[sustran] Re: The Private Provision of Public Transport
Craig Townsend
townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au
Tue Feb 5 11:39:21 JST 2002
Brendan and Sustran (apologies to those not interested!)
If you haven't already done so, I would suggest obtaining a copy of
Cervero, Robert (2000) Informal Transport in the Developing World, Nairobi,
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). One way of
obtaining a copy is through the UNCHS publications.
>Coming back to the original question, two areas which surely have
>applicability in the developed cities :
>
>a) The use of river and canal transport in Bangkok, which offers fast
>options to bypass the street traffic.
>
I agree that river and canal transport offers untapped potential for
developed and developing cities. However, Bangkok certainly isn't a best
practice. For much of the history of Bangkok, most movement was via
waterway. However, the use of waterways has declined rapidly as extensive
road building and rapid motorization began in the 1940s/50s. Due to
difficulties in assembling land for rights of way required for road-based
transport in such a dense city, and pressure from a number of sources to
build roads, many of the canals were filled in and turned into roads. This
practice continues, and the current governor who has no budget to spend on
land acquisition has identified canals that can be used for expressway and
rail rights of way (but the Thai government generally won't fund rail so
just the roads will be built). Consultants from many developed nations
have included improvement of water-based transport in most plans for
Bangkok, but it is not viewed as a viable option by local people and
officials. Some increases in water-based services were made in the 1990s,
but they appear to have declined since the late 1990s. It is also extremely
dangerous (30 students died when one pier collapsed a few years ago) and
physically demanding to board and reach the boats, and if you are splashed
by the water it can be very uncomfortable and dangerous as the canals and
the river are also the city's sewerage system. There are few residential
and commercial activities close to the waterways, so it is not really
faster for most trips.
>colective paratransit services in urban areas provide the 'intermediate
>transport' layer which is missing in developed cities where the transit is
>based on mass services - rail and big buses on fixed routes. Many car
>trips just cannot be made by public transport because the local links are
>missing. While the business model and the cost base may not be directly
>transferrable, the market knowledge and organisational techniques may be.
Again, I would question whether the "techniques" in developing cities are
relevant to developed cities - can you give me examples of what you mean
by market knowledge and organization techniques? (Maybe we should continue
this discussion privately, Brendan) There are also successful examples of
paratransit services in developed countries, including those "illegal" US
services studied by Richmond. For example, TransLink, the transport
authority for the Greater Vancouver region in Canada has a shared-ride
custom transit system (HandyDART), operated by private agencies throughout
the metropolitan area. The lift-equipped vans provide door-to-door
transportation for mainly disabled and elderly customers with restricted
mobility. http://www.translink.bc.ca
________________________________________________
Craig Townsend
Institute for Sustainability & Technology Policy
Murdoch University
South Street, Murdoch
Perth, Western Australia 6150
tel: (61 8) 9360 6278
fax: (61 8) 9360 6421
email: townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au
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