the wheels on the bus

Futurarc features Jakarta's rapidly expanding and resoundingly successful Bus Rapid Transit system in this article ("Busway Moves: Jakarta’s bus rapid transit system offers hope for the rest of the city’s gridlocked transport" -by Erwin Maulana and Christen Jamar. via Erwin Maluana's blog: Rwien Universe.)

Again, multiple lessons we can learn from a sister megacity where:

Driving speeds averaging less than 15 kilometres an hour during peak times, and average commutes taking well over an hour...(the) city suffers from problems experienced in developing urban centres not only in Asia but worldwide. A combination of urban migration and growing access to cars have created a nasty snarl of traffic as Jakarta’s nearly nine million residents try to get around the city. Bring in the out-of-town commuters, estimated to swell the city’s population on a daily basis by three million people, and you’ve got the makings of an incessant and impenetrable traffic jam.

Among the many unwelcome side effects of such an unsustainable transportation network are a depressed quality of life, lower productivity and, perhaps most importantly, unhealthy air quality.

(c.f. -Peter's June 5 post "Bleah" on Metroblogging Manila -and the link to the Kate Pedroso's short article in Inquirer. -UDC)

And this analysis by Sutanto Soehodho, chairman of the Jakarta City Transportation Council (DTK-J), an urban transport stakeholder organisation. (Don't we need one of those?)

“Jakarta’s transportation conditions today are approaching crisis level,” says Sutanto Soehodho...(He) says that Jakarta’s main form of public transportation—the city bus system—is currently utilised by only two percent of the population. That is because the buses are over-crowded and uncomfortable; the other form of public transport, a light rail, provides dismal service and an inconvenient network. As a result, most people prefer the solitude and personal space of their cars, even if it means waking up earlier.

There have been regular efforts to expand the road network, but ultimately, transport experts say, energy should be directed at cutting down the number of cars. (Emphasis mine -UDC) According to Sutanto, the length of the road network increases by one percent each year, while vehicle use is climbing 11 percent annually. If they continue at that rate, he says, “Jakarta will totally collapse in traffic” by 2014.

The Jakarta Macro Transportation Scheme, Jakarta's blueprint for transportation (again, don't we need one of those?) includes:

...efforts to limit car usage, such as increasing public parking costs, congestion pricing and enforcing the 3-in-1 system (in high-traffic zones at peak hours, each car must be transporting at least three people). It also includes some road infrastructure improvements, such as widening roads and building flyovers and underpasses. The scheme’s major infrastructure projects include monorail lines and a mass rapid transit (MRT) subway. The government is also looking at the city’s waterways for transport.

..and of course, the TransJakarta Bus Rapid Transit system which...

... has turned out to be an enormous success. It currently carries 100,000 passengers a day, triple the amount it was carrying when it started. Surveys have indicated that 14 percent of Busway riders used to drive; and 80 percent of people asked said they would switch to the Busway system if it was accessible.

Its popularity has led to a rapid expansion—after the first line was launched in 2004, another two started operating in 2005, and yet another four in January of this year. By 2010 the government intends to have 15 corridors in operation, covering a total length of 159 kilometres, according to the DTK-J.

Compare that the the Metro Manila Urban Transportation Integration Project (MMUTRIP) that calls for mainly road expansion and signalization as a solution to traffic congestion. MMUTRIP will cover:

...traffic management improvements of the 3 most heavily used public transport corridors in MM. These are EDSA LRT Line 3 Corridor, LRT Line 2 Corridor and the South Luzon Expressway Corridor. It will also include the improvement of selected secondary roads to better disperse traffic over the road network and reduce congestions in arterial roads. Phase I components of the Project are:

1. On-going construction work for the 2,424 m. secondary road of Pasong Tamo. The civil works will include road, sidewalk and drainage improvements, installation of 3 new traffic signal facilities, 6 waiting sheds, 80 streetlights, 1,688 lm of pedestrian barriers including landscaping works.

2. Construction works for the improvement of EDSA Corridor through the improvement of identified secondary roads and 6 major intersecting roads. It will also involve the construction of new pedestrian bridges, rehabilitation of existing ones, elevated walkways, covered sidewalks and waiting sheds.

3. Finalization of the engineering designs for the improvement of LRT Line 2 Corridor (C.M Rector to Marcos Highway).

In MMDA's world: pedestrian barriers, yes; better bus systems, no. ("But all the important people are in cars...")

Meanwhile, Futurarc lists the sweet reasons for TransJakarta's success:

First, it is an easy and, perhaps more importantly, cheap system to get up and running quickly—the construction required is limited to building shelters and physically separating the bus lane from the rest of vehicle traffic. The shelters are clean; the buses are comfortable and more fuel-efficient. The system has been integrated into the light rail transit (LRT) coming in from the suburbs and with inter-city bus stations in Jakarta’s suburban towns. Plans are in place to integrate the system further with the monorail, subway and water-based transport systems.

And this last line, should be a daily mantra for all our traffic managers and transportation planners.

Sutanto agrees the Busway is the best way of alleviating traffic quickly in Jakarta. “One bus can carry 80 people. Sixty-five cars would be needed to carry the same number of people,” he says.

Ah, but first, we have to get them out of their cars.

Image Credit: Jakarta's Mass Transit System 2015
From Futurarc.com

yes!

BRT in Beijing

Metro Manila may get Bus Rapid Transit

Hat tip to the kids at skyscraper city and to anonymous for the comment.
(Can't find the original source article just yet.) :

Vol. XXI, No. 27
Monday, September 3, 2007 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
The Nation

Bus rapid transport system to put order
on Metro Manila thorough fares (sic)

METRO MANILA may soon put order to its bus system with the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) considering a bus rapid transit (BRT) system to address congestion.

A team of transportation experts early this month completed a pre-feasibility study for a BRT system for the metropolis.

The technical working group, chaired by Transportation Undersecretary Anneli R. Lontoc, include representatives from the United States Agency for International Development, University of the Philippines’ National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS) and nongovernmental group Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Center.

The BRT system will be similar to the TransMilenio in Bogota, Colombia and TransJakarta in Jakarta, Indonesia, the groups said in a statement.

The BRT is a mass transportation system using buses that operate on exclusive lanes with features commonly found in rail systems: pre-boarding fare collection at stations, scheduled trips, and the use of intelligent transport systems such as global positioning system.

The project proponents will attempt to combine the advantages of a metro system (exclusive right-of-way improves punctuality and frequency) with the advantages of a bus system (low construction and maintenance costs).

And while the system approaches the service quality of rail transit, it still provides the cost savings of bus transit.

Last March at the signing of a Metro Manila Declaration for Environmentally Sustainable Transportation, Jose Regin F. Regidor, director of NCTS, had said BRT is "environmentally sustainable transport."

It needs to be mainstreamed and not remain as a mere alternative to the current situation, he added.

The group said it soon will undertake a full feasibility study of a public BRT system, which would consider how commercial buses fit into the system.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority is currently implementing an organized bus route system for the metropolis’ 2,000 privately owned buses. BRT systems are widely used in the Latin Americas, the United States, Europe, Australia, and in Asian countries such as China, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia. — Maria Kristina C. Conti

Postscript: Wait a minute! I got a little too excited there and didn't notice the date on the article. It was four months ago.

Any one have any updated news?

if you want to know more about brt

All About Bus Rapid Transit

This one's for the great folks over at the Philippine Forums of Skyscraper City who are discussing how we put up bus rapid transit in our cities:

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has a great online resource on Bus Rapid Transit -what it looks like, how it works (in urban and suburban settings). It's a very concise introduction to BRT systems and links to tons of resources.

If it's any comfort, the TSTC is also trying to get BRT implemented and expanded in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area and are working to build up the political will to improve public transit in their megacity.


With a hat tip to Streetsblog.

how long...

...will it take to improve the quality of life in Metro Manila? Decades?

Try 3-4 years. That's according to Jaime Lernier, the the former (and famous) three-time mayor of the city of Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Parana. (He later became governor of Parana.)

Lernier, speaking last week at the World Watch Institute's State of the World 2007 briefing here in D.C., said “Every city can improve its quality of life in 3 to 4 years.”

How? Through "urban accupuncture" -that is, by "tackling urban problems at appropriate 'pressure points' (that) can cause positive ripple effects throughout entire communities."

Lerner noted that even the poorest cities can boost their standards of living by using techniques like bus rapid transit (BRT), designing multiuse buildings, and encouraging residents to live closer to their workplaces.

Lernier should know what he is talking about, he not only pioneered the Bus Rapid Transit system, he also pioneered innovative city maintenance systems such as:

• using herds of sheep instead of tractors to keep the grass in the city parks -saving the city millions in mowing costs
  
• paying fishermen to collect garbage (by the pound) from the neighboring bay -cleaning the bay in no time while giving the fishermen income year round and saving the city millions in clean-up and maintenance costs
• trading bags of groceries and transit passes to people in slums in return for bags of garbage (cleaning up the streets in the slums which were too narrow for garbage trucks to get into)
  

More after the jump...

Lernier started planning and building Curitiba's Rede Integrada de Transporte in the 70's after doing a cost analysis that showed:

...that "heavy rail" like a subway costs ten times the amount for "light rail" (trolleys), which, in turn, costs ten times a bus system, even with dedicated bus ways. The "light rail" savings usually touted to sway municipal decision makers occur because even trolleys can have relatively fewer drivers than a 40 - 60 passenger bus. Lerner got Volvo to make 270-person accordion buses (300 Brazilians, says Lerner), so that was no longer an issue. The City built attractive transit stops with the look and feel of train stations -- and all the handicapped access equipment -- and got private firms to purchase and operate the buses. The city controls the routes and fares, while the private companies hire drivers and maintain equipment. (Emphasis mine-udc.)

The success of the BRT inspired Bogota's Transmilenio, Mexico City's MetroBus, Jakarta's TransJakarta Busway and a dozen other BRT projects around the world). The system was cheap, easy to roll out and easy to use:

Curitiba has a very simple and practical transportation system. Public transportation consists entirely of buses. There are several different types of bus, each with a different function.

Moving around in a car can be difficult in and around the city centre because of the many one-way streets and constant traffic jams. This makes the public transportation system more attractive if one wants to go there. (Emphasis mine -udc.) The trinary system allows quick access to the city centre for car drivers. Some avenues are spacious and laid out in a grid, and apart from some points around the city centre, Munhoz da Rocha Street and Batel Avenue, traffic jams aren't thus severe.

At the Worldwatch Institute event, Lerner also encouraged:

"greater efforts to turn chronic urban problems into innovative solutions. Curitiba, for example, converted an old landfill into the Open University for the Environment, a school that provides environmental education to citizens and policymakers at little-to-no cost. “In the city, there is no frog that can’t be turned into a prince,” Lerner says.

From wikipedia: "In June 1996, the chairman of the Habitat II summit of mayors and urban planners in Istanbul praised Curitiba as "the most innovative city in the world."

(Btw, Lernier is an architect and an urban planner. His work as mayor of Curitiba and his continuing commitment to improving the urban environment is the kind of action i'd like to see from Filipino architects.)

Image credit: One of the bus stops on Curitiba's pioneering BRT, via wikimedia commons.

anything they can do...

Some notable articles from the latest Sustainable Transport e-update of the Institute of Transportation & Development Policy:

• Guangzhou Announces BRT Implementation, Bans Motorcycles
• Guayaquil, Ecuador Receives 2007 Sustainable Transport Award
• Jakarta BRT Expands to Seven Corridors
• Bus Rapid Transit in Johannesburg: Implications for Mini-bus Taxis

What particularly caught my eye were the lessons we could pick up from our neighbor, Jakarta, that only started implementing its TransJakarta Bus Rapid Transit three years ago but already has 4 lines in operation and will expand the system to 7 lines and 120 kms by year's end.

Four years!! At (most likely) one tenth the cost of light rail! Compare that to how long it took us to get LRT 1 and 2 and the MRT off the ground!

Commissioning the 7th line by year's end "would make TransJakarta the world’s largest BRT system." And that's still less than half the target network of 15 lines called for by the city’s Transportation Master Plan.

Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso also "described plans to begin implementing road pricing this year, which aims to reduce congestion on key travel corridors while raising financial resources for improving the quality of mass transportation services."

Taking their cue from London's Congestion Charging, the road-fees will go to improving mass transit.

Meanwhile, Johannesburg gives us a model of participation and politics in implementing BRT.

In November 2006, Johannesburg City Council approved a full BRT system, to be called Rea Vaya, which is scheduled to open by April 2009.

...

A key selling point for (Johannesburg Mayor Amos) Masondo was the possibility of incorporating the existing minibus taxi industry into the new system as private operators. During apartheid the minibus taxi industry was one of the few places where black South Africans were able to invest. After the African National Congress took power, in order to prevent the creation of powerful mafias, no owner was allowed to own more than ten vehicles. Because of their quasi-legal status, these minibus fleets could never become formal sector businesses. Currently, Johannesburg has one public bus operator and one private bus operator, both of which are subsidized by the Municipality, and many small fleets of minibus taxis that are not subsidized. Rea Vaya will encourage the existing minibus operators to form themselves into legal companies, and bid on the operating contracts, putting them on a level playing field with the current bus operators (emphasis mine-udc).
...
The long-term vision is to develop a system that places over 85% of Johannesburg’s population within 500 meters (.3 miles) of a Rea Vaya trunk or feeder corridor.

We could build support for BRT systems in Metro Manila by encouraging existing bus and jeepney drivers and operators to form consortiums that will bid to operate the lines. The government can provide tax incentives and facilitate the importation of (prescribed) buses and build the stations.

The formula is win-win -the new consortiums would be great at encouraging SMEs and moving our transport operators into more sustainable capital formation. It will also be a great opportunity to move our drivers into salary systems and move away from the traffic inducing boundary system.

Now if we could only get someone to pay attention...

Image credit: a Jakarta BRT station, from the Transjarkata Thread at Skyscraper City.

getting better public transit in metro manila (part 2)

Mobilizing the political will
to improve public transit in Metro Manila
Part 2: A promise of what is possible

So, first we have to change the frame of the conversation: from congestion to social justice.

The consequence of a bad public transport system is not bad traffic (alone) but a fundamental inequity -where those who cannot afford cars or cannot afford to take cars everyday pay a greater share of their household income and pay a greater penalty in time.

A bad public transport system is inequitable. And it is also inefficient.

We need to get better public transport not because we want to get rid of traffic congestion* -but because we want a transport system that does not favor the rich over the poor and the middle class. We want it because we want parents to spend more time with their children and we want students to have more time to study.


The next thing

The next thing we have to do is to provide an alternative vision of what can be.

You cannot change anything by simply complaining about it or pointing out what is wrong. We do not need any more black hats to tell us why something does not work when we know it is not working. We need to see what will work.

You can only inspire and motivate people to change if you show them what can be.

This is where the success of Bogota, Curitiba, Mexico and Jakarta comes in. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are many, many successful examples of bus rapid transit projects.

These projects are successful not only in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of economy and democratic participation.

Unlike massive light rail projects, bus rapid transit is:

• cheaper (at just 1/5 to 1/3 the cost per kilometer vs. fixed rail)
• cheaper to operate (no substations, no high maintenance infrastructure)
• is more flexible (if you design the stations right, you can have service overlaps)
• faster to roll out (transjakarta started in 2004 and will have a total length of 159 kilometers by the end of the decade)
• is more participative (you can ask existing bus operators and drivers to bid to operate the buses -compare that to their options when we go with expensive fixed rail infra)

We need to invite people from these cities to come and talk about their success. We need to show videos of how BRT works and do TV and magazine reports on our transportation options. We need to show the best practices and the best solutions other mega cities are already exploring,

We need to talk about BRT and other alternative transportation systems (like bicycle networks, and bike rental systems). We need to get everyone to ask:

Why not?
and
So why can we do that here?

Up next, Part 3: Building a winning coalition

Image credit: Estación Transmilenio
by caos y silencio

*BTW, next time someone says we need to ---take your choice:

• widen roads,
• build flyovers,
• discipline the driver
• deploy more traffic cops
  
• buy a new computerized traffic signal system or
• build new roads

--to eliminate traffic congestion, challenge them to name ANY CITY in the world that has eliminated traffic congestion by doing any of those actions. I guarantee you, NOT ONE city or region or metropolis in the world has has succeeded using any of those options.

NOT ONE.

There is only ONE PROVEN method to reduce traffic congestion -and that's congestion pricing.

It's been proven in Singapore. It has been very succesful in London. New York is planning to implement it.

getting better public transit in metro manila (part 1)

Mobilizing the political will
to improve public transit in Metro Manila
Part 1: A sense of urgency

This begins my long promised post on how to get better public transportation (in particular: bus rapid transit or BRT) in Metro Manila.

The first thing we have to do

The first thing we have to do is to create a sense of urgency.

To do that, we have to change the frame of the conversation.

Ask anyone in Metro Manila about the "effects of bad public transportation" and invariably they will say bad traffic. Granted that PUV driving behavior (caused by the economic model) does cause traffic chaos, to put that first on the list of adverse effects of bad public transportation is to be myopic.

Traffic congestion is the most visible effect -but it is largely visible to car users. What is invisible and ignored is the effect bad public transportation has on the urban poor and lower middle classes who are dependent on PUVs to get from home to school or to work.

That segment is the fat part of the pyramid, almost 80% of daily person trips in Metro Manila are taken via public transport. Despite the overwhelming size of this cohort, I have yet to see statistics that detail the consequences of the inefficient system on the riding public.

Whatever conversations about public transit that is covered by the papers centers around fare prices and the issues of the operators and drivers. Their regular threats to hold transport strikes and their near constant refrains of the fares being too low to support their livelihood and their complaints about harassment from the MMDA and the local police. (I am not discounting those complaints, only saying that they have become monotonous.)

The questions we need to ask are: what are the economic and social effects of an inefficient public transport on the riding public in general, and the urban poor in particular? What are the comparative efficiency advantages (e.g. -time) of driving a private car vs. taking the bus or jeep? Specifically we need to ask:

1. How much of the household budget does transportation consume? (Particularly for the C,D and E classes.) -and this should cover the costs of car ownership (purchase, maintenance and operation) as well as the costs of fares for all modes of public transit.
2. How much more time does it take to get from home to work or home to school when you take public transit (all modes) vs. a private car?
3. What is the social cost of the inefficiency and bias towards cars? How much less time do parents in families without cars have to spend with their children? Do students have to rent at boarding houses because it is just not feasible to travel from home to school daily?

My own back of the envelope (read: totally unscientific) calculations make me think transportation eats up about 20% of the household budget of middle class families -and that share could rise up to about a third in poorer families.

I suspect that the inefficient PUV system offsets the daily schedule of transit riders by 1.5 to 2 hours a day vs. private car owners. That's about 20 hours a week of bias for car owners.

But again, these are all just estimates. We need to demand that someone study the real numbers -or bring the stats out if there have already been studies.

We need to bring these issues to the public sphere and we need to frame this as an urgent social justice issue.

Imagine the direct impact you could have on the quality of life of the middle class and the urban poor if you could at least halve that time bias. You would be giving parents 10 more hours a week with their families; giving mothers and fathers an extra hour a day to tend to their children; giving students respite from the grueling time spent on the road or giving them the option of not having to pay for room and board just to live closer to school.

We need to make efficient public transport more important than traffic congestion.



Next up: Part 2: A promise of what is possible

Image credit: "63, alone / solo" by yeraze

getting better public transit in metro manila (part 4)

Mobilizing the political will
to improve public transit in Metro Manila
Part 3: Divide and Conquer

This is part four of a series on how to improve public transit in Metro Manila.

Reviewing again the previous posts:

Step One is to change the frame. Improving public transit is not about decongesting traffic. It is about social justice.

Step Two is to show an alternative vision. Discussing what is wrong about the status quo will not bring change by itself. We have to show what is possible.

Step Three is to build a winning political coalition. A political coalition that will shepherd the change through the political process, and bring political pressure to bear to convince the policy wonks and sway the elected officials.

"Winning" presumes a political contest - a battle, and so we cannot win unless we win over or defeat the opposition which brings us to:

Step Four, Dividing and Conquering the Opposition.

Sun Tzu exhorts us to "know your enemy," so the first question is, "Who would be opposed to more efficient public transportation in Metro Manila?"

The answer, of course, is no one.

More so if the premise is social justice. What politically-sane person in the Philippines would stand against something that is about efficiency, serves the public and is pro-poor?

But it would be the height of naivete to think that there would be no opposition. There will be, but their opposition will stand on issues NOT diametrically opposed to efficiency and social justice.

We need to know their interests, issues and goals and use the same to gain leverage for our agenda.

There will be two types of opposition: organized and not. And that nomenclature is split further down to groups who are influential or not.

The biggest, most visible threat would be from organized and influential opposition, which in my book will likely be the Operators and Drivers Associations of the present public transport services (BODAs, JODAs and TODAs). They have, after all, recently and successfully flexed their muscles (giving, what R.O./Y.R. calls Manila's Extreme Sport, a day long uptick in degree of difficulty -though Enrique claims he found no real effect). They also have a long history of protest action.

But as organized as the ODAs are, they are in no way monolithic. To succeed in breaking the opposition, we have to look at the internal faultlines and use their interest to win adherents over to our side.

Drivers, above all, want a predictable income. Under the boundary system, fluctuations in fuel prices, uneven fines, capricious law enforcement and traffic and traffic congestion affects their take home income. Any system that smooths out those fluctuations - that gives them steady income would be preferable.

Operators, meanwhile, want to maximize their profits. As businessmen, they will appreciate a system that provides incentives to their investments.

One other note, the current free-wheeling public transport ecosystem provides an entrepreneurial route from driver, to small operator, to large operator (or transport consortium). A better public transit system can win adherents if it answers those concerns.

The Bus Rapid Transit system, as implemented in many cities, offers viable solutions to each of these concerns.

First of, the dedicated-lane, bus priority traffic system automatically eliminates the congestion and capricious law enforcement concerns of the drivers.

Also, unlike capital intensive Light or Heavy Rail systems, BRT systems provide a pathway for participation for existing transport providers. Drivers and smaller operators can be encouraged to form cooperatives to bid for and to run the services of the BRT. Large consortiums can easily transition and also provides services. Take the example of Mexico's MetroBus, where 70% of the service is run by companies and cooperatives from the ranks of the former drivers and operators of the minibus services that the BRT system replaced.

Becoming service providers for the BRT, under a formalized enterprise, will allow drivers to shift into formal salaries , moving them away the insecurity of the boundary system. They will also have the benefits of formal employments, such as health insurance and social security.

We can also mandate employee ownership of the service firms so that the drivers earn more than their salaries, but also partake of the profits. Their livelihoods will also not be tied down to the fare rates, but their extra income (share of the profits) will be linked to the efficiency of the service.

A properly designed BRT policy and investment program will move small operators from single proprietorships into medium sized business enterprises. We can provide the capital and tax incentives -for example, by having the government buy and own the buses and leasing them back to the operators to reduce the operator's asset risks. The system can professionalize the current large consortiums, encouraging better corporate management.

A properly designed BRT policy will break the ranks of the ODAs and will likely appeal to majority of the drivers and will draw quite a few of the entrepreneurs.

Other opposition

The only possible opposition left will be the companies with vested interests in large infrastructure projects along with politicians who earn kickbacks from these major investments.

They will argue that fixed rail systems are more efficient but their influence can be neutralized by questioning their vested interests. So, too, with politicians who would stand on their side.

Imagine a politician who is not only labelled "anti-poor" for standing against the social justice issues of a more efficient public transport system, but that they could also be questioned for supporting large investments - as having vested interests.

The final other possible group would be an organized motorist group, which presently does not exist as a viable political force, but it is foreseeable that they could coalesce into a front that can wield some influence. Their main concern would be the traffic consequences of appropriating a lane for the BRT, but that easily be traded of with the removal of undisciplined PUV behavior and by arguing that more efficient public transit will actually reduce car use -thereby freeing up the road for more devoted motorists.

If we frame the BRT proposition correctly, and wield the right political levers, we can easily neutralize the opposition listed above.


Next up: Making it work, the mechanics

Image credit: Our Direction by B Tal

organized bus routes...

Though I'm not too keen on Bayani's Fernando's design ethic (what with pink overpasses and pink fences) but his efforts to put together the organized bus route system is commendable. I know they are packaging it as a traffic solution (which gives lie to where the squeaky wheel is in urban planning decisions -pun intended) but it really is a step towards creating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system for Metro Manila.

BRT systems, also known as the "poor man's light rail," have been succesfully deployed in a number of Latin American cities. (Most notably: Curitiba, Brazil; in Bogota, Columbia; and lately, Mexico City, Mexico. BRT provides a cheaper way of organizing transport systems, and with political will, can do wonders for relieving urban gridlock while saving cities money.

It is generally not high on the list of systems recommended by multi-lateral funding agencies, or official aid programs as they can be implemented without expensive foreign engineering consultants or and don't require the recipient city to buy expensive technology from the sponsor country.

BRTs, if deployed correctly, offer a host of benefits apart from better public transport. Some notes from Bogota's Transmillenio:

The air is not pure in Bogota, either. The inefficiency of the public transport system in the Colombian capital is one more problem affecting the quality of life of the population, in addition to the violence associated with the illegal drug trade, the civil war and crime in general.

The mayor's office launched the "Transmilenio" plan in late 2000, aimed at improving transportation services and air quality in Bogota, the third most contaminated city in Latin America.

In two years, Transmilenio has increased the average speed of city buses from 10 kph to 25 kph, slashed the number of fatal traffic accidents and saved 10 million dollars a year in costs related to air pollution by reducing the incidence of respiratory illnesses.

Until the plan took effect, 22,000 outdated buses were used by more than 70 percent of Bogota's seven million residents, while just 19 percent traveled in 850,000 individual cars.

The Bogota bus fleet was too large (more than 3.5 buses for every 1,000 inhabitants), with a life of 14 years per unit and an average speed of 10 kph.

"Passengers spent an average of more than two hours a day in transit," said Transmilenio's chief of planning and administration, Angelica Castro.

The new system includes designated lanes for buses, four-lane roads with stops every 500 m along the meridian, leaving the exterior lanes for non-stop buses.

According to the plan, by 2016 the city will have 388 km of bus lanes, 300 km of bicycle routes and a new bus fleet equipped with catalytic converters to curb pollutants. They public buses will also be designed taking into account the needs of children, the elderly and the disabled.

The program seeks to dissuade the use of individual cars. In the works are a 100-percent hike in parking prices for downtown Bogota, and a 20 percent tax on gasoline. Half of those revenues will go toward financing infrastructure intended to fight air pollution.

-Interpress Service

BF's OBR, combined with a clear commitment fo converting to CNG buses would do wonders for Metro Manila. (Of course, they could do more with the aesthetics.)

The root of our transport problems though lies in how we have tended to view roads as investments, but public transport as a marketplace. -- more in next post.

t.o.d. spelling

Let's get this straight. it's supposed to be Transit Oriented Development NOT Development Funded Transit. Could someone make that clear to the MRT-8 proponents?

From Businessworld article dated September 20, 2005:

"A consortium led by American Transport System Corp. is proposing to develop a 2,300-hectare estate in Angono, Rizal, approximately the size of Makati City, to raise funds for the $907.4-million Metro Rail Transit 8 (MRT-8).

The estate called Palayan ng Bayan will be linked to MRT-8 by a 25-kilometer, six-lane highway the group will build by next year."

"In a proposal to the government, consortium representative, Herve Laumond, said 516 hectares will be initially developed into a special economic zone housing information technology firms, call centers, and wafer plants by 2006.

Also in the consortium are Vinci Construction Grand Projects, Bombardier Transportation, Invensys Foxboro Transportation, Aecom Technology Corp. and Systra."

"The consortium expects a high-end investment in wafer plant with an annual turnover of $500 million-$700 million to funnel, $15 million-$20 million to state coffers and about $10 million-$13 million to the local government of Rizal.

Mr. Laumond said the initial development would be enough to cover expenses for MRT-8 as it would draw $4 billion-$5 billion in direct investment. He said the project would benefit the government in direct income tax amounting to $45 million yearly at current exchange rates. The project will employ 100,000 workers."

So the scuttlebutts: To defray the investment costs, they want to develop an area larger than Makati that will potentially have 100,000 workers -BUT it'll be 25-kilometers from the nearest MRT-8 station which they'll need to connect to the train via a six-lane highway. What's wrong with this picture?

Intent of MRT-8 (mass transit) = less car dependence, less traffic congestion, less sprawl VS. six lane highway+25 kilometers to nearest station = sprawl and traffic congestion

Where will the workers live? Will they take the train to work?

The real-estate deal is just to cover the construction costs, to say nothing of the $100 M they will need to operate this project in the first 5 years.

The government should REALLY REALLY CONSIDER bus rapid transit as a solution. It'll be at a fraction of the cost and won't require these faustian trades. These light and heavy rail projects are starting to look like pork for engineering companies. (BTW, Laumond was also a proponent of MRT-4 and also has his fingers in the Panay Rail project.)

rethinking public transport

So, had enough of the Erap verdict? If you haven't, go visit Roby Alampay's op-ed piece in The Guardian UK (which I consider to be the last word on the matter), then come back here so we can talk about more immediate matters, like the quality of daily life in our megacity.

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Question: If you were running a company and you knew that 78% of your assets traveled through a single channel, wouldn't it be in your strategic interest to that make sure that channel operated as efficiently as possible?

Well, then, what should we do about public transportation in Metro Manila?

Everyday, nearly 8 out of every 10 person trips (that's 1 person, taking one trip, in one vehicle, from one point to another) in our megacity is taken via public transportation.

In 2002, that meant 20M out of 25.7M person trips per day. That's twenty million individual movements. That's the production base of the your megacity's economy going from home, to work, or to school, or to get their daily needs. -That's 78% of the person trips that generates 1/5 (or more) of the national GDP.

It's obvious isn't it? It's management 101 - to become more productive, make your major channels as efficient as possible (more efficient than your minor channels).

So, what have we done to make public transportation more efficient?

We've invested heavily and are planning to expand our investments in an expensive, but still fragmented, light rail network. We're buying back the MRT to the tune of $865-million and throwing in another P6.57-billion to finally connect the northern end of the MRT to the LRT. (And yet, have we thought about connecting one of these lines to the airport?)

We're putting in more monies into the LRT-7 (a private initiative that smells more like a real estate deal), the Northrail, the extension of LRT-1 (LRT-6) to Zapote and are upgrading the PNR service to Laguna. -All these investments in rail infra takes us decades to build. Meanwhile, Jakarta has rolled out 159 kilometers of bus rapid transit in just the last 3 years.

We've put in an Organized Bus Route system (basically just a traffic management tool) to control bus flow on EDSA. We're even flirting with using electric jeepneys (a move I'm personally not too excited about).

All of which will make some dents on demand but will probably still miss by a wide margin in fulfilling the crying needs in public transport.

The MRT barely moves 500,000 people a day, they need to invest more money to up the service to 650K/day. The LRT/Megatren combined barely scratch 400,000 passengers a day. -So those three existing rail systems carry at most, 1M people. If you assume those are roundtrip passengers, then that's 2M person trips per day - less than 10% of the share of public transport. (And you wonder why there are still jeepneys on our roads.)

The coming investments in light rail and high speed commuter rail are all primary trunk transport routes, if we hope to make the megacity more productive, then we have to seriously reconsider reforming and re-investing in the secondary and tertiary transport systems.

I don't have the answers, but I hope seeing those numbers should change your perspective.

As difficult as it is to drive through Metro Manila to get from one point to another in your private car, our most important investments (investments that will bring the most direct returns in quality of life and competitiveness of the metro) don't lie in widening our roads or speeding up automobile traffic -so you can drive faster. It lies in rethinking our tricycles, our jeepneys and buses and the routes they serve.


All transport data from MMUTIS and LTO, c. 2002
via a presentation on BRT in Metro Manila by Dr. Ricardo Sigua NCTS
(ppt file, 1.8mb)

Image credit: toda by aileron

seven

Expanding Mass Transit in Metro Manila

NEDA's given the greenlight to MRT-7. The pricetag? $3.3B, but that doesn't all go to rail:

The scheme calls for a 20-kilometer light rail system integrated with a 20-kilometer highway that will link the North Triangle area in Quezon City with San Jose del Monte City in Bulacan province.

“So all in all, this will be a 40-kilometer project and will come at no cost to the government (since it would be funded through the BOT scheme),” Santos explained.

The rail and road network is expected to cost as much as $1.3 billion, while the commercial and residential developments that are expected to rise along the route would cost another $2 billion.

Wait a minute. The "commercial and residential developments that are expected to rise along the route" will cost $2B and is part of the BOT?

Like MRT-8, this seems to be more of a real estate deal than a public infra project.

I'd like to see how all that "development" is going to be distributed. I'm betting most of it will be along the 20 kilometer highway, NOT along the 20-kilometer rail route. So much for leveraging the transit investment. More like the investors are leveraging government funds for their investments.

I have not seen any detailed plans, although they've given the general locations of the 14 stations, we do need to pay close attention to how these stations are designed and sited. For example: will the locations make it easy for commuters to transfer to connecting jeepneys? (To get to UP from the University Station? or to Ateneo from the Tandang Sora station?)

What will also be important is how the local government and the LTO respond to the plans for the stations. Quezon City should re-zone around the stations to get more density and more riders. The LTO and LTFRB should reconsider jeepney routes to feed the stations.

I would have much rather a Bus Rapid Transit project in place of light rail. The $1.2 billion (for the railway) would have brought at least 60 kilometers of BRT. Plus, a BRT system would have allowed the existing transport franchise holders (jeeps and buses) to possibly participate in the venture.

Image credit: Proposed general location of University Ave. Station
from Universal LRT Corporation

the mexicans, too!

The BBC reports that Mexico is taking a page from Shanghai.

They are requiring their public officials to bike to work at least once a month. (If they live too far from their office, then they can take public transport.)

Officials in Mexico City have been ordered to leave their cars behind and cycle to work once a month.

The new city regulation that has just come into force is aimed at reducing traffic and pollution in one of the most congested cities in the world.

About four million cars travel every day through the city of more than 18m people - and officials say their aim is to cut pollution as well as disease.

Tax incentives are envisaged for firms encouraging alternative transport.

Those officials who cannot cycle because of health reasons, or because they live too far from work, will be allowed to use public transport, but not their vehicle.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard proposed the programme last year - and was the first to get on his bicycle from his home south of the city to his office in the central Zocalo.

His Corridors of Unmotorised Movement: Pedal your City comes complete with a guidebook on "urban cycling" - including security-related details like what to wear and how to get spotted by motorists.

Only 0.7% of all journeys in the capital are by bicycle - and Mr Ebrard aims to increase to 2% in three years' time and 5% in six years.

At the same time, the mayor says he will improve public transport, including building more special bus lanes.

Check out those gems:

• Tax incentives for companies that encourage biking to work
• Increasing biking's transport mode share from 0.7% to 5% in six years.
• Improving public transport (NOT JUST IMPROVING TRAFFIC! -and of course, all this via bus rapid transit)

Maybe we should require all senatorial and congressional candidates (along with pretenders to local office) to take public transit or bike across the metro.

I'm tired of debates - show us how good you are at biking across the metro or navigating the public transport system (with a minimum of factotums) and maybe we can pick the standouts from the pool of inferior choices.

Image credit: Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, from the BBC Online.

links monday 073007

If you've been too busy to read through those very interesting links I've been putting in the Quick Links and Notable Posts on the Metro at the bottom of this page (both list are sourced from my del.icio.us links here, and here) , as well as the links to the Notable articles on top of my sidebar, I've decided to (*fingers crossed*) devote Mondays to a roundup of those links.

The articles are great reads and hopefully add to the lessons we can learn and ideas we can implement in our own metropolis.

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Complete Streets

In USA Today, John Ritter reports on "Complete Streets" -the growing movement to design streets to accommodate all modes of transport -pedestrians, bikers, public transit and yes, private cars.

A growing number of states and local governments are rejecting a half-century of transportation practice and demanding that streets accommodate all types of travel, not just automobiles.

Complete streets are "designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and bus riders of all ages and abilities are able to safely move along and across a complete street."

I've discussed this topic extensively in my series on Rethinking our Streets.

See also the Complete Streets Coalition (US-based) for more ideas and links.

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Paris and Public Transportation

In the New York Times, Serge Schmeman talks about what Paris is doing right:

"...to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike."

The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist, has vowed to reduce car traffic in the city by 40 percent by 2020.

He’s serious about it..two years ago the city laid down a granite divider between the bus-only lane and the cars, squeezing private cars from three lanes to two. Taxis and bicycles may use the bus lane.

At the same time, every bus stop was newly equipped with a screen that told you how long the wait was for the bus. During rush hour, when the cars stand still along Boul’ Mich, there’s nothing better than zooming past them in a bus.

And Delanoë’s latest gambit in the anti-car war is the bicycle. Last week, the city started a program to rent out 10,000 bikes ( a program copied from cities such as Barcelona, Lyon, Lausanne and Geneva).

Seems like human powered public transport is the way to go.

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Transforming Mexico City

Meanwhile, NYT also reports that Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is "trying to do what some might consider impossible: transform his megalopolis into a place that's more healthy, livable and even fun."

Since taking office in December, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has imposed tougher traffic rules to make pedestrians safer, installed security cameras in high-crime neighborhoods and required city staffers to ride their bicycles to work once a month.

The city trucked in sand to build ''urban beaches'' at seven public pools, screened outdoor movies and inaugurated ''bicycle Sundays'' when thousands of cyclists, skaters and pedestrians take over the main avenues. Ebrard even invited former Vice President Al Gore to lecture city residents about climate change this week.

...

The mayor's goal is transforming the city into Latin America's latest model of urban renewal. The big idea behind these relatively inexpensive measures is that by encouraging happiness, rather than solely economic growth, he just might change residents' image of their city -- and themselves.

''For us, it's important to continue promoting healthy living, and that means taking back public spaces to create a safe, better city,'' Ebrard explains.

Not sure we can try the "Urban Beaches" (an idea they borrowed from the French) until we get the Pasig to an acceptable level of clean, but I'm certainly all for requiring public officials to take bikes (or public transit) to work.

The big picture though is that this is Mexico City we're talking about! If they can try it, why can't we?

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Chinese cities want to speed up urbanization

Lastly, the Economist reports on the race to urbanize China. They highlight the case of Chongqing in western china and its race to make the "vast municipality (the area is as big as Scotland) an oasis of modernity in China's backward west (and its goal:) by 2020 the municipality must be 70% 'urbanised'."

The municipality's official population is more than 30m, which if it were a single city would make it one of the largest in the world. To achieve the 2020 target, country-dwellers must move into urban areas at a rate of more than 500,000 a year.

Chongqing is a "microcosm of China's struggle to move millions from rural to urban areas." For all the travails of the rapid pace of urbanization (pollution, congestion, slums) China is determined to move its vast population into its cities for very rational economic reasons. They seem to understand that the growth of their economy is directly related to the growth of their cities.

A concept that somehow we haven't yet embraced. (Take a look at this gapminder chart of how urbanization is related to per capita income.)

Image credit: "Nowhere to run now, baby" by Darwin Bell

urban happiness

I hope you caught last week's article in the Globe and Mail covering Bogota's Urban Happiness Movement. It's been covered by other blogs (caveat: a few splogs on that list) but it hasn't hit any of the pinoy blogs, I think.

It features, of course, Enrique Peñalosa -one of my favorite ex-mayors of any city. He visited the Philippines early this year to address the League of Cities.

Some the nuggets of goodness from the article:

On a clear, cloudless afternoon, Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, leaves his office early in order to pick up his 10-year-old son from school. As usual, he wears his black leather shoes and pinstriped trousers. As usual, he is joined by his two pistol-packing bodyguards. And, as usual, he travels not in the armoured SUV typical of most public figures in Colombia, but on a knobby-tired mountain bike.

...On most days, this would be a radical and perhaps suicidal act. But today is special.

Ever since citizens voted to make it an annual affair in 2000, private cars have been banned entirely from this city of nearly eight million every Feb. 1. On Dia Sin Carro, Car Free Day, the roar of traffic subsides and the toxic haze thins. Buses are jam-packed and taxis hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands of people have followed Mr. Peñalosa's example and hit the streets under their own steam.

Hey! Two things I'd like to see in Metro Manila: Car Free Day and a Mayor riding a bike to and from work.

Car Free Day is just one of the ways that Mr. Peñalosa helped to transform a city once infamous for narco-terrorism, pollution and chaos into a globally lauded model of livability and urban renewal. His ideas are being adopted in cities across the developing world...

His policies may resemble environmentalism, but they are no such thing. Rather, they were driven by his conversion to hedonics, an economic philosophy whose proponents focus on fostering not economic growth but human happiness.

So Makati has again regained pole position in tax collection, but I wonder which of our cities would top a happiness index?

“There are a few things we can agree on about happiness,” (Peñalosa) says. “You need to fulfill your potential as a human being. You need to walk. You need to be with other people. Most of all, you need to not feel inferior. When you talk about these things, designing a city can be a very powerful means to generate happiness.”

Can we shape our cities so we generate happiness? By some counts, we already rank 7th in the world for happiness, how much higher can we get if our cities were designed "to generate happiness"?

And if you think our cities are too far gone, chew on this:

In the mid-1990s, Bogota was, citizens recall, un enfierno – a living hell. There were 3,363 murders in 1995 and nearly 1,400 traffic deaths. The city suffered from the cumulative effects of decades of civil war, but also from explosive population growth and a dearth of planning. Wealthy residents fenced off their local public parks. Drivers appropriated sidewalk space to park cars. The air rivalled Mexico City's for pollution. Workers from the squalid shanties on the city's south end spent as much as four hours every day commuting to and from Bogota's wealthy north.

...

Like cities across the Third World, Bogota was looking to North American suburbs as a development model, even though only 20 per cent of people owned cars.

The tide changed with Mr. Peñalosa's election in 1998.

“A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can't be both,” the new mayor announced. He shelved the highway plans and poured the billions saved into parks, schools, libraries, bike routes and the world's longest “pedestrian freeway.”

He increased gas taxes and prohibited car owners from driving during rush hour more than three times per week. He also handed over prime space on the city's main arteries to the Transmilenio, a bus rapid-transit system based on that of Curitiba, Brazil.

Bogotans almost impeached their new mayor. Business owners were outraged. Yet by the end of his three-year term, Mr. Peñalosa was immensely popular and his reforms were being lauded for making Bogota remarkably fairer, more tolerable and more efficient.

Moreover, by shifting the budget away from private cars, Mr. Peñalosa was able to boost school enrolment by 30 per cent, build 1,200 parks, revitalize the core of the city and provide running water to hundreds of thousands of poor. (emphasis mine -udc)

In under a decade, Bogota went from a "living hell to living well" all because of a "radical campaign to return streets from cars to people" that is "now a model for the world."

Image credit: "Al infinito... y mucho más allá..."
by mariantonia

brt up close

The public transportation system
we could have in Metro Manila

Here's an even more in depth look at bus rapid transit -how it works and how it is managed, featuring Bogota's Transmilenio.

The video is from The Oil Drum and was produced by Streetfilms, the same folks who gave you the documentary on Bogota's Ciclovia.

Just so you know that BRT systems are not only about improving traffic, but is basically about social justice through efficient transportation, read more about the Transmilenio's impact on the urban poor from the BoP folks in NextBillion. They write:

For Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogotá who drove the initial planning and implementation of Transmilenio, making high quality transportation accessible to Bogotá's low-income population was central to the project. By attacking the public transportation crisis, characterized by "penny wars," gaps in service, unequal pricing, high levels of pollution, and serious traffic congestion, the new BRT system aimed to reduce inequality. This included not only disparities in the quality of transportation services, but also long-term economic and educational inequities perpetuated by a lack of mobility and access between high and low-income areas of the city. [WRI has an interesting feature piece available that also describes the breadth and vision of Peñalosa's urban reform efforts].

Hmmm. So "public transportation crisis" that is characterized by "penny wars, gaps in service, unequal pricing, high levels of pollution, and serious traffic congestion."

Does that sound familiar?


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And this serves as a great prelude to my next post: "Getting better public transportation in Metro Manila."