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On electric vehicles and road safety
Electric vehicles are still basically motorized vehicles and should be treated so on the roads. While the previous models were slow and small, many of the newer ones coming out of the factories have similar performance features (e.g., speed, power, etc.) and dimensions as conventional vehicles. Many conventional models have electric or hybrid variants as companies attempt to attract customers using their tried and tested models and brands. BMW, for example, has electric sedans that are practically the same in interiors and exteriors with their conventional models. It is not surprising that vehicle safety researchers are now studying how electric vehicles fit into the road safety conundrum. I am sharing this brief but informative article that describes the efforts of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) of the US in studying the EVs and safety:
Tucker, S. (December 27, 2022) “How electric cars are creating new challenges in car safety,” MarketWatch, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-electric-cars-are-creating-new-challenges-in-car-safety-11671646057?mod=technology [Last accessed: 12/29/2022]
To quote from the article:
“It’s comforting to know that EVs will face the same tests as gas-powered cars. But the fact that the IIHS worried it might need to build new equipment to accommodate them illustrates something important.
At the rate the auto industry is modernizing toward EVs, almost all of us will be driving them someday. But there will inevitably be an overlap period when some cars on the road are electric, and others are gas-powered.
In an accident, weight matters…
Crash tests can only estimate the likelihood of injury to someone inside the tested car. They can’t predict injuries in the other car. And we’re all about to share the roads with other cars that dramatically outweigh ours.”
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Shared article: Active and Micro Mobility Modes Can Provide Cost-Effective Emission Reductions–If We Let Them
I’m sharing this article on active and micro mobility modes from Todd Litman, published in Planetizen.com:
Source: Active and Micro Mobility Modes Can Provide Cost-Effective Emission Reductions–If We Let Them
From the article:
“Common Active Transportation Leverage Effects:
–Shorter trips. Shorter active trips often substitutes for longer motorized trips, such as when people choose a local store rather than driving to more distant shops.
–Reduced chauffeuring. Better walking and bicycling conditions reduces the need to chauffeur non-drivers (special trips to transport a passenger). These often require empty backhauls (miles driven with no passenger). As a result, each mile of avoided chauffeuring often reduces two vehicle-miles.
-Increased public transit travel. Since most transit trips include walking and bicycling links, improving these modes supports public transit travel and transit-oriented development.
-Vehicle ownership reductions. Active mode improvements allow some households to reduce their vehicle ownership, which reduces vehicle trip generation, and therefore total vehicle-miles.
-Lower traffic speeds. Active travel improvements often involve traffic speed reductions. This makes non-auto travel more time-competitive with driving and reduces total automobile travel.
-More compact development. Walking and bicycling support more compact, multimodal communities by reducing the amount of land devoted to roadways and parking, and creating more attractive streets.
-Social norms. As active travel increases, these modes become more socially acceptable.
The article is a must read if we are to understand how important active transport and micro mobilities are in the context of today’s transport conundrum. Of course, part of the contextualization and perhaps ‘localization’ on these modes will be related to land use or development. The latter is a big challenge especially for the likes of Metro Manila and other rapidly developing cities in the Philippines where housing in the cities (related to compact development) has become quite expensive and has driven more and more people to live in the suburbs. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this has resulted in more pressure to develop transportation systems but infrastructure development cannot play the catch up game given the limited resources for their construction. Meanwhile, services are also behind in terms of quality and requires reforms and rationalizations.
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On university-community collaborations
I’m not a stranger to university-community collaborations. In fact, I even helped draft a proposal for the World Bank to support such collaborations, which I believe would be sustainable and therefore worthwhile to be pursued by potential partner universities and local government units. There are actually many such collaborations but most of these are probably informal with certain faculty members of universities (usually state universities or colleges) being involved in committees or moonlighting in projects implemented or funded by LGUs. I say informal because technically, the school is not involved in the project and it is only incidental that the person or persons involved are affiliated with the university or college.
Here is an article showing an example of university-community collaborations:
National Institute for Transportation and Communities (2022) “Transportation recovery after disasters: A collaborative university/community model,” phys.org, https://phys.org/news/2022-08-recovery-disasters-collaborative-universitycommunity.html [Last accessed: 8/15/2022]
The authors wrote about actions that could be done “to build future economic resilience.” To quote from the article:
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Increasing pre-disaster investment in resilient transportation infrastructure to reduce the cost of eventual recovery;
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Improving business resilience practices for high-impact industrial sectors, through education and outreach;
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Identifying structural barriers to adoption of resilient business practices, and promoting mitigation through recovery.
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Mainstreaming disaster resilience into economic development by breaking the siloed approach to emergency management and economic development.
While these actions were framed for the community engaged by the University of Utah, they are general enough to be applicable to other communities as well.
I mentioned earlier about the need for formality. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) encourages and supports what are termed as Extension Works or Extension Projects by higher education institutions. These may be in various forms including committee work, advisory, capacity building/training, or even professional work/services provided to the province, city or municipality (even barangay). But there should be accountability here as well as the proper assignment or allocation of resources.
Just compensation is one of the more sensitive or tricky elements or items here as often, LGUs would like to get something for free or assume that certain services are free. They are not and time and effort should be compensated; just not the international rates you might expect for consulting work from the likes of World Bank or Asian Development Bank.
Here is where contracts (e.g., in the form of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)) can be useful to establish the terms of engagement that includes budgets for Personnel Services (PS), Equipment Outlay (EO) and Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE). The latter categories should be familiar with LGUs because these are standard items under which details are provided for their programs and projects. State universities and colleges are also familiar with these as standard government terminologies for budgets. Of course, that goes without saying that in certain engagements, there may be third parties such as donor or funding institutions that will should all, most, or part of the costs for collaborative work.
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On using advanced tools for infrastructure assessments
I came upon this article on how transportation departments in the US are using tools such as drones to assess critical infrastructure including roads and bridges. This is very relevant to us especially as many similar infra are aging and would need to be assessed to determine how to reinforce, retrofit or even rehabilitate certain infrastructure vs. naturally occurring phenomena like earthquakes and typhoons.
Reed, J. (August 2, 2022) “How Transportation Departments Are Using Advanced Drone Technology for Infrastructure Assessments,” Aviation Today, https://www.aviationtoday.com/2022/08/02/transportation-departments-using-advanced-drone-technology-infrastructure-inspections/ [Last accessed: 8/4/2022]
To quote from the article:
“The WVDOT may expand its drone programs to perform road safety assessments and to assist in designing new road routes by providing topographical maps.”
I recall that there have been road-based surveys involving Lidar to map the road and adjacent land surfaces about a decade ago (maybe less). This was a nationwide project funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and implemented by the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Department of Geodetic Engineering. I’m not sure where that data is stored or hosted but the DGE should have a back-up somewhere that can be used or further processed for road safety assessment applications. This could be an interesting and fruitful research area that can involve people from various disciplines.
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Counting cars…and other vehicles as well
I saw a couple of these counting instruments set-u by the DPWH, one along Ortigas Avenue Extension and another along Sumulong Highway. These are mobile counting machines that are used to count vehicles along both directions of the roads. These are supposed to be calibrated to be able to distinguish among the various types of vehicles using the roads. I assume the classifications would be according to the types used by the DPWH and not simply a general count of the number of vehicles. I wonder though if these can accurately count smaller vehicles like motorcycles, bicycles and PMD’s like the one in the photo below.
If these can be calibrated to count bicycles and PMDs, it would allow for the establishment of baseline numbers and expansion or seasonal factors for what are now termed as micromobility modes. The recent bicycle counts done through volunteers and during peak hours cannot be expanded simply because there are no reference factors that can be used for this purpose. The available expansion or seasonal factors with DPWH derived from 24-hour counts at strategic locations along national roads only account for motor vehicles. These cover the variations of motor vehicle traffic over long periods of time (e.g., 24/7) that allows one to determine Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) as well as typical traffic during certain days of a week (e.g., traffic on a Monday or a Sunday).
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On bike counts – Part 1
Bike counts are being conducted this June and July in many cities around the country to mainly determine the number of cyclists in various locations in the participating cities and if there was an increase in the numbers. An increase will be encouraging and should support the upgrading and expansion of the bike lanes network established during this pandemic (we are not yet in the post-Covid-19 age).
The following Images are from the Mobility Awards Facebook Page where you can find the rationale for these surveys. Vehicle or pedestrian counts are perhaps the most basic type of surveys and are conducted over certain periods of time to establish variability as well as seasonality. In the case of most if not all the counts mentioned below, surveys were and are to be conducted during the perceived peak periods for bike traffic: 6:00 to 8:00 AM and 4:00 to 6:00 PM.
Counts like these need to be evaluated or analyzed considering various contexts. While the outcomes of such counts are often presented from the point of view of advocates and there is a tendency to play with the numbers (which I will explain in more detail in succeeding posts), the bigger picture relating bike numbers to other modes of transport would be among the most important. Trip purpose is another essential factor to be considered. And there is also data on the origin-destination characteristics of trips. Historical or time series data is also important if trends are to be established.
By itself, these bicycle counts are very important data that will ultimately be useful for planning, design and construction of facilities for active transport. The lack of data on bicycles while there is a bias for motor vehicle data means we cannot see the complete picture and therefore remain car-centric when dealing with transportation issues.
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A Bike Master Plan for Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao
Before Active Transport Week concludes this weekend, I would just like to share this collage from one of our staff at the National Center for Transportation Studies of the University of the Philippines Diliman. It is about the Master Plan developed for the three metropolitan areas in the country – Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao. I will share more details about this soon including a link or links to where you can download a copy of the plan.
The project concluded recently with the submission of the Final Report but most important is the Master Plan document that can serve as a reference for further development of bike lanes in the metropolises. I’ve seen the Master Plan and many of its provisions and recommendations can easily be adopted or is replicable in other cities and municipalities in the country. Perhaps, there should be a National Master Plan?
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Star ratings for bicycles
I just wanted to do a quick share of a new method for evaluating road and bicycling infrastructure – cycleRAP. This was developed by the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP), which has established a star rating system as the international standard for road safety assessments. We currently use their Star Ratings for Schools (SR4S) to evaluate the school environment towards ensuring safe journeys for school children. Here’s the link to their website:
To quote from the site: “CycleRAP is an easy, affordable and fast method of evaluating road and bicycling infrastructure for safety. It aims to reduce crashes and improve safety specifically for bicyclists and other light mobility users by identifying high risk locations without the need for crash data.”
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On how traffic enforcement enhances road safety
It seems to be a no-brainer and has always been an assumption to many traffic engineering studies including those employing simulation to determine the outcomes of various scenarios involving transportation. The element that is traffic enforcement, however, cannot be assumed as something uniform across countries, cities, barangays or even individual road sections and intersections (yet we often do assume uniformity and a certain level of strictness).
Here is an article that reports on new research pertaining to how the enforcement of traffic laws makes roads safer:
Mohn, T. (June 8, 2022) “Enforcing traffic laws makes roads safer, new research shows,” Forbes.com, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2022/06/08/enforcing-traffic-laws-makes-roads-safer-new-research-shows/?sh=74b03c97591e [Last accessed: 6/10/2022]
To quote from the article:
“High visibility enforcement of traffic safety laws actually works. When carried out, regulations governing driving have a positive and measurable impact on safety by reducing dangerous behaviors behind the wheel that put road users at risk…
““Enforcement alone will not solve the traffic safety crisis,” Adkins added. “We cannot simply enforce, build, design or educate our way out of this problem. The Safe System necessitates a comprehensive approach for achieving our collective goal of zero traffic deaths, including equitable enforcement that focuses on risky driver choices that endanger all road users.”
The article points to new research published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The synthesis to that research may be found here while the full report is found here.
Such research and articles are very relevant especially as incidents like the one involving a driver running over an enforcer become viral and bring to the forefront traffic enforcement or the lack of it (some will word it differently – like why many drivers don’t follow traffic rules and regulations). The discussion must continue especially in the context of road safety.
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Articles on railway safety
I shared a link to a Medium writer who specialized on articles about air crashes. These were investigative articles that provide details about air crashes especially since these are all tragedies and include those that have remained mysteries like Malaysian Airline Flight 370.
I am sharing today another collection of articles pertaining to transport safety. This time they are about railway or rail safety. Here is the link to the collection of articles from Max Shroeder:
https://mx-schroeder.medium.com
And here is an example of what he writes:
https://mx-schroeder.medium.com/stressful-schedule-the-2005-amagasaki-japan-derailment-12156ddd488
Again, there is much to be learned about these incidents. The circumstances, factors and experiences need to be examined in order to draw lessons from these incidents and reduce the likelihood of them happening again. In the case of the Philippines, this is especially applicable as the country rebuilds its long distance railways infrastructure with a line connecting Manila and Clark, Pampanga along what used to be called the Main Line North (MLN) of the Philippine National Railways (PNR), and another currently being rehabbed and for upgrading to the south in what was called the Main Line South (MLS). Other rail projects are also underway like the Metro Manila Subway and the MRT Line 7. All pass through populous areas, and railway crashes may not just lead to passenger and crew fatalities and injuries but also the same for those residing or working along these rail lines.
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Caught (up) in traffic 