From yanivbin at gmail.com Thu Jun 1 01:41:00 2017 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 22:11:00 +0530 Subject: [sustran] BMTC seeks public opinion on priority lanes Message-ID: the MoUD sent out the guideline 6 years ago and the local authorities are not convinced? http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bmtc-seeks-public-opinion-on-priority-lanes/article18683094.ece BMTC seeks public opinion on priority lanes STAFF REPORTER MAY 31, 2017 19:43 IST UPDATED: MAY 31, 2017 19:43 IST Dedicated bus lanes in Delhi. With over 6,000 buses transporting 52 lakh passengers every day, the BMTC feels that a similar system is needed in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: PRAKASH SINGH 24-hour poll on Twitter ends on Thursday Bus priority lanes and signals are back in the limelight after being on the back-burner for several years because of a lack of support from civic agencies. The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has started a poll on Twitter inviting public opinion on the necessity of bus lanes. The poll went live around 5 p.m. on Wednesday and will end on Thursday. It had received more than 200 votes in two hours with a majority, around 65%, saying that it is an urgent necessity. The BMTC have been proposing bus priority lanes from as far back as 2003. In 2011, a pilot was proposed on Old Airport Road, but faced opposition from several quarters, including the Bangalore Traffic Police who insist it would be next to impossible to keep the lanes free of other traffic. However, with over 6,000 buses transporting 52 lakh passengers every day, the BMTC feels that the project would be beneficial to those who use public transport. ?We are waiting to see the poll results. We are yet to take a decision on whether to present the findings to the government,? said Ekroop Caur, Managing Director, BMTC. Last year, BMTC had suggested 12 roads for the project. However, it failed to take off. *In March this year, when Nrupatunga Road was closed for repairs, the traffic police provided a dedicated bus lane on Sheshadri Road which enabled around 400 buses to pass in one hour.* Armed with such encouraging indicators, BMTC is making a fresh attempt to generate interest in the proposal. The poll can be found on the @BMTC_Bengaluru handle on Twitter. From pardo at despacio.org Sun Jun 11 17:15:46 2017 From: pardo at despacio.org (Carlosfelipe Pardo) Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2017 10:15:46 +0200 Subject: [sustran] First ever bike ride - 200 years later Message-ID: A relatively simple task: find the place where the first bike ride was done on 12th June 1817, trace it on a map and do it again, exactly 200 years later. Take pictures and come back with a nice story to tell?Not so simple, I found. Full post: https://medium.com/@carlosfpardo/the-first-ever-bike-ride-doing-it-200-years-later-and-getting-lost-45478c6daa01 From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Jun 11 19:18:43 2017 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2017 15:48:43 +0530 Subject: [sustran] =?utf-8?Q?Subsidizing_Congestion=3F_India=E2=80=99s_Cur?= =?utf-8?Q?rent_Fiscal_Policy_for_Public_Buses_and_Private_Vehicles?= Message-ID: http://thecityfix.com/blog/subsidizing-congestion-indias-current-fiscal-policy-for-public-buses-and-private-vehicles-aloke-mukherjee/ Subsidizing Congestion? India?s Current Fiscal Policy for Public Buses and Private Vehicles By Aloke Mukherjee April 26, 2017 [image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcohn/16975418305/in/photolist-rYGYBc-rCiUgU-xMQpML-qY5MeK-wF1WXK-rSzNRL-rRYbBM-qSdwvN-rKfrKY-r2LRky-y3YHc2-rBqXKX-wvffxG-rPLxbo-tSsHsA-xKfc6P-tSua23-rPdifv-uPJLEx-rMrNnR-rAxRYP-rS4srX-rHqdsv-rZYWZf-vXuKK7-rVCzjs-w] Taxing Private Vehicles and Fuel Can Change How Cities View Transport. Photo by Adam Cohn / Flickr Revenue generated from taxation allows governments to invest in infrastructure and resources that allow for the delivery of essential services. Broadly speaking, these investments are expected to work towards improving the quality of life for the country?s citizens. However, India?s fiscal policy for public buses ? the mainstay of public transport in the country ?appears to contradict this objective. A previous blog post on this topic has highlighted the contribution of taxation to both higher bus fares and poorer service quality in India. This blog focusses on another aspect of India?s distorted tax policy towards bus-based public transport: its contribution to traffic congestion across urban India. Traffic congestion results when there are too many vehicles for the available road space . While a multitude of factors often combine to result in gridlock, arguably the most important contributing factor has been the explosive growth in vehicles in India; a 6.2-fold increase in the number of registered vehicles in less than two decades, from 33.79 million in 1996 to 210 million in 2015 . This unprecedented increase has severely overburdened major roads in most cities, leading to endemic gridlock. Conventional measures favored by governments to reduce congestion, such as road-widening or the construction of flyovers and underpasses, have provided no long-term relief to the problem. This is because increasing roadway capacity induces demand . Realizing that the newly-widened road offers a faster commute, more people (and hence vehicles) start to use the road until all the extra space created by the widening of the road has been filled by new vehicles. A more comprehensive solution is to utilize road space more efficiently by prioritizing high-occupancy public transport, such as buses, over private vehicles. This requires a two-pronged approach: 1. improving the quality of public transport to incentivize usage and 2. discouraging people from using private vehicles. In this regard, a good fiscal policy can play a major role. Taxation can serve several purposes for a government. Apart from revenue generation, it can also be used to influence citizen behavior ? by taxing unhealthy or unsustainable practices at higher rates, discouraging their use. Mexico, for example, introduced an additional excise tax on sugar-sweetened drinks in 2013, estimated to have reduced consumption of sugary drinks by close to 12 percent in a year. The added revenue from such tax measures has, in several cases, been used for the amelioration of problems caused by such behavior. For instance, California increased taxation on cigarettes in 2012 and used the additional revenue to fund cancer research . The same fiscal logic works to combat traffic congestion: higher taxes on vehicles and fuel can serve as a strong disincentive to purchase and use private vehicles, especially for non-essential trips. The increased revenue can be used to fund improvements in road-based public transport and walking infrastructure. Unfortunately, Indian fiscal policy, instead of nudging users away from private transport and towards public transport, is either indifferent between the two or provides undue benefits to private users at the cost of public transport. Two major aspects of this policy deserve note: *Direct taxes (Motor Vehicle and Passenger Tax):* Better known as ?road tax,? this is a state tax levied to meet the costs of construction and maintenance of roadways . Certain states also levy a passenger tax on the revenue generated from ferrying passengers by State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) . These two taxes form the bulk of direct taxes paid by SRTUs. While private vehicles (cars and bikes) also pay Motor Vehicle Tax, it is a one-time payment, usually a percent of the vehicle?s value. SRTUs, on the other hand, pay Motor Vehicle Tax either quarterly or annually based on their bus capacity, revenue or routing (depending on the state). Extrapolations from Ministry of Road Transport and Highways data yield the average annual Motor Vehicle Tax per bus. Adding to this the average Passenger Tax and assuming that (a) a typical bus lasts 8 years and (b) a non-AC bus costs approximately 3.5 million rupees (US $54,000), it is possible to estimate the lifetime direct tax per SRTU bus as a percent of its value. In many states, public buses face a significantly higher direct tax burden than private cars or bikes, as the following comparisons from Indian States Gujarat , Karnataka , Maharashtra and Punjab detail: A comparison of tax rates for public and private vehicles in India. Graphic by Aloke Mukherjee *Taxes on fuel:* Several countries use revenue from fuel taxes to subsidize or otherwise support mass transit. In the U.S., for example, approximately 16 percent of revenue from excise duty on gasoline is earmarked for mass transit. The UK provides a fuel subsidy from existing fuel duties to transit operators in the form of the Bus Service Operators Grant to keep bus operating costs manageable. Higher retail fuel taxes serve as a deterrent to private vehicle use for nonessential trips, and can also subsidize public transport. In India however, SRTUs (apart from Rajasthan) currently pay the same rate of tax on diesel purchased as private vehicles. In fact, from 2013 to 2015, bulk purchasers were expected to pay a significantly higher rate per-liter for fuel purchased, due to the dual-pricing scheme introduced by the UPA government, effectively subsidizing private vehicles at the cost of public transport. India?s fiscal policy towards public transport is rather lopsided, often taxing public buses far higher than private vehicles. While increasing taxes on private vehicles is rarely a popular move, the long-term benefits of rationalizing road taxes in favor of public transport outweigh the short-term political costs. However, it is important that public transport service quality and supply is rapidly improved, rather than a sole fiscal disincentive towards using private vehicles. *Originally published on WRI India * From jakob.baum at giz.de Tue Jun 13 20:25:35 2017 From: jakob.baum at giz.de (Baum, Jakob GIZ) Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 11:25:35 +0000 Subject: [sustran] A Report to Revamp Public Transport in Jordan Message-ID: <02b5f2301ce24aa58f6ec741cb8c82c5@giz.de> Hazem Zureiqat gives a comprehensive insight into the history and status quo of public transport in Jordan and how to solve eight key challenges. Very interesting read! http://sutp.org/en/news-reader/a-report-to-revamp-public-transport.html This article was originally published by Hazem Zureiquat in Venture Magazine on 15th May, 2017: http://www.venturemagazine.me/2017/05/report-revamp-public-transport/ Jakob Baum giz | Deutsche Gesellschaft f?r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Sustainable Mobility Project G 310 - Energy, Water, Transport Friedrich Ebert Allee 40 53113 Bonn T +49 (0)228 4460-1935 F +49 (0)228 446080-1935 E jakob.baum@giz.de S baum.giz Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) -- www.transformative-mobility.org The Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP) -- www.sutp.org German Partnership for Sustainable Mobility (GPSM) -- www.german-sustainable-mobility.de GIZ Transport -- www.giz.de/transport Stay updated on GIZ's activities in transport and mobility: http://www.giz.de/en/mediacenter/117.html -->Thematic Newsletters: Transport and Mobility ________________________________ Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH; Sitz der Gesellschaft Bonn und Eschborn/Registered offices Bonn and Eschborn, Germany; Registergericht/Registered at Amtsgericht Bonn, Germany; Eintragungs-Nr./Registration no. HRB 18384 und/and Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Eintragungs-Nr./Registration no. HRB 12394; USt-IdNr./VAT ID no. DE 113891176; Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats/Chairman of the Supervisory Board: Dr. Friedrich Kitschelt, Staatssekretaer/State Secretary; Vorstand/Management Board: Tanja Goenner (Vorstandssprecherin/Chair of the Management Board), Dr. Christoph Beier (Stellv. Vorstandssprecher/Vice-Chair of the Management Board), Dr. Hans-Joachim Preuss, Cornelia Richter From Calliope.lemattre-gontcharoff at unitar.org Thu Jun 22 17:23:54 2017 From: Calliope.lemattre-gontcharoff at unitar.org (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Calliop=E9_LEMATTRE-GONTCHAROFF?=) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:23:54 +0000 Subject: [sustran] UNITAR invites you to join our e-learning course on "Sustainable Urban Mobility in Developing Countries" Message-ID: Dear all, On behalf of UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) we are pleased to inform you of the launch of the e-learning course "Sustainable Urban Mobility in Developing Countries", in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft f?r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The main objective of the online course is to enhance the capacity of local decision makers and urban and transportation planners to formulate and implement appropriate policies that contribute to sustainability in urban transport in developing countries. You can choose to take the course in English, French or Spanish: flyers in the three languages containing all necessary information about the course are attached to this email. We think that our online course could be of great interest to you and your team, and we cordially invite each of you to participate in this event. We would also be very grateful if you could help us spread the information through your network. For more information and / or to register, you can access the following website: English: https://www.unitar.org/event/full-catalog/sustainable-urban-mobility-developing-countries-3 French: https://www.unitar.org/event/full-catalog/mobilit%C3%A9-urbaine-durable-dans-les-pays-en-d%C3%A9veloppement-2 Spanish: https://www.unitar.org/event/full-catalog/movilidad-urbana-sostenible-en-pa%C3%ADses-en-desarrollo-2 The course starts on 18th September 2017 for a duration of 12 weeks. Group discounts are available for this course, so do not hesitate to ask us about it! If you are interested, do not forget to register before the deadline (13th September). We hope to count on your collaboration and participation in our course! If you have any question concerning the course, do not hesitate to contact me. Best regards, Calliop? Lemattre-Gontcharoff (Ms.) Decentralized Cooperation Programme United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland calliope.lemattre-gontcharoff@unitar.org | www.unitar.org | www.learnatunitar.org [UNITAR_Logo_35mm_Blue-Pantone279C-email-png] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20170622/b59daf4a/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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