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Category Archives: Transport Planning
On the efficiency of transportation – a crash course on transportation engineering concepts
There is an excellent article on the efficiency of transportation systems:
Gleave, J. (2019) Space/Time and Transport Planning, Transport Futures, https://transportfutures.co/space-time-and-transport-planning-1aae891194e5 [Last accessed: February 25, 2019].
It is highly recommended not just for academics (including students) but also for anyone interested in transportation and traffic. It’s like a crash course in transportation engineering with a lot of basic concepts in traffic engineering and traffic flow theory being presented for easy understanding by anyone. Enjoy!
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Reference on bike-focused street transformations
There’s an update to the “Rethinking Streets” guide with one that is focused on street transformation for bicycles. Here is the link to their site where they now have 2 guidebooks:
http://www.rethinkingstreets.com
You will have to click one of the guides to register (if you haven’t done so before) and download them.
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On computer games for city planning
There’s another article on a very popular computer game that allows people to play city planner or mayor. I recall playing the game for the first time in the early 1990s. A friend got hold of a bootleg copy of the first version and we soon found ourselves addicted to the game. 🙂
Roy, J. (2019) From video game to day job: How ‘SimCity’ inspired a generation of city planners, Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html [Last accessed: 03/13/2019]
Of course, later on we tried experimenting on some concepts to see how the game will go for themes such as transit oriented development (TOD) and combinations of land uses. This allowed us to have an appreciation of how a city will grow and how networks perform given various scenarios. I still believe the game has a lot of value not just from the gaming perspective but also from an academic or practical view. City planning (and not just the transportation or traffic aspect) is a very complicated matter and requires a lot of know-how, wisdom and logic (also others) for a city to function well and for it to grow. Perhaps the newer versions of the game will be even more “realistic” and help develop future planners and administrators.
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Lessons to be learned from experiences on public transport abroad
There’s this “old” article that came out last year that is very much relevant as it is timeless for its topic. The title is intriguing as the many if not most US cities are known to be car-dependent. Few have good public transportation in terms of the efficiencies or qualities we see in Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo (just to mention Asian examples). Clearly, quality of service is the main reason why people are apprehensive about using public transportation. In fact, the attraction of ride shares, for example, are precisely because people want to have what they perceive as safe, comfortable and convenient modes of transport for their regular commutes. Only, for many people, their choice is also limited by the affordability of such modes of transport. Perhaps the same is applicable if you extend the discussion to include active transport. Cities and municipalities would need to provide the right infrastructure and environment for people to opt out of cars, take public transport, walk or cycle.
English, J. (2018) Why did America give up on mass transit? , http://www.medium.com/citylab, https://medium.com/citylab/why-did-america-give-up-on-mass-transit-dont-blame-cars-d637536e9a95 [Last accessed: 08 March 2019]
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Simulating cities?
I found this nice article about some of the most popular simulation games; especially SimCity:
Baker, K.T. (201 ) Model Metropolis, Logic, https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/?mbid=nl_021119_transportation_list_p [Last accessed: 2/13/2019]
While there are still those who dismiss these as merely games, they fail to appreciate the really complex algorithms and processes that could now mimic real world situations. That includes governance of cities that is a very important factor to its development. Land use planning or transport planning alone cannot provide the solutions for a city’s problems associated with, among others, its growth. The success reflects on the administration and leadership that should be able to anticipate and respond to issues while consolidating and rationalising resources, which are often limited.
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The Ortigas Center bike lanes, complete streets and road diets
The MMDA recently stated they were planning to apply the road diet concept to EDSA by narrowing the current lane widths in order to add one lane per direction. While the idea seems to of good intention, the mention and application of road diet is flawed. I have previously shared an article on social media showing the definition and examples of complete streets:
Clearly, complete streets are for the benefit of everyone (i.e., inclusive) and not biased for motor vehicles. Here is a photo of F. Ortigas Ave. at the Ortigas Center in Pasig City showing the correct application of the Complete Streets and Road Diet concepts to an urban street. Note the elements for cycling and walking that are very prominent in the re-design of the street.
Protected bike lanes at either side of F. Ortigas Ave. at the Ortigas Center
We hope to see more of these re-designs in many other cities and towns in the Philippines. It is not a really difficult concept to apply or adopt as technically these are not complicated. However, there needs to be a change in the mindset of planners and engineers when they do these exercises considering how car-oriented our designs are. It is easy to say we want more people-oriented transportation facilities until it dawns on us how dependent we are on cars and resist the efforts to realise more sustainable designs.
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Article on the “Boring Company” and the reinvention of transportation
Here’s another quick post where I share this interesting article on Elon Musk’s Boring Company. Central to the article is the notion that certain things related to transportation needs to be reinvented. This was written in March last year. To quote from the article:
“The Boring Company is emblematic of the Silicon Valley conviction that everything must be reinvented, literally: Airbnb is building a hotel, Uber is moving closer to operating like a bus service, and Elon Musk is slowly inventing the subway all over again…”
Here’s the article:
Marx, P. (2018) “Can we please let the Boring Company die already?,” http://www.medium.com , https://medium.com/radical-urbanist/can-we-please-let-the-boring-company-die-already-8562067adc1b [Last accessed: 01/11/2019]
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The Julia Vargas Avenue protected bike lane
I thought I already posted an update on the Julia Vargas Avenue in Pasig City. It turned out I was only able to upload photos on my folder but wasn’t able to get to writing about the bike lane. And so we conclude the year 2018 with a positive post of something we would like to see more in 2019 and beyond. We are hopeful that the protected bike lanes along Julia Vargas Avenue, connecting C-5 with the Ortigas Center, will expand and that this example along those of its predecessor bikeways in Marikina and Iloilo would be replicated across the country particularly in highly urbanised cities.
A view of the westbound bike lane along Julia Vargas at the Ortigas Center. Note that the eastbound bike lane (visible in this photo) is not similarly protected vs. motor vehicle encroachments. It would be preferable for that lane to be protected, too. Parang bitin pa tuloy ang effort nila.
Another view of the protected bike lane along the westbound side of Julia Vargas Avenue in contrast with the obviously congested lanes available for motor vehicles.
The middle lanes of the carriageway are wide and can accommodate motorcycles though the latter always seem to prefer filtering or splitting the lanes. The median lanes are generally for low occupancy vehicles (less than 3 passengers) while the middle ones are for high occupancy vehicles (3 or more passengers) including UV Express vans and buses.
Happy New Year to all!
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On re-designing or re-imagining our transportation system for people
Here is another good read especially for those who advocate or even just beginning to appreciate the concept of people-oriented transportation:
VannPashak, J. (2018) “Design for humans as they are, not as you want them to be,” http://www.medium.com, https://medium.com/@jvannpashak/design-for-humans-as-they-are-not-as-you-want-them-to-be-ef95076c0988 [Last accessed: 11/23/2018].
In a recent symposium where I made a presentation about low carbon transport and visioning and re-imagining transport, I was asked how we can re-design our transportation to be more people-oriented than car-oriented. I replied that we have to do a lot of unlearning. That is, many planners and engineers would need to unlearn many things they’ve learned in school and those they got from their workplace. One convenient excuse for not coming up with a better design, for example, is that certain planners or engineers just followed what their offices or agencies have been doing. What if what their offices and agencies (and consequently their seniors at work) where wrong all these years and what was “ginagawa na” or “nakasanayan” have led to deficient outcomes? I even joked about whether these offices or agencies were “open minded” referring to a favourite by-line by networking companies. Being open-minded in the context of having people-oriented transport solutions would be difficult if everything was “nakakahon” because these were what you learned from school and/or the workplace. It is difficult to admit that something was and is wrong.
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On school trip generation
I chanced upon the changing of the shifts for a national high school. This was the time of day when the morning shift students were dismissed (i.e., coming out of school) and the afternoon shift students were coming in.
Students come out of the school to mainly either walk or take public transport (mostly tricycles) to their homes.
Most vehicles give way to people, especially students, crossing the busy street. There are usually traffic aides in the area who help manage traffic and to ensure pedestrians may safely cross or move about.
There are no severe traffic congestion here unlike those generated by many exclusive or private schools. There is actually a private school just beside this public high school that also generates significant private vehicle traffic but somehow manages not to congest this major road that’s part of the L. Sumulong Memorial Circle the way another private school congests Sumulong Highway in the mornings.
Is this simply because of the school being a public school as compared with private schools? Perhaps it is, given the perceived disparity in income classes concerning those going to typical public schools and those going to typical exclusive schools. But income disparity aside, wouldn’t it be possible for most students to just walk or take public transport to school? I actually envy the public school students in the photos above as they can walk to school. And that is because they likely live near the school, which is something that is a desirable situation if public schools are at least at par in quality with the more established private schools (especially the sectarian ones where many parents likely prefer their children to go to). This disparity in quality leads to people residing in relatively long distances away for the preferred schools to travel (often with their private vehicles) to and from the exclusive schools. The point here is that it really is more complicated than what it seems in terms of trip generation.
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Caught (up) in traffic 