Traffic planners elsewhere prepare for a post-car world
Credit to Author: MARLEN V. RONQUILLO| Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 18:39:24 +0000
Bill de Blasio’s New York City welcome, after his doomed presidential bid, was a court decision that sustained the car ban carried out by his city’s Department of
Transportation (DOT) on Manhattan’s busy 14th Street. De Blasio was the prime proponent of the car ban on one of the busiest streets of New York City and, probably, the entire US. Under his and the DOT’s proposal, only buses, delivery trucks and ambulances would have access to that road.
Some well-heeled residents of Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Flatiron, and other neighboring communities sued the New York City government for its supposed “arbitrary and capricious action.” Cars banned from the 14th would just create “gridlocks” in other parts of Manhattan, the court case stated. The court, which probably based its decision on solid transport science, green lighted the car ban.
A recent New York Times headline on the traffic experiment summed up the aftermath of the car ban. “Cars were banned on 14th Street. The Apocalypse did not come.”
What the journalists observed were buses seamlessly doing their task as provider of mass transport, without the clutter of private cars. A short description? Traffic heaven.
In a country that celebrates cars, the impossible thing — which was also the right thing — was done, and a sense of relief and liberation has descended upon the general areas covered by the 14th Street. Buses are running on time and at their normal speeds. Car lanes had been finally transformed into “ busways.” For the first time in a long, long while, people working or with business to transact in and around the area got to their appointments and work schedules on time. The most gridlocked part of New York City was freed from cars.
Bike riders and pedestrians shared that general sense of relief.
De Blasio and the DoT probably got their inspiration from Barcelona, which has started the radical experiment of banning cars from most of the busy parts of this beautiful Catalan city. Areas freed from cars have been transformed into what they call “superblocks,” where “pedestrians, cyclists and citizens” meet in safety. Each superblock leads to a bus waiting station.
Barcelona is preparing for what it calls “a post-car” world, where streets are not for cars but for pedestrians, green spaces, bike lanes, restaurants, parks etc.
Major cities in North America and Europe steeped in 21st century urbanism, of course, have yet to go the way of Singapore, where the convoy of the prime minister yields to buses. And where, the joke goes, it is easier to get a second wife than acquire a secondhand car.
When Filipino commuters read of these developments in urban planning and transport science in some of the major cities of the world, what sets in is a sense of utter desperation. Based on the hints and clues being written about in some of the newspaper columns, the proposal to vest Mr. Duterte with emergency powers to deal with the Metro Manila is getting a second wind. (I have this feeling that car companies are behind those column “plants.”) And what will be the singular thrust of that emergency power grant? To restrain buses, our de facto providers of mass transport, to give cars the priority access to the public roads.
That is a proposition of extreme cruelty and stupidity.
There are more than 270,000 cars and private vehicles on EDSA everyday and more than 10,000 buses (combined provincial and metro). And what to restrict, if policies were just sane or based on transport science, is a no-brainer. But no. The restrictions will be imposed on the mass carriers, which carry 35 passengers during lean hours and 50 to 60 passengers during rush hours. The reordering of traffic will be based on cutting and reordering bus routes.
We can only hope that Sen. Mary Grace Poe, who wants to support the emergency powers grant if backed by plans vetted by transport science and data, can see through the ruse of the emergency power grant proposed by the commentarial. The bus restriction plan will be the laughingstock of a world where urban planning and transport science all move into the direction of either a car ban or car restriction. Cities without cars, or a post-car world.
The stupid argument for traffic policies favoring cars over buses is the so-called “lack of an efficient mass transport system” argument. “Nobody goes deeper and ask this question. Why cant today’s metropolitan and provincial buses provide a level of service that meets the discriminating tastes of commuters?
I will provide the background.
The last bus modernization program, the last time the government gave incentives to metropolitan and provincial bus operators for fleet modernization, was implemented during the time of Oscar “Oca” Orbos at the then-Department of Transportation and Communications in the late ‘80s. (I know, I was an unpaid gofer of Oca then and served the coffee when they discussed the odd-even scheme.) After Oca’s time, the bus industry was at the receiving end of regulations, restrictions and more government impositions. The approval of new, regular provincial bus routes (the non point-to-point franchises) was closed in the 20th century yet.
Zero support, all restrictions and new regulations.
What kind of perverse policy would deny incentives and support to mass transport? I do not know. What I know is this. There is a never-ending urge to support car assemblers. Do you remember the sad day the bodies of the 44 Special Action Force heroes were flown to Manila? Mr. Aquino 3rd was not at the airport because he was at the inauguration of a used car assembly facility in Laguna. Mr. Duterte also graced the rollout of a bantam car model at that same facility.
Of course, this is the Philippines where cruelty and stupidity in crafting policies is always a given.
But this is the universal truth: the obsession with a car-centric transport policy is something that is extraordinarily stupid, insane and cruel.