REDESIGNING URBAN TRANSPORT
Lester R. Brown
The world’s cities are facing unprecedented problems. In Mexico City, Tehran, Kolkata, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the air is no longer safe to breathe. Respiratory illnesses are rampant. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend sitting frustrated in traffic-congested streets and highways climbs higher each year. In response, forward-thinking city planners are seeking ways to redesign cities for people not cars. They have begun to realize that urban transport systems based on a combination of rail lines, bus lines, bicycle pathways, and pedestrian walkways offer the best of all possible worlds in providing mobility, low-cost transportation, and a healthy urban environment.
A rail system can provide the foundation for a city’s transportation system. Rails, either underground or on the surface, are geographically fixed, providing a permanent means of transportation that people can count on. Once in place, the nodes on such a system become the obvious places to concentrate office buildings, high-rise apartment buildings, and shops.
Some of the most innovative public transportation systems, those that shift huge numbers of people from cars into buses, have been developed in Curitiba and Bogotá. The success of Bogotá’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system, TransMilenio, which uses special express lanes to move people quickly through the city, is being replicated not only in six other Colombian cities but elsewhere too: Mexico City, São Paulo, Hanoi, Seoul, Taipei, Quito, and several cities in Africa. In China, Beijing is one of 20 cities developing BRT systems. Even industrial-country cities such as Ottawa, Toronto, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and—much to everyone’s delight—Los Angeles have launched or are now considering BRT systems.
Some cities are reducing traffic congestion and air pollution by charging cars to enter the city, including Singapore, London, Stockholm, and Milan. In 2003, London adopted a £5 ($10) charge on all motorists driving into the center city between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., immediately reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Within a year, bus ridership increased by 38 percent and delays dropped by 30 percent. In July 2005, the fee was raised to £8 ($16). Overall, since the congestion charge was adopted, car and minicab traffic into the central city has dropped 36 percent, while bicycle traffic has increased by 50 percent.
