Today, NPR had an interesting story about “Hypermilers”, a group of people who try and get every last bit of distance out of each gallon of gas they use in their cars. In an ideal world, record high gas prices and the threat of global warming would inspire large scale systemic change where automobile companies produce ultra high efficiency cars, cities curb sprawl while fostering high-density mixed-use development, and where investment in mass transit is a top priority.
However, we don’t live in an ideal world. So, in the absence of that kind of change people can take it upon themselves, like these Hypermilers, to protect their wallet and the environment by changing the way they drive. What the Hypermilers are doing is a part of “EcoDriving“, a way of driving that decreases the amount of fuel you use and the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that you emit. It’s not a substitute for deeper, big picture solutions that get to the root of these problems, but in the meantime, it sure can help.

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Here two-wheelers invade a footpath. All photos by Sudhir Gota, SECON Pvt Ltd.

Krishnappa is a security guard for a multinational software firm in Bangalore who, for the past thirty years, has walked and cycled to work. For Krishnappa, the trip, which often took around 15 to 30 minutes, was one of life’s small pleasures as he made his way along Bangalore’s tree-shaded streets, often meeting friends and acquaintances, discussing politics and family matters, before continuing on his way. However, in recent years he has been unable to walk or cycle to work. And it’s not because of age or injury.

When asked about his transport woes, he blames the government. The increase in land prices, lack of cycle tracks, footpaths, poor public transportation, and the risk of being struck by a motorized vehicle have forced him to drive to work. He now spends nearly 30% of his salary on his monthly commute.

Krishnappa is not alone. Rapidly growing Bangalore city has generated a new human species aptly named “Transport Challenged People.” The common trait of these people is that they are forced to become captive to a mode of transport just because they don’t have an accessible alternative. Their other characteristic is that they pay a price for traveling that they do not consider fair or just, but because they have no other option, they continue to pay it.

Bangalore has seen a spiral of economic activity and urban growth, with the developed area of the city increasing from roughly 175 square kilometers in 1971 to more than 560 in 2006. The government, in order to decongest the city center, restricted the Floor- Space-Index (FSI) – that’s a technical term for building density - in the core and liberated the FSI along the outer peripheries. The restriction in FSI in the city core caused land value here to skyrocket, driving out the lower class to the more affordable peripheries. (There’s a photo essay after the jump)

It’s on the peripheries where the transport woes reach their nadir. The rapid change of this region from agricultural to mixed use was haphazard; traditional rural roads catering to village traffic became mixed with urban traffic, choking the roads and restricting public transportation. The government, in order to solve “MOBILITY” needs, started transforming the available footpaths and shoulders into roads. It also converted two-way roads to one-way roads and created elevated roads when there wasn’t enough space on the ground. In fact, Bangalore roads make up nearly 85 square kilometers of the city. That’s not a small number; the land value of these road is approximately $47 billion!

Bangalore’s urban sprawl was aided by the economic boom, during which income levels of certain industries skyrocketed. The rising income combined with long travel times, poor public transportation facilities and the glamor and hype generated by the automobile industry powered the vehicular boom on the roads. The government’s efforts to make the city more car-friendly had a boomerang effect with a virtual multiplication of private automobiles on the road. In fact, the motorization index nearly doubled from 178 in 1996 to 361 in 2006. Presently, private automobiles - two wheelers, cars, taxis etc. – make up nearly 88% of the vehicles on Bangalore’s streets. Yet that accounts for just 39% of trips. Thus it can be concluded that Bangalore has high congestion not because it lacks roads– a claim that advocates of road construction routinely make - but because there are so many private vehicles moving so few people.

The issue of Transport Challenged People cuts to the heart of the city’s well-being. That’s because nearly 40% of households don’t own any private automobiles and are completely dependent on walking, cycling and mass transportation for moving around the city. But these people, especially pedestrians, are rarely if ever considered by transport planners. The result is a lack of proper walking infrastructure which forces pedestrians to compete with motorists for a slice of the road, increasing their odds of being struck by a motor vehicle. Although Bangalore has nearly 477,853 bicycles, cycling makes ups less than 15% of operational trips because there is no place on the roads for cyclists to ride.

It’s important to point out that nearly 50% of households have a salary of approximately $123.6 per month. The percentage of expenses on transportation is around 24% of household income. If an individual like Krishnappa, due to lack of adequate facilities such as footpaths, cycle tracks and buses, unwillingly drives to work, then he would spend nearly $22.25 per month for his transportation alone. When a poor household starts spending such a high amount of money on transportation, its overall quality of life severely deteriorates because it can no longer afford things that it could otherwise buy. And these are not trivial things; they can be basic health care and schooling. With rising costs of energy - Bangalore has the highest petrol prices in India - and stagnant income levels, these people have no way of escaping transportation induced problems.

At stake here is the type of city that we want Bangalore to become. So far, rapid motorization has converted Bangalore from a garden city to a black city - nearly 800 people die on Bangalore’s roads every year. And approximately 40% of these fatalities involve pedestrians and cyclists. The woes of such transport challenged people will continue unless the government begins to address their needs and concerns.

It’s time to start planning for people and not vehicles. Accessibility and not mobility should be the primary concern of the planners and government. People like Krishnappa, who are the victims of rapid motorization, demand an explanation.

For a more thorough discussion, please click here.

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Going nowhere fast in Bangkok. Photo by pchweat.

Which city has the world’s worst traffic? It’s a tough question, as cities like Sao Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, and Los Angeles compete neck and neck for the world’s worst bottlenecks. But Time Magazine thinks it has found its answer in Bangkok, dubbing Thailand’s megacity “The Capital of Gridlock.” Hannah Beech, the author of the Time news story, explains just how bad traffic can get, writing that, “Police don’t consider traffic bad until a car is stationary for at least an hour. Really bad is two hours.”

Overall, Ms. Beech does a tremendous job covering the wide range of problems connected to Bangkok’s traffic congestion:

The human side: “Traffic in Thailand’s capital snarls with such ferocity that hundreds of women over the past few years have been forced to give birth in cars.” Police are now trained in midwifery, she reports.

The economic side: “More than $1 billion in productivity is lost every year to traffic jams.”

The environmental side: In the 1970’s Bangkok cemented over canals to build more streets for the growing number of cars. “…the declining number of canals, which once served as reservoirs for rain, means that substantial portions of the city flood during the five-month-long wet season. The rising water invariably short-circuits traffic lights, turning intersections into free-for-alls.”

To watch a video about Bangkok’s train market, click here.

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CNN has started a series of articles and videos called Eco-Solutions about, well, eco-solutions to the world’s, err, eco-problems. This week’s video features Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico City and his efforts to transform this bustling capital city infamous for its traffic and smog into a healthy, more livable city. One of the things he has done, which this video highlights, is shut down Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s most important artery (think 5th Avenue in New York City), on Sunday’s to traffic so that children and families can enjoy the tree-lined avenues while strolling or riding their bikes. It’s a remarkable acheivement, given what Reforma looks like on weekdays:

The video also highlights Metrobus, a bus rapid transit line, which has significantly reduced the amount of travel time for its passengers and has cleaned the air in the city. Although the first line was built under the previous Mayor, Manuel Obradar, Marcelo Ebrard plans to extend it to 10 lines, and has already broken ground on two of these.

These achievements are part of his “Plan Verde,” an ambitious plan to make Mexico City an environmentally friendly city. They’re also an important indication that Ebrard is more that just giving lip service to the environmental movement. After all, even the Mayor rides his bike to work!

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I’m happy to see such a high level of sophistication in recent public services announcements on sustainable transportation issues. First we had Lolo, the planet saving Donkey that takes public transportation and now we have this very clever awareness test from Transport for London. Not only does this ad make the point in a very sticky way but they gave it the means to “go viral” by including links for viewers to spread it to their social network of choice.

Do The Test here -> http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Pass it on!

Thanks to Eric Gilliland of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association who gave us the tip by passing this through his social networks.

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There’s wifi on this bus! Photo by RACINGMIX

Transit with wireless is an incredibly attractive way to travel. And apparently AC Transit, a regional bus agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, agrees, providing wireless internet on all their buses crossing the San Francisco Bay.

Yesterday I had an action packed day of transit; I took BART from North Berkeley to Union City, then hopped on a bus with wireless that crosses the Dumbarton Bridge to Palo Alto, or so I thought. When I realized I was on the wrong bus, and figured out that there were no more buses coming, I had no other option but to take a cab.

Fortunately that afternoon I got on the right bus, an AC transit Transbay bus with very fast wireless, and fast service too: it took me just 38 minutes back to Union City!

Using my wireless on a Lufthansa flight.

I have now used wireless in the air, on a bus, in a car, and on rail. If you’re like me, and you like staying connected, wireless on mass transit is the way to go. It’s also a nice perk for people who might otherwise consider driving in private car to get to their desired destination.

Read about my other travel adventures here.

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China’s Green Beat, is a neat bilingual blog I stumbled upon the other day, written by John Romankiewicz, an American Fulbright scholar currently living in Beijing, and Zhao Xiangyu, a Chinese citizen from Heilongjiang, a province in the northern part of the country. Check out the above video for a comical take on serious challenge: motorization in the Chinese capital.

Read more about Beijing’s metro, BRT system, Olympic bid, and weather problems.

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He’s cute, he’s adventurous, he’s reliable, and he’s closeted. What more could one ask of a folding bike?

My latest love interest is the Dahon Speed 7. I’d been eying him in the bike store for quite a while, examining his features, and comparing him with his strong-framed brothers. Finally, in the beginning of February I decided he was the one for me.

The Dahon - or “Speedy”, as I’ve come to call him - is the latest stage in the shift I’ve been making away from private ownership of a motorized vehicle. Now I look at the Vespa I bought two years ago as a way station on that path, and I’m planning to sell it once spring arrives in full bloom.

Last September I had to give up running because of foot problems. I was accustomed to getting around the city on foot, Metro, and bus, so originally I thought the folding bike would be mainly for recreation or workouts. But in the three-plus weeks I’ve had Speedy, I’ve used him a lot more than I’d expected for errands, and for getting to business meetings and dinner engagements. This February has been a relatively mild winter month by Washington DC standards, and Speedy has given me the freedom of the city in a way that I really hadn’t expected.

The day I bought him I took him on a one-hour-plus ride up the Capital Crescent Trail to Bethesda, hung around the bookstores there for a while, then had the great pleasure of riding downhill all the way home. I’ve taken him to Capitol Hill; I’ve taken him on lunch dates; and on a particularly nasty evening with freezing rain I took him on a dinner date to Georgetown. He makes going to the Post Office or doing other routine errands a whole lot more fun, and personally I think there’s a certain cachet to arriving at meetings with a bike helmet tucked under my arm. Between the backpack and the luggage rack, Speedy can easily haul home enough groceries for five days.

Washington DC has become much more bike-friendly since I lived here in the 1980s and 1990s. There are many more bike lanes now, and bike racks seem to be a standard part of the sidewalk furniture in every street rehab project. A large proportion of the buses have bike racks too, and the Metro allows riders to carry on bikes at any time except rush-hour. Folding bikes, however, can be carried on even during rush-hour, but they have to be enclosed in a bag. They can also be carried as hand-baggage onto Amtrak trains, so I can bring my new bike on any trip I take up to New York City.

For now, the love affair continues…

Full disclosure: My husband still has a car, and he is generous in both letting me use it and even chauffeuring me to and from various carpool arrangements, and Amtrak and Greyhound stations. So my weaning away from car-dependence is still far from total. And yes, I think he approves of my new affair with Speedy!

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Bike docking stations in Paris. Photo by dangiles73.

Last week, Ken Livingston, the Mayor of London, announced an ambitious plan to transform the British capital into a pedestrian and cycling city, an effort that he expects will reduce London’s carbon footprint by approximately 1.6 million tones.

Following the lead of Paris, his plan calls for an extensive network of bike docking stations located every 300 meters throughout the city, allowing Londoners to quickly pick up a bicycle, ride it to their destination and leave it at the nearest docking station for someone else to ride.

The city will also create road infrastructure for cyclists, building 12 “radial cycling corridors” on existing roadways to protect cyclists from traffic.

Over the next decade the government expects to spend 500 million pounds on the system.

The effort to move people out of their cars and onto their bikes dovetails nicely with London’s congestion pricing scheme, which charges drivers a fee for entering central London.

Click here to learn more about pedestrianization in London.

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After some early hiccups, Tranantiago might just have a promising future. Photo by kurotashiO! ®

A year after its mangled implementation, Transantiago, the ambitious program to restructure Santiago’s sprawling and inefficient bus system, is still generating quite a bit of buzz. Last week, for example, The Economist published a piece on the political fallout from Transantiago, suggesting that the precipitous drop in President Michelle Bachelete’s approval ratings were caused by the system’s shortcomings.

Other media outlets throughout Chile have followed up with similar stories of their own. (See El Mercurioand Radio Cooperativa)

Recently I’ve heard many questions about the future of Santiago’s bus system: should it return to the partially de-regulated operations of the 1990s? Or maybe even go back to the totally deregulated transit of the early 1980s?

The answer to these questions is unequivocal: no.

Overall, the service during the 1980s and 1990s was extremely poor, resulting in unprecedented gridlock, high accident rates, increased air pollution, and long travel times. During this period, the upwardly mobile, whose incomes rose during the economic boom, turned their backs on mass transit, opting for the convenience of cars, which flooded the streets and only exacerbated the congestion and air pollution plaguing Santiago.

For Santiago, the road ahead is to build off many of Transantiago’s positive outcomes – yes, there have been many, including improved air quality – to create a world-class mass transit system. To do so will require investment, operational improvements and better regulation, but the returns will be profound. Below is a list of things that would help improve current situation:

• High-capacity Bus Rapid Transit for the main corridors, with bus-exclusive lanes and better enforcement, prepayment systems inside all stations, integration facilities, and centralized control.

• Flexible bus services to reduce large number of transfers and serve high demand areas (express routes, short loops, etc).
• More funding for mass transit without increasing user fares. Congestion pricing for cars is one option for raising revenue while also reducing traffic and air pollution.
• Better communication between the bus system managers and the general public, sparked by a public outreach and education campaign.

These and many other improvements are on the agenda of political leaders and local planners. I’m confident that if these changes are realized, Transantiago’s initial problems will be nothing more than a bad memory, soon forgotten like the disastrous deregulation in the 1980s.

For more detailed information, click here and here.

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