVE IS CNG?* *Each bus costs over: Rs 84 lakh (non AC), whereas an ordinary diesel bus costs: Rs 40 lakh* *Mileage per kilometre is: 2 km per kg of CNG, but a diesel bus has a mileage of 3.8 - 4 kmper litre* *Maintenance of CNG buses is anexpensive affair, for example in an ordinary bus the oil needs to be changed: 12 times (during its lifespan)whereas CNG bus needs an oil change 100 times* *Delhi transport service incurred a loss of: Rs 2,914 cr due to operation ofCNG buses. However, it is subsidised by* *the government, but BMTC has no separate funding from the government*