Fuel Consumption and Environmental Impact of Rickshaw Bans in Dhaka

January 3, 2008 | By | 45 Replies More

Author: Syed Saiful Alam Shovan
rickshaw.jpg

Most trips in Dhaka are short in distance, usually one to five kilometers. These trips are perfect of Rickshaws. Rickshaws are cheap and popular mode of transport over short distances. Rickshaws are safe, environmentally friendly and do not rely on fossil fuels. Rickshaws support a significant portion of the population, not only the pullers, but also their families in the villages, the mechanics who fix the rickshaws, as well as street hawkers who sell them food. From the raw materials to the finished product the Rickshaw employs some 38 different professions. Action needs to be taken to support the Rickshaw instead of further banning it in Dhaka. The combined profits of all Rickshaws out earn all other passenger transport modes (bus, rail, boats and airlines) combined. In Dhaka alone, Rickshaw pullers combine to earn 20 million taka a month.

We think that over the coming holiday of Eid du Ajah, new Rickshaw bans will be put into action on roads in Dhaka. Eid was used in the past to place new bans on roads in Dhaka. Last Eid many roads were declared Rickshaw free without public support or approval. By banning Rickshaws roads are clogged with increased private car use as well as increased parking by cars. Banning of Rickshaws on major roads increases the transportation costs for commuters. Not only due to longer trips to avoid roads with bans in effect, but also due to actually having to take more expensive forms of transport such as CNG or Taxi, where in the past a Rickshaw would suffice. The environmental impact of banning Rickshaws is obvious because it exchanges a non-motorized form of transport for a motorized form of transport, thus increasing the pollution and harming the environment. Rickshaw bans harm the most vulnerable in society, mainly the sick, poor, women, children and the elderly; generally those who can not afford or do not feel comfortable on other forms of public transport. To ban Rickshaws also hurts small businesses that rely on them as a cheap and reliable form of transporting their goods. Rickshaws are ideal for urban settings because they can transport a relatively large number of passengers while taking up a small portion of the road. In 1998 the data showed that Rickshaws took up 38% of road space while transporting 54% of passengers in Dhaka . The private cars on the other hand, took up 34% of road space while only transporting 9% of the population (1998 DUTP). This data does not include the parking space on roads that cars take up in Dhaka . If included this would further raise the amount of space taken up by private cars. Every year the Rickshaw saves Bangladesh 100 billion taka in environmental damage.

The government makes many efforts to reduce traffic congestion in Dhaka but with no success. Blaming Rickshaws for traffic congestion and subsequently banning them from major roads has not had the desired affect. Traffic is still as bad now as it was before the Rickshaws were banned on major roads. Rickshaws thus can not be seen as the major cause of traffic congestion. Instead one should look towards private cars and private car parking on roads as the major cause of traffic congestion. The space gained by banning Rickshaws is often used for private car parking. The current trend in transport planning reduces the mobility of the majority for the convenience of the minority. The next time a ban on Rickshaws on another road is discussed please take into consideration who is being hurt and who is being helped. For a better transport system in Dhaka we need to create a city wide network of Rickshaw lanes. If this is done Dhaka can reduce its fuel usage dramatically as well its pollution. We ask your help in our fight to keep Dhaka a Rickshaw city. Any information or help is very much appreciated and sought after. I write you this letter to describe the difficulties we are facing and some solutions but they are by no means exhaustive and we look forward to your help and input.

Author is the Volunteer of Save Environment Movement৷ Email: shovan1209@yahoo.com

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Category: Opinion

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  1. THE BENGAL GAZE: The Rickshaw as an Endangered Species : Pedicab News | February 29, 2008
  1. Linda Lonnqvist says:

    Has a ban actually taken place? Hope not. Good luck campaigning!

  2. Yasmin Chowdhury says:

    Pricing public transit: learning from Bangkok
    Yasmin Chowdhury
    yasmin_cho@yahoo.com

    When I first visited Bangkok in 1994, I got around the city mostly by bus. The buses were slow, the streets congested, and I soon learned that I could only make one plan for the morning and one for the afternoon, as it might take a couple hours to move about.
    Then the city started to build their skytrain. I waited with great anticipation for its completion. It seemed to require a lot more time and a lot more money (OK, just two years of delay and three times over budget) than originally anticipated, and the fares are admittedly quite high, but it was finally built—if never finished. (I saw an article in a Thai newspaper about people very upset that the planned line to their area had never been built; meanwhile, the pilings leading to the now domestic-only airport have been converted into advertising posts.)
    To be quite honest, I love the skytrain. Sure, the cement structure looming overhead is ugly. Sure, most of the stations lack escalators, making them inaccessible to those in wheelchairs, and exceedingly difficult for those lugging heavy bags or luggage. Sure, the two lines only cover a very limited portion of Bangkok. Sure, it’s expensive. Sure, despite all the hassles, the trains are often packed. Sure, the stations are congested and I sometimes have to push through people to reach my train. But at least I can see a little of the city while I travel, and I can now get around to the stops on the line quickly, allowing myself to visit far more places in a day.
    Though the skytrain certainly makes moving around the city much easier (if you can afford it), it obviously didn’t alleviate the congestion, as the government then opened a very limited subway system. The first time I tried to ride it, about a year after it opened, it was closed for two weeks due to an accident. I finally rode it a couple years after that, and discovered that it cost about US$0.50 to ride what it would take me ten minutes to walk. That seemed outrageous, and I don’t love riding up and down long escalators and traveling in tunnels. Since the Metro doesn’t seem to go much beyond the skytrain, I stick to the skytrain.
    But now, after spending billions of dollars on those mass transit systems, and despite having an existing extensive bus system, and more roads than most Asian cities of their level of economic development, the government is now planning bus rapid transit—a bit like a street-level trolley, but with buses instead of trams. Of course, that too is delayed—but the cost is a fraction of that for the skytrain and Metro.
    A more careful look at those costs reveals something interesting and of considerable relevance as Dhaka plans its public transit system. According to various Web sites, the skytrain, which opened in 1999, cost about US$1.5 billion for 24 kilometers. That amounts to US$62.5 million per kilometer. Of course, things were cheaper back then.
    Construction of the Metro began back in 1996, but it wasn’t finished until 2004. According to Wikipedia, “The project suffered multiple delays not only because of the 1997 economic crisis, but also due to challenging civil engineering works of constructing massive underground structures deep in the water-logged soil upon which the city is built.” Interesting. Fortunately we don’t have those troubles in Dhaka (ahem!).
    As for cost, the Metro cost a mere US$ 2.75 billion for 21 km, or US$130.95 million per kilometer—just over twice that of the skytrain. Apparently burrowing underground, dealing with flooding issues, providing ventilation, and so on is much more expensive than building above our heads. Meanwhile, again quoting Wikipedia, “ridership has settled down to around 180,000 riders daily — considerably lower than projections of over 400,000, despite fares being slashed in half from 12-38 baht to 10-15 baht per trip. As of 2006, fares range between 14-36 baht per trip.” With an exchange rate as I write of 32 baht to one US dollar, that’s a mighty high fare. Good thing Bangladeshis are wealthier than Thais (??).
    Meanwhile, the anticipated cost for the BRT is 33.4 million for 36 kilometers. Admittedly, anticipated costs are often far less than actual costs, but still, at US$0.93 million per kilometer, that’s a bargain compared to the Metro or the skytrain—even more so when considering it’s being built last, when prices are highest. At 67 times less than the skytrain and 141 times less than the Metro, even with significant cost increases, it will still be far more affordable than its public transit predecessors.
    Of course, operational costs are another issue. Buses require fuel, trains electricity. Buses tend to require more maintenance, tires wear down frequently, and buses have to be replaced far more often than trains. While it is cheaper to build a BRT system initially, the higher operational costs might mean that, in the long term, a tram system would be more affordable—tram meaning street-level light rail, not something up in the sky or underground, which greatly multiplies the costs.
    Which is all to say, I’m all for public transit. So, apparently, are Thais: last I checked, hotels and housing advertise their proximity to the various public transit options. Apparently people are sick and tired of sitting in cars stuck in traffic jams. In public transit, you can sit back and read a book while you ride, look out the window (preferably not at tunnels), eavesdrop on your neighbor’s conversation, and otherwise amuse yourself without risking crashing into someone once the traffic moves again.
    But when considering spending millions or billions on public transit, it would make sense to invest it wisely, in a system that will be the most extensive and least expensive, and thus offer the best value for the money. At 141 times per kilometer less to build BRT than Metro, we could both have a far more extensive system, meeting far more people’s needs, and lower fares. Sounds like a bargain to me!

  3. Yasmin Chowdhury says:

    Thoughts on Metro, from a well-traveled resident
    Yasmin Chowdhury
    yasmin_cho@yahoo.com

    The recent decision to build a Metro (underground rail) system in Dhaka has met with a range of responses. On one side is the “halleluyah” response—at last, government is taking public transit seriously, with plans to invest serious funds (at least $3.2 billion US dollars) into making life easier for the masses.
    On the other side rises the practical question: how feasible is the plan, how much will eventually get built, will it actually function, and might not a different form of public transit—say, a tram or trolley, or Bus Rapid Transit—achieve similar benefits for about a hundred times less money per kilometer?
    On the bright side, traveling in cities with a Metro is a far different experience from traveling in those without one. Where I grew up, there is no developed system for public transit, and it is virtually impossible to get around without a car. Since I let my driver’s license expire about a decade ago, I feel like a child when I visit, reliant on adults to take me places. Meanwhile, when I visit big modern cities, like Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York City, or San Francisco, or any number of European cities, I can easily move around on my own.
    But while the independent mobility is a blessing, with it comes a significant downside. When traveling underground, we fail to experience the city we are in. Living in Boston and frequently traveling by subway, I had many of the stops memorized, and could easily get around underground—but I had no idea what was over my head. When I finally got into the habit of walking through the city following the subway lines but above ground, I realized that only now was I gaining a perspective of where buildings, monuments, and important parts of the city are in relation to each other—not in terms of a subway map, but in terms of actual physical layout. In the process, I realized how little I had actually understood, all those years of living there, about the true layout of Boston—or of what is to be found in various neighborhoods that I had ever only passed under. The parts of the city I knew best were those I walked in, or where the subway emerged into a street-level trolley, and there was a sense of connection between the passengers and the street life out our windows.
    When traveling underground, we are unaware—and thus often unconcerned—about the situation at ground level. Passing under a slum, we don’t pause to reflect on the lives of the people there, and whether something couldn’t be done to make it better, or on why trash is thrown here and there, or how desolate some of the streets look…but we do notice those things when traveling on the surface, and there is the possibility that from noticing, we will go on to change it.
    This has a direct practical side as well for business owners; when traveling at ground level, we can see shops and other amenities. Oh, that’s where I can buy that—or oh, that looks like a pleasant restaurant! And knowing where it is and how to access it, there is the possibility of going back someday. This is both a far more amusing way to pass the time when traveling then in looking at tunnel walls, but also is good for the businesses we pass.
    Then of course there are the practical matters. I remember seeing a map of the subway system in Washington, D.C. which showed various “planned” routes. I remember seeing the same map year after year, and being surprised that they were never built. Short on funds? Similarly, I read in the newspaper in Bangkok that the sky train was supposed to extend far beyond the existing network. That hasn’t happened, and the sky train itself took many years to build in part, I hear, due to corruption. Meanwhile, the new Metro in Bangkok doesn’t go much beyond the sky train. What then are the chances that Dhaka will succeed in building all it plans? If the existing plans prove unaffordable, as the price of materials continues to rise, how much will a very limited system do to reduce traffic congestion or make traveling easier?
    Meanwhile, building a subway system requires building a lot of tunnels. The funny thing about tunnels is, they have to be accessed from the street. This involves a lot of big holes, and while those holes are in place, streets are closed down. So congestion will be significantly worse for the years during which the Metro system is built.
    There is also the issue of crowding on the subway. I was in New York City recently, and given the intense street-level congestion, when going too far to walk, I tried the subway. It was certainly better than being stuck in traffic, but of course I had no idea where I was, and I couldn’t decipher the thick New Yorker accent of the conductor. On one trip, the train was so packed that I couldn’t see out the windows to read the names of the stops. This made arriving at my destination a bit of a challenge, and left me as clueless as ever about the geography of Manhattan.
    The sky train is often packed in Bangkok, with barely room to stand. Thais are polite, and I have never had a man grab me. Unfortunately, I can’t say that for my experience of riding in crowded subways in Boston, and I have heard horror stories about the system in Mexico, which apparently had to provide separate carriages for women to prevent sexual harassment on the packed trains.
    Then there are those lovely escalators down to the stations. Where there are hills, or where the system must go under high rise buildings, stations must be built far below ground. Some of those escalators seem to go on forever. Stepping onto those moving stairs with the ground so far below as to seem to belong almost to another planet always makes my head spin. I was relieved, on a recent trip to D.C., to discover that a Bangladeshi colleague had the same experience, only worse. He insisted on taking the lift. Of course the lifts are intended mostly for the disabled, those with small children, or those with luggage, so one sometimes must wait a long time for it. Between long lines for lifts and the crowded situations of the trains, it sometimes feels as if we have simply shifted a portion of our traffic congestion below ground.
    Speaking of traffic congestion, it helps to remember that people need to be able to get to and from the public transit stops. Getting from one stop to another in little time is a great convenience, but the benefits of that convenience are rapidly diminished when it is difficult to get from public transit to one’s actual destination. I made a mistake in Bangkok once and got off at the wrong subway stop. As I came up to the street, I realized that where I needed to go was on the other side of a highway, with no provision for crossing. I could either go back underground, pay again, then wait for another train to come along to take me just one more stop, or I could risk my life running across the highway. Needless to say, I ran.
    In cities with broken sidewalks, and sidewalks blocked by parked cars, and barbed wire and cement medians to prevent people from crossing the street, getting to and from public transit becomes a daunting challenge. Anyone in their right mind would choose to drive instead, if they had the option, thus defeating in large part the point of the public transit in the first place: to woo people away from their cars. That is, public transit doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it is part of the city, and it is meant to connect places not just along the tracks, but throughout the city. If people can’t easily get to the stops on foot, or on rickshaw, then there is little point in building the system in the first place.
    Then there is that lovely dream of the uncongested streets of Dhaka, once our Metro system is built. How many large, crowded cities with crowded Metros have streets free of traffic jams? Let’s face it, moving through a city—even at a good pace—underground just isn’t that pleasant an experience. Subway stations are often hot and smelly. Homeless people tend to use them as urinals, and there are always those aggressive people who insist on smoking despite all the signs. If subways freed up the streets, then all the passengers who could afford a car or taxi would go back to riding in one.
    I remember once being late for the airport in Boston and figuring that rather than go all that way below ground, and change trains twice, and move at the snail’s pace the Boston subway often goes at—it is the oldest subway system in the US and thus the least modern—I would take a taxi. Oops. Of course it took even longer, thanks to all the traffic, and I missed my plane. Yet Boston’s subway system is far more extensive than Dhaka’s is likely ever to be, and it is easy to walk in Boston, and there is a good bus system to complement the subway, and the population is a fraction of Dhaka’s. So why are there still traffic jams, when the Metro is supposed to eliminate them?
    I’m sure the decision was made in good faith. Perhaps the planners involved have not spent much time in the major cities of the world, and experienced both their subways and the traffic situation above ground. Perhaps they feel that people enjoy being below ground, or that the city is best experienced as little as possible—that is, either underground, or safely insulated in a steel box. No doubt they consider the expenditure of a mere few billion dollars quite reasonable, pocket change really. Perhaps they are too busy to read the Strategic Transport Plan which was meant to map out the best transport plan for the future, and which found that a Metro would offer no significant improvements over surface public transit, and thus there is no justification to build it.
    Even allowing that a few billion dollars is a minor sum which should involve little thought or planning before expending, I would still suggest that when Dhaka’s city planners make their final decision about an efficient, fast, affordable, high quality system of public transit, they should be careful not to miss the boat. It’s a lot more expensive and more technically difficult to build and operate an underground system than a surface one.
    We would get a far more extensive system, with far lower fares or less government subsidy, if we built a surface rather than an underground system. The system could be built a lot faster than a Metro, and with a lot less disruption of traffic during its construction. That issue of fares is important—around the world, public transit tends to be expensive, and yet still highly subsidized by government. The more expensive the system is to build and maintain, the higher the fares and the subsidies, and the less that will eventually get built.
    People could see their city out the windows while riding, gaining both a sense of perspective and of knowledge of what is happening around them. A less expensive system could be started quickly, and gradually expanded. Ensuring that people can walk around the city would not only make the public transit system viable, but would help reduce congestion by shifting some short distance trips to walking. The money to fix our footpaths, and the political will to ban car parking on them, should not be more difficult to find than the billions planned for the Metro.
    Public transit is definitely the way to go—but not all public transit was created equal, and leaping onto the wrong train won’t help us reach our final destination.

  4. Maruf Rahman says:

    The ground floor: for parking or for people?
    Maruf Rahman
    marufrbd@yahoo.com

    Traveling through a section of Dhaka recently, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. A new building, going up on one side of the road, was true to the new theory and rules of construction: the ground floor is left empty and open, for parked cars, while the upper floors are meant for people (homes, workplaces, shops, etc.). On the other side of the street were existing buildings, with the ground floor occupied by shops, and dwellings above. Despite the poor condition of the footpath, many people were outside, walking and milling about. The street was lively, with much to see and look at.
    As I continued along, I passed other new buildings where the ground floor is occupied by car parking. Anyone wishing to access a service along that portion of the street must first climb up at least one flight of stairs. A popular restaurant spans the 2nd and 3rd floor of a building, while a handful of cars occupy the ground floor—and of course still spill out over the footpath. When we discover that simply vacating the ground floor for car parking isn’t enough, then what—will we keep moving higher and higher up, giving more and more space to cars? Will we build expensive underground parking lots for cars, even though we can’t provide affordable housing for all our people?
    I thought about my own situation, in a ground floor office with a constant flow of visitors. The ready access to the street makes it inviting, and those visitors are the lifeblood of our work. I thought about the people I know who live or work on the ground floor, and the shortage of housing for different people’s needs, and the current trends to shift people to the upper levels and reserve the ground floor for parked cars. Where would we all go, if we are evicted by car parking?
    In shopping malls and in multi-storey buildings, the shops on the lower floors command the highest rents. When people walk, they don’t look up; they observe what is at their level. The ground floor is of great commercial importance, because it is the most visible and the most accessible. People will only notice upper-floor shops and businesses if they make an effort, and a further effort is required—even if there is a lift—to access them. They will never attain the easy flow of those on the ground floor. Why give our most valuable commercial real estate to cars?
    When we live on the ground floor, or on a lower floor, it is easy for us to go in and out. If we return home and discover we have neglected to buy milk or eggs, we can easily go out to the neighborhood shop. We can visit others, or partake of the street life. When we live high up in an apartment building, the prospect of waiting for the lift, and riding it for many floors, is often enough to convince us to stay home in front of the TV rather than venturing back out again.
    Further, when the ground floor is occupied by parked and moving cars, there is little room or safety for those on foot. Even on the footpath, we must always be on the alert for cars driving onto the footpath to park, or over it to access a building. As we walk along, we see not shops or restaurants, not signs of human life, but rather parked cars. Rather than interesting and lively streetscapes that give us incentive to walk—and inspire affection for our surroundings—we face steel and cement. When we enter buildings, we pass not through doors meant for people, but through parking lots full of cars.
    In parks and empty lots, people seeking recreation and enjoyment must vie for space with the cars. We begin to suspect that the city was created not for us, but for our vehicles. We are encouraged to cross streets underground or by bridges, because the street level is for cars. We are told that our problems will be solved by building public transit—below ground. Our housing, shops, restaurants, and workplaces are shifted to the upper floors. As human life at ground level gives way to cars, we begin to feel that we are the invaders of the city, and it is cars who fully belong. Certainly this is evident on many streets, where people are prevented from crossing by barbed wire, giving a prison-like environment to our streets and a very clear message to those on foot.
    But as we give more and more of our space away to cars, as we retreat further and further from the streets and the street level in order to make space for cars, perhaps we should question how much we gain, and how much we lose, by doing so. One thing should be clear by now: there can never be enough space for cars. However much we give them, they will always demand more. No city has solved its traffic or parking problems by building more roads or providing more parking; demand always outpaces supply.
    But those cities who have reversed the trends, and actively taken space away from cars and given it back to people, have discovered that, ironically, their parking and congestion problems actually lessen. When people can no longer easily park for free throughout the city, they question the need to take the car for short trips. When there is less space on the road for cars and more for pedestrians and cyclists, more people walk and cycle. When we reassert that the streets are for people, people regain the streets—and the city.
    Perhaps it’s all a bit like the schoolyard bully. He demands lunch money from his peers, and they hand it over. He and his friends take over the yard, and send everyone else into a corner. The more you give him, the more he takes. How can we make him stop? Isn’t he ever satisfied? Then one day, the other kids get together and take him on, and he relents. The kids again get to spend their lunch money on themselves, and play freely in the yard. They look at each other, and shrug, and laugh: how could we ever have been so foolish, to think that he would become satisfied and stop demanding more? And now that we are back in control, enjoying what always should have been ours, we are never going back! We will reoccupy the ground floor, reoccupy our cities, and only give to cars what extra space we can afford to give away, without losing our rights, our footpaths, our streets and the most essential parts of our buildings.

  5. World Carfree Network says:

    PRESS RELEASE – Aug. 16, 2005

    DHAKA CONTINUES WITH RICKSHAW BANS, DESPITE NEW WORLD BANK POLICY

    Five months ago the World Bank reversed its policy and stopped supporting bans of cycle rickshaws on the main roads of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, after an international campaign led by World Carfree Network. Despite the Bank‘s change in policy, the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) is planning to ban rickshaws from two more major routes (Elephant Road and Shapla Chattar) by the end of this month. The DCC also has plans to ban rickshaws from three other major thoroughfares, Progasti Sarani, Bangla Motor and Rokeya Sarani.

    World Carfree Network is dismayed by this new step backward in Dhaka. Our hopes were raised by the World Bank decision earlier this year to change its anti-rickshaw policy because cycle rickshaws are a key form of sustainable and affordable transportation in Bangladesh. Rickshaw bans betray a policy bias in favor of the wealthy minority (only 9 percent of Dhaka’s population) who own cars. The importance of Dhaka’s 300,000 to 500,000 rickshaws to the local economy and to the lives of many low-income pullers, as well as to women, children and the elderly, who rely on rickshaws for transport, should not be overlooked.

    The Bangladeshi Daily Star quotes Dhaka Deputy Traffic Commissioner Anser Uddin Khan Pathan saying that the ban will make commuters “happy” because it will reduce traffic congestion, but he adds that no new busses will be added to provide for rickshaw passengers. In fact, past experiences with Dhaka roads where rickshaws have been banned indicate that in some cases congestion actually increases and air quality almost certainly decreases. The fact is that cycle rickshaws produce no toxic emissions and take up far less road space than motorized vehicles, as observed by a policy paper of the Dhaka transport authority.

    A February 2, 2005 letter from the World Bank’s director Christine Wallich to the Dhaka Transport Coordination Board stated unequivocally that the bank would not support future transport projects banning non-motorized transport when the costs outweigh the benefits. World Carfree Network believes Dhaka’s city government could much more effectively curb congestion and increase air quality by barring cars from central areas, prohibiting parking on major streets, creating separate lanes for buses and rickshaws, and promoting bicycles.

    With oil prices skyrocketing, numerous cities in the developed world are scrambling to obtain sustainable, non-motorized transport. In the European Union, climate change and energy security are crucial policy concerns and several cities have moved to limit or ban cars from central streets. For example, Paris is considering a carfree zone that would cover four entire districts of the downtown area.

    International sustainable-development experts and environmental-protection groups are urging developing countries, such as Bangladesh, to retain their non-motorized transport advantage, rather than repeating first-world planning mistakes which will be costly to reverse in a few years. World Carfree Network and our member groups in the region will continue to work with Dhaka authorities and World Bank officials in hopes of halting any further bans on cycle rickshaws and overturning earlier bans.

    Press inquiries: Steven Logan may be reached at ++420 274816727 or ++420 736157762 and info@worldcarfree.net

  6. Syed Shamsul Alam says:

    Transport, Environment, Economics and Health:
    Promoting an All-Win Situation

    Syed Shamsul Alam

    While economic gains may be sufficient in themselves—assuming a reasonably fair distribution of those gains—to improve conditions in health and education, the opposite tends to happen with transport. Market economies support transport investments and infrastructure that actually lead to worsening traffic conditions, and richer cities tend to suffer from worse transport problems—including more traffic congestion, more pollution, and more injuries and deaths from road crashes—than poorer cities.
    As i**es increase, if the government does not intervene, then car use will increase. In the case of Hong Kong and Singapore, the governments quickly realized that a drastic increase in car use in proportion to rising i**es would lead to an impossible situation on the streets, and thus instituted strict measures for car control, such as mandating that car owners first buy parking spaces, or charging very high fees for licenses. Where governments have not taken such proactive steps—or where such steps are taken and then loosened under pressure of car manufacturers and others—the traffic situation will invariably decline as i**es rise.
    While we often hear of the subsidies given by government for mass transport, few talk of the subsidies governments give for cars. Yet such subsidies play an important role in increasing car ownership, and can represent vast sums of money being spent providing free parking, road space, and other infrastructure (such as elevated expressways) for cars, or on fuel subsidies largely used by car owners. Meanwhile, the increase in cars and government moves to increase road space for them—often by limiting or banning other transport—result in a decrease in fuel‐free transport (mostly walking, cycling, and cycle rickshaws), due to danger, lack of road space, and the unpleasantness of trying to use such modes adjacent to noisy and polluting motorized vehicles.
    The “free” market thus fails us by resulting in more fuel-dependent transport (FDT), with serious consequences for the environment and health. (Of course if the market were really “free”, there would not be huge subsidies for cars, and car owners would be expected to pay in real terms for the damage they cause, so that a very different picture would likely result.) Damage to the environment of fuel-dependent (motorized) transport includes air and noise pollution, space used for roads and parking that could have been green space (for agriculture, parks, and nature), and contribution to climate change. Damage to health includes rising rates of respiratory and other disease from pollution; injuries and deaths from road crashes; lack of physical activity caused both by more time spent in cars, and the inability to walk or cycle due to the presence of so many cars; increases in obesity due to lack of physical activity; and the reduced possibility of interacting with neighbors, or of children and youth enjoying outdoor recreation, due to the conversion of open spaces to parking and the danger from so many fuel-dependent vehicles.
    Other problems caused by fuel-dependent transport include economics, poverty, and insecurity. For example, the average American spends $6,000/year for car costs, or 20% of gross earnings for the ʺprivilegeʺ of owning a car. Given that one main reason to own a car is to drive to work—so that one can then pay for one’s car—the futility and wastefulness of the current system is obvious. People b**e further impoverished due to high expenses on transport, which can represent a significant portion of monthly i**e. For instance, traveling by bicycle is essentially free, whereas bus fares can prove very costly to the low‐i**e. Those whose i**e is dependent on fuel‐free transport are also affected by bans on their livelihood, including rickshaw and van pullers and handcart peddlers. Finally, global insecurity is increased due to dependence on foreign oil and the wars that result as countries fight for control over existing oil supplies.

    Shifting from the “free” market focus, with its emphasis on further enriching wealthy corporations, to a focus on transport for development, would lead to significant changes and gains—not only for the poor, but for everyone. Namely, such a focus would emphasize the need for more fuel-free transport (FFT). FFT has many benefits, including the facts that it is inexpensive, does not cause air or noise pollution, generates employment, provides convenient exercise (allowing people to incorporate physical activity into their daily routine, rather than having to make extra time and spend extra money on it), and increases equity by giving people of different i**e equal rights on the street (or prioritizing the poor over the rich, which would make a small contribution towards balancing the great inequalities favoring the rich).

    In working to achieve change in the transport‐health‐environment‐economics equation, our overall goal is to create people‐friendly cities. Given the significant role transport can play in increasing or decreasing quality of life in a city, transport must play a significant role in making cities more livable. Needed changes include an increase in fuel‐free transport (walking, cycling, cycle rickshaws), an increase in public transport, a decrease in car use (brought about by high parking fees reflecting actual land values, license controls, and car‐free areas), and encouragement of high-density, mixed‐use areas, which in turn would lead to a reduction in traffic demand as access is emphasized over mobility.
    Of course bringing about changes in transport, affected as such changes are by economics and politics, is by no means easy. Significant opposition arises from a number of sources, for rather obvious reasons; such opponents include those manufacturing and selling cars, road and highway construction**panies, media (consider the role of car advertisement in electronic and print media), much of government, and some international agencies.
    While there is no one set of working methods guaranteed to bring success, a mix of approaches modified for one’s own political environment is likely to include at least some of the following: signature campaigns, letter writing (to newspapers and policymakers), meetings with journalists and other ways of giving journalists information, research and publications, meetings and other**munication with government officials, seminars, press conferences, and demonstrations.
    Local, regional, and international alliances can also help support the work. Such alliances can include local NGOs working on the issues of environment, rights of the poor, and public health; a regional network with HealthBridge partners; and international support from such networks or groups as the World Carfree Network (WCN) and possibly the Institute for Transportation & Development Policies (ITDP).
    While success is difficult in this area, it is by no means impossible. For instance, successes in Bangladesh included a major slowing of rickshaw bans, and an expressed reversal of World Bank policy in Dhaka regarding those bans. In the words of World Bank Country Director, Christine Wallich: “Any future support from the World Bank would be possible only if it can be demonstrated that aggregate positive impacts of NMT‐free conversion on transport users and transport providers outweigh the aggregate negative impact.” Other countries within the
    HealthBridge network and beyond have also experienced significant successes.
    There is much to learn from the work, and while the difficulty is great, there is still much cause for optimism. Significant lessons include the obvious—that accepting that defeat is inevitable guarantees defeat. That is, if we believe before we start that we will fail, and thus don’t even try, we will indeed fail. Only by trying do we at least have the possibility of success—a possibility that can, surprisingly, materialize at times! After all, as we have also learned, policies serving only a powerful elite will, necessarily, have limited appeal among the masses. While the rich have access to resources that may seem overwhelming, there is tremendous power in public opinion. Therefore, supporting the masses can succeed—if, of course, the work is done wisely.
    In sum, we need to work together to guarantee a major role for fuel‐free transport (and to reduce transport needs overall by emphasizing proximity over mobility), and to reduce fuel‐dependent transport. By reducing car use, we can create an all‐win situation, in which even car users benefit. How? By supporting jobs and inexpensive transport for the poor; by decreasing pollution, congestion, and noise; by increasing levels of physical activity and thus improving health; by increasing access to convenient transport for all groups, and by increasing availability of and access to safe outdoor play spaces for children. The result of all these measures is friendlier, people‐focused cities—cities in which all inhabitants will gain.

  7. Roky says:

    nice very nice

  8. Carfree says:

    Hi All,
    I thought this was pretty interesting:
    http://news. theage.com. au/sydney- 2050-highrise- and-carfree/ 20080319- 20gw.html

    Sydney 2050: high-rise and car-free
    March 19, 2008 – 5:19PM

    Jump off a whisper quiet tram, check on your hydroponic vegies and take an express lift up to your penthouse in a pencil-thin city skyscraper built in the middle of the street.

    Sound like the Sydney you know and love?
    Well this could be the everyday routine for Sydneysiders in 2050, according to a futuristic architectural vision of the city on display at Customs House in central Sydney.

    The display, which opens on Wednesday night, showcases the visions of six emerging architectural teams from around Australia, and the results are confronting.

    In 42 years time, Sydney will have lost its sprawling car-clogged suburban layout and taken on a car-free, high-rise, public transport focused configuration out of necessity, Sydney Futures Exhibition creative director Richard Francis-Jones says.

    “It seems unlikely that Australia and other `advanced’ nations will respond adequately to the challenge of carbon emissions reductions and therefore we will need to deal with the effects of climate change, temperature increases, rising water levels, flooding shortages, storms and damaging climatic events,” Mr Francis-Jones said.

    The architectural teams were asked to consider the possible consequences of climate change, social inequity, urbanisation, displacement and growth.

    Most of the displays focus on Sydney’s transport infrastructure and show the city moving away from its current obsession with the car.

    Some of the submissions portray trams running through the existing major city arteries, shard-shaped towers erected on unused city streets and abandoned carpark’s converted into green zones.

    “Common to many submissions is a radical rethink of our current transport infrastructure away from the domination of the private automobile to more shared and sustainable systems,” Mr Francis-Jones said.

    The display critiques the suburb and advocates increasing densities and integrating ecological systems and landscapes.

    “Many of these visions also speculate on the promises of new technologies, not only in terms of clean energy generation, sustainable systems and building advances but also in the very mechanisms of planning and political decision-making. ”

    A submission by Tribe Studios depicts the Sydney CBD as a dense, pedestrian-friendly place where cars are banned, where light rail moves residents around and concrete carpark’s are filled with flourishing hydroponic agriculture.

    “It will be a truly 24-hour city, with a mix of commercial, retail, public and residential typologies,” Hannah Tribe said.

    Sydney Future Exhibition is on display at Customs House, Circular Quay, Sydney from March 19 to April 13.

    © 2008 AAP

    —– ### —–
    J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities
    mailbox@carfree. com http://www.carfree. com

  9. Aminul Islam Sojun says:

    Traffic congestion: are trains the culprit or the solution?

    A news item in the New Age newspaper on 24 March states that “Bangladesh Railway has agreed to suspend rail operations between Tejgaon and Kamalapur stations during the peak travel hours to reduce tailback in the capital. The move follows a recent request from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to the railway authorities for assistance in mitigating huge tailbacks that have become a common feature in the capital city. According to DMP, many of the city’s roads are too frequently blocked for trains arriving at or leaving Kamalapur Railway Station.”

    The question naturally arises as to whether we wish to carry out a symbolic measure to reduce congestion on the city’s roads, or actually to facilitate transport of our city’s residents?

    If the aim of transport policy is the movement of people not cars, then the decision is counter-productive. After all, trains (like cars and buses) move people. But a train can move 20 times as many passengers as cars per land space. Even without trains, there will be traffic jams, but trains do ensure a large number of people moving in small space while using far less fuel than if they were traveling by car.

    Further, by giving priority to rail, traffic congestion would actually decline, whereas giving priority to cars will only increase driving and thus congestion—and all the related costs in terms of traffic fatalities and pollution.

    A recent comprehensive analysis of transportation system performance in 130 U.S. cities identified a number of benefits to those cities connected by rail rather than only by bus and car. The study found that cities with large, well-established rail systems have lower per-capita traffic congestion costs, lower per-capita traffic fatalities, and lower per capita consumer and government transportation expenditures.

    The study also found that residents in cities with large, well-established rail systems experience about half the per capita traffic congestion delay as people who live in comparable size cities that lack rail. This occurs because residents of cities with good train service drive less.

    Cities with large rail systems have about a third lower per capita traffic fatality rates, as travel is far safer by rail than bus or car. Residents of these cities save approximately $450 annually per capita in transportation costs compared with consumers living in cities that lack rail systems.

    The study concludes that rail service costs are repaid several times over by reduced congestion, road and parking facility costs, reduced traffic accident costs, and consumer cost savings.

    Why, then, the priority in Bangladesh of cars and other road-based transport over trains? When people cannot easily travel by rail, they are likely to shift instead to bus or–for the few who can afford to–private car. This raises the question of whether the policy is indeed intended to reduce congestion, or simply to raise the profits of bus owners and car salesmen.

    Rather than cancel trains, rail service should be expanded to give people a positive choice over the use of cars. This would reduce not only traffic congestion but also fuel use, transport costs, and road deaths and injuries. With the possibility of saving lives, reducing costs, and effectively reducing congestion, the choice is clear: it is private cars, not trains that need to be taken out of service at peak hours.

    Aminul Islam Sojun

    Journalist

    aisojun@gamil.com

  10. Knowledge-based Transport Planning and Rickshaw Bans : Pedicab News

    BANNING RICKSHAWS: Rich Blaming Rickshaws for Traffic
    By Mahbubul Bari
    Dhaka, Bangladesh – The New Nation

    For several years, discussion of transport issues and problems in Dhaka has had a singular focus on the supposed contribution of cycle rickshaws to traffic congestion, and the need to facilitate movement of automobiles. In line with this analysis of the transport situation, various projects have been undertaken, focusing on banning rickshaws and rickshaw vans from major roads, and sometimes relegating them to narrow rickshaw lanes. The problem of car parking has been addressed mainly through insistence on provision of separate parking places by offices, shops and restaurants even by enacting law under the building code. It is a matter of deep regret that not a single transport policy decision was undertaken after conducting a proper scientific or knowledge-based analysis of the transport problems of the city. It has become a standard norm to take important policy decisions rather arbitrarily, whether it is rickshaw ban or Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for the city.

    The results of these various initiatives have been made clear through government-mandated studies, including the HDRC report on the rickshaw ban on Mirpur Road (HDRC 2004), and the DUTP after-study report (DUTP 2006). The results, almost astonishingly negative, would suggest that the basis for the policy decisions and transport plans are flawed. This would be less than surprising when considering the fact that important transport policy decisions were taken without employing any knowledge-based approach or scientific study.

    Moreover, despite the strong evidence of increased travel costs and traffic congestion, transport planning continues to focus on expanding the role of the automobile and reducing that of fuel-free transport. That pattern has been reflected by the further extension of the rickshaw bans on more city roads. In this connection, readers are requested to draw their attention to the following news item:

    “Traffic Division of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police made Purana Paltan-Bijoynagar Road off-limits to rickshaws from Thursday. The decision was taken at a meeting on Wednesday. All the deputy commissioners of four traffic divisions were present at the meeting. M Sayedur Rahman, deputy commissioner (south) of traffic division, told New Age on Thursday that the authorities banned plying of non-motorised vehicles on the stretch between Purana Paltan and Bijoynagar to ease traffic congestion.” The New Age, Dhaka, Friday, October 19, 2007″.

    This arbitrary decision making process as depicted in the news item draws attention to a number of disturbing questions as follows: Do the police have the authority to ban or restrict rickshaw movements?

    If yes, from whom do they get that authority?

    Do the police have similar authority to limit the movement of motorised vehicles when there is not sufficient road capacity for them, e.g. narrow lanes, which cannot accommodate cars without causing traffic jams?

    Probably not, it is therefore clear that such misguided policy actions are being pursued just to give absolute priority in the transport system of the city for a tiny minority of car owners, i.e. the so called elite section of the society.

    Do the police have requisite training to make proper transport decisions?

    If so, why dies Dhaka needs organisation like DTCB, when the police can do the job better?

    The rickshaw bans are being extended beyond Mirpur Road, but it seems unlikely that those bans were carried out by the police, rather than by a section of the powerful bureaucrats behind the scene. It may be mentioned here that after failure of the rickshaw ban in the demonstration project of the Mirpur Road, the World Bank has set the standard of extending further bans on the condition that: “Any future support from the World Bank would be possible only if it can be demonstrated that aggregate positive impacts of NMT-free conversion on transport users and transport providers outweigh the aggregate negative impact”.

    It is matter of deep regret that policies continue to give car owners absolute priority, while ignoring the fundamental principle of any transport project appraisal, that is, that net user benefits of any transport intervention must exceed net loss.

    Now, it may be appropriate to concentrate on, possibly, the most important argument in the news item, that is, “the authorities banned plying of non-motorised vehicles on the stretch between Purana Paltan and Bijoynagar to ease traffic congestion.” In the following paragraphs answer to this question and other related aspects of such transport policy interventions, will be analysed in the light of knowledge-based and participatory decision-making approach.

    Did the previous rickshaw ban in Dhaka City ease traffic congestion?

    The answer lies in the “After Project” report of the government mandated study of the Mirpur Road Demonstration project (DUTP 2006), where fuel free transport was banned.

    It might be appropriate to look into the issue considering a number of key congestion indices with respect to before and after scenarios of the Mirpur Road Demonstration project as follows:

    Average journey time per vehicle

    Average journey time per person

    Journey reliability

    Throughput (total number of vehicles per time interval that pass a point on the carriageway)

    Average Journey time per Vehicle

    The Table 1 shows the comparison of travel times of fuel dependent (motorised) vehicles between 2000 and 2005. Considering large variability of the travel time data, it is evident that there is no statistically significant difference of travel times of fuel dependent or motorised vehicles between pre and post rickshaw ban scenarios. This means that no travel time gain for fuel dependent vehicle was achieved due to rickshaw ban.

    The Table 2 demonstrates the comparison of travel times of buses between 2000 and 2005. Although there is no statistically significant difference of travel times for fuel dependent vehicles between pre and post FFT ban scenarios, the travel times for buses did undergo significant deterioration with a 26.1% increase of travel times. This means that bus congestion has increased significantly due to imposition of rickshaw ban in the Mirpur Road demonstration corridor.

    On balance average vehicle congestion in terms of journey time per vehicle has increased significantly due to the rickshaw ban.

    Average journey time per person : Bus travel has worsened following the FFT ban, with a 26.1% increase in travel time; passenger travels by bus has become slower than by rickshaw. Thus all the bus passengers (28.1% of total passengers)-both those who continue to travel by bus in pre- and post-project scenarios, and those who were forced to shift from rickshaws-have experienced significant increase in travel times.

    Impacts of the project on car passengers who have been riding a car both pre- and post-project are more or less neutral, as there is no significant difference in travel time.

    The passengers of motorised para-transit who continue to travel both in pre- and post-project scenarios are likely to suffer increase in average journey times. While there is no significant difference in travel times between scenarios, the times required to find a driver who would be willing to go for short trips have gone up substantially as per HDRC report (HDRC 2004) thereby increasing average travel times per person.

    Despite being subjected to a ban on Mirpur Road, rickshaws remain the most popular means of transport in the corridor, accounting for 30% of all trips. Rickshaw passengers have become net losers, being forced to take long detours using congested side roads, and thereby substantially increase their travel time.

    These evidences from the after project studies prove that congestion in terms of average journey time per person have increased significantly after rickshaw ban in the Mirpur Road demonstration corridor.

    Journey Reliability: Both DUTP after project study (DUTP 2006) and HDRC studies reported significant deterioration of waiting times for bus passengers. Again, as reported in the HDRC report, baby taxi operators are reluctant to take short trips, causing significant increases in waiting times for passengers. Similarly, finding suitable taxicabs at an affordable cost has become increasingly troublesome and time-consuming for short trips.

    It is therefore clearly evident that journey reliability of the Mirpur Road demonstration project deteriorated significantly due to imposition of rickshaw ban. This in turn represents increase of congestion.

    Throughput (total number of vehicles per time interval that pass a point on the carriageway)

    Although it might not be appropriate to compare throughputs between a FFT free road and a mixed vehicles road, it is obvious from the Table 3 that number of vehicles that pass at North of Dhanmodi R#2 of Mirpur Road, decreased significantly both in terms of absolute number of vehicles and passenger car equivalents due to rickshaw ban. This indicates the congestion in terms of throughput has increased significantly due to rickshaw ban in Mirpur Road.

    Again, although passenger carrying capacities of the whole network under investigation were found to increase on average by 30% due to a significant increase of bus services under a private sector-driven initiative, increase in passenger capacity for the demonstration project was only 15%. Again, a careful analysis of data reveals that nearly total elimination of FFT combined with a very high increase in bus service resulted in only a 15% increase in passenger capacity, whereas a small decrease in cars combined with only a modest increase in bus service resulted in a 27% increase in passenger capacity in a VIP road, which has been under FDT-only operation in the base case, indicating that as far as road capacity is concerned the problem is cars, not rickshaws.

    Whether car more efficient than rickshaws in terms of road space occupancy?

    Despite constant claims of the city officials that rickshaws are the main source of traffic jams, data indicate that rickshaws are far superior to cars as far as road space occupancy is concerned (see Table 4). In the base case i.e. before fuel free transport ban, rickshaws made up 69.8% of vehicles, yet utilised only 43.5% of road space to transport 59.4% of passengers (all trips). Cars made up only 6.4% of vehicles, yet occupied as much as 29.9% of the road space in the base case to transport far fewer passengers (5.5%) than by rickshaw.

    Despite being removed from the main roads, rickshaws are still the most popular mode of transport, serving 30% of the passengers, whereas cars serve only 8.5% of all trips (11% of vehicular trips) while requiring the greatest share of road space (54.2%). Although the modal share of cars in overall has gone up only 3.0%, they now claim about 25% more road space than prior to FFT ban. If one considers the additional parking space required for them, total road space required would be much higher. It is clear that a combination of fuel-free transit and public transit would be far superior to a fuel-dependent transport and public transit option.

    It may be mentioned here that despite 50% traffic growth of motorised vehicles during 2000 to 2005 period, the traffic in terms of PCE (passenger car equivalent) in Mirpur Road Demonstration corridor was lower in 2005 in comparison to that of 2000. However, despite having less number of traffic in 2005, the performance of the corridor was significantly worse under FFT free condition after the ban.

    It is therefore clearly evident from the data analysis of the DUTP after project study that congestion in terms of all major congestion indices has increased significantly due to imposition of fuel free transport ban in the Mirpur Road demonstration corridor.

    Comments
    3 Comments so far

    Syed Saiful Alam on December 31, 2007 12:20 am Fuel Consumption and Environmental Impact of Rickshaw Bans in Dhaka

    Dear all
    Most trips in Dhaka are short in distance, usually one to five kilometers. These trips are perfect of Rickshaws. Rickshaws are cheap and popular mode of transport over short distances. Rickshaws are safe, environmentally friendly and do not rely on fossil fuels. Rickshaws support a significant portion of the population, not only the pullers, but also their families in the villages, the mechanics who fix the rickshaws, as well as street hawkers who sell them food. From the raw materials to the finished product the Rickshaw employs some 38 different professions. Action needs to be taken to support the Rickshaw instead of further banning it in Dhaka. The combined profits of all Rickshaws out earn all other passenger transport modes (bus, rail, boats and airlines) combined. In Dhaka alone, Rickshaw pullers combine to earn 20 million taka a month.

    We think that over the coming holiday of Eid du Ajah, new Rickshaw bans will be put into action on roads in Dhaka. Eid was used in the past to place new bans on roads in Dhaka. Last Eid many roads were declared Rickshaw free without public support or approval. By banning Rickshaws roads are clogged with increased private car use as well as increased parking by cars. Banning of Rickshaws on major roads increases the transportation costs for commuters. Not only due to longer trips to avoid roads with bans in effect, but also due to actually having to take more expensive forms of transport such as CNG or Taxi, where in the past a Rickshaw would suffice. The environmental impact of banning Rickshaws is obvious because it exchanges a non-motorized form of transport for a motorized form of transport, thus increasing the pollution and harming the environment. Rickshaw bans harm the most vulnerable in society, mainly the sick, poor, women, children and the elderly; generally those who can not afford or do not feel comfortable on other forms of public transport. To ban Rickshaws also hurts small businesses that rely on them as a cheap and reliable form of transporting their goods. Rickshaws are ideal for urban settings because they can transport a relatively large number of passengers while taking up a small portion of the road. In 1998 the data showed that Rickshaws took up 38% of road space while transporting 54% of passengers in Dhaka . The private cars on the other hand, took up 34% of road space while only transporting 9% of the population (1998 DUTP). This data does not include the parking space on roads that cars take up in Dhaka . If included this would further raise the amount of space taken up by private cars. Every year the Rickshaw saves Bangladesh 100 billion taka in environmental damage.

    The government makes many efforts to reduce traffic congestion in Dhaka but with no success. Blaming Rickshaws for traffic congestion and subsequently banning them from major roads has not had the desired affect. Traffic is still as bad now as it was before the Rickshaws were banned on major roads. Rickshaws thus can not be seen as the major cause of traffic congestion. Instead one should look towards private cars and private car parking on roads as the major cause of traffic congestion. The space gained by banning Rickshaws is often used for private car parking. The current trend in transport planning reduces the mobility of the majority for the convenience of the minority. The next time a ban on Rickshaws on another road is discussed please take into consideration who is being hurt and who is being helped. For a better transport system in Dhaka we need to create a city wide network of Rickshaw lanes. If this is done Dhaka can reduce its fuel usage dramatically as well its pollution. We ask your help in our fight to keep Dhaka a Rickshaw city. Any information or help is very much appreciated and sought after. I write you this letter to describe the difficulties we are facing and some solutions but they are by no means exhaustive and we look forward to your help and input.

    Syed Saiful Alam Shovan
    Volunteer
    Save Environment Movement
    House # 58/1, Kalabagan 1st lane
    Dhanmondi, Dhaka,Bangladesh
    Email shovan1209@yahoo.
    http://www.environmentmovementbd.org

    Yasmin Chowdhury on March 1, 2008 7:43 am Pricing public transit: learning from Bangkok
    Yasmin Chowdhury

    When I first visited Bangkok in 1994, I got around the city mostly by bus. The buses were slow, the streets congested, and I soon learned that I could only make one plan for the morning and one for the afternoon, as it might take a couple hours to move about.
    Then the city started to build their skytrain. I waited with great anticipation for its completion. It seemed to require a lot more time and a lot more money (OK, just two years of delay and three times over budget) than originally anticipated, and the fares are admittedly quite high, but it was finally built—if never finished. (I saw an article in a Thai newspaper about people very upset that the planned line to their area had never been built; meanwhile, the pilings leading to the now domestic-only airport have been converted into advertising posts.)
    To be quite honest, I love the skytrain. Sure, the cement structure looming overhead is ugly. Sure, most of the stations lack escalators, making them inaccessible to those in wheelchairs, and exceedingly difficult for those lugging heavy bags or luggage. Sure, the two lines only cover a very limited portion of Bangkok. Sure, it’s expensive. Sure, despite all the hassles, the trains are often packed. Sure, the stations are congested and I sometimes have to push through people to reach my train. But at least I can see a little of the city while I travel, and I can now get around to the stops on the line quickly, allowing myself to visit far more places in a day.
    Though the skytrain certainly makes moving around the city much easier (if you can afford it), it obviously didn’t alleviate the congestion, as the government then opened a very limited subway system. The first time I tried to ride it, about a year after it opened, it was closed for two weeks due to an accident. I finally rode it a couple years after that, and discovered that it cost about US$0.50 to ride what it would take me ten minutes to walk. That seemed outrageous, and I don’t love riding up and down long escalators and traveling in tunnels. Since the Metro doesn’t seem to go much beyond the skytrain, I stick to the skytrain.
    But now, after spending billions of dollars on those mass transit systems, and despite having an existing extensive bus system, and more roads than most Asian cities of their level of economic development, the government is now planning bus rapid transit—a bit like a street-level trolley, but with buses instead of trams. Of course, that too is delayed—but the cost is a fraction of that for the skytrain and Metro.
    A more careful look at those costs reveals something interesting and of considerable relevance as Dhaka plans its public transit system. According to various Web sites, the skytrain, which opened in 1999, cost about US$1.5 billion for 24 kilometers. That amounts to US$62.5 million per kilometer. Of course, things were cheaper back then.
    Construction of the Metro began back in 1996, but it wasn’t finished until 2004. According to Wikipedia, “The project suffered multiple delays not only because of the 1997 economic crisis, but also due to challenging civil engineering works of constructing massive underground structures deep in the water-logged soil upon which the city is built.” Interesting. Fortunately we don’t have those troubles in Dhaka (ahem!).
    As for cost, the Metro cost a mere US$ 2.75 billion for 21 km, or US$130.95 million per kilometer—just over twice that of the skytrain. Apparently burrowing underground, dealing with flooding issues, providing ventilation, and so on is much more expensive than building above our heads. Meanwhile, again quoting Wikipedia, “ridership has settled down to around 180,000 riders daily — considerably lower than projections of over 400,000, despite fares being slashed in half from 12-38 baht to 10-15 baht per trip. As of 2006, fares range between 14-36 baht per trip.” With an exchange rate as I write of 32 baht to one US dollar, that’s a mighty high fare. Good thing Bangladeshis are wealthier than Thais (??).
    Meanwhile, the anticipated cost for the BRT is 33.4 million for 36 kilometers. Admittedly, anticipated costs are often far less than actual costs, but still, at US$0.93 million per kilometer, that’s a bargain compared to the Metro or the skytrain—even more so when considering it’s being built last, when prices are highest. At 67 times less than the skytrain and 141 times less than the Metro, even with significant cost increases, it will still be far more affordable than its public transit predecessors.
    Of course, operational costs are another issue. Buses require fuel, trains electricity. Buses tend to require more maintenance, tires wear down frequently, and buses have to be replaced far more often than trains. While it is cheaper to build a BRT system initially, the higher operational costs might mean that, in the long term, a tram system would be more affordable—tram meaning street-level light rail, not something up in the sky or underground, which greatly multiplies the costs.
    Which is all to say, I’m all for public transit. So, apparently, are Thais: last I checked, hotels and housing advertise their proximity to the various public transit options. Apparently people are sick and tired of sitting in cars stuck in traffic jams. In public transit, you can sit back and read a book while you ride, look out the window (preferably not at tunnels), eavesdrop on your neighbor’s conversation, and otherwise amuse yourself without risking crashing into someone once the traffic moves again.
    But when considering spending millions or billions on public transit, it would make sense to invest it wisely, in a system that will be the most extensive and least expensive, and thus offer the best value for the money. At 141 times per kilometer less to build BRT than Metro, we could both have a far more extensive system, meeting far more people’s needs, and lower fares. Sounds like a bargain to me!

    Syed Saiful Alam on March 2, 2008 10:29 am March 2, 2008
    DMP’s plan for better traffic
    management fails
    The Daily New Age March 2, 2008
    http://www.newagebd.com/met.html#1
    Abdul Kader

    Though the Dhaka Metropolitan Police has made efforts from time to time for better traffic management in the capital city, they fail due to lack of proper enforcement of traffic rules, said a traffic engineer.
    The DMP commissioner at a meeting in October last year with four deputy commissioners of traffic division decided to strengthen the enforcement of laws against the banned 20-year-old vehicles and illegal parking, but no progress was found visible as a huge number of unfit vehicles still ply the city streets.
    The communications ministry in collaboration with DMP imposed the ban on plying of 20-year-old buses and minibuses in 2002. Even though the DMP seized a good number of outdated vehicles in few months since the imposition of the ban, now many unfit vehicles ply the streets.
    The DMP authorities also decided to take stern action against illegal parking, but it still continues in the city for lack of implementation of the decision.
    A traffic sergeant said a vehicle is fined Tk 200 for illegal parking under Section 137 of Motor Vehicles Ordinance. ‘The range of fine should be increased to stop violation of the rules.’
    Officials of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority said the revised ordinance had been submitted to the government with proposal for increasing the existing fine which was at final stage.
    Shakil Kashem, lecturer of urban and regional planning department at BUET said, ‘The authorities concerned have showed their eagerness to remove bus counters from footpaths, but they don’t dare to take steps against illegal car parking on roads and footpaths.’
    Besides, the DMP authorities from February, 2007 imposed a ban on honking on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue stretching from Shahbagh crossing to Shaheed Jahangir Gate.
    Since May 6, 2007, it was extended to different areas, including Shaheed Jahangir Gate to Abdullahpur in Uttara via Mohakhali, Kemal Ataturk Avenue to Phoenix Building via Gulshan-1 and Gulshan-2, Gabtali to Azimpur via Russell Square, Bijoy Sarani to Mohammadpur Traffic Office via Lake Road, Sheraton Hotel crossing to Kakrail crossing, Matsya Bhaban to Rainbow crossing via Kakrail Church, Science Laboratory to Matsya Bhaban via Shahbagh and Matsya Bhaban to Golap Shah mazar via old High Court crossing and Phoenix Road.
    At the beginning, traffic sergeants filed over 2,000 cases against the violators, but now there is no effective enforcement of the ban.
    A traffic engineer of a government agency said, ‘We take many good decisions regarding to traffic management, but cannot implement those decisions. As a result, the decisions that came from meetings don’t bring any fruitful result.’
    When contacted a traffic division top official said manpower for traffic management is very less than that of requirement. ‘All the sergeants and traffic police have to work on priority basis and keep themselves busy with traffic management.’
    Sayedur Rahman, deputy commissioner of Traffic Division (south) of DMP told New Age, ‘The enforcement of laws is on as usual. Every day cases are filed against illegal parking and violating the honking ban.’
    Yet people are violating the rules. An increase in the fine for violating the motor rules may prevent people from the violation of rules, he added.
    A traffic sergeant in Paltan area said, ‘The trend for violating the traffic rules is very high among the drivers. We have filed many cases, but they don’t pay heed because the amount of fine is very minimal.’
    A traffic police said bus owners association would have to take steps as their drivers abide by traffic rules. ‘Most bus companies or owners employ drivers on contractual basis who frequently violate traffic rules to save times.’
    The government has taken an initiative to amend the motor vehicles ordinance 1983 with an increase in fine apart from a citizen’s charter. The amendment process was at final stage, a BRTA official said.

  11. Md. Abdullah Al Mamun says:

    I enjoy the debate and I am encouraged to see that lots of intelligent persons have put their heads to solve transport problem of Dhaka city. I got this idea as lots of comments are coming in the daily news papers for the solution of transport problems of Dhaka. Lots of issues have been covered in this discussion including technical, financial, institutional, environmental aspects and decision making process for the transport management of Dhaka city. No doubt those are valuable input for the policy makers if they want to consider. I want to shed light on the economic aspects of the issue for the sustainable mode choice for the transport system of Dhaka.

    The question of the debate is the choice of transport mode for road users of Dhaka. As the road space is a scarce resource the space should be allocated among the competing modes in such a way that welfare of road users and the residents of Dhaka as a whole is maximized which is again a challenging task for the policy makers and/transport professionals.

    At first, in absence of the (rather ignoring) public transport system the debate is not complete as this mode has the most important role to play in the transport system of Dhaka. Yes, there is a role of public transport, but it doesn’t mean it should be the most expensive (luxurious!!) options like underground metro or sky rail, there are more effective and efficient at-grade modes like BRT or Tram system. I am not going in this area as this issue has clearly been discussed by Yasmin Chowdhury which is very important for the consumption of decision/policy makers.

    As mentioned in previous paragraph, in absence of dependable and reliable public transport system there exists a serious inefficiency in the transport system of Dhaka. The travel demand is suppressed due to the poor economic condition, this latent demand can be effective with economic growth and the reduction in car prices which can contribute to more congestion in years to come if proper attention is not given immediately. Due to the absence public transport the rickshaw and other motorized modes are enjoying higher shares let alone the inefficiency due to the subsidized fuel price.

    STP (2005) reports that from the perspective of Travel Demand Management (TDM), Dhaka provides a promising picture that most developed countries strive to achieve which had occurred organically not by careful design. One of the reasons is that people live close to the work-place so they can walk to their work-places. The report also argues that ‘some of these achievements may be unintended consequences of poor economic conditions rather than planned transport related actions, are in effect reducing travel demand’ (pp chapter 3-27). But there is no clear guideline for the use of TDM measure in the STP (2005) for even maintaining this promising picture.

    So, for the allocation of the scarce road space the economic tools must be used in the form of market-based or non-market based approach. As market is often seen as an efficient method of allocating scarce resources, with the price mechanism acting as signal to the consumer, in this case the transport user. As such market can be utilized in order to provide incentives to bring about a socially optimum use of environmental resources. Alternatively the non-market (command and control) mechanism can be utilized making use of regulations establishing specific standard for different modes. This market tools are being tried in developed cites in different form like congestion charging, parking charge, high fuel duty, area licensing, car free zones etc. I think time has come to look at the economic tools for the solution of traffic problems of Dhaka. But for that deeper understanding is required to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, equity and acceptability issues in the context of Dhaka. Finally, the people of Dhaka will not be able to afford the cost of learning from mistakes in case of formulating transport policy options for our beloved Dhaka.

  12. A pro-people transport plan for Dhaka

    Eng. Ziaur Rahman

    Day by day the number of private cars increases in Dhaka City. This is fuelled by the fact that the private cars have been given priority in transport planning. More private cars, however, means more pollution, both noise and air. Not only does a car dependent transport system hurt the environment; it also uses up a lot of fuel, making our economy heavily fuel dependent. Transport planning that focuses on private cars benefit only a tiny portion of the population while making it harder for the majority to get around. If the current transport plan is implemented about 80% of the population will be neglected. For the 80% of the population that will be left out of the current transport plan one would need to develop pedestrian, fuel-free transport, and public transport infrastructure. For these we need to combine city planning with transport planning. Neighborhoods should contain everything needed for daily life such as, schools, jobs, shops, hospitals and entertainment. This would reduce the number of long trips between neighborhoods and lessen the volume of traffic on the roads. The short trips that would be needed within the neighborhoods walking and cycle rickshaws should suffice and if the infrastructure is improved it would increase speed and safety. For long distance travel out public transport must be developed. It is very necessary to control the number of private cars in order to create a better transport system as well as creating a more livable city. The Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for Dhaka must take pedestrians, fuel- free transport, inclusive neighborhoods and public transport into consideration in order to create a just transport system for all.

    The current transport plan encompassing the next 20 years, that is about to be approved, needs to be revised taking some of the before mentioned problems into consideration. The proposed STP for· Dhaka, if implemented, would only increase travel time and transport costs, pollution and fuel dependency, infrastructure and maintenance costs.

    The STP proposes 11 options to solve the current and future transport problems in Dhaka. The sixth option was chosen. This option includes constructing a metro rail system, a bypass, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The question is why the option ranking sixth was chosen, while the first five were rejected. If one is not to follow the outcome of a detailed evaluation, but rather to introduce new terms on which the decision was supposedly made, then what is the point of a detailed evaluation in the first place?

    Further questions arise. A decision had previously been made to approve a 6,000 crore Metro rail project. Now a second decision has been made to approve a 23,000 crore Metro rail project. Why the two projects? And why such large expenditures for Metro when it is anticipated that relatively few passengers will use it? While public transit is undoubtedly important, a surface system would cost about 100 times less per kilometer, allowing for both lower cost and a far more extensive system. Further, if pedestrians are, as STP claims, to be given priority, why is there almost no expenditure and no plans for improving the situation for pedestrians-without whom, in any case, a Metro rail cannot function, as people must be able to reach the Metro stops in the first place.

    Research shows that if we invest in more roads all the problems associated with them, pollution, noise, fuel dependency, and traffic congestion will only increase. In proposal number 6, 3 elevated road ways are to be built at a cost of 614 million US dollars, an increased expenditure of 64% over option 1. We spend 64% more and get only more problems with traffic congestion and the environment. All 11 STP options claim to put pedestrians first but they only allocate 0.24% of the budget to pedestrian facilities. This is a tiny amount of money for a transport mode that is supposedly to get special consideration. The STP also claims that a waterway would be an environmentally friendly way to transport goods around Dhaka, but they only budget 1.11 % towards the building of such a waterway. Similarly 34% of trips in Dhaka are made by fuel-free transport but they only budget 0.44% to building up this transport mode. STP praises pedestrians, waterways and fuel-free transport as great modes of transport, yet allocates them next to nothing in all of their proposals. Their importance should be reflected in the amount of money allocated but sadly it is not.

    The Bangladesh Railway should play a major role in the transport sector of Dhaka. Its ability to move large numbers of people cheaply and fuel efficiently is a major plus to any transport plan. The STP proposal 6, suggest moving the main railway station, Karmalapur, to the outskirts of Dhaka City. This would only increase the traffic problems in Dhaka City because instead of taking the train all the way to the heart of the city, the many train passengers coming to Dhaka from other cities, would have to take road transport from the outskirts into the heart of the city. The road transport would increase the pollution in Dhaka City as well as the travel costs of the passengers. In a report of the Dhaka Urban Transport Project (DUTP) showed that a rickshaw-ban on Mirpur Road decreased public transport movement along the road by 26%. Yet they claim that they banned rickshaws in order to increase the mobility of public transport. After the implementation of the DUTP, the economy of the Mirpur Road corridor lost 700 million Taka per year due to wasted time sitting in traffic. This figure does not include the money spent on wasted fuel a or the environmental costs of burning so much fuel, which would be another 1.5 billion Taka.

    Before the STP proposal gets approved, we request the government to take steps to implement demand management and mixed use neighbourhoods. Also we request that the transport planning is not focused on cars but rather people. We would like to reiterate that Dhaka City should develop pedestrian, rickshaw, bicycle and public transport infrastructure. We also hope that facilities are created outside of Dhaka to alleviate the burden placed on the Dhaka City transportation system by people traveling to Dhaka for health care, education etc.

  13. What If We Loved Our Kids More than Our Cars?

    For it must be a sick society indeed that can, and does, and continues to, love its cars more than its children.

    Syed Siful Alam Shovan

    Within just one generation, the lives of children throughout the world have changed radically, with just one indication among many being that so many children are now driven to school rather than walking. The same change that occurred in the US has happened also where I now live, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Even though car owners are very much the minority, children’s freedom has been greatly curtailed by those cars . Those whose parents do have cars are driven everywhere; those whose parents do not, unless they are very poor, are escorted by adults, and strictly prohibited from playing outdoors. It sometimes seems the only children in the city who have the opportunity for wholehearted pleasure, and who have confidence and skill in negotiating the streets, are the slum children.
    One could, of course, sit back quietly and watch these changes, reflecting that surely it isn’t as bad as it appears, or that something else will come along to make things better, or that children perhaps don’t need to play outdoors, or meet and interact with strangers, or get to know those of other social classes, or learn how to get around on their own. It is easy to be defeatist and say, who am I to fight such changes? And there are those who feel the changes are inevitable, because the only response is to curtail cars–and that is a “freedom” or enjoyment we could never part with. It isn’t that bad, people may argue; in some parts of the world children have access to parks and playgrounds, and while structured sports for children may not deliver all the benefits of street play, it is the best we can do in the modern world–and surely nobody wishes to give up the benefits of modernity.
    We too, here in Dhaka, watched the changes and despaired. Later, I found inspiration in reading David Engwicht’s Street Reclaiming; we bought sports equipment to give to the children on the street where our office is–a “residential” neighborhood with homes, NGO offices, a private university, a pharmaceutical company, a car repair center, and a fair amount of traffic–and made signs to put in the streets with such messages as “Love us, let us play”. The kids took the sporting equipment and played on the roof of their apartment building; the signs seemed likely to turn rusty in our office.
    Then one day, a few months later, a couple of my colleagues came into my office and announced that on that very afternoon, they were starting a cycle training program. A what? We have been working to promote cycling, and fighting with transport officials on the issue of cycle rickshaw bans in Dhaka; in the process we have collected a good number of small, folding bikes. Out came the bikes. We bought a few more for little kids, and taped paper with the message “Cycle training” over our old signs, and put up a banner, and later made a large sign showing Einstein on a bicycle–an amusing choice, I had to think, in a Muslim country–all to make the car drivers pay attention, slow down, and yield a lane or two to the kids.
    The first day we arranged for some friends to come cycle; almost nobody from our street showed up. Curious children and skeptical adults watched from their balconies. Later, a neighbor told us that people believed we couldn’t be offering free cycle training without an underlying motive–which they took to be that we were planning to kidnap their children. How effective the media has proved in frightening parents out of allowing their children freedom of movement or opportunity to play! If only we could compare the likelihood of children being harmed by being kept under lock and key to the likelihood of being kidnapped…. But the woman who told us this was brave, or had a better feeling towards humanity, and brought her children, and reported to her neighbors, and the numbers began to increase. We advertised the program (for free) in newspapers and through handbills, and children and adolescents (and even adults) from different parts of town began to come, and a regular group of children showed up for the inestimable pleasure of riding a bike with other children.
    Other organizations have started similar initiatives, though on small fields rather than on streets. Less than a year has passed, and we hope eventually people will realize the good sense of converting quiet streets into temporary children’s playgrounds. In the meantime, other stunning and unanticipated results have occurred. Prior to the program, no children on the street knew each other, having always being escorted by parents, usually by car; now many friendships have developed.
    One of our volunteers, Topon Shikder says: “We have created a platform which allows children from different apartment buildings to get to know each other, breaking the isolation which existed, in which everyone lived their separate lives. So now if someone is in trouble–is sick, or there is no male around–they can turn to each other for help. And of course the kids love it, they keep asking me, ‘give me a bike, give me a bike, when is it my turn?’ It’s wonderful to see their excitement.”
    We have slum children helping to run the program and fix the bicycles; like it or not, if you want to ride, you have to interact with these kids, and interact they do. A couple of child servants, who have no other opportunity for recreation, sneak away to join, and revel in being treated the same by our staff as the rich neighborhood kids. The children who repair the bikes have gained confidence as well as new skills, marching about with great authority; twice a week a few of them eat lunch with our office staff. During school holidays, children from the street come to our office to borrow bikes, usually in groups; it is now perfectly normal to have children moving around as freely as if it were their office.
    Another of our volunteers, Muminul Islam says, “Street children–those who pick rags or papers, or sell peanuts at the nearby lake, to make a little money–often wander to our street to watch, and stand with their mouths almost hanging open. So I send one of our kids with a bike to ask the child if he wants to ride for a few minutes. I can’t express how happy they are! Sometimes afterwards they get so excited, they come up to me and grab my hand, calling me uncle or brother, and thank me profusely.”
    I wish I could say that the adults on our street have also thanked us warmly for the initiative, and that drivers slow down, or avoid entering our dead-end street altogether so as not to disrupt the children. Most adults, including the parents whose kids participate, are delighted; when they see drivers racing on the street, or honking loudly at the kids, they complain about how uncivilized they are. But other adults tell us we should take the program elsewhere, and one woman–a child physician–complained that it’s hard on drivers because “we have to slow down”; others ask why we take so much space (blocking one or two lanes of a three-lane street). Our volunteers shake their heads in wonder–it really seems that people love their cars more than their children, they say.
    What we are giving to the children at one level seems so minor-? the chance to ride a bike up and down a stretch of road, while passing drivers blare their horns. On the other hand, we are giving them the freedom to leave their homes unescorted, to gain a new skill, to form friendships, to interact with different kinds of people…and to have fun. Perhaps, if things go well, if we are able to continue and expand, we will even succeed in communicating our key message: that cars should not be allowed to destroy the joy in children’s lives. Perhaps people will see that children don’t have to grow up trapped in cars and behind TV, helpless and dependent, growing up in fear of strangers and of the world around them. Perhaps they will come to see the harm in the mentality that has developed, in which any sacrifice of children’s natural state seems preferable to restrictions on cars. For it must be a sick society indeed that can, and does, and continues to, love its cars more than its children.

    (Syed Siful Alam Shovan. E-mail:shovan1209@yahoo.com)

  14. Going Underground

    Yasmin Chowdhury digs deep into Dhaka’s proposed metro system

    The recent decision to build a metro (underground rail) system in Dhaka has met with a range of responses. On one side is the “Hallelujah” response — at last, the government is taking public transit seriously, with plans to invest serious funds (at least $3.2 billion) into making life easier for the masses.

    On the other hand, the project raises practical questions: how feasible is the plan, how much will eventually get built, will it actually function, and might not a different form of public transit — say, a tram or trolley or rapid bus transit — achieve similar benefits for about a hundred times less money .

    On the bright side, travelling in cities with a metro is a far different experience from travelling in those without one. Where I grew up, there is no developed system for public transit, and it is virtually impossible to get around without a car. Since I let my driver’s license expire about a decade ago, I feel like a child when I move around, relying on adults to take me places. But when I visit big modern cities like Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, or any number of European cities, I can easily move around on my own.

    However, while the independent mobility is a blessing, it comes with a significant down-side. When travelling underground, we fail to experience the city we are in. Living in Boston and frequently travelling by subway, I had many of the stops memorised, and could easily get around underground — but I had no idea what was over my head.

    When I finally got into the habit of walking through the city following the subway lines, above ground, I realised then that I was gaining a perspective of where buildings, monuments, and important parts of the city were in relation to each other — not in terms of a subway map, but in terms of an actual physical layout. In the process, I realised how little I understood, after all those years of living there, about the true layout of Boston — or of what was to be found in various neighbourhoods that I had ever only passed under. The parts of the city I knew best were those I walked in, or where the subway emerged into a street-level trolley, and there was a sense of connection between the passengers and the street life outside our windows.

    When travelling underground, we are unaware — and, thus, often unconcerned — about the situation at ground level. Passing beneath a slum, we don’t pause to reflect on the lives of the people there, and whether something could be done to make it better, or why trash is thrown here and there, or how desolate some of the streets look. But we do notice those things when travelling on the surface, and there is the possibility that from noticing, we will go on to change it.

    This has a direct practical side as well for business owners: when travelling at ground level, we can see shops and other amenities. Oh, that’s where I can buy that — or, oh, that looks like a pleasant restaurant! And knowing where it is and how to access it, there is the possibility of going back someday. This is both a far more amusing way to pass the time when travelling than looking at tunnel walls, and also good for the businesses we pass.

    Then, of course, there are the practical matters. I remember seeing a map of the subway system in Washington, DC, which showed various “planned” routes. I remember seeing the same map year after year, and being surprised that they were never built. Short on funds? Similarly, I read in the newspaper in Bangkok that the sky-train was supposed to extend far beyond the existing network. That hasn’t happened, and the sky-train itself took many years to build, in part, I hear, due to corruption. Meanwhile, the new metro in Bangkok doesn’t go much beyond the sky-train. What then are the chances that Dhaka will succeed in building all that it has planned? If the existing plans prove unaffor-dable, as the price of materials continues to rise, how much will a very limited system help to reduce traffic congestion or make travelling easier?

    Meanwhile, building a subway system requires building a lot of tunnels. The funny thing about tunnels is, they have to be accessed from the street. This involves a lot of big holes, and while those holes are in place, streets are closed down. So congestion will be significantly worse during the construction of the metro system.

    There is also the issue of crowding on the subway. I was in New York City recently, and given the intense street-level congestion, when it was too far to walk, I tried the subway. It was certainly better than being stuck in traffic, but, of course, I had no idea where I was, and I couldn’t decipher the thick New York accent of the conductor. On one trip, the train was so packed that I couldn’t see out the windows to read the names of the stops. This made arriving at my destination a bit of a challenge, and left me as clueless as ever about the geography of Manhattan.

    The sky-train is often packed in Bangkok, with barely room to stand. Thais are polite, and I have never had a man grab me. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my experience of riding in crowded subways in Boston, and I have heard horror stories about the system in Mexico, which apparently had to provide separate carriages for women to prevent sexual harassment on the packed trains.

    Then there are those lovely escalators down to the stations. Where there are hills, or where the system must go under high-rise buildings, stations must be built far below ground. Some of those escalators seem to go on forever. Stepping onto those moving stairs, with the ground so far below as to seem to belong almost to another planet, always makes my head spin. I was relieved, on a recent trip to DC, to discover that a Bangladeshi colleague had the same experience, only worse. He insisted on taking the lift. Of course, the lifts are intended mostly for the disabled, those with small children, or those with luggage, so sometimes one must wait a long time for them. Between the long lines for lifts and the crowded situation on the trains, it sometimes feels as if we have simply shifted a portion of our traffic congestion below ground.

    Speaking of traffic congestion, it helps to remember that people need to be able to get to and from the public transit stops. Getting from one stop to another quickly is a great convenience, but the benefits of that convenience are rapidly diminished when it is difficult to get from public transit to one’s actual destination. I made a mistake in Bangkok once and got off at the wrong subway stop. As I came up to the street, I realised that where I needed to go was on the other side of a highway, with no provision for crossing. I could either go back underground, pay again, then wait for another train to come along to take me just one more stop, or I could risk my life running across the highway. Needless to say, I ran.

    In cities with broken sidewalks, and sidewalks blocked by parked cars, barbed wire and cement medians to prevent people from crossing the street, getting to and from public transit becomes a daunting challenge. Anyone in his right mind would choose to drive instead, if he had the option, thus defeating in large part the point of the public transit in the first place: to woo people away from their cars. Public transit doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it is part of the city, and it is meant to connect places not just along the tracks, but throughout the city. If people can’t easily get to the stops on foot, or on rickshaw, then there is little point in building the system in the first place.

    Then there is that lovely dream of un-congested streets in Dhaka once our metro system is built. How many large, crowded cities with crowded metros have streets free of traffic jams?

    Let’s face it, moving through a city underground — even at a good pace — just isn’t that pleasant an experience. Subway stations are often hot and smelly. Homeless people tend to use them as urinals, and there are always those aggressive people who insist on smoking despite all the signs. If subways freed up the streets, then all the passengers who could afford a car or taxi would go back to riding in one.

    I remember being late for the airport in Boston once, and figuring that rather than going all that way below ground, changing trains twice, and moving at the snail’s pace the Boston subway often goes at — it is the oldest subway system in the US and thus the least modern — I would take a taxi. Oops. Of course it took even longer, thanks to all the traffic, and I missed my plane. Yet Boston’s subway system is far more extensive than Dhaka’s is ever likely to be, it is easy to walk in Boston, there is a good bus system to complement the subway, and the population is a fraction of Dhaka’s. So, why are there still traffic jams, when the metro is supposed to eliminate them?

    I’m sure the decision was made in good faith. Perhaps the planners involved have not spent much time in the major cities of the world, and experienced both their subways and the traffic situation above ground. Perhaps they feel that people enjoy being below ground, or that the city is best experienced as little as possible — that is, either underground or safely insulated in a steel box. No doubt they consider the expenditure of a mere few billion dollars quite reasonable, pocket change really. Perhaps they are too busy to read the Strategic Transport Plan, which was meant to map out the best transport plan for the future, and which found that a metro would offer no significant improvements over surface public transit, and thus there was no justification for building it.

    Even allowing that a few billion dollars is a minor sum, which should involve little thought or planning before being spent, I would still suggest that when Dhaka’s city planners make their final decision about an efficient, fast, affordable, high quality system of public transit, they should be careful not to miss the boat. It’s a lot more expensive and technically more difficult to build and operate an underground system than a surface one.

    We would get a far more extensive system, with far lower fares or less government subsidy, if we built a surface rather than an underground system. The system could be built a lot faster than a metro, and with a lot less disruption of traffic during its construction. The issue of fares is important — around the world, public transit tends to be inexpensive, and yet still highly subsidised by government. The more expensive the system is to build and maintain, the higher the fares and the subsidies, and the less that will eventually get built.

    People could see their city out the windows while riding, gaining both a sense of perspective and of knowledge of what was happening around them. A less expensive system could be started quickly, and gradually expanded. Ensuring that people can walk around the city would not only make the public transit system viable, but would also help reduce congestion by shifting some short distance trips to walking. The money to fix our footpaths, and the political will to ban cars parking on them, should not be more difficult to find than the billions planned for the metro.

    Public transit is definitely the way to go — but not all public transit is created equal, and leaping onto the wrong train won’t help us reach our final destination.

    Yasmin Chowdhury is a freelance contributor to Forum.

  15. heritage says:

    Private car Control
    by Edwin J.Feulner, Ph.D.

    Cars are a menace to society. Every year they lead to thousands of deaths. Criminals use them in committing crimes. And when mixed with drugs or alcohol, their deadly potential increases. In short, cars should be banned.
    Sounds crazy, right? But substitute “guns” for “cars” and you have the gun-control argument in a nutshell.
    Gun-control advocates will argue that the comparison is unfair, and it is: To guns. The truth is, cars are more dangerous than firearms. In 1997 there were 43,458 motor vehicle deaths in the United States, according to the National Center on Health Statistics. By comparison, there were 32,436 firearms deaths—and fully half of those were suicides.
    Notice I said motor vehicle deaths, not motor vehicle accidents. Some will say that gun victims are murdered while car-crash victims are “accidentally” killed, an argument designed to make guns look “bad” and cars “neutral.” But 39 percent of all fatal crashes involve drunk drivers using their cars as deadly weapons. By the numbers, criminals kill about 15,000 people a year with guns, and drunk drivers kill about 15,000 people a year with two-ton machines that can travel at more than a hundred miles per hour. Perhaps we should pass a law banning “Saturday Night Chryslers.”
    Not only do guns cause fewer deaths than the activists would have us believe, they can also be life-savers. According to John Lott, a professor at the University of Chicago, as many as 2 million crimes a year are prevented in the United States because the potential victim is armed. In Canada and Great Britain, for example, where gun controls are stringent, 50 percent of all break-ins occur while the victims are at home. In the United States, where many homeowners own weapons—and the criminals are aware of this—87 percent of all home burglaries occur when the residents are away, Lott notes in his book “More Guns, Less Crime.” Is there a lesson here?
    For his contribution to the gun-control debate, Professor Lott has become an intellectual pariah. Elite opinion-shapers, who have embraced gun control with religious fervor, want nothing to do with him. In their view, if you have something nice to say about guns you’re one of those people—the kind who hunt ducks with bazookas, worry about Communists invading their cul-de-sac, and name their kids “Smith” and “Wesson.”
    Of course, gun-control snobs are seldom at risk of serious crime themselves. It’s easy to preach against guns from gated communities protected by private police forces. But suggest that the $8-an-hour rent-a-cop who guards these neighborhoods be allowed to have a gun to protect his own family, and the gun-control zealots wax hysterical.
    Witness today’s political debate, which is rife with talk of rights—a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” for those who want their insurance plans to cover liposuction, an “Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights” for those who want more (or fewer) peanuts in their in-flight snacks. Mention constitutional rights, however, including the right to own a gun, and you’ll be accused of being a Neanderthal.
    In Maryland, Attorney General Joseph Curran can’t be bothered with the Second Amendment. He wants laws that would ban all handguns in the state. Never mind that Curran is sworn to uphold the Maryland constitution, which guarantees Maryland citizens the protections of the U.S. Constitution. When it comes to the Bill of Rights, some politicians defend only the parts they like.
    That’s the way the gun-control crowd wants it. No 225-year-old scrap of parchment will stand in the way of their drive to banish guns—but not cars, rocks, knives, baseball bats, or any other object used to inflict harm—from the face of the earth. It’s that kind of thinking that poses the real threat to Americans.
    Edwin Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org), a Washington-based public policy research institute.
    Distributed nationally by the Scripps Howard News Service
    http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed113099b.cfm

  16. Talk on
    LET US MAKE OUR CITY HAPPIER

    Venue: URP Seminar Room

    Organized By:Padatik

    Dear all,
    We have introduced a group at BUET named as Padatik. The main goal of this group is to introduce a Car Free Day in BUET Campus and finally in Dhaka City.

    Initially all the members of this group have decided to come to campus on foot every Monday. This group is going to organize a talk on “Let Us Make Our City Happier”. Please see the attached file for time and venue. You are cordially invited to join the group and enjoy the talk.

    Mr. Suman Kumar Mitra
    Lecturer
    Department of Urban and Regional Planning
    Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
    Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

    Phone: 880 2 966 5650 (PABX)
    FAX: 880 2 861 3026, 880 2 861 3046

  17. Japan set to show off its expertise on energy frugality

    By Martin Fackler
    Published: July 4, 2008

    KUMAGAYA, Japan: With its towering furnaces and clanging conveyer belts carrying crushed rock, Taiheiyo Cement’s factory looks like a relic from the Industrial Revolution. But it is actually a model of modern energy efficiency, harnessing its waste heat to generate much of its own electricity.

    Engineers from China and elsewhere in Asia come to study its design, which has allowed the company to slash the amount of power it buys from the grid.

    The plant is just one example of Japan’s single-minded dedication to reducing energy use, a commitment that dates from the oil shocks of the 1970s that shook this resource-poor nation.

    Now, with oil prices hitting dizzying levels and the world struggling to deal with global warming, Japan hopes to use its conservation record to assume a rare leadership role on a pressing global issue. It will showcase its efforts to export its conservation ethic – and its expensive power-saving technology – at the summit meeting of the Group of 8 industrial leaders that Japan is playing host to, starting Monday.

    “Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure,” Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in a recent speech outlining his agenda for the summit meeting. Japan, he said, “wants to contribute to the world.”

    Fukuda has already urged the leaders of the Group of 8 nations to adopt numerical targets as they discuss new ways to curb carbon dioxide emissions, a focus of treaty talks aimed at a new global agreement by the end of 2009. The existing pacts, the original climate treaty from 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, have been widely described as failures by energy and climate experts.

    The rising cost of energy is expected to dominate the meeting, which will be held on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. President George W. Bush and other leaders are facing calls to try to increase oil supplies by expanding offshore drilling and to rein in hedge funds and other investors who speculate on world energy markets.

    Japan, by many measures, is the most energy-frugal country among the world’s developed nations. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less.

    It is also the only industrial country that sustained government investment in energy research even after oil prices fell.

    “Japan taught itself decades ago how to compete with gasoline at $4 per gallon,” said Hisakazu Tsujimoto of the Energy Conservation Center, a government research institute that promotes energy efficiency. “It will fare better than other countries in the new era of high energy costs.”

    According to the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union or the United States, and one-eighth as much as China and India in 2005. While the country is known for its green products like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have come in less eye-catching areas, for example, by cutting energy use in manufacturing.

    Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged at the equivalent of about 200 million tons of oil since the early 1970s, according to Economy Ministry data. It was able to maintain that level even during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and 1980s, as the economy doubled, when adjusted for inflation, to $5 trillion.

    Japan’s strides in efficiency are clearest in heavy industries like steel, which are the biggest consumers of power. Over the past 36 years, the Japanese steel industry has invested about $45 billion in developing energy-saving technologies, according to the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, an industry group.

    The results are visible at the sprawling Keihin mill on Tokyo Bay, operated by Japan’s No. 2 steel maker, JFE Steel. Massive steel ducts snake from the blast furnaces and surrounding buildings. These capture heat and gases that had previously been released into the air or burned off as waste. Now, they are used to power generators that produce 90 percent of the electricity used by the plant. (The Keihin plant’s main fuel remains the coal used to heat its huge blast furnaces.)

    Such innovations allow the mill to produce a ton of steel using 35 percent less energy than three decades ago, said Yoshitsugu Iino, group leader of JFE Steel’s climate change policy group. Iino calculates that if the global steel industry adopted Japanese conservation measures, it could slash carbon emissions by some 300 million tons a year, equal to the greenhouses gases released annually by Australia.

    etc.

    —– ### —–
    J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities
    mailbox@carfree. com http://www.carfree. com

  18. With a few simple steps, we could make Dhaka more livable. The first step is to change our priorities, by emphasizing access, not mobility, short rather than long distance travel, children, not cars, and livable environments, not just transport. To achieve this, we must change our policies; for instance, by enforcing the ban on parking on footpaths; reducing parking and charging a fair market rate for it; creating positive infrastructure for non‐polluters: pedestrians, cyclists, and rickshaws; and by putting children first: building more or better schools, libraries,
    and parks, and by making streets safer. In short, “We need a model in which happiness, rather than consumption levels, is the measure of success.”

  19. Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes
    By WILLIAM NEUMAN
    In a surprising reshaping of the urban landscape, the city is creating a public esplanade along a portion of one of its most prominent streets, Broadway in Midtown, setting aside the east side of the roadway for a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters.

    The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, will run from 42nd Street to Herald Square. Scheduled to open in mid-August, it will change that section of Broadway from a four-lane to a two-lane street.

    “I’m envisioning it as a public park on the street,” said Barbara Randall, the executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, which is working with the city’s Department of Transportation to create the boulevard.

    The work, which has begun without a formal public announcement, reflects Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sweeping vision of reducing pollution and traffic congestion in New York, and particularly Manhattan, by increasing open space and encouraging bike riding and other alternatives to cars.

    The plan also makes clear that the Bloomberg administration, after losing its bid in Albany for a congestion-pricing plan that would have fought traffic by charging drivers to enter the area of Manhattan below 59th Street, intends to push ahead with smaller-scale initiatives to wrest at least part of the street from cars and trucks.

    Other recent initiatives from the Transportation Department include banning cars on Park Avenue on three Saturdays in August and exploring a bicycle-sharing program.

    The new esplanade “will transform all of Broadway, visually and mentally” Ms. Randall said. “People will start thinking of the street differently. They’ll start thinking of it as a destination where you can watch the world go by.”

    Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that the esplanade, which was designed with the help of Jan Gehl, a well-known urban designer based in Copenhagen who has been hired as a consultant by the city, was part of a larger program to turn underused street space into public plazas in each of the city’s 59 community board districts.

    But Ms. Sadik-Khan acknowledged that there was a special significance when the street was one of the city’s most famous thoroughfares.

    “Broadway is not famous because there are a gazillion cars going through it,” she said. “We’re trying to have the public space match the name.”

    “It’s a really important signal of how we can transform the streets of New York,” she added.

    There are questions, however, about the impact the narrower Broadway will have on Midtown traffic. (Ms. Sadik-Khan said that a two-lane Broadway would be able to handle the traffic flow just fine.) Some workers in the area wondered whether people would flock to dine and relax so close to a busy route’s speeding taxis, noisy trucks and exhaust fumes.

    “They’ll have carbon monoxide in their tuna fish,” said Corey Baker, 31, who works at a fashion branding company at Broadway and 41st Street.

    Still, Mr. Baker said that the neighborhood would benefit from more open space and added that he might even use it.

    “If it was a tourist crowd, then no,” Mr. Baker said. “If it was other people grabbing lunch, then it’s good.”

    Many people interviewed on Broadway on Thursday were curious about the work, which included newly painted pavement and orange-and-white plastic traffic barriers that had mysteriously appeared on the street in recent days.

    Ms. Sadik-Khan said that the department was planning to unveil the project closer to its scheduled completion, on Aug. 15. But she said that officials had spent months discussing it with the three business improvement districts and the local community board.

    She said the city was spending $700,000 to create the string of blocklong plazas from 42nd to 35th Streets. That includes painting the bike lane green, buying the chairs, tables, benches, umbrellas and planters and applying a coat of small-grained gravel mixed with epoxy onto the pedestrian areas, which will set them off from both the street and the bicycle path.

    The three business improvement districts — the Times Square Alliance, the Fashion Center B.I.D. and the 34th Street Partnership — have agreed to pay for maintenance, which primarily involves buying and maintaining the plants for the planters. They estimate the cost at about $280,000 a year.

    The planters are a key part of the design because they will be the only thing separating the expanded pedestrian areas from the cars and trucks zipping by.

    Nevertheless, many people on Broadway on Thursday said they would welcome the new plazas in an area that has a shortage of places to sit outdoors. About the only such place along that stretch of Broadway is Golda Meir Square, a small plaza in front of 1411 Broadway, at 39th Street, where folding chairs are set out during the day.

    On Thursday, there were a couple of dozen chairs, all occupied. Those who could not get a chair sat among the pigeons on the steps leading to a platform with a bust of Golda Meir.

    Andre Fisher, 54, a clothing manufacturer who works in the garment district, was soaking up the sun in one of the chairs. “I think we’ve got enough places for cars and not enough places for people to sit,” he said, endorsing the idea.

    Several people wondered about the impact on traffic, but Ms. Sadik-Khan said that it would be slight. In its current configuration, Broadway has two lanes for traffic north of Times Square, widens to four lanes from 42nd Street to Herald Square, and then returns to two lanes.

    Ms. Sadik-Khan said that the heaviest downtown traffic in the area was on the avenues, not on Broadway. And she said that drivers would learn to adapt.

    “It’s going to be clear if you really want to go downtown and you’re in a car you’re going to be much better off going down one of the avenues than going down Broadway,” she said.

    The city has already carved out smaller plazas in several neighborhoods. One is at the corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan and another on a block of Willoughby Street in Brooklyn, where it intersects with Fulton Street. The city is also working to create more boulevard-like space along a shorter section of Broadway near Madison Square Park.

    On Willoughby Street, Shakir Thompson, 44, sat on a chair on Thursday studying a textbook on electrical theory. He said he used the plaza daily.

    “It’s nice, it’s calm,” he said, despite the buzz of nearby traffic. “In the country they wouldn’t relate to this. But in the city we have to take what we can get.”

    Daryl Khan contributed reporting.

  20. Hi,

    Something similar happened late last year with Bogotá and its BRT/LRT/metro
    discussion. Though plans are now underway for its phase 3, there were many
    press articles from El Tiempo (the major national newspaper) which were
    strongly lobbying building any type of rail- based solution in one of the
    trunk lines of the city. It was also linked to the campaigns of the
    candidates for mayors (Peñalosa and Moreno, the latter pro-rail). Some of us
    who normally wrote articles there suggested the newspaper to let us publish
    something to “neutralize” the very polarized debate, but no attention was
    paid to us. Instead, they provided biased information about rail projects
    from some places in the world (including the elevated rail from Medellín
    which was a financial disaster), while manipulating numbers on costs of
    trunk lines (using the highest costs of BRT vs the lowest costs of an LRT,
    which were almost the same), capacity (using the lower capacity numbers of
    BRT and comparing to the highest capacity numbers of metros) and other
    information such as “world-class cities have subways” (which could be more
    like “built, but would have rather built a BRT in some cases”).

    The sad thing is that readers of the newspaper (i.e. most citizens) may now
    think that BRT is a low-quality mass transit solution, while rail-based
    solutions are “that which we’ll never have because of ignorance of technical
    people” or whatever. Additional to that, those of us who were critical of
    rail-based solutions for low-demand corridors (such as the Avenida Septima,
    with 10,000 pphpd) were just told “you are with Peñalosa, so you are
    biased”. Politics is deeply intertwined with transport now, especially when
    speaking of mass transit options.

    However, as I said, plans for the next phase of TransMilenio are underway.
    The city will now spend some (more) money on feasibility studies for a metro
    (I think it’s the 15th time in 40 years, the last one being developed in
    1997 or so), since everybody wants a rail-based solution, no matter where or
    at what cost (and if possible, underground or elevated, because “it won’t
    fit elsewhere”). The ideal would be that, if we have a metro, it should be
    at a reasonable cost and in the proper corridor (most probably, Avenida
    Caracas). The national government said they will support a metro only if (a)
    there is no need for subsidy and (b) there is an adequate level of demand.
    Let’s hope that the result of the study is not a self-fulfilling prophecy…
    it wouldn’t be the first time. In the meantime, cars are bumper to bumper
    and we still don’t have the Nano here.

    But I don’t want to divert the discussion from the issue of the Times of
    India. I just wanted to highlight the importance that the media has on these
    issues and that we need to see which are good ways to solve this. In
    Bangkok, we once sent an article to a newspaper with information on what 1
    million USD would do in mass transit options (we showed a map with the
    results for LRT, subway and BRT), plus some info on what BRT is, etc. Call
    it lobbying from the other side if you like, but it was a good experience.

    Best regards,

    Carlosfelipe Pardo
    Coordinador de Proyecto- Project Coordinator
    GTZ – Proyecto de Transporte Sostenible (SUTP, SUTP-LAC)
    Cl 93A # 14-17 of 708
    Bogotá D.C., Colombia
    Tel/fax: +57 (1) 236 2309 Mobile: +57 (3) 15 296 0662
    carlos.pardo at gtz.de http://www.gtz.de
    (carlos.pardo at sutp.org http://www.sutp.org )

  21. World Bank Says Dhaka Rickshaw Ban Should Not Go Forward
    01 Apr 2005

    Posted In: Planning & Advocacy for Cycling & Walking,

    The World Bank has spoken out against the systematic ban against cycle rickshaws on major arterials in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The ban was initially implemented on one major corridor in 2002, and spread to a second corridor last December.

    The city was poised to expand the ban to cover a total of 120 km over the next several months. While the initial proposal for the ban came out of an urban transport strategy developed under the auspices of a World Bank urban transport loan for Dhaka, after questions were raised by NGOs, the World Bank determined that the way in which the cycle rickshaw ban was implemented violated their urban transport policy.

    “Any future support from the World Bank would be possible only if it can be demonstrated that aggregate positive impacts of NMT-free [non-motorized-transportation-free] conversion on transport users and transport providers outweigh the aggregate negative impact,” Bangaldesh Country Director Christine Wallich wrote in a statement. “The bank would not support the continued conversions that do not conform to the above principles, and any support would be contingent on the government carrying out mitigation measures to reduce the negative impacts, and alleviate public concern.”

    While automobiles represent only 9% of Dhaka’s traffic stream, walking and cycle rickshaws are the most popular forms of transport, respectively. Nearly half a million cycle rickshaws are used by city residents for their mobility and livelihood. Most dependent on cycle rickshaws are women, school children, and low-income garment workers.

    Although the Bank has not asked for the two existing bans to be reversed, Wallich urged that several measures “be completed as soon as possible to mitigate the impact on affected transport users and providers.” These included a program to retain rickshaw drivers for other trades, improvements of bus service and infrastructure, and the designation of a network of streets for “non-motorized vehicles only.”

    More information is available from the World Carfree Network: http://www.worldcarfree.net.

  22. Jakarta Busway System Could Save Rp 235 Billion in Subsidies
    02 Jul 2008

    Posted In: Jakarta BRT, Developing High-Quality, Low-Cost Mass Transit, Indonesia

    If private vehicle users switched to taking the busway, the administration could save hundreds of billions of rupiahs, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) estimates.

    Agnes Winarti, The Jakarta Post

    If private vehicle users switched to taking the busway, the administration could save hundreds of billions of rupiahs, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) estimates.

    “On the assumption that private vehicles travel an average of 10 kilometers in an hour, Rp 235 billion (US$25.8 million) would be saved in fuel subsidies a year if private vehicle users switched to the busway,” ITDP national director Milatia Kusuma Mu’min said at a seminar Tuesday.

    The seminar on economical efficiency prospects through improving public transportation services was held by the ITDP, the Indonesian Transportation Community and the University of Indonesia’s engineering faculty alumni association.

    The Transjakarta busway routes are Blok M-Kota, Pulo Gadung-Harmoni, Kalideres-Harmoni, Pulo Gadung-Dukuh Atas, Ancol-Kampung Melayu, Ragunan-Kuningan, and Kampung Rambutan-Kampung Melayu.

    Milatia said if the busway system utilized all 14 corridors, the government would save Rp 963 billion in fuel subsidies a year.

    A fully functioning busway system can carry up to 900,000 passengers per day, while after the recent fuel price increases, the number of busway passengers has increased from 210,000 to around 225,000 a day.

    ITDP data shows there were only 30,000 passengers a day in the busway’s first operational year in 2004.

    According to the New York-based ITDP, bus services have evolved from an informal transit service to conventional bus services, then to basic busways and eventually full Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems.

    “Jakarta’s busway system is currently seen as a basic busway. So, it still needs to be upgraded to be a fully functioning BRT system. There’s no instant solution,” she said.

    Basic busway services are characterized by segregated or single corridor services, on-board fare collection, basic bus shelters and standard bus vehicles.

    The fully functioning BRT refers to an integrated network of routes and corridors, enclosed and high-quality stations, pre-board fare collection, frequent and rapid services and the use of clean technology.

    Looking toward a full BRT system, the Tranjakarta busway is expected to set up an integrated electronic fare collection system, integrated modes of public transport with excellent feeder services, as well as supporting policies through appropriate traffic demand management and transit oriented development.

    “A good feeder service is not available yet,” Mila said.

    She said it was important to start preparing for manual feeder services, like bicycle facilities, as well as motorized services.

    Head of the logistics and transportation study center at Gadjah Mada University, Heru Sutomo, said although Corridor I has been a success, the construction of other corridors have been too fast and too ambitious, and have overshadowed the need for feeder services.

    For the long term, bus and train stations must be developed in a more user friendly way, Heru said. The distance from stations to housing complexes, offices, shopping centers, social facilities should be shorter and they should provide easier access to other forms of public and private transportation and sidewalks.

    To access the original article, click on the link below:

  23. Rickshaw ban: a bane or boon?

    To a person like me who has spent the major portion of his life in the vintage streets and lanes of Shahjahanabad, or the Mughal-built Old Delhi, riding on horse carts and rickshaws, the blanket ban on cycle rickshaws by the Delhi High Court has come as a shock. I feel that courts that otherwise are doing yeomen service to the cause of justice at times pass orders that are not people-friendly.

    May be for the Chandni Chowk traders, this initiative might come as a breather because they have been complaining about traffic congestion. But there are many for whom the decision sounds the death knell.

    Mullaji, a rickshaw puller I know in the Chandni Chowk area, is shocked. Only recently he admitted his son in one of the English medium schools of the area, after saving from his daily earnings of around Rs.200. He is apprehensive about his son’s future following the ban.

    While people in the area clearly seem to be divided, the rickshaw pullers’ voice, those whose daily bread is endangered, is going unheard.

    Pedalling tirelessly, come rain, biting cold, winds or scorching sun, these hard working men tell heart-rending tales about how they support big families with ailing elders and children.

    Even the tourists who relish cycle rickshaw rides are taken aback by the ban.

    It is said there are around 580,000 rickshaws on Delhi roads. Of this, about 80,000 are only licensed. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), it is alleged, makes a huge sum of money from the illegal unlicensed rickshaws.

    Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal, a trader association in Old Delhi, had filed in the Delhi High Court in February 2002 a petition seeking the restriction of the number of cycle rickshaws in the area, citing the fear that traffic in Chandni Chowk from Gauri Shankar Mandir to Fatehpuri is highly choked due to the presence of unlimited number of cycle rickshaws and unauthorized occupation of road by vendors.

    As an activist from the walled city, I feel the association should have sought a viable solution to the traffic problem rather than a ban on the rickshaws. Many residents of the area feel that the ban is not justified because the elders, women and children rely on rickshaws to commute. Also people prefer open rickshaws to being dumped into crowded buses.

    True “eco-friendly” buses are there now. But do they solve the problem? The traffic jams could also be due to the large number of private cars and auto-rickshaws. A whole lot of categories of vehicles might also be banned for environmental reasons. The notion that a cycle rickshaw generates more traffic congestion than a private car is unjustified and untenable. Moreover, the new buses meant for Chandni Chowk will have a problem of parking as well.

    Cycle-Rickshaw Chalak Malik Sangharsh Association president Shashi Bhushan says the cycle rickshaws are now plying in Oxford in London, Paris municipality areas and Singapore.

    In Delhi people need cycle rickshaws for transport, the pullers need them as a source of income. For the elderly women, sick and children, rickshaws are like independent cars on hire, as they like to travel freely for reason of comfort. The old and sick would be picked from their doorstep in narrow lanes and be dropped where a car or other transport cannot ply. As cycle rickshaws play an important role in short distance travel, banning them would be problematic for short distance commuters.

    The court is also of the view that “plying of cycle rickshaws on Delhi roads by poor rickshaw pullers is against human dignity and it results in the exploitation of the poor people who as last resort take upon themselves the work of rickshaw pullers at the mercy of influential people owning such cycle rickshaws.” Very true, but what about their livelihood now. It would have been a humane act if surrogate occupation was provided to them.

    In Kolkata, the situation is far worse as the rickshaw pullers have to run bare feet on potholed roads but if they are deprived of their rickshaws out of a strange sympathy for their human dignity, they would have nothing to do other than begging.

    It is better if the issue is subjected to public referendum. Rather than a blanket ban, need of the hour is to study the problem minutely. What the state government requires is that a policy be designed to regulate the rickshaws not only in Chandni Chowk but the whole of the walled city. It would be better to regulate a system with the help of NGOs and associations like Cycle-Rickshaw Chalak Malik Sangharsh Association.

    After all, these rickshaws are an inveterate part of Chandni Chowk culture.

    (Firoz Bakht Ahmed is a commentator on culture, heritage and Delhi history. He can be contacted at firozbakht@rediffmail.com)
    Indo-Asian News Service

  24. RICKSHAWS AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING!

    conference in Bali this week, to haggle over how best to tackle climate change, they should spare a thought for the humble bicycle rickshaw drivers of New Delhi.
    The rickshaw wallahs, as they’re known locally, have invoked the battle against global warming in their fight to be allowed to stay on the crowded streets of the Indian capital.

    I first learned about the plight of the wallahs on a recent visit to the city when the wheezing old taxi I was riding in nearly ran a rickshaw off the road. This isn’t altogether unusual in India, where traffic runs on the principle of survival of the fittest – or at least the biggest.

    Ian Williams / NBC News
    A rickshaw travels across the busy streets of New Delhi, India.

    All the same, my driver’s reaction seemed unusually hostile. The rickshaw shouldn’t be on the road, clogging it up, he snarled, and anyway it was now illegal for them to come to this part of town.

    That surprised me too, since I’ve yet to find any Delhi driver who regards traffic rules as anything more than advisory.

    I decided to investigate further, since I rather like the old rickshaws. They may not be much to look at, and sitting behind a sweating, straining cyclist, his rickshaw squeaking and wobbling amid the Delhi gridlock, might be regarded by some as rather cruel. But to me Indian cities just wouldn’t be the same without them.

    ‘Modern’ enough?
    In Delhi alone there are more than 80,000 licensed rickshaws, though the number is estimated to be more than five times that. In some parts of the bustling old city, they can be the only way of accessing narrow lanes.

    I soon discovered that, yes, the Delhi authorities have indeed banned them from Delhi’s main corridors as well as parts of the old city.

    But the wallahs are fighting back, and feisty local environmentalists have taken up their cause.

    The NGO, Initiative for Transportation and Development Programs, has challenged the ban in the Delhi High Court demanding the authorities provide a dedicated track for the cycle rickshaws on all main roads.

    They told the court the ban on rickshaws would worsen air pollution if cars replaced them.

    The police told the court that getting rid of the rickshaws would help make Delhi a “modern” city.

    “Delhi traffic police are of the opinion that cycle-rickshaws are extremely traffic hazardous and accident-prone,” they said in a statement to the court. They said traffic was a nightmare because of the “infiltration,” of cycle-rickshaws.

    Serious stuff.

    Cycle rickshaws may not conform to the Delhi police’s view of what makes a modern city, but many capitals of more developed countries are beginning to see them as part of the solution to environmental problems. They can now be seen in London, Oxford, Paris, Singapore – even New York City, where they are called pedicabs. And London’s considering a system of licensing for cycle rickshaws.

    And as for the pollution, Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment is warning that the city faces a winter of smog, with heightened risk of respiratory diseases, because the staggering increase in the number of motor vehicles, particularly diesel-fueled cars.

    It’s not the first time an Indian city has tried to get rid of rickshaws. Calcutta tried recently to ban the hand-pulled variety, the city’s communist authorities arguing these leftovers from the days of the British Raj are inhumane. But the rickshaw pullers don’t see it that way and so far they’re refusing to give way.

    In Delhi, the High Court is still chewing over the environmentalists’ petition.

    While I do hope something of substance comes out of Bali this week, I have my doubts. It may well be that local battles like the one being fought by Delhi’s rickshaw wallahs make more difference than two weeks of talking in the sun in the luxury of an Indonesian tropical island.

  25. Maruf Rhaman says:

    Bicycle Benefits?”

    Does Your Town Have “Bicycle Benefits?”

    There’s a guy on a bike riding up and down the east coast pitching a program called “Bicycle Benefits.” The guy is Ian Klepatar and BB is his program to encourage businesses to reward customers who arrive by bicycle.
    Simple and effective are two words to describe this program. A business chooses what reward to offer a customer who arrives on bike, the customer gets rewarded and everyone wins.
    The program is so brilliant and effective that I’ve asked Ian to send in updates from the road. He left his hometown near Saratoga, New York two weeks ago to start his trek around the east coast, talking up the benfits of “going by bike.” Klepatar attended the Washington DC Bike Summit then lit out for Boston. The first of many entries on his travels follows.
    Boston, MA: Today was like so many days that cyclists and bicycle advocates know all too well. Whether we are pushing for bike lanes on a new street in our community or getting cut-off, doored or disrespected among traffic flow while commuting to work, we know the feeling in others just “not getting it.” Unlike the past three days since I arrived in Boston, business owners didn’t really seem to be that interested in the benefits of bicycles. ‘You know there aren’t really that many bikers that come in this restaurant’ they tell me. I guess in my eyes, if somebody knows how to ride a bicycle, they are automatically a biker. At the same time just because we ride bicycles, it doesn’t make us bikers. So I go on to tell the uninterested owner the benefits of participating in a program which promotes physical activity, helmet use, alleviating congestion and parking hassle. The concept of the program is pretty basic. Businesses in the community offer discounts/rewards in order to entice community members to jump on their bicycles and visit the restaurants/businesses by bicycle. Upon arriving by bicycle and showing the affixed Bicycle Benefit helmet sticker, the individual receives the designated discount/reward. However, just as we often struggle to convey the many benefits of bicycle paths connecting neighborhoods to community centers or the importance of complete streets http://www.completestreets.org/ legislation to our elected politicians, I too wonder why some people don’t get it…Perhaps it’s been a while since we all felt the joy and benefits of riding a bicycle.

    info@1world2wheels.org

  26. Nihad Choudhury says:

    The traffic commentary
    Nihad Choudhury

    MY article is in response to the recently published column “Spinning our wheels” by Mr. Nasim Manzur. Instead of simply agreeing with all the facts and figures given by the aforementioned writer, I would also like to reiterate some of the problems and possible solutions to solve this “metro-crisis.” Although, I am an expatriate residing in New Jersey, I spent my entire childhood in Dhaka and, therefore, my article will be biased towards the capital.

    Mr. Manzur has pointed out Beijing’s $ 28.1 billion injection to reduce traffic congestion during the Olympic Games. I would like to add that there are various driving restrictions in place for the games as well. For example, according to The New York Times, almost 70% of the estimated 300,000 cars registered to the Chinese government in the city will be off the roads.

    Along with that, trucks will be forbidden to enter the city for two months during the Olympics and the Paralympics soon after. That is a drop of almost 45% of total traffic according to Mr. Zhou Zhengyu, a spokesman for the city’s traffic committee. In Dhaka’s case, such a drop in vehicular transportation would be impracticable (unless we get the next Olympics!).

    According to a survey carried out by Democracy Watch, a majority of respondents identified worsening roads and unplanned repairs as the main causes of traffic jams. It is the respondents’ belief that the software behind the package (i.e. legal framework, planning, management, etc) rather than the hardware (i.e. brick and mortar stuff), needs expansion.

    From my perspective, the other reasons behind these gridlocks are the simultaneous presence of motorised and non-motorised vehicles on the same roads and traffic mismanagement. To handle the first situation, the government has definitely been on the dot by banning rickshaws on several important roads. But, for the traffic mismanagement part, I believe there is room for improvement, especially in hotspots such as the intersections in Motijheel and Gulshan. But, the alternation of the Bengali temper and the education of a traffic sergeant, that’s another matter altogether.

    In actuality, as well as peoples’ views, Dhaka seriously lacks alternative modes of transportation for its burgeoning populace. As Prof. Nabi mentioned in his article in The Daily Star, and to voice the opinion of thousands of belligerent commuters, a Mass Rapid Transit system is definitely needed. But, instead of focusing on only the “billion dollar metro system,” why don’t we also consider the numerous water bodies within the city?

    With a little collaboration between the city officials and various affluent entrepreneurs, there are many lakes, not to mention the Buriganga river, that may provide a meaningful substitute for cars and buses. For example, in Amsterdam the city provides boats such as The Canal Bus and the Museumboot (The Museum Boat) to commute in and around the city. If geographers’ predictions are correct, both Dhaka and Amsterdam will be underwater within the next 40 odd years. Well, I suppose the Dutch seem to be quite prepared for the catastrophe already.

    Finally, from the perspective of a resident of New Jersey, the state with the famous Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, I believe the construction of a super-highway is a very viable solution. Although this may seem contradictory to the previous mentioned views regarding more roads, I believe that traffic and the masses should be directed not only around the city, but also out of it!

    Just envision a miniature Asian Highway within Bangladesh itself, running all the way from Lalmonirhat to Cox’s Bazar. Even though a mammoth creation as such would be expensive, if toll-booths are placed in every exit to a district the returns would be an annuity of sorts. The main purpose would be to allow people to live outside Dhaka and yet have access to all the conveniences of the city.

    We agree that most commuters do spend half their journey complaining about the gridlock and road conditions. But, to be quite honest, the same conversations are carried on in most other metropolises as well. The only advantage that Dhaka residents may have over other cities would mainly be the saturation levels of the city planners.

    Dhaka is fairly young in comparison to many other metropolitan cities. Thus, it still has time to reallocate resources to solve this problem. But, gargantuan funds are required to initiate all these beautiful ideas. But, an optimist would agree that with a little help from local businessmen, and foreign investments (pssst The World Bank and ADB), that too could solved.

    Nihad Choudhury is a student at Rutgers University and welcomes all feedback at nihadchy@gmail.com.

  27. A. S. M. Mahbubun Nabi says:

    TO SOLVE THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM
    OF DHAKA METROPOLITAN AREA
    A. S. M. Mahbubun Nabi
    Professor, Dept. of Urban & Regional Planning
    BUET, Dhaka- 1000.

    In order to solve the transportation problem of Dhaka City, the Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for Dhaka City was initiated in March, 2004 by GOB with the assistance of World Bank, and with Louis Berger Inc. as Principal Consultants and Bangladesh Consultant Ltd. as local partner. In August, 2004 an Advisory Committee comprising of some 32 members from different categories of professionals, engineers, planners, architects, academics, civil servants etc. was appointed to guide and oversee the work of the consultants. The plan (STP) was completed in December, 2005.

    The Strategic Transport Plan (STP) has made some strategic recommendations to solve the transportation problems of Dhaka City. The major components of the Strategic Transport Plan are the following:
    (A) Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, which include the following components:
    a) Three Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Routes of total length of about 200 Km. at a total
    cost of U. S. $ 1.0 billion
    b) Three Metro Lines with an estimated cost of about U. S. $ 2.1 billion, or Taka
    14,500 crores.

    (B) 50 Roadway Projects including the following components :
    a) Three elevated expressways : Gulistan-Jatrabari Flyover; Gulistan – Mohakhali
    Elevated Expressway; and Moghbazar Flyover; and
    b) Two Bypass Roads : the Eastern Bypass and the Western Bypass.

    The STP recommendations are highly capital intensive option that will require a total investment of U.S. $ 5.52 billion or Taka 38,000 crores for its implementation, but the benefits which will be achieved out of this investment will not be very significant. Some of the capital-intensive projects as recommended in the STP are discussed below :

    Metro System : The STP team has recommended a Metro System comprised of three Metro Lines at a total cost of U.S. $ 2.1 billion or Taka 14,500 crores. The total length of the Metro Lines is not known, but I guess it will be about 70 km. in length. If we consider that people will walk down to Metro Stations from a distance of 1 km. to avail the Metro service, then the area-coverage of Metro service will only be about 140 sq. km. But, the total area of Dhaka Metropolitan City (RAJUK area) is about 1530 sq. km. Hence, the area-coverage of Metro Service will be less than 10 percent of total area of Dhaka Metropolitan City.

    The STP team has failed to recognize some major disadvantages of Metro system, such as, they are technically difficult and potentially unfeasible in a city prone to flooding. If the Metro system has to be safe for implementation and operation, then Dhaka City will have to be made completely flood-free for all time, which will be extremely difficult.

    Metro construction requires costly excavation. Typical costs of Metro is about $ 50.0 million to 240.0 million per km. Additional costs are involved with other infrastructures, such as underground Metro stations. A Metro station costs about $ 150.0 million.

    Operating costs of Metros are extremely high requiring very expensive electric rail cars. Metro systems require constant and huge supply of electricity which will be very difficult to be ensured in Dhaka City. Most Metro systems of the world have operating deficits which can often severe the budget of the country.

    Worldwide experience is that, except in a few cases the fare of the Metro ride is subsidized, and in some cases very heavily subsidized. The experience shows that the various Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects from the late 1990’s are all in financial trouble and are nowhere achieving profitability.

    In Sao Paulo Metro, the City Govt. pays a subsidy of $ 0.20 (25%) for each trip (total trips are 2.1 million per day). One of the more spectacular recent failures of a Metro and LRT was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the system there were substantial subsidy in the fare . The result was a financial failure and the system was nationalized in late 2001. After only 3 years of operation the system accumulated debts of more than US. $ 1.4 billion leading to the biggest bankruptcy in Malaysian corporate history. The 20 km Metro in Singapore, built at a
    total cost of U.S. $ 2.9 billion, have an operational loss of US. $ 1.1 million per month in 2004.

    The STP recommended Metro for Dhaka city, if it is built and operated, will have a minimum economic fare of Tk. 10.0 for the ride of 1 km. distance, which will be affordable only for a very small percentage of passengers. In order to make it affordable for middle-income group of people, at least 50 percent subsidy in the fare will be required. The STP has estimated that about 57,42,000 passenger trips will be carried daily by the Metro, and the average trip-lengths will be about 5 km. Hence, a subsidy of Tk. 143.55 million will have to be paid daily and the yearly subsidy will be about Tk. 5240 crores.

    The construction of Metros is often agonizingly slow. The 20 km Metro in Singapore was under construction for nearly 8 years. The Blue Line Subway (21 km.) in Bangkok was under construction for about 7 years.

    Flexibility to expand and adaptability to a changing situation is also a key requirement for any mass transit system. Dhaka is rapidly growing and the situation in the city is rapidly changing. But the expansion of the Metro system is very complex.

    Per kilometer construction cost of Metro is about hundred times more than that of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, and thus the Metro system is likely to cover only a very small portion of the city and would be of far less use if the private auto users are not diverted to the Metro service.

    According to the STP estimate, the Dhaka Metropolitan Study Area will generate daily 7 crore travel-trips of which only 8% of the trips will be served by Metro service. With an investment of Tk. 14,500 crores, the Metro system will not be able to solve more than 10 percent of the transportation problems of Dhaka City.

    Elevated Expressways and Flyovers: The STP team has recommended a system of Elevated Expressways and Flyovers of about 29 km. length. The construction cost of this system will be about U.S. $ 0.9 billion or Taka 6200 crores.

    Elevated expressways generate their own traffic diverted from other roads. They favour only a very small minority of people driving cars and autos, often simply shift congestion from one point to another in the network, increases in noise, pollution, congestion and fuel consumption. As the former Mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Penalosa once remarked, “There are two ways to destroy a city. One is through nuclear bombing, and the other is with elevated roads”. The STP study itself exposed the potential disastrous consequences of elevated expressways. Government subsidies provided to the use of elevated expressways only favour the richest segment of the population which is contrary to equity goals. Evidence suggests that existing flyovers have actually caused an increase in traffic congestion on the roads below the flyovers.

    In Dhaka city (in 2004) only one percent of the population was owners of autos and individualized transport (private car, jeep, micro, station wagon and pick-up). Flyovers and elevated expressways constructed at a great public expense, will only serve the needs of less than one percent people who own an individualized transport. For the remaining 99 percent of the people, these projects offer little benefit beyond increased difficulties and congestion, because the road capacities below the flyovers are reduced by at least 20 percent of the original capacity. Such facilities are of little benefit to buses, since buses generally move at ground level given the need for passenger to board and alight. These are inaccessible to pedestrians and cannot be used by rickshaws. They do not benefit the very large majority of people in the city and portrays a policy which cannot be sustainable.

    Elevated expressways can only be justified in the cities where almost all families own a car. But in case of Dhaka, where auto-ownership is only one percent, it will be a great blunder to build elevated expressways. The capital once invested on such projects becomes fixed with the land and become unable to be withdrawn any significant part of the investment through failure to command a fair return from it.

    The construction of elevated expressways through densely populated urban areas is likely to have serious detrimental impacts on environment and door-to-door accessibility. In Seoul, South Korea, government recently tore down an elevated expressway when they realized that it worsened the situation without solving any problem.
    The STP recommendations are biased and is detrimental to the economy of the country.

    Though the STP recommendations have been claimed to be a multimodal solution, but the study refers to only fuel-dependent transports ignoring the contributions of fuel-free non-motorized transports and pedestrians. Fuel-free non-motorized transport and pedestrian movements represent more than 50 percent of the total trips, and short trips constitute 76 percent of total trips in Dhaka City. How can the STP transport model be regarded as valid when it ignores the majority of the trips?

    The STP study has other weaknesses as well. In order to assess mobility of passengers in a mixed mode urban area, it is imperative to evaluate transport alternatives with respect to door-to-door trips. The trip time or trip distance represents only a portion of the travel. The total travel constitutes link travel time, walking time, waiting time and penalties of modal transfer, which have not been considered in the STP model. Hence, the recommendations of the STP model do not ensure that this will increase the convenience of mobility and access for the majority of the people.

    The Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for Dhaka city has opted for a transportation strategy which is highly capital intensive and which will require about US. $ 5.52 billion or Taka 38,000 crore for its implementation, but the strategy will not be successful in solving the transportation problem of Dhaka City. The reason is explained below:

    When the population of a city increases, the volume of traffic on the roads also increases, and as the volume of traffic on the roads increases, the transportation problem also increases,. The Strategic Transportation Plan for Dhaka City has been prepared for a population of 1,98,00,000 (within RAJUK area) in the year 2024. Beyond this period population of Dhaka City will grow at least at a growth rate of 3.0 percent per annum. Hence, the solution of transportation problem which has been given for a population of 1,98,00,000 will soon become ineffective at an increased level of population in the City.

  28. Syed saiful Alam says:

    Suggestions for Improving Transport in Dhaka

    1. Maintain the use of rickshaws by
    a) Canceling all planned bans on rickshaws from different roads;
    b) Creating rickshaw-only lanes on major streets (including those that currently ban rickshaws), and
    c) Considering a gradual shift to improved rickshaws that are easier to maneuver and more comfortable for passengers. If the rickshaw licensing system is to be maintained, set a higher level for the number of rickshaws, and base it on research into which all citizens can have input.

    2. Cancel all plans for future flyovers, and use transportation budgets to improve public transit and conditions for NMT.

    3. Make cars less affordable and available through reducing import of cars, raising registration fees and taxes, and restricting licenses.

    4. Ban cars from small streets and lanes and from congested areas, and greatly reduce parking. Enforce a ban on parking on footpaths and on major streets.

    5. Make cycling more safe and attractive by providing separate bicycle lanes on all major roads (creating a continuous cycle lane throughout the city) and by giving bicycles priority at traffic signals so they aren’t in danger by motorized vehicles.

    6. Make cycling more affordable by greatly reducing the tariff on imported bicycles.

    7. Create more places to park bicycles.

    8. Increase bus use by creating special lanes for buses on major streets, banning all motorized vehicles except buses and emergency vehicles in congested areas, and considering other benefits to buses.

    9. Ensure conducive environment for walking by a) creating pedestrian-only zones in the central shopping and business districts, b) reducing motorized transport (Pedestrians will naturally walk farther when the streets are quieter), c) cleaning up footpaths from construction debris and car parking (vendors actually attract Pedestrians, and should be allowed to stay, though not to block entire footpaths), and d) making footpaths more comfortable by planting more trees along them.

    10. Carry out public education campaigns through the mass media and other means (e.g. through leaflets given to school children) to encourage parents to walk or cycle rather than drive their children to school, and to consider more environmentally-friendly and social means of transport, e.g. public transit and walking/cycling rather than cars/auto-rickshaws.

    11. Support community programs to convert underutilized streets into children’s playgrounds for a couple hours each day, thereby making better use of roads in quieter neighborhoods, and allowing children play space, as is currently happening in various areas as a citizen initiative.

    Source: Improving Dhaka’s Traffic Situation: Lessons from Mirpur Road

  29. Syed saiful Alam says:

    Most people would agree that reducing poverty is an important goal, as is reducing
    the gap between the rich and poor. However, exactly how to achieve these goals is a
    matter of much debate. One often-neglected aspect is transport.
    Transport is a key aspect of life, affecting us not only when we travel, but
    throughout our days. Our peace and quiet are disturbed by car horns. Our air is
    polluted from vehicular emissions. Our neighborhoods are given over to moving
    and parked cars, leaving less room for ourselves and our children to walk, bicycle,
    and play.
    In addition to these quality of life and environment issues is that of economics.
    Investments made in roads take away from investments in public transport and
    facilities for non-motorized travel, such as by foot or bicycle. For those who can’t
    afford travel expenses, education and jobs may become inaccessible. For others,
    travel to and from work represents a heavy expense that contributes to keeping them
    in poverty. Reducing the travel expenses of the poor could thus help them to
    improve their standard of living.
    This paper discusses various transport options and their advantages and
    disadvantages, and makes suggestions for improving mobility of the majority while
    simultaneously decreasing poverty and increasing social equity.

    source: Transportation Policy for Poverty Reduction and Social Equity

  30. Syed saiful Alam says:

    Economic and other impact of ban on NMT pullers
    The HDRC study found various impacts on NMT pullers (rickshaws, vans and hand
    carts) when comparing their situation before and after the ban. These include:
    1. Average monthly net income of rickshaw pullers decreased by 32%, from
    3,834 to 2,600 taka (see Table 1 and Figure 1 below). Overall, income for
    NMT pullers declined by 34%.
    2. The amount of money sent back to their villages also declined following the
    ban. Before the ban, on average rickshaw pullers spent 64% of net income
    and sent the rest (36%) to his village. Following the ban, the amount spent in
    Dhaka decreased by 27%, while the amount sent to the village decreased by
    41%. Similar patterns follow for other NMT pullers (see Table 1 and Figure
    2).
    3. Pullers compensated for loss of income by reducing food consumption,
    particularly of fish, meat, and cooking oil: for NMT pullers overall, 85.9%
    decreased their consumption of fish, 87.5% decreased consumption of meat,
    65.1% decreased consumption of cooking oil, and over half (55.3%) decreased
    consumption of vegetables.
    4. There was an increase in the number of income earners in the family from 1.24
    to 1.37. This suggests that some children have been taken out of school to
    compensate for lost income, or that the burden on wives of the pullers have
    further increased as they must earn money as well as do all the family and
    household labor.
    5. Average number of working days per month for NMT pullers increased by
    1.1 days (from 23.67 to 24.78 days a month), and for rickshaw pullers by 1.3
    days (from 23.18 to 24.44 days a month).
    6. Average number of working hours per day also increased, from 10.33 to 10.97
    hours overall, and from 10.16 to 10.70 for rickshaw pullers.
    7. More rickshaw pullers worked full-day than half-day shifts: 60.5% after the
    ban, and 56.7% prior to the ban; the figures overall were 65.1% after the ban
    and 61.5% prior to it.
    8. Only about 5% of pullers reported a second income, and that second income
    was insufficient to compensate for the loss of income from the ban.
    9. Almost all the pullers (81.6% overall) were affected by loss of income; 86.1%
    of van pullers reported decreased income.
    10. Although HDRC recommends training in driving of MT for displaced pullers,
    only 1.6% of pullers overall suggest that they be provided MT driver training,
    while 55.9% asked for alternative rehabilitation and 31.6% suggested
    construction of special lanes for NMT. Similarly, while only 6% wanted an
    alternative profession in MT, 36% would like to take on petty trading, 27%
    return to agriculture, and 23% take on day labour.
    4
    11. Only 4% of pullers supported NMT withdrawal on other major arterial roads;
    fears expressed by them included hardship for the pullers and their families,
    and concern that the move would lead to further deterioration of the law and
    order situation in the country in general and Dhaka in particular.

    source: Improving Dhaka’s Traffic Situation:
    Lessons from Mirpur Road

  31. Jason Grant says:

    No Traffic on a Saturday? Well, No Cars, Anyway

    Bicycles and pedestrians filled Lafayette Street at Canal Street on Saturday, the first day of the Summer Streets program.

    By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
    Published: August 9, 2008

    At Grand Central Terminal, the trains ran as usual on Saturday. Tourists studied maps, vendors hawked water and magazines ­ but outside, something was off. On one side of the station there were no cars, taxis or delivery trucks. Instead, the street was filled with pedestrians and bicycles.
    Skip to next paragraph
    Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

    Jason Phelps, 34, stepped off the curb, tilted his sunglasses and froze. “I’ve just walked into a swarm of bicyclists,” he told someone on his cellphone. “I don’t know what they want,” he joked, “but I’m going to close my eyes and pray.”

    The ding of bicycle bells and the chatter of people on foot replaced the usual automobile noises along 6.9 miles of Manhattan for six hours on Saturday. It was the first day of Summer Streets, the city’s experiment in car-free recreation modeled on similar efforts in Guadalajara, Mexico; Bogotá, Colombia; Paris; and several American cities.

    On a path that extended from the Brooklyn Bridge north to Park Avenue and the Upper East Side, thousands of people filled the streets, taking part in activities like street-side tai chi or salsa dancing. Others simply enjoyed the chance to stroll in normally car-clogged streets. In a city where walkers, cyclists and motorists must share limited space, having a major thoroughfare through Manhattan free of cars created a giddy sort of excitement.

    Deborah Fried, 48, a tourist from California, rented a bicycle outside the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. Ms. Fried said she regularly rode her bicycle at the beach near her hometown of Pacific Palisades, but she had never bicycled on her visits to Manhattan .

    She said the Summer Streets path felt safe.

    “You don’t have to worry and be killed by a taxi,” she said. “To me, this beats bicycling on the beach because you get the flavor of the city.”

    The route was broken up by three rest stops, where water, maps and first aid were available. The stops also featured music and dance performances, and yoga and other exercise classes. Police officers directed traffic at 24 streets crossing the route.

    Rabbi Jonathan Feldman, 47, took advantage of the break in traffic for a walk with his children before morning services. He said he appreciated the early morning quiet on Park Avenue.

    “It gives the city a certain calmness that it doesn’t have otherwise,” Rabbi Feldman said.

    The city may make Summer Streets, which continues the next two Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., a regular event if it proves to be a success (city officials have said that this would be a subjective measure).

    Although Department of Transportation officials said they did not yet have an estimate of how many people turned out on Saturday, Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner, praised the debut. “Summer Streets really struck a chord this morning,” she said in a statement.

    The plan to close off streets had drawn criticism from shop owners, who feared it would hurt business. But the city assured skeptics that Summer Streets might bring more customers to their stores.

    On Saturday, the economic impact remained unclear. Martha Barzola, 37, manager of a Papyrus stationery store on Park Avenue, said that the area around the store during summer weekends can sometimes resemble a ghost town. Because of the increased foot traffic, however, her store achieved its sales goal of $600 for the day within two hours, she said.

    But Ibrahim Hamzah, an assistant manager for an Edison ParkFast lot on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones Streets, said he had not had a single customer, in contrast to the 30 or 40 cars that is typical for a Saturday in summer.

    “The number of times this is going to happen should be minimal,” Mr. Hamzah said. “We’re losing money, and it makes the job boring.”

    There were other complaints. One woman, who declined to give her name because she was in a rush, said she had to park several blocks away to get to a medical appointment. Other pedestrians said that some novice riders, still learning to control their bicycles, were a danger to those on foot. Delivery of food to restaurants was disrupted because trucks could not get in.

    Taxi drivers had also worried that Summer Streets would reduce the number of people hailing cabs. But Ali Sada, parking his cab for a few minutes at Park Avenue and 57th Street, praised the event.

    “All these people are going to be tired when they put their bikes away,” he said. “We’re going to make a lot more money.”

    Jason Grant contributed reporting.

    —– ### —–
    J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities
    mailbox@carfree. com http://www.carfree. com

  32. CYCLE RICKSHAWS

    There are guesstimates that close to 1 million cycle rickshaws ply the Indian roads carrying about 3-4 billion passenger-km/year . In some cities they are the major means of transport. They provide employment to about 700,000 rickshaw pullers, are very maneuverable and are completely non-polluting and hence environmentally friendly means of transport. It is very unfortunate that deliberate policies in most of the urban towns of developing countries have been made by the concerned authorities to phase out these rickshaws. These non-polluting vehicles are being replaced by polluting (both air and noise wise) petrol and diesel powered three wheelers. Some data show that three wheeler diesel tempos in Lucknow city (capital of Uttar Pradesh) produce close to 70-80 decibel noise at a distance of 1-2 m, besides belching out huge amounts of particulates into the air. It is therefore humanly degrading to pull the existing inefficient cycle rickshaw. Yet because of poverty, laborers do become rickshaw pullers and suffer adverse consequences to their health. The rickshaw manufacturing presently is a footpath industry with no quality control and there are as many rickshaw designs as cities in which they ply. These rickshaws are so poorly made that they have to be replaced completely in a couple of years. Thus there is a need to improve the existing rickshaw and bring quality control in its manufacture.

  33. Improving Dhaka’s traffic situation: Lessons from Mirpur Road
    ENG. ZIAUR RAHMAN

    On 17 December, rickshaws were banned on Mirpur Road from Russell Square to Azimpur. The reasons given for the ban were that rickshaws cause traffic jams because they take up too much road space and move more slowly than cars and buses. The move to ban rickshaws was pushed by the World Bank, which also pushed the government to ban rickshaws from various other roads in 2005. Roads for People applauds the efforts of the government of Bangladesh to reduce traffic problems in Dhaka City. We agree that it is wisest to separate non-motorised transport (NMT) from motorised transport (MT) on main roads, and that a reduction in traffic jams would decrease suffering of Dhaka’s inhabitants. However, much of the work to date appears ill-advised, leading to negative consequences in terms of traffic flow, travellers expense, livelihood of the most vulnerable, and pollution. Research suggests that women in particular are suffering from the rickshaw bans, finding no adequate replacement transport and often experiencing greater travel costs in terms of both time and money. The ban on non-motorised transport on Mirpur Road has had the following effects resulted in at least a 10 per cent increase in monetary costs per trip (actual increase seems to be much higher as evident from the experiences of the focus group discussions), induced at least a 50 per cent increase in average journey times per passenger per trip (our estimate using HDRC and DTCB data), caused 32 per cent loss of net income by rickshaw pullers, forced one forth of passengers from rickshaws to walking,
    left no options but to take shelter in more expensive and unreliable modes, such as baby taxis and taxicabs, even for short trips, for more than one third of people, and caused untold sufferings for the most vulnerable road users like women, children and the disabled.
    In this paper we set out some thoughts on some of the current directions of transport policy, and our suggestion for improvements. The ban on NMT on Mirpur Road from Gabtoli to Russell Square meant non-motorised transport was banned on this stretch of road in December 2002 as a pilot project. Several more streets are slated for NMT bans. As of December 17, 2004, NMT was also banned on Mirpur Road from Russell Square to Azimpur.
    Human Development Research Centre (HDRC) was commissioned by the Dhaka Transport Coordination Board (DTCB) to investigate positive and negative consequences of the ban and make recommendations for further potential bans.
    This section summarises the findings of that report, while also raising a significant question: to what extent is it acceptable to increase poverty among the poorest for the sake of a small perceived benefit in travel time, and also at the cost of higher transport costs and some decreases in mobility? Put another way, how much are the poor and middle class expected to suffer for the convenience of car owners to drive a bit more quickly (except in cases where the jams quickly revert to previous levels, as appears to have happened on the Russell Square-Azimpur corridor) and to park where they wish along the streets and on the
    footpaths?
    Economic and other impact of ban on NMT pullers
    The HDRC study found various impacts on NMT pullers (rickshaws, vans and hand carts) when comparing their situation before and after the ban. These include:
    Average monthly net income of rickshaw pullers decreased by 32 per cent, from 3,834 to 2,600 taka (see Table 1 and Figure 1 below). Overall, income for NMT pullers declined by 34 per cent.
    The amount of money sent back to their villages also declined following the ban.
    Before the ban, on average rickshaw pullers spent 64 per cent of net income and sent the rest (36 per cent) to his village. Following the ban, the amount spent in Dhaka decreased by 27 per cent, while the amount sent to the village decreased by 41 per cent. Similar patterns follow for other NMT pullers (see Table 1 and Figure 2).
    Pullers compensated for loss of income by reducing food consumption, particularly of fish, meat, and cooking oil: for NMT pullers overall, 85.9 per cent decreased their consumption of fish, 87.5 per cent decreased consumption of meat, 65.1 per cent decreased consumption of cooking oil, and over half (55.3 per cent) decreased consumption of vegetables.
    There was an increase in the number of income earners in the family from 1.24 to 1.37. This suggests that some children have been taken out of school to compensate for lost income, or that the burden on wives of the pullers have further increased as they must earn money as well as do all the family and household
    labour.
    Average number of working days per month for NMT pullers increased by 1.1 days (from 23.67 to 24.78 days a month), and for rickshaw pullers by 1.3 days (from 23.18 to 24.44 days a month).
    Average number of working hours per day also increased, from 10.33 to 10.97 hours overall, and from 10.16 to 10.70 for rickshaw pullers.
    More rickshaw pullers worked full-day than half-day shifts: 60.5 per cent after the ban, and 56.7 per cent prior to the ban; the figures overall were 65.1 per cent after the ban and 61.5 per cent prior to it.
    Only about five per cent of pullers reported a second income, and that second income was insufficient to compensate for the loss of income from the ban.
    Almost all the pullers (81.6 per cent overall) were affected by loss of income; 86.1 per cent of van pullers reported decreased income.
    Although HDRC recommends training in driving of MT for displaced pullers, only 1.6 per cent of pullers overall suggest that they be provided MT driver training, while 55.9 per cent asked for alternative rehabilitation and 31.6 per cent suggested construction of special lanes for NMT.
    , while only six per cent wanted an alternative profession in MT, 36 per cent would like to take on petty trading, 27 per cent return to agriculture, and 23 per cent take on day labour.
    Only four per cent of pullers supported NMT withdrawal on other major arterial roads; fears expressed by them included hardship for the pullers and their families, and concern that the move would lead to further deterioration of the law and order situation in the country in general and Dhaka in particular.

  34. মিরপুর সড়কে রিক্সা উচ্ছেদের পরবর্তী অবস্থা

    যানজট নিরসনের নাম করে ইতিপূর্বে বিশ্বব্যাংকের ঋণ সহায়তায় একটি প্রকল্পের আওতায় মিরপুর সড়ক থেকে রিকশা উচ্ছেদ করা হয়েছে। কিন্তু প্রকল্প পরবর্তী সময়ে যানজট আরো বৃদ্ধি পেয়েছে। এছাড়া বাসের গতি কমেছে। মিরপুর সড়কে রিকশা উচ্ছেদ করা হলেও এখনও অনেক মানুষ ভেতরের (ধানমন্ডি এলাকার) সড়কগুলি দিয়ে রিকশা করেই চলাচল করছে। এর জন্য তাদের সময় ও খরচ দুইই বৃদ্ধি পেয়েছে। রিকশাচালকদের আয়ও কমেছে। মিরপুর সড়কে রিকশা বন্ধ করে ধানমন্ডি-১ (পুলিশ বক্স) থেকে নিউমার্কেট পর্যনত্দ রিকশা চলাচলের জন্য লেন প্রদান করা হয়েছে। কিন্তু যাত্রী অনুপাতে লেনের জন্য জায়গা প্রদান না করায় মানুষকে সীমাহীন দূর্ভোগ পোহাতে হচ্ছে। এই লেনটি দিয়ে একদিকে একটি সারিতে রিকশা চলতে পারে। আর লেনটি নিউমার্কেটের ভেতরের রাসত্দার সঙ্গে সংযুক্ত হওয়ায় রিকশায় চলাচলের জন্য অনেক পথ ঘুরতে হয়। এছাড়া নিউমার্কেটের ভেতর দিয়ে প্রাইভেট কারসহ অন্যান্য অনেক ধরনের যানবাহন চলাচল করে। ফলে রিকশা নির্বিঘ্নে চলতে পারে না। সেখানে একটি রিকশা আটকা পড়লে পেছনে শত শত রিকশা আটকা পড়ে। এর জন্য ধানমিন্ড-১ নম্বর সড়কে সৃষ্টি হচ্ছে রিকশা জট।

    এই লেন-এ বরাদ্দকৃত জাযগা চাহিদানুযায়ী রিকশা চলাচলের জন্য যথেষ্ঠ নয়। অথচ লেনের বাইরে প্রায় সময় দুই লেন জুড়ে প্রাইভেট কার পার্কিং করা থাকে। সামান্য কয়েকজন মানুষকে পার্কিং সুবিধা দিতে গিয়ে রিকশা লেনে প্রয়োজনীয় জায়গা না দেওয়ায় হাজার হাজার মানুষের দূর্ভোগ সৃষ্টি হচ্ছে। এখানে অবিলম্বে গাড়ি পার্কিং বন্ধ করে রিকশা যাত্রীদের সংখ্যানুপাতে লেনের জায়গা দিলে নিউমার্কেট এলাকার ব্যবসা বৃদ্ধির সাথে সাথে জনসাধারণ উপকৃত হবে। সেই সাথে যানজট হ্রাসের সঙ্গে পরিবহণ ব্যবস্থায় সৃঙ্খলা ফিরে অসবে।

    প্রাইভেট গাড়িতে গড়ে ২.২ জন যাত্রী থাকে। সে অনুযায়ী প্রাইভেট গাড়ি থেকে নিউমার্কেটের এই জায়গায় ঘন্টায় ৮৭ জন মানুষ সুুিবধা পাচ্ছে। একই জায়গায় রিকশা চললে প্রতি ঘন্টায় ৯ হাজার ৭৭ জন যাত্রী চলাচল করতে পারতো। এই লেন দুটিকে পার্কিং করার পরিবর্তে রিকশার জন্য বরাদ্দ দিলে ১০৩ গুন বেশি ব্যবহারযোগ্য করা সম্ভব।

    নিউমার্কেটের এই লেনটি রিকশার জন্য বরাদ্দ দেয়া হলে প্রশ্ন উঠতে পারে প্রাইভেট গাড়ি কোথায় রাখা হবে? এর সমাধানে নিউমার্কেটের যেকোন একটি জায়গা পার্কিংয়ের জন্য নির্দিষ্ট করে দেয়া এবং জায়গা ও সময় অনুসারে খরচ নির্ধারণ করা। এ ধরনের নিয়ম করা হলে দুটি ইতিবাচক পরিবর্তন হবে। প্রথমত যারা এখন দীর্ঘ সময় গাড়ি পার্কিং করছে তারা কমসময় গাড়ি রাখবে বা পার্কিং খরচ কমাতে বিকল্প পরিবহণ ব্যবহার করবে। তাহলে প্রাইভেট গাড়ীতে যাতায়াত হ্রাস পাবে। দ্বিতীয়ত আশে-পাশের এলাকা হতে নিউমার্কেটে যাতায়াত করতে লোকজন রিকশা, সাইকেল বা হেঁটে চলাচলকে প্রাধান্য দেবে। এর মাধ্যমেও প্রাইভেট গাড়ীর ব্যবহার হ্রাস পাওয়ায় যানজট কমবে।

    এই প্রক্রিয়ায় প্রাইভেট গাড়ী নিয়ন্ত্রণ করা হলে মিরপুর রোডে যানজট অনেকাংশে হ্রাস পাবে। গাড়ীর জন্য ঘন্টা অনুসারে অর্থ নেওয়ার ফলে পূর্বে পার্কিং করার জন্য যে পরিমান জায়গা প্রয়োজন হতো, তার থেকে কম ব্যবহার হবে, যারা মার্কেটে এসে দ্রুত কাজ সেরে চলে যেতে চায় তারা গাড়ি রাখার সুযোগ পাবেন। পার্কিং নিয়ন্ত্রণ হওয়ায় রাস্তায় রিকশা চলাচলের জায়গা বেরুনোর প্রেক্ষিতে আরো বেশি মানুষ যাতায়াত সুবিধার কারণে ব্যবসায়ীদের ক্রেতা সংখ্যা বৃদ্ধি পাবে।

    বিনামূল্যে অথবা কম মূল্যে পার্কিং সুবিধা প্রদান করলে যাদের গাড়ী আছে তারা হেঁটে, সাইকেলে বা পাবলিক পরিবহন অপেক্ষা প্রাইভেট গাড়ীতে যাতায়াত করতে উৎসাহী হয়। যা যানজট বৃদ্ধির মাধ্যমে মানুষের যাতায়াতে বাধা সৃষ্টি করায় ব্যবসার উপরেও নেতিবাচক প্রভাব পড়ে। ব্যবসা প্রতিষ্ঠানের সামনে বেশি বেশি প্রাইভেট গাড়ী থাকলে যারা অন্যান্য মাধ্যমে আসতে চায় তাদের চলাচল বিঘি্নত হয়। গাড়ীর জন্য বিনামূল্যে পার্কিং সুবিধা দেয়ার অর্থ হচ্ছে অন্যদের চলাচলে বিঘ্ন সৃষ্টি করা। ঢাকায় খুবই কম সংখ্যম মানুষের গাড়ি রয়েছে। প্রাইভেট গাড়ী ব্যবহারকারীদের প্রাধান্য দেওয়া হলে ব্যবসায়ী এবং বেশিরভাগ ক্রেতা সঙ্কটে পড়বে। একটি দোকানের সামনে বেশি গাড়ি খুব দৃষ্টিকটু দেখায় এবং চলাচলে প্রতিবন্ধকতা সৃষ্টি করে। এর জন্য অনেকই ওইসব দোকানে যেতে নিরুৎসাহ বোধ করে।

    অনেক সৌখিন মানুষ আছেন হাঁটা পথে কি পাওয়া যায় সেগুলি লক্ষ্য করে এবং কিছু পছন্দ হলেই কিনে ফেলে। কিন্তু দোকানের সামনে গাড়ি থাকার কারণে মানুষ কিছু দেখতে না পাওয়ায় বিক্রি কমে যায়। যা ব্যবসায়ীদের ক্ষতিগ্রস্থ করে। দোকানের সামনে গাড়ি না থাকলে পথচারীরা বাইরে থেকে জিনিসপত্র দেখতে পায় এবং কোন কিছু দ্বারা আকৃষ্ট হলে ভেতরে প্রবেশ করে কেনাকাটার সুযোগ পায়।

    বিনামূল্যে বা নামমাত্র মূল্যে পার্কিং ব্যবসার জন্য ক্ষতিকর। পার্কিংয়ের জন্য টাকা নেওয়া ব্যবসার প্রসারের সহায়ক। সময় ও জায়গার দামের উপর নির্ভর করে গাড়ি পার্কিংয়ের জন্য টাকা দিতে হলে মানুষ কম সময় গাড়ি রাখার সুযোগ পাবেন এবং অন্য ক্রেতারা ঐ জায়গা ব্যবহার করতে পারবেন। একই জায়গায় অনেক বেশি ক্রেতাকে সুবিধা প্রদান করার কারণে দোকানীদের বিক্রি বাড়ে। কম সংখ্যক গাড়ী বেশি সময়ের জন্য পার্কিং করা হলে অল্প পরিমাণ জায়গায় অনেক গাড়ী পার্কিং করায় জায়গার সর্বোচ্চ ব্যবহার হয়।

    গাড়ী বেশি সময় পার্কিংয়ে রাখার অর্থ হচ্ছে জায়গার অপব্যবহার করা। পার্কিং বিনামূল্যে বা কম মূল্যে হওয়ায় মানুষ বেশি সময়ের জন্য গাড়ি রাখতে উৎসাহিত হবে। এক্ষেত্রে অনেকেই গাড়ি রাখা জায়গা পেতে সমস্যায় পড়বেন। অল্প মানুষ বেশি সময় ধরে দোকানে অবস্থান করলেই ব্যাবসায়ীদের সুবিধা হতে পারে না। ব্যাবসায়ীদের জন্য প্রয়োজন অনেক বেশি ক্রেতা সমাগম। এর জন্য পার্কিং স্থানে যতবেশি গাড়ি রাখার সুযোগ তৈরি করা যাবে তত বেশি মানুষ আসার সুযোগ পাবেন। সেক্ষেত্রে সময়ানুযায়ী পার্কিং ফি বৃদ্ধি করা হলে মানুষ কম সময়ের জন্য গাড়ি পার্ক করবে।

    রাস্তায় প্রাইভেট গাড়ী পার্কিং কমানো গেলে অনেক মানুষ যাতায়াত সুবিধা পাবে। পার্কিংয়ের খরচ বৃদ্ধি পেলে মানুষ কম সময় গাড়ি রাখবে এবং যাদের বেশি প্রয়োজন তারা সবসময় গাড়ি ব্যবহার করতে পারবেন। পার্কিং করার জায়গা একই পরিমান হওয়া স্বত্বেও গাড়ি কম সময় রাখার কারণে অনেকে মানুষ গাড়ি পার্কিং করার সুবিধা পাবেন। এর ফলে আরো বেশি মানুষ দোকান, কেন্দ্র বা হোটেলে আসবেন। এতে গাড়ী ব্যবহারকারী ক্রেতারা কম সময় থাকলেও ব্যবসা বাড়বে, গাড়ির ভীড় বাড়বে না।

    গাড়ির আধিক্যে পার্কর্িংয়ের জায়গা না পাওয়া গেলে বিনামূল্যে পার্কিং সুবিধা দেয়া হলেও ব্যবসায়ীদের ক্রেতা সংখ্যা বাড়বে না। পার্কিংয়ের খরচ বৃদ্ধির মাধ্যমে অল্প জায়গায় বেশি গাড়ি পার্কিং এর ব্যবস্থা করা সম্ভব। দুইভাবে পার্কিং সুবিধা হতে পারে বিনামূল্যে অথবা সহজে জায়গা করে দেওয়া। বেশির ভাগ মানুষ চায় গাড়ি পার্কিং এর জায়গা পেতে। পার্কিংয়ের সঠিক মূল্য পরিশোধ করতে হলে সময়ের কথা বিবেচনা করেন বিষয়টি অনেকেই আনন্দের সাথে গ্রহণ করবেন। এতে যারা কম সময়ের জন্য দোকানে যেতে চায় বা কম সময় থাকতে চায় তারা সহজে গাড়ি পার্কিং করার সুযোগ পাবেন। আর কম জায়গায় পার্কিং এর ব্যবস্থা করতে পারলে ব্যবসায়ীরা পন্য সামগ্রী রাখা ও ব্যবস্যা সমপ্রসারণ ও ক্রেতাদের চলাফেরার জন্য আরো বেশি জায়গা দিতে পারবেন। বিনামূল্যে পার্কিং ব্যবসার জন্য লাভজনক নয়। খরচ বৃদ্ধি পেলে পার্কিংয়ের জায়গা সব সময় কিছু খালি থাকবে। ফলে ক্রেতারা সহজে মার্কেটে আসতে পারবে বিধায় ব্যবসায়ীর লাভ হবে।

    ডিইউটিপি প্রকল্প
    ডিইউটিপি এর প্রকল্প (২০০০-০৫) পরবর্তী প্রতিবেদনে উল্লেখ করা হয়েছে ”প্রাইভেট গাড়ি ব্যবহারের অন্যতম সমস্যা পার্কিং। যাতায়াত করার চেয়ে প্রাইভেট গাড়ি পার্কিং এর জন্য বেশি জায়গা দখল করে।” গবেষণায় দেখা যায় প্রাইভেট গাড়ি ৯৫ ভাগ সময় পার্কিং অবস্থায় থাকে। প্রাইভেট গাড়ী পার্কিংয়ের জন্য প্রচুর জায়গার প্রয়োজন পড়ে। পার্কিংয়ের জায়গা এবং পার্কিং অবকাঠামো নির্মাণে প্রচুর খরচ হয়। কিন্তু জায়গা এবং অবকাঠামো নির্মাণের খরচ অনুযায়ী পার্কিং ফি সঠিকভাবে গ্রহণ না করায় পার্কিংয়ের চাহিদা বেড়েই চলেছে। জায়গা ও সময় অনুসারে পার্কিংয়ের সঠিকমূল্য নির্ধারণ এবং প্রাইভেট গাড়ি নিয়ন্ত্রণ করা না গেলে পার্কিংয়ের চাহিদা বাড়তেই থাকবে।

  35. debapi kumar ghosh says:

    Ownerships of all vehicles, including NMVs, in many Asian cities is threatened by growing motorization, loss of street space for safe NMV use, and changes in urban from promoted by motorized transport sector and has often ignored non-motorized transport modes. Without changes in policy, NMV use may decline precipitously in the coming decade, with major negative effects on air pollutions, noise, accidents, global warming, traffic congestion, fuel consumption and the employment and mobility of low income group.
    As any country of Asian where a major share of trips are made by walking and cycling, NMVs have an important role to play in urban transport systems throughout Asia in coming decades. But we are gradually banning NMVs from our urban cities due to continue our developing process.

    Where Japan, Germany, Denmark and Netherlands have witnessed major growth of bicycle use despite increased motorization, through policies providing extensive bicycle paths, bicycle parking at rail station and high fees for motor vehicles use. China has for several decades offered employs commuter subsidies for cyclists, cultivated a domestic bicycle manufacturing industry, and allocated extensive urban street space to NMV traffic. And the speed of bicycle in china city is appear to be comparable to those of the motorized vehicles in china city and other more motorized Asian cities for short journey.
    We also take lessons from Surabaya, Hanoi and ho chi minh city. As expected after the banning of NMV from main arterials, the traffic in these cities enjoyed relatively congestion free conditions initially for few years. However, eventually the extra spaces freed were occupied by motorcycles. The modal share of motorcycles in these cities around 70%. The rapid growths in motorcycles resulted in unbearable congestion, air and noise pollution, needless to mention about the extra burden on economy for burning more fossil fuel. It is encouraging that the authorities in these cities now realize the need to promote the NMV. However, it has already become too late. It is not easy to bring back modal share into pre NMV ban conditions.

    So like others Asian countries, the NMV of Dhaka city is under threaten condition. To improve traffic condition and avoid traffic jam, rickshaws are banning from many VIP road.The benefit will be very short lived and eventually the road will become congested again, as it happened others part of Asia and also Dhaka city(after banning rickshaws from Gabtoli Rassel square Corridor).Due to the price hike of oil in the international market more and more people are rushing towards CNG-run vehicles in recent years. And due to low price of CNG, the middle class society of Dhaka city is intending to buy private car. As a result, the traffic congestion of Dhaka city is increasing. In this position where the whole transport system in Dhaka City is running overcapacity condition,
    The report rightly pointed out that a very large proportion of passengers have continued to use rickshaws as the main mode of transport and about to 10 lacks people have depended on rickshaws for their live lead. Moreover, the rickshaw is drawing out from many countries like Singapore, Japan with the industrial development. And the people who are involved with rickshaw is shifted to industries. But in our country and in Dhaka city the industrial growth rate is not like such that it will give employment those people who are involve in rickshaw business.

  36. Asif K Shams says:

    Why blame rickshaws only?
    Asif K Shams, Banani, Dhaka

    Being a disabled person I am seriously inconvenienced by the ban on rickshaws on important roads. I am a mid-level employee so cannot afford CNGs , even if I can find one. Taxis and private cars are unthinkable. For this reason I am very pleased to see that your fearless newspaper has highlighted the acute problems caused by traffic jams on a daily basis. However, the police authorities are relentless in blaming rickshaws for the jams and even force me to walk (I use a crutch) in the heat and in the rain.

    Over the last 2/3 weeks you are printing revealing pictures of gridlock on the road, when not one rickshaw can be seen. The actual cause is apparent to all (except perhaps, the authorities). There are too many private cars on Dhaka’s roads that are too narrow to accommodate them all. Most of these cars are huge requiring lots of octane, cause pollution and park anywhere they like without any difficulty to obstruct traffic in all directions. Moreover, their incessant honking on hydraulic horns is turning most of Dhaka people deaf, as the police sergeant confessed in your paper recently.

    In this connection, I have been following the writings of Sikander Ahmed and others who are giving many useful suggestions. He claims that if existing traffic laws are strictly followed and implemented, both motorized and non-motorized transports can ply on the roads with ease. Why isn’t someone listening, instead of constantly putting the blame on those who cannot fight back.- usually the poor rickshawallas and those who use them.

  37. David says:

    Thank you Syed Saiful Alam Shovan for prompting this amazingly relevant discussion from so many well informed and articulate people!
    You have prompted a renewal of my interest in the future of rickshaws as a very important and realistic transport option.
    This is an important issue and you have managed to gather a wealth of intelligent readers who will do the cause for change a lot of good.

  38. The current political scene

    Politics in the country is entering an interesting but critical phase. Sheikh Hasina has come back home and Khaleda is already here. There is now no doubt that the ‘minus-two’ formula has flopped so badly that those who propagated it should hang their heads in shame for these two ladies are now stronger than the time when they were incarcerated as common corrupt individuals with such great fanfare. The ACC chief, who led this move to incarcerate the two leaders boasting that this government would let the law deal with prime ministers and common people in the same manner, should at the least have the dignity to resign.
    This government for all it is worth is now on its knees. Those leading it, Dr Fakhruddin most of all, are now looking like characters in the comic books, funny and stupid, as they still go around making loud noises about their so-called achievements. Their present predicament notwithstanding, unfortunately for Bangladesh the politicians are no great characters either. It was the mindless and meaningless politics of the two mainstream parties that allowed the army to get a stranglehold of power. As it has now transpired, it was the army chief in tandem with the UNDP representative in Dhaka and the permanent representative in New York who have among them managed an unsigned letter from the UN chief that the army chief used to threaten a pitiful president who was then also head of the caretaker government to declare emergency on the pretext that in that unsigned letter, the UN chief had threatened Bangladesh about its peacekeeping role if the caretaker government under President Iajuddin held the January 2007 elections. The army chief’s threat was based on the rumblings in the army rank and file about the peacekeeping missions from which they earn a great deal of money.
    The fact that the two leaders are back again in the centre stage does not mean that the army intelligence that still has some power in their hands is down and out. In their nearly two years’ hold on power during which they stepped on everybody’s toes, except their own, these forces have handled the BNP in a manner much worse than the AL. They are now playing perhaps their final cards to divide these two parties by helping one to win. The CEC, who till very recently, had shown great calm, has also given cause for doubt in the public mind that there are manoeuvrings going on behind the scene by casting doubts on the 2001 elections that is an overtly pro-AL political position.
    The future for Bangladesh will, however, depend on how the two ladies behave during the election, assuming that the BNP will contest in the elections. Let us wait and see what happens for the future is not for us to tell.
    Shahjahan Ahmed
    Dhanmondi, Dhaka
    Mirpur Road: parking vs moving

    Consider the case of Mirpur Road near New Market. One entire lane remains almost entirely unused. In front of New Market it is filled with parked cars; the rest of that lane is empty, except for some pedestrians, as drivers are used to the idea that it is a parking lot rather than a lane, and thus don’t use it.
    But if the lane were converted into an additional rickshaw lane, where would car drivers park? If we assigned one parking area for private cars at any section of New Market, and charged per time used—for instance at 30 taka/hour—then two major changes would result:
    1. Those who now park all day, and thus are the least efficient users of spaces per people benefited, would park for far less time, or use alternate transport to arrive and thus not park at all;
    2. Those arriving from nearby would discover it is cheaper to take a rickshaw or walk, and would thus also arrive by other means.
    Both these changes would reduce traffic congestion on Mirpur Road. This would also mean that far less parking spaces are needed, thus freeing up spaces for shoppers who wish to enter and leave quickly—and are more likely actually to make purchases than those who abandon their car for hours. Businesses would also benefit from the increased number of shoppers who will be able to arrive by rickshaws when the size of the rickshaw lane would double.
    Syed Saiful Alam
    Volunteer, Save the Environment movement, Dhaka

  39. Mirpur Road: parking vs moving

    Consider the case of Mirpur Road near New Market. One entire lane remains almost entirely unused. In front of New Market it is filled with parked cars; the rest of that lane is empty, except for some pedestrians, as drivers are used to the idea that it is a parking lot rather than a lane, and thus don’t use it.
    But if the lane were converted into an additional rickshaw lane, where would car drivers park? If we assigned one parking area for private cars at any section of New Market, and charged per time used—for instance at 30 taka/hour—then two major changes would result:
    1. Those who now park all day, and thus are the least efficient users of spaces per people benefited, would park for far less time, or use alternate transport to arrive and thus not park at all;
    2. Those arriving from nearby would discover it is cheaper to take a rickshaw or walk, and would thus also arrive by other means.
    Both these changes would reduce traffic congestion on Mirpur Road. This would also mean that far less parking spaces are needed, thus freeing up spaces for shoppers who wish to enter and leave quickly—and are more likely actually to make purchases than those who abandon their car for hours. Businesses would also benefit from the increased number of shoppers who will be able to arrive by rickshaws when the size of the rickshaw lane would double.
    Syed Saiful Alam
    Volunteer, Save the Environment movement, Dhaka

  40. Traffic congestion
    Aminul Islam Sojun, Journalist, Dhaka

    A news item in some newspapers stated, “Bangladesh Railway has agreed to suspend rail operations between Tejgaon and Kamalapur stations during the peak travel hours to reduce tailback in the capital. The move follows a recent request from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to the railway authorities for assistance in mitigating huge tailbacks that become a common feature in the capital city. According to DMP, many of the city’s roads are too frequently blocked for trains arriving at or leaving Kamalapur Railway Station.”

    The question naturally arises as to whether we wish to adopt a symbolic measure to reduce congestion on the city roads, or we want to facilitate movement of commuters?

    If the aim of the transport policy is the movement of people not cars, then the decision is counter-productive. After all, trains like cars and buses carry people. But a train can carry 20 times as many passengers as cars per land space. Even without trains, there will be traffic jams, but trains do ensure a large number of people moving in a small space while using far less fuel than if they were travelling by car. Further, by giving priority to rail, traffic congestion would actually decline, whereas giving priority to cars will only increase driving and thus congestion– and all the related costs in terms of traffic fatalities and pollution.

    A recent comprehensive analysis of transportation system performance in 130 US cities identified a number of benefits to those cities connected by rail, rather than only by bus and car. The study found that cities with large, well-established rail systems have lower pre-capita traffic congestion costs, lower per-capita traffic fatalities, and lower per capita consumer and government transpiration expenditures.

    The study also found that residents in cities with large, well-established rail systems experience about half the per capita traffic congestion delay as people who live in comparable size cities that lack rail. This occurs because residents of cities with good train service drive less.

    Cities with large rail systems have about a third lower per capita traffic fatality rates, as travel is far safer by rail than bus or car. Residents of these cities save approximately $450 annually per capita in transportation costs compared with consumers living in cities that lack rail system.

    The study concludes that rail services costs are repaid several times over by reduced congestion, road and parking facility costs, reduced traffic accident costs, and consumer cost savings.

    Why, then, the priority in Bangladesh is given to cars and other road-based transport over trains? When people cannot easily travel by train, they are likely to shift instead to bus and the few who can afford to private car. This raises the question of whether the policy is indeed intended to reduce congestion, or simply to raise the profits of bus owners and car salesmen.

    Rather than cancel trains, rail service should be expanded to give people a positive choice over the use of cars. This would reduce not only traffic congestion but also fuel consumption, transport costs, and road deaths and injuries. With the possibility of saving lives, reducing costs, and effectively reducing congestion, the choice is clear: it is private cars, not trains that need to be taken out of service at peak hours.

  41. Suggestions for improving
    transport in Dhaka

    Maintain the use of rickshaws by a) cancelling proposed new ban on rickshaws from different roads; b) creating rickshaw-only lanes on major streets (including those that currently ban rickshaws), and c) considering a gradual shift to improved rickshaws that are easier to manoeuvre and are more comfortable for passengers. If rickshaw licensing system is to be maintained, set a higher level for the number of rickshaws and base it on research into which all citizens can have input.
    Cancel all plans for future flyovers, and use transportation budgets to improve public transit and conditions for NMT.
    Make cars less affordable and available through reducing import of cars, raising
    registration fees and taxes, and restricting licenses.
    Ban cars from narrow streets and lanes and from congested areas, and reduce parking spaces for private automobiles. Enforce a ban on parking on footpaths and on major streets.
    Make cycling more safe and attractive by providing separate bicycle lanes on all major roads (creating a continuous cycle lane throughout the city) and by giving bicycles priority at traffic signals. Make cycling more affordable by greatly reducing the tariff on imported bicycles. Create more places to park bicycles.
    Increase bus use by creating special lanes for buses on major streets, banning all motorised vehicles except buses and emergency vehicles in congested areas, and considering other benefits to buses.
    Ensure conducive environment for walking by a) creating pedestrian-only zones in the central shopping and business districts, b) reducing motorised transport (pedestrians will naturally walk farther when the streets are quieter), c) cleaning up footpaths from construction debris and car parking (vendors actually attract pedestrians, and should be allowed to stay, though not to block the entire footpaths), and d) making footpaths more comfortable by planting more trees along them.
    Carry out awareness campaigns through mass media and other means (e.g. through leaflets distributed to school children) to encourage parents to walk or cycle rather than drive their children to school, and to consider more environment-friendly and social means of transport, e.g. public transit and walking/cycling rather than cars/auto-rickshaws.
    Support community programmes to convert underutilised streets into children’s playgrounds for a couple of hours each day, thereby making better use of roads in quieter neighbourhoods, and allowing children play space.
    Syed Siful Alam Shovan

  42. Metro system for Dhaka!

    The STP team has recommended a Metro System comprised of three Metro Lines at a total cost of U.S. $ 2..1 billion or Taka 14,500 crores. The total length of the Metro Lines is not known, but I guess it will be about 70 km. in length. If we consider that people will walk down to Metro Stations from a distance of 1 km. to avail the Metro service, then the area-coverage of Metro service will only be about 140 sq. km. But, the total area of Dhaka Metropolitan City (RAJUK area) is about 1530 sq. km. Hence, the area-coverage of Metro Service will be less than 10 percent of total area of Dhaka Metropolitan City.

    The STP team has failed to recognize some major disadvantages of Metro system, such as, they are technically difficult and potentially unfeasible in a city prone to flooding. If the Metro system has to be safe for implementation and operation, then Dhaka City will have to be made completely flood-free for all time, which will be extremely difficult.

    Metro construction requires costly excavation. Typical costs of Metro is about $ 50.0 million to 240.0 million per km. Additional costs are involved with other infrastructures, such as underground Metro stations. A Metro station costs about $ 150.0 million.

    Operating costs of Metros are extremely high requiring very expensive electric rail cars. Metro systems require constant and huge supply of electricity which will be very difficult to be ensured in Dhaka City. Most Metro systems of the world have operating deficits which can often severe the budget of the country.

    Worldwide experience is that, except in a few cases the fare of the Metro ride is subsidized, and in some cases very heavily subsidized. The experience shows that the various Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects from the late 1990’s are all in financial trouble and are nowhere achieving profitability.

    In Sao Paulo Metro, the City Govt. pays a subsidy of $ 0.20 (25%) for each trip (total trips are 2.1 million per day). One of the more spectacular recent failures of a Metro and LRT was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the system there were substantial subsidy in the fare . The result was a financial failure and the system was nationalized in late 2001. After only 3 years of operation the system accumulated debts of more than US. $ 1.4 billion leading to the biggest bankruptcy in Malaysian corporate history. The 20 km Metro in Singapore, built at a total cost of U.S. $ 2.9 billion, have an operational loss of US. $ 1.1 million per month in 2004.

    The STP recommended Metro for Dhaka city, if it is built and operated, will have a minimum economic fare of Tk. 10..0 for the ride of 1 km. distance, which will be affordable only for a very small percentage of passengers. In order to make it affordable for middle-income group of people, at least 50 percent subsidy in the fare will be required. The STP has estimated that about 57,42,000 passenger trips will be carried daily by the Metro, and the average trip-lengths will be about 5 km. Hence, a subsidy of Tk. 143.55 million will have to be paid daily and the yearly subsidy will be about Tk. 5240 crores.

    The construction of Metros is often agonizingly slow. The 20 km Metro in Singapore was under construction for nearly 8 years. The Blue Line Subway (21 km.) in Bangkok was under construction for about 7 years.

    Flexibility to expand and adaptability to a changing situation is also a key requirement for any mass transit system. Dhaka is rapidly growing and the situation in the city is rapidly changing. But the expansion of the Metro system is very complex.

    Per kilometer construction cost of Metro is about hundred times more than that of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, and thus the Metro system is likely to cover only a very small portion of the city and would be of far less use if the private auto users are not diverted to the Metro service.

    According to the STP estimate, the Dhaka Metropolitan Study Area will generate daily 7 crore travel-trips of which only 8% of the trips will be served by Metro service. With an investment of Tk. 14,500 crores, the Metro system will not be able to solve more than 10 percent of the transportation problems of Dhaka City.

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