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Another roadblock for active transport?
The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) recently released what they claim to be their counts of bicycle traffic along major roads in Metro Manila from 2020 to 2023.
These are supposed to be official data as it is issued by the government agency in-charge of traffic management for Metro Manila roads (aside from its other functions and roles). What are not stated, and are actually very important details, are the locations of the counts and when the counts were conducted. The Traffic Engineering Center (TEC) that was under the DPWH and currently with the MMDA used to publish traffic volume maps for major roads in Metro Manila. So along EDSA, for example, the volume per section are shown on the map. The same for other major roads like Commonwealth, Quezon Avenue and SLEX. The thicker lines mean higher volumes along those sections, and vice versa. However, they did not consciously count bicycles (only motor vehicles) and perhaps MMDA only started counting during the pandemic (i.e., 2020). So there is no one value to represent a road. And counts vary over time of day, day of the week and even throughout the year (i.e., monthly variations).
There were many reactions to the MMDA’s posting of the data and most were critical and even derided the agency for what to them appeared to be inaccurate data. The problem is that it seems there are no other counts that can validate and perhaps refute the MMDA data. Previous bike counts were not conducted according to how the MMDA and DPWH count vehicles. That is, counts are typically done over a 14 or 16-hour period and ideally on several days in a year. Expansion and conversion factors are applied based on established stations along major roads that are supposed to have more frequent if not continuous counts. This methodology is how Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) is computed. Call it car-centric if you like but the methodology is very much applicable to bicycles as well. Peak hour counts for bikes are not enough and the peak hour factor for motor vehicles does not apply to bicycles (if this is to be used to expand/convert peak volumes to daily values). In fact, if you go into the math, there should be a peak hour factor for each type of vehicle considering each vehicle’s volume will vary differently over time. So yes, the solution here is to conduct bicycle counts according to how MMDA or DPWH counts vehicles and these should be done along several stations along major roads (e.g., those in the table above) to validate the MMDA counts.
More on this topic in the next post!
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On non-roadway traffic deaths and incidents
I found this interesting article about non-roadway crashes or incidents that may cause deaths. These are often recorded in buildings including parking lots or facilities but are not generally collected and reported by governments as part of road crash data.
Wilson, K. (April 18, 2024) “Why Does the Vision Zero Movement Stop At the Edge of the Road?,” Streetsblog USA, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/04/18/why-does-the-vision-zero-movement-stop-at-the-edge-of-the-road [Last accessed: 4/28/2024]
From the article:
“According to the latest report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a shocking 3,990 people died in car crashes that occurred outside of the traditional transportation space in 2021, the last year for which data is available. One-quarter of those people were outside vehicles, including, pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users, and even children simply wishing their parents goodbye before they were accidentally run over by the caregivers who loved them most; all lost their lives after they were struck by drivers on private property, like parking lots, driveways, drive-thrus, and private roads.”
These crashes very likely contribute to under-reporting. One wonders, for example, how many incidents occur in mall parking lots, schools and subdivisions. Recall the incident in Ateneo years ago when a child got ran over and killed as students were being dropped off in the morning. Surely there are other incidents though not involving deaths, and these need to be recorded among traffic incidents. The deaths need to be included in the reports. These are important information to complete the picture of road traffic safety in any country including the Philippines.
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Article share: on making more affordable neighborhoods
I’ve been commenting about how transportation cannot be isolated and the need to relate it to other factors such as housing or home location choice. The latter though is also affected by other factors as well that affect the affordability of homes near the city centers or CBDs where workplaces and schools are located. The result of course is sprawl or the encouragement of sprawl. Private companies take advantage of this or contribute to this ‘encouragement’ by developing land farther away from the center. Thus, for Metro Manila’s case, many people reside in the peripheral provinces of Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite. There are even those who choose to reside in Pampanga, Bataan and Batangas.
Kayatekin, C.S. and Sanmiguel, L.U. (April 16, 2024) ” ‘Urban form’ and the housing crisis: can streets and buildings make a neighborhood more affordable?” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/urban-form-and-the-housing-crisis-can-streets-and-buildings-make-a-neighbourhood-more-affordable-224108 [Last accessed: 4/23/2024]
Quoting from the article:
“Our main finding was that the bottom-up districts we looked at had, overall, more small-scale apartments. The reason is simple: they had more small-scale buildings, built on small-scale plots. Once divided into apartments, this produces small apartments – homes in the bottom-up areas were 10% to 23.1% smaller than their top-down counterparts. This also made their real estate markets for small homes more competitive, and therefore more affordable.
However, our study showed there is nothing inherently magical about bottom-up areas. Their more intricate housing stock has little to do with the layout of streets and blocks, and a lot to do with how that land is built upon.
Plot size appears to be the deciding factor: the districts with greater numbers of small buildings built on small plots supported a denser and more affordable housing stock, regardless of whether they were top-down or bottom-up.
Older bottom-up areas seem to naturally lend themselves to having more small-scale plots. This is likely due to the incremental development of these areas, and the complex land ownership patterns that developed as a result. However, there is no reason why a top-down area cannot be designed to replicate these characteristics.”
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When Driving Isn’t an Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency
Here is another quick share of an article from Planetizen. The article relates about people who cannot drive so driving for them is not an option:
Source: When Driving Isn’t an Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency
Quoting from the article:
“Zivarts shows that it is critical to include people who can’t drive in transportation planning decisions. She outlines steps that organizations can take to include and promote leadership of those who are most impacted—and too often excluded—by transportation systems designed by and run by people who can drive. “
There are actually many who can drive and who would like not to drive but then opt to drive because of limited and inconvenient or uncomfortable options. I think government agencies and local government units are supposed to work on this but like people who try to ‘solve’ traffic by isolating it from other factors such as housing, they ultimately gain little ground if not fail. It doesn’t help that the decision makers such as government officials and politicians drive or are driven. Of course, there is still such a thing as empathy so let’s not discount those who do use cars for their commutes but also work hard to improve transportation. It’s just that such people are rare these days and may not be in a position to move things to enable significant improvements to the transportation system.
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Planning for Accessibility: Proximity is More Important than Mobility
Here is a quick share of another very informative article that discusses the importance of proximity and more dense development in order to reduce car dependence.
Source: Planning for Accessibility: Proximity is More Important than Mobility
Here are some excerpts from the article:
“This shows that proximity is much more important than mobility in providing accessibility: location, location, location. For the last century, our transportation planning practices have contradicted this principle. Transportation agencies built urban highways that destroyed and degraded accessible and multimodal neighborhoods to benefit suburban motorists. This was racist and classist, but the mechanism was the way that transportation planners valued increased traffic speeds, measured as travel time savings, while ignoring the loss of accessibility imposed on urban neighborhood residents.
Of course, many other factors affect people’s transportation and neighborhood preferences. Some people need their cars for work or after-work activities, and not everybody can bicycle or use transit even if it is available. However, surveys such as the National Association of Realtor’s National Community Preference Survey indicate that many people would prefer living in more compact, walkable neighborhoods than they currently do but cannot due to a lack of supply.”
Such articles are a must read for those who want to understand why government needs to invest in land at or near the CBDs, and develop that land so people will not need to reside far from their workplaces and schools. Truly, there are many other factors affecting transport preferences or mode choice. Housing is one such factor that we continue to treat separately from transport. It is very (prohibitively) expensive to buy or rent in the city particularly in or near the CBDs. The result is people opting to purchase or rent homes in the suburbs. It doesn’t help that developers are also actively promoting subdivisions there and therefore are contributing to sprawl that puts so much pressure on transportation systems.
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30th Conference of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines
I am sharing here the First Call for Papers for the 30th Annual Conference of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines (TSSP). The conference will be held in Iloilo City almost to the day of the last time it was held there in Sept. 12, 2014.
Information on past conferences may be found here: https://ncts.upd.edu.ph/tssp/conferences
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Article share: The Benefits of Trees
Here is a quick sharing of this article on the benefits of trees. I thought such articles are always timely and relevant especially if you frame this in the context of road or highway development as well as the complete streets concept that is currently being promoted to improve transport conditions including road safety.
Source: The Benefits of Trees
Article share: on subsidies to public transportation
Here’s a nice article that presents arguments for subsidies to support transit or public transportation:
Wilson, K. (February 5, 2024) “Study: Subsidizing Transit Actually Makes It More Efficient,” Streets Blog USA, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/02/05/study-subsidizing-transit-actually-makes-it-more-efficient [Last accessed: 2/18/2024]
Subsidies to public transportation can be quite tricky and may require quite a balancing act. There seems to be few options outside of the straightforward subsidies national and local governments in the Philippines provide. Rail transit, for example, is heavily subsidized but these are rare for road-based public transportation. The concept of service contracting has been considered but it also has a few variations. While there seems to have been a proof of concept tested during the pandemic, it required so much funds that government apparently lost interest (i.e., the funds were also needed by other sectors). Local governments meanwhile, or at least those that had resources, decided to operate their own public transport (e.g., Quezon City bus).
To quote from the article:
“Newmark’s study doesn’t definitively determine why, exactly, high subsidies seem to correlate with better efficiency and transit agencies collecting more fares, but he has some theories. Some systems, he says, use subsidies to increase service frequency or install dedicated lanes to speed routes up along heavily-utilized corridors — and riders are responding, predictably, by showing up in droves. (Route expansion can help, too, he said, but only if agencies expand service to places “where there’s actual demand.”) Others use subsidies to keep ticket prices low, but not to eliminate fares outright, which Newmark argues is a smart move.
“People value stuff they pay for, and they pay for stuff they value,” Newmark added. “An underlying point in this paper is that transit offers something [valuable], and it’s worth trying to capture that value, whether through fares or in other ways.”
If transit networks and the taxpayers who support them can get that recipe right, it could create a virtuous cycle.
“If people see the benefits [of subsidies], that may make them more willing to invest [their taxpayer dollars],” he adds. “Good transit leads to a real social movement for more subsidies.” “
What do you think about subsidies to public transport in the Philippine setting? Of course, we are referring to ‘formal’ public transportation here. There are many ‘informal’ or paratransit modes like tricycles and non-motorized pedicabs. There are also motorcycle taxis providing services or filling in the gaps in transport services.
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More than just painted lines – good practice examples of bike lanes
I’m sharing this article on the best bike lanes in the United States:
Holbrook, A. (February 12, 2024) “The 5 Principles That Make America’s Best Bike Lanes: A Lot More Than Painted Lines,” Velo, https://velo.outsideonline.com/urban/urban-gear/five-principles-the-best-bike-lanes/ [Last accessed: 2/15/2024]
This is a follow-up on an article on the best new bike lanes or bikeways that I shared earlier. This article features an interview of the author of the previous article about what features distinguish these bike lanes over others that have been implemented. Definitely, bike lanes should be designed beyond the usually painted lines that offer little protection to cyclists.
Here are examples of bike lanes in the Philippines:
Painted bike lanes along Ortigas Avenue Extension, Cainta, Rizal
Protected bike lane along Katipunan Avenue (C-5), Quezon City
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On urban noise
We open February with an article share. The article is about noise in urban areas. Not surprisingly, most noise comes from transportation and the solutions mentioned in the article not only addresses transportation noise but at the same time addresses other concerns about transportation, including safety.
Durand-Wood, E. (January 25, 2024) “Why Are Cities So Noisy? And Can We Do Anything About It?“ Strong Towns, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/25/why-are-cities-so-noisy-and-can-we-do-anything-about-it [Last accessed: 2/2/2024]
To quote from the article:
“In 2011, the WHO set recommendations for daytime and nighttime environmental noise levels, and found the maximum safe noise level for daytime is 55db (somewhere between moderate rain and normal conversation) and at night, 40db (about the level of a quiet library). Beyond these levels, prolonged exposure to environmental noise has been shown to cause health problems, and not just hearing-related ones.”In 2011, the WHO set recommendations for daytime and nighttime environmental noise levels, and found the maximum safe noise level for daytime is 55db (somewhere between moderate rain and normal conversation) and at night, 40db (about the level of a quiet library). Beyond these levels, prolonged exposure to environmental noise has been shown to cause health problems, and not just hearing-related ones.
Until recently, most analysis related to urban noise has focused on noise as an annoyance or disruptor to humans. But with these new guidelines, there was an acknowledgement that too much environmental noise can actually have grave health consequences, noting that “at least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western part of Europe.”
We now know that higher levels of environmental noise raise heart rate and blood pressure, cause harmful sleep interruptions, and are linked to cardiovascular disease, dementia, and cognitive impairment in children, among others. And as with environmental pollution, there are racial and socioeconomic disparities with noise pollution.
In a 2022 report, the United Nations identified urban noise pollution as a top environmental risk.”
Have you noticed how noisy it is in our cities? Many actually choose to live in the suburbs as the perception is its quieter especially during the night. The health risks due to noise are well-established as presented also in the article. However, there are ways to address this and reduce the noise, particularly the type attributed to transportation and traffic.
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Caught (up) in traffic 