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Article on the evaluation of congestion pricing
I want to share this article on the congestion pricing zone in London. This is called the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which also met resistance when it was first implemented.
Selby, O. (January 16, 2025) “ULEZ expansion hasn’t hurt high street spending,” Centre for Cities, https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/ulez-expansion-hasnt-hurt-high-street-spending/ [Last accessed: 2/1/2025]
Quoting from the article:
“The benefits ULEZ has provided to public health have been studied extensively. The data is clear: London has the worst air quality of any UK city and the capital’s emission zone is helping to change this.
So far, card transaction data does not suggest that ULEZ is harming high street spend. This should reassure policy makers in London, who committed to the emission zone a while ago, and strengthen the convictions of policy makers in New York who are now following suit.”
The article is a nice reference not just for evaluation of similar congestion pricing schemes but can also be used for carless streets or zones. I wonder if there are similar work being done for Baguio’s congestion pricing scheme as well as the carless programs in Ortigas Center. Quezon City should also do this for the newly implemented program along Tomas Morato.
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On the fatal Katipunan road crash
The vehicles involved in a recent road crash that killed at least 4 people are still there and parked under the Aurora Flyover. A truck apparently lost its brakes and control and the driver ended up plowing into other motor vehicles, likely trying to gain some control in order to stop the truck. It was reported in news articles that there were 4 immediate fatalities and many suffered serious injuries. We probably won’t know the final fatality count unless someone reports on those hospitalized for injuries.
The crash highlighted again the need for vehicles, especially trucks, to be roadworthy. This time of year, most of these trucks run busy schedules with the logistics requirements. But maintenance is just one part of the problem here as the truck was reported to be speeding. So driver behavior is also a factor and apparently there was no monitoring (having those CCTVs don’t count if they are only used in a passive manner such as for evidence after a road crash had already occurred) or enforcement versus speeding for these large vehicles. Also, was the truck overloaded? This practice may also lead to the deterioration of the truck’s brakes and the vehicle’s mass contributes to the severity of the crash including the damage to other vehicles. The MMDA and LGUs have their work cut out for them to address these road safety concerns.
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Planning for True Transportation Affordability: Beyond Common Misconceptions
How much do we spend on transportation as part of our budgets? Is it 5% of your monthly budget? Is it 10%? Or is it eating up a substantial part of what you’re earning?
Source: Planning for True Transportation Affordability: Beyond Common Misconceptions
To quote from the article:
“This research indicates that many common policies favor expensive transportation and housing over lower-cost alternatives, which drives the cost of living beyond what is affordable, leaving too little money to purchase other necessities. The result is immiseration: growing stress, unhappiness, and discontent.
The solution is simple: planning should favor affordable over expensive modes and compact development over sprawl. This is not to suggest that automobile travel is bad and should be eliminated. Many people are justifiably proud of being able to afford a nice car, and automobiles are the most efficient option for some trips. However, automobile travel requires far more resources and is far more expensive than other modes, typically by an order of magnitude, so true affordability requires an efficient, multimodal transportation system that allows travelers to choose the options that truly reflect their needs and preferences.
Affordability requires a new economic paradigm; rather than trying to increase incomes or subsidies we need to increase affordability and efficiency so households can satisfy their basic needs consuming fewer resources and spending less money. Our planning should be guided by a new goal: how can we help families be poor but happy.”
I share this article because it provides a more complete narrative and assessment than those just focusing on transport. Home choice locations and affordable housing are part of the equation. Looking at transport alone can be myopic and leads us to think it is the only problem to solve.
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Are transportation issues election issues in the Philippines?
Are transportation issues in the Philippines? Or are these issues at the local level? Here is an article about how transportation issues were brought to light and were actual topics in the ballot in Los Angele, California in the US:
Tu, M. (November 25, 2024 ) “Bike, Bus and Pedestrian Improvements Won the Vote in L.A. How Did Advocates Pull It Off? “ Next City, https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/bike-bus-pedestrian-improvements-healthy-streets-los-angeles-ballot?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=532838ef65-DailyNL_2024_11_18_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-532838ef65-44383929 [Last accessed: 11/26/2024]
The three lessons in the article are:
- Build a coalition – “In the lead-up to the election in March, Streets For All successfully secured endorsements from unions, climate organizations and business groups that saw the vision for safer streets.”
- Safety wins – “We could make climate arguments, we could make equity arguments, but the thing that felt the most bulletproof to us and the most empathetic to the general Angeleno was just road safety,”
- Keep it simple – “…simple messages were the most effective. Vredevoogd fought for one billboard on Vermont Avenue that read “In 2022, more pedestrians died on Vermont Avenue than in the state of Vermont.”
Los Angeles or LA as many people fondly call the city is well known for being car-centric (as opposed to San Francisco to the north, which is more transit-oriented). Perhaps we can learn from this experience though I know there are already groups and coalitions lobbying for better transportation in the Philippines. Are they successful and to what extent are they succeeding? Granted there are different situations and conditions, even modalities, to engage politicians, there are also so-called party list groups claiming to represent the transport sector but none appear to be really standing up for issues like improving public transport or road safety. And so the challenge is still there for people to make transportation issues election issues in the country.
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How the Built Environment Affects Your Mood
Here’s a nice read as we do our storm watch, and probably explains why when we reminisce about college or university as “the best years of our lives”.
Source: How the Built Environment Affects Your Mood
To quote from the article:
“It is not for nothing that older adults often regard college as “the best years of your life” because in some cases it truly is. College years serve as a gateway drug to all the amenities and benefits of urban-core living — until you graduate that is. Then you have to return to your parents’ suburban home (as many Americans do) and suddenly all the amenities you had disappear. Your newfound college friends might make up for the lack of a diverse built environment. Nope, they all have moved back to their sprawling neighborhoods too, probably dozens of miles if not hundreds of miles away from your town. You might get a new car to celebrate your graduation and your new 9 to 5 corporate job. Work will keep you busy! But you know what else? Driving. No more waking up 10 minutes before class and arriving just on time. You might now have to wake up a few hours early to drive to your job through rush hour morning traffic, and do it all again in the afternoon.
You might also gain weight — not because you are eating more, but because you are walking less. Various studies demonstrate the link between car usage and obesity, showing “greater levels of obesity in communities where the private automobile is the dominant means of transportation.” And let’s not forget that obesity leads to other health issues such as diabetes and hypertension, among others. Mental health conditions such as depression are more prevalent in adults with obesity. Hence once college ends, graduates stop socializing, stop enjoying public amenities every day, start driving everywhere, stop walking and hence gain a little more weight in the process. Then it is no surprise that young graduates feel unfulfilled, and sometimes even depressed after college — for them, it feels they were robbed of an integral part of their new lives.
Our surroundings impact our mental and physical health. Living in neighborhoods with negative qualities can increase the risk of mental health conditions such as depression. At the same time, the pandemic made us appreciate diversity in our lives and what happens when we are deprived of it. Walkable cities are not “just a preference”; they develop happiness by fostering community trust, promoting physical activity, and offering nearby amenities. As learned, these spaces encourage healthy behaviors, reduce car dependency, and create opportunities for social interaction — all things that are crucial for our well-being.”
Based on this, no wonder I love to stay at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman. I’m sure my colleagues in UP Los Banos feel similarly.
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On bike lanes contributing to safer roads
Do bike lanes make roads safer? There are obviously mixed reaction to this question especially if you look as social media. If we are level headed about this topic and look at the evidence out there, the answer is yes. But there can be caveats as we try to contextualize in the local setting. The formal studies so far are in countries where the drivers arguably more disciplined than ours here in the Philippines. Driver behavior, after all, is a major factor for road traffic safety. Here is a good article for reference in the discussions and arguments for bike lanes:
Tu, Maylin (November 5, 2024) “How Bike Lanes Slow Drivers and Save Lives,” Next City, https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-bike-lanes-slow-drivers-and-save-lives [Last accessed: 11/10/2024]
To quote from the article:
“Bike lanes with physical delineators (cones or bollards) were more effective than paint-only lanes at calming traffic, echoing a popular mantra for bike activists: “Paint is not protection.” (The lanes were not protected, however, because drivers could drive over the delineators.) For vehicles turning right, top speeds were reduced by 28% and average speeds by 21%. Paint-only bike lanes slowed driver speeds by up to 14% and drivers going straight slowed down by up to 8%…
The study adds that pop-up bike lanes are a cost-effective solution for studying the effects of more permanent solutions — after all, you could just borrow the traffic cones. A city could quickly implement pop-up or temporary infrastructure. Then, armed with data and community feedback, they could invest in making the changes permanent.”
The article also points to a technical paper or scientific article on the traffic calming effect of bike lanes. Here is the link to the article published in the Journal of Urban Mobility: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urbmob.2024.100071
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On whether bike lanes cause more traffic congestion
I previously share articles on whether bike lanes cause more traffic. This question has been asked so often as we have returned to the “old normal” levels of traffic and bike lanes that were put up during the pandemic have been neglected or removed in favor of motor vehicle traffic. The perception for those in-charge of traffic and transportation in local government units is that the space occupied by bike lanes take up the space demanded by motor vehicle use. Thus, the view that bike lanes cause congestion. Here is another article share in support of bike lanes:
Mortillaro, N. (October, 2024) “Do bike lanes really cause more traffic congestion? Here’s what the research says,” cbc.ca, https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/bike-lanes-impacts-1.7358319 [Last accessed: 01/11/2024]
To quote from the article:
“One would think that building more roads with more lanes for cars would reduce congestion, but research shows that’s not the case, thanks to something called induced demand. The more traffic lanes that are put in, the more it appeals to people who may not otherwise have chosen to drive, thereby putting more cars on the roads and increasing congestion.
“So for a short period of time, there might be a slightly improved [reduction], but within a year or two, or perhaps three, traffic is as bad or worse than it was before the lanes were added in the first place,” said David Beitel, data services lead at Eco-Counter, a Montreal company that collects and analyzes pedestrian and bicycle traffic data.
Conversely, if you put in more dedicated bike lanes, people tend to feel safer and demand for use increases, said Shoshanna Saxe, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s department of civil and mineral engineering and Canada Research Chair in sustainable infrastructure.
“As soon as you build a bike lane, within a year, two years, the latent demand shows up,” she said.
Bike Share Toronto statistics show that ridership on its network of shared bikes has increased dramatically since 2015, when 665,000 bike trips were made annually. In 2023, that shot up to 5.7 million trips.”
I think many people here are already aware of the concept of induced demand. However, this is usually shrugged aside as realities in their situations (e.g., commuting options, locations of residences and workplaces, etc.) lead them to choosing private vehicles (i.e., cars and motorcycles) over public or active transport. The last paragraph there is significant though as there never was and so far a decent estimate of bike trips in any city in the Philippines. Granted that there are attempts to measure bike trips but the volumes published so far are not as reliable as we want them to be in order to be convincing decision-makers to put up more bike lanes. Of course, the convincing part is always challenging if decision-makers have already made up their minds in favor of the car.
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On the need for helmet laws and their implementation to reduce fatal road crashes involving motorcycles
I found this article reporting on findings of their study on helmet laws and their impacts on road safety:
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (October 20, 2024) Lax helmet laws have killed more than 20,000 motorcyclists, study shows, https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/lax-helmet-laws-have-killed-more-than-20-000-motorcyclists-study-shows [Last accessed: 10/23/2024]
To quote from the article:
“Wearing a helmet is one of the biggest things riders can do to protect themselves from death and traumatic brain injury,” said Eric Teoh, IIHS director of statistical services and the author of the paper. “We understand that requiring helmets for all riders everywhere would be unpopular with some motorcyclists, but this could save hundreds of lives each year. Those aren’t just numbers. They’re friends, parents and children.”
There’s a link to the study report in the article for those who want to have a copy of the report.
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Sharing the road with persons with disabilities
The wife took this photo as we were turning at the roundabout at Tikling Junction in Taytay, Rizal. I just wanted to share this here for everyone’s awareness that there are those of us traveling who have certain disabilities that may not be so obvious. We probably see people on wheelchairs or special vehicles like those you’d find along Cainta roads especially near or in the vicinity of Tahanang Walang Hagdanan. And then there are those with PWD stickers on their motor vehicles. But are we aware and sensitive to the needs of others like this deaf cyclist? There should be policies to ensure their safety as they should be able to travel for whatever purpose they may have similar to our senior citizens and children who are among the most vulnerable road users. And drivers and riders should have the training and the empathy to share the road with them.
Deaf rider along Tikling Junction, Taytay, Rizal – not all would probably have a vest like this and motorists likely would be oblivious to their situation. There will also be pedestrians with similar circumstances who have natural disabilities. Irresponsible would those who are “deafened” by their gadgets like those wearing earphones or headphones while riding or walking. –
On transportation and global health – article share
I was supposed to write about the keynote lecture delivered during the 30th Annual Conference of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines (TSSP). I am sharing instead an article written by Dr. Renzo Guinto who is an Associate Professor at the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute based at the National University of Singapore.
Here is the link to his article on the Philippine Daily Inquirer: Health at the center of transport and mobility
I will not quote from the article and leave it to my readers to read and appreciate the articles content.
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Caught (up) in traffic 