Sustainable Mobility Guide for Municipality

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Sustainable Mobility Guide for Municipalities

With nancial support provided bykotrs Alaptvny (Hungarian Environmental Partnership)

and XminusY Solidarity Fund

Developed by the Hungarian Young GreensChief editor: Justin HyattCollaborator: Gyrgy Folk


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PrefaceIntroduction1. The Effect of cars in our society2. Infrastructure and policy making3. Trafc Evaporation4. City Spaces5. The Transport Picture6. Sustainable Mobility7. The Sustainable CityAppendix A: List of practical suggestionsAppendix B: Best practices from around the worldAppendix C: Guide to organizations and resourcesSourcesGlossary

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Table of Contents


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The voyage of discovery is not in seekingnew landscapes but in having new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

A vision unfolds

Some of the most enjoyable places to be, contain-ing content and happy communities are not mainlya product of sudden economic growth or because

the local government hit a jackpot full of gold.The real reason is rather that one or several of theleaders or community members made a conscien-tious choice to move the town in a sustainable andpositive direction and this will power and fore-sightedness has made all the difference in the com-munity.

The place where it started, the impetus for movinga community in a positive direction, can be foundin a vision: The vision of a sustainable community,a place containing beauty and where citizens live

in a healthy and peaceful environment, where theirchildren have places to play, and where it is fun

and easy to get around. This guide intends to helpinspire the formation of such a vision. It also pro-vides insight into the various components that canhelp make such a vision work.

Introduction

This small book presents an overview of all themajor themes that are involved for towns and cit-ies to become more sustainable and more enjoy-able places to live in. An attempt has been made tocover all the main topics, from transport issues tocity planning and infrastructure, to pace of life and

economic vibrancy. We offer a look at many posi-tive examples of sustainability and we present youwith real examples of cities and trends all aroundthe world that have done or are doing marvelousthings. Specic recommendations and practicalideas are presented as well, to aid the work of pol-icy makers and urban planning authorities. A veryuseful part of this publication is the resource guide

in the appendix, which offers information and ad-

dresses for further exploration. Many of the orga-

nizations and movements listed can be consultedwith for further information and advice in mattersrelated to their respective elds.

We have created this with the best hopes that thiscan be a useful tool for you in your area and inyour work, and we will be happy to receive yourfeedback.

Special thanks go to Judit Madarassy and VivianHyatt for their helpful comments on the manu-script. The Deutsche Gesellschaft fr TechnischeZusammenarbeit (GTZ) has also kindly providedtheir help and resources for the making of this pub-lication.

Budapest, May 2006

Preface

Introduction Q u i

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There are many ways that a community, its citizens

and leaders can choose to become more sustainableand provide a more livable place for its inhabitants.Many of them are listed here to aid in the guidancefor city leaders and urban specialists with ways tomake real and positive differences in their com-munity. Furthermore, these are realistic devices,whose implementation are rst of all a matter of choosing the right path for the community, second

only an issue of nancial costs. If a communitydeliberately chooses to pursue a policy of makingtheir city or town a pleasanter, calmer, more eas-ily navigable and fun place to live, then ultimatelyall of the suggestions will pay themselves off andbe more rewarding in the long run. The key and thematter of fundamental importance is simply the de-cision in the rst place to take charge of a long term

policy of creating a healthier and more sustainablecommunity together with the right tools.

Many communities have had turning points andimportant dates in their history, some of which youcan read about in these pages. Maybe your com-munity will also experience a meaningful shift inoutlook about how to approach and plan for a morehuman friendly environment in which to live?

Coming to terms with the need for change

While this guide takes every effort to paint a posi-tive picture of what a sustainable community canlook like, and the hope is inherent that imaginingthis picture and catching such a vision can natu-rally take place, it is also the case that we must rsthighlight some of the negative trends of the increas-ing motorization of cities. We hope that commonsense will win out, once all of the ramications of car-centric societies are laid bare: from the graveenvironmental and health concerns, to the need forguaranteeing a positive habitat for children, to re-storing peace and calmness to currently noisy andtrafc-clogged communities, to multiplying usablespace and offering an easier and more enjoyablelifestyle for city residents. Given such a strongcase for action on creating more livable communi-

ties, any well-intending mayor or municipal leader

will almost certainly choose the course of a moresustainable future and higher standard of living forits citizens. Be it a new vision, a change in courseof policy, or the discovery of instruments and de-velopments happening all over the world, that willlead to such changes, such a path will be neededif we want to be honest with our citizens and givethem the best chances for a happy, safe, and healthy

future. It is unlikely that a full program for improv-ing the quality of life of a city can take place with-out at least some limitations imposed on the useof the motorcar, however we would like to presentthe case that the end effect of such a program willcertainly produce positive results for all to enjoy.

The content of this guide

In the rst section wecan read about the impact thatthe current increase in trafc is having in towns,breaking down the impact and effects of a heavyreliance on the motorcar for transportation alongenvironmental, social and economic lines. It shouldbe noted that while the overall tone of this book isa positive one, with encouragement and hope pre-sented for a nicer environment to live in, this rstsection will necessarily have to deal with some of the less pleasant aspects of modern life. Hopeful-ly, the reader will not become too depressed withthe current situation, but rather inspired to work forways to improve things, and read on!

In section two we analyze the maxim what youbuild, they will use. Examples are given to sup-port the notion that infrastructure built often bringsthe demand to follow it, and that wise choices madeby policy makers can result in the highest levels of user-end satisfaction. The key is to think long andhard about both current or future policy as well asmajor projects to be considered for implementa-tion, as these will have lasting consequences.

Section three presents the results of a closely stud-ied phenomenon called trafc evaporation. MajorEuropean Union research indicates that contrary

Introduction


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to what might be expected, closing off parts of a

city center to trafc will produce an overall lesseramount of trips made, thus increasing the levels of peace and quiet for the local residents and makingthe city center more attractive for visitors.

Section four revolves around city spaces and thepossibilities for improving the city in many differ-ent ways, making it easier to get around and more

stress-free. Many techniques and examples areprovided on how to make cities more attractive,more safe, less noisy and more fun.

In section ve, sustainable modes of transport arelooked at more carefully. There are many ways of increasing the overall efciency of public trans-portation networks, many of them at only a small

cost. When the overall transport picture is lookedat, including situations involving public transport,biking and walking, then the picture of a city is cre-ated where people will naturally choose such typesof transport, due to their attractiveness, efciencyand ease.

Section six discusses sustainable mobility and thepace of life. While the former discusses the needfor a comprehensive strategy on dealing with traf-c and mobility questions, the latter looks at therelated issue of speed and the pace of life. This sec-tion also touches on urban arrangements and theirrelationship to mobility.

Finally, section seven wraps up it all up, by put-ting the different parts together that are neededto achieve a sustainable city. Here the need for astrong local economy is an added dimension. Brief-ly touched upon are other issues that complementsustainable mobility issues, but lie mostly out of the scope of this guide.

There are three appendices to this guide. The rstone lists many of the practical suggestions thathave appeared in the guide as a handy referenceThe second one showcases many of the best prac-tices in both the transport sector and urban issues,

happening around the world today. The third lists

various organizations, current projects as well assuggested readings in this area.

Certain terms are marked as special vocabularywith an asterisk (*), which means that an entry isprovided in the glossary.

One of the greatest ironies of the TwentiethCentury is that around the globe, vast amountsof such priceless things as land, petroleum, and clean air have been relinquished for motorization

and yet most people in the world will never ownan automobile.

-Marcia D. Lowe

The industrial period has brought about mass-pro-duction, mass-distribution and total integration of the personal car into our everyday lives. Car own-ership, driving and personal transport offer manyopportunities and obvious benets for the user.These joys and benets are however soon counter-balanced by disadvantages, with harms and lossesaffecting all, not sparing the owner and user of thecar.

1 A closer look at the automobile

1 A closer look at the automobile


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There is an inevitable inverse relationship of the

benets compared with the harms when taking intoconsideration an increasing frequency of personalmotorized transport*: the negative impacts increaseas the positive ones fade away. Urban developmentmust adopt one of two approaches. Cities will haveto choose which direction to go, as a full, unmiti-gated level of support of all transport modes andinfrastructure will soon become impossible.

Simplied to provide clarity, the two choices of acity are:

1) Develop, invest and build more in an attemptto meet the demands of a rapidly growing per-sonal motorized transport.2) Reorganize, redesign and plan for measuresto alter the trend of an ever-faster growth of au-

tomobile use and other personal motorized ve-hicular trafc.

If we could imagine for a minute the separation of a city into car-accessible and a car-free sections,where an individual choice could be made betweenliving and working in a car-oriented or in a car-freedistrict, car ownership and use would thus becomea near private affair, as life-styles (with all of itsconditions and effects) could be chosen freely byindividuals. Car ownership a persons free choice is usually thought of as a completely private af-fair, as if we actually did live in cities segregatedaccording to use or non-use of the car. The truth,however, is that car use and car-based infrastructurehave wide-reaching effects on all of us, whether weown a car or not. It is thus imperative that take acloser look at the impacts of widespread car usage,in order to make a more informed and wise deci-sion about our attitudes and the direction in whichwe wish to take our communities.

The wise leader and the concerned decision-mak-ers, who really care about the health and well-be-ing of their communities must take an honest lookat the current trends of the auto-centric society andall of the effects that have been ushered in duringthe car age. Only when the exact nature of the prob-

lems affecting a given society are fully understood,

can solutions be found that are guided by the realdesire of improving the life of all of the citizens.Decision makers should come to realize that bothdecisions made about the future of a city as well asindecision in acting on issues have real effects ontheir community.

Before we consider the various impacts that carshave on our health, our societies and the environ-ment, let us take a quick look at the reasons we dohave for driving, considering also the backdrop of an auto-centric society.

Speed and Freedom

Arguably, the two leading reasons for owning acar are its inherent speed and the opportunity togo when and where the driver wishes. The latter,given the name freedom has often been touted asthe American dream, and has given rise to stereo-types of rugged individualism and a independentlifestyle. While there is an obvious appeal to thisromanticized ideal given that it is being tried outall over the world the truth is usually more mun-dane: the daily drive to work, running errands andpicking up the kids from school.

The loss of speed in relation to time

Regarding particularly the speed that cars possess,while by itself it seems to provide the car with ahuge advantage to every other form of transport,once the factor of time is included in the equation,a general fact about the automobile and travel withit that we can consider is the amount of time spentdedicated to it. The philosopher and social criticIvan Illich has made a calculation of the time putinto the different components that relate to drivingand that require time investments:

The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a

1 A closer look at the automobile: A quick drive through Carville

A quick drive through Carville


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year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it standsidling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the moneyto put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. Heworks to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and trafctickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on theroad or gathering resources for it. And this gure does nottake account of the time consumed by other activities dic-tated by transport: time spent in hospitals, trafc courts andgarages; time spent watching automobile commercials or at-

tending consumer education meetings to improve the qualityof the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hoursto get 7,500 miles: less than ve miles an hour. (that equals12,000 kilometers and 8 km per hour)

It has been noted elsewhere that this does not in-clude the ever greater amounts of time spent intrafc jams. Sitting in trafc jams has both a time

value and money value associated with it. In fact,it has been estimated that time lost in gridlock cancost European nations billions of Euros.

Paying a large bill

Considering the up-front cost of driving, it canmany times appear to be a cheaper alternative to

other modes of transport, when only the fuel iscompared to the cost of a bus ticket. This compari-son is often made, resulting in the fact that manypeople choose the car over a sometimes expensivebus or train ride. However, just like there are manyhidden aspects of time spent in car-related activi-ties, so are there also many hidden costs to driving.It should rst of all be realized that the automobileindustry, including the creation of highways, areusually greatly subsidized by government, manytimes along with an inadequate level of funding forpublic transportation. However, just concentratingon the costs handed down to the end-user, there arestill many extra monetary costs, that go beyond thefuel costs: Purchase of vehicle, maintenance of ve-hicle, payment of fees, such as insurance, driverslicense, car registration. Add to that all of the smallcosts like oil-change, green card, toll roads, park-ing. Then there might be large costs, such as hos-pital or doctors fees. While the gure is already

a lot higher, it still comes short of the total cost

of driving, which can be added up by consideringthe large subsidies of many governments in build-ing expensive roads and car parks and in generallysupporting the automobile industry. A car for short trips

It should also be noted about the car, that the aver-

age distance a car makes daily is below 20 km andone third of the trips that a car makes is less than3 km. In trafc less than 2 hours a day, cars stillhave to be accommodated, which involves either areal designated parking space or other space takenaway from sidewalks, for example.

Fossil fuel emissions

Probably the most widely understood adverse ef-fect of the automobile age is that of the cars fossilfuel emissions. Global warming, which has nowrightfully become a buzzword, is caused by thegreenhouse effect*. In all, transport is estimatedto account for 20-25% of all greenhouse gas emis-sions. Motor vehicles are the single biggest sourceof atmospheric pollution, contributing an estimated14% of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions fromfossil fuel burning, a proportion than is steadilyrising. Add the emissions from exploration, trans-portation, rening and distribution of fuel, and thisgure if 15 to 20 percent of world emissions. Theaverage European car produces over 4 tons of car-bon dioxide every year.

While a thorough discussion of global warminggoes beyond the scope of this book, it should nev-ertheless be appreciated that scientists are becomingmore and more certain of the great dangers of globalwarming. Serious and respected scientists are claim-ing that a reduction of greenhouse gases is neededcloser to 60%-80% rather than the 5.2% cut dictated

1 A closer look at the automobile: The Environmental, social and health-related impacts of cars

The Environmental, social andhealth-related impacts of cars


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by the Kyoto protocol. The effects of global warm-

ing can lead to an environmental catastrophe even inour own lifetimes: Weather will become more andmore unpredictable, with some areas of the globeexperiencing ooding and very cold weather whileother places will become extremely hot and dry. Agreat displacement of people in search of livable cli-mates will then follow. It should be noted, that sincethe deep waters of the planet take such a long time

to heat up, we are currently experiencing the maineffects of CO2 emissions from 40 years ago. As ev-ery community in the world plays a role in this, it isindeed a global problem that needs to be addressedalso at the local level.

Motor vehicles generate more air pollution than anyother single human activity. While global warming

can potentially lead us to an environmental catastro-phe, the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels hasalready been having an effect on human health for along while. Cancer and asthma are both diseases thatnd a direct link in pollution. While the negative ef-fects of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide havebeen fairly well known for a while, the negative ef-fects of microparticles, found especially in dieselemissions, are gradually becoming known, and areshown to have devastating consequences for humanhealth. Add to this dioxin, which is a by-product of pollution, yet according to some, is thought to bethe number one cancer-causing force in the world.Dioxin, through pollution, nds its way into thefood that we eat, hitting meat and dairy productsespecially hard. New ndings also suggest that thenutritional components of many food products arebeing compromised, thus creating a greater need fornutritional supplements.

In the U.S., the American Lung Association esti-mate that between 10,000 and 24,000 people dieeach year as a result of trafc related air pollution.Epidemiologists and public health specialists in theU.S. and U.K. indicate that up to 60,000 Ameri-cans and 10,000 British are killed each year as aresult of particulate pollution. In Hungary, a recentnding has come out, claiming that the pollution

emissions in the city of Budapest, caused foremost

by the trafc situation, will account for a reductionin the average life expectancy by three years.

Accidents

Apart from pollution, road accidents account forthe other major health impact of travelling by car.Over 40,000 deaths occur on the roads of Europe

every year. Four out of ve fatalities occur in ur-ban areas. A million people die on the roads everyyear 10 million are estimated to be injured. At adaily rate, the gures have been thus calculated:3,000 people dieevery day, around the world, intrafc. On top of that, 30,000 people are injuredevery day.

Environmental destruction

Not just human health is at peril due to pollution,but the natural and animal world is as well. Onthe one hand, the pollution itself or the accompany-ing changes brought on the climate are devastatingenough to natural habitats, but when we add to thisthe fact that more and more roads are being builtthrough natural areas, which brings with it manyother developments and further sources of humanengineered pollution. An indirect yet very potentimpact of the automobile is its spread of humanactivity into many reaches of the natural world,producing not just pollution, also a large amountof waste, a loss in space and natural habitat, andmuch more.

Furthermore, the great amount of materials needed just to manufacture a car are so high, that accordingto some estimates, a car produces more pollution inits period of manufacture than in its entire lifetimeof driving. This includes raw materials such as steel,iron, rubber, plastics and aluminum as well as largeamounts of substances that deplete the ozone layeras well as huge quantities of energy.

In considering the strictly environmental effectsof pollution, it should not be forgotten that human



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health and well-being is very closely tied to both

the plant and animal world. In fact, we could notlive without plants and animals. Thus, consideringan environmental perspective involves a consider-ation of humans just as much as it does of plantsand animals.

The waning of the oil age

Most cars run on gasoline or diesel. These arederived from petroleum, commonly referred toas oil. Globally, motor vehicles use one third of the worlds oil resources. The extraction of oilinvolves habitat loss, oil spills, air and water pol-lution, large emissions of carbon dioxide, regularhumanitarian abuses and international conicts.The living conditions in many areas where oil is

extracted is harsh. We can consider here the poorliving in the environmental wastelands of Nigeriasoil producing areas or the effects of oil extractionin Azerbaijan. The strong protest against drillingfor oil in Alaska has made it clear that there arevery serious societal and environmental effects at-tached with oil extraction.

However, when considering oil, we must also keepin mind that it is a non-renewable resource and thatthe dictates of peak oil* are that we are now near-ing a period of decline in availability. The mostoptimistic studies estimate that oil reserves will besufcient for 30 years, while skeptical estimates al-low for only 10 years of further extraction withouta new explosion of oil prices. One thing is for sure:The record high prices of today, even if they dolevel out or occasionally slightly drop, will onlycontinue in the direction of price increases. Theage of cheap oil is over, which is already having astrong effect on North America, as it is there thatthe greatest governmental subsidies for oil exist.

The effect on communitiesNeighborhood streets and the trafc they bear dohave an impact on the social fabric of that neighbor-hood. For instance, the average number of friends

a person has within his or her neighborhood cor-

responds to the speed and volume of street trafc.Sociologist Donald Appleyard discovered that on astreet with light trafc 2,000 vehicles a day residents had about 10 friends and acquaintancesin the neighborhood, as compared to a street withheavy trafc 16,000 vehicles a day whereresidents had only four acquaintances, includingon average 0.9 friends.

Severance* is the term given to the effect that a busyroad can have by cutting a line straight through acommunity or an Eco-habitat. In the case of com-munities, it can imply that a person might have totravel a long distance or encounter many difcul-ties to reach a location that is not necessarily thatfar away, as the bird ies. For ecosystems, it means

that species have a limited habitat to live in, andthat when some animals do try to cross over a busyhighway, they often do so at their own peril.

Community is very important to the health andwellbeing of both a society seen as a whole as wellas for each and every individual. Another loss forthe community, when cars become the dominant

mode of transport, is the loss of human interaction.In communities that involve lots of walking, com-munal transport and public space, the amount of interaction, especially chance meetings, mark anoverall vibrancy of a community that can never beachieved by a society where the automobile is thechief form of transport, as here there are very fewchance encounters, planned meetings are the orderof the day.

The loss of Space

If on the one hand, cars create pollution, envi-ronmental and health problems, then on the otherhand they are great consumers of space. It is anundisputed fact that cars require a great amount of space. This is because they are the largest thingson the road. In fact, as they become more popularthey need more and more road space and more andmore roads. When they are not in use they need to



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be parked somewhere. Altogether, an auto-centriccity takes away a large proportion of space from pe-destrians, when compared with the times before theauto age or with cities that have a relatively smallproportion of car use. In some cities, travelers by footare daily faced with cars parked on their sidewalk.In Berlin, for example, even with a high standard of

public transportation as well as bike infrastructure,and an unusually high amount of green space, 40%of available land is still taken by the automobile. Inother cities, the percentage is much higher. This re-sults in a loss of places to go, and street life, whichleads to vibrant communities and economies, losesout. It is no wonder that many cities are choosingcarfree zones for their centers, where the most inter-esting and stimulating elements of society, cultureand commerce take place.

Not exercising

The health benets of choosing active methods forgetting around, such as cycling and walking, havebecome obvious. Research has shown that sedentarylifestyles will necessarily bring many health compli-cations, while cycling on a regular basis, for instance,can bring a 40% reduction of disease risk comparedto sedentary lifestyles. In general, all things point to

the fact that the more types of active travel are en-

joyed and promoted, the healthier citizens will be.

Noise and Visual pollution

Anybody who has lived in a large city is familiarwith the noise that comes with being in a large city.Whether it is of trafc rushing by, the screechingsound of brakes or car alarms going off at night,

this has all become quite normal to the city dwell-er. Non-city dwellers have been observed to needsome adjustment time to the noise of cities oncethey arrive. And visually, rows of parked cars aswell as large parking areas often provide a lesspleasant view than a city park or a pedestrianizedcobblestone square.

If you build it, they will come -ancient proverb

Infrastructure that becomes developed largely in-uences patterns of use and can often be seen tocreate demand. While transport related policy andplanning measures are often treated as a responseto the particular demands and trafc patterns of aregion, the fact should not be overlooked that exist-ing and newly developed infrastructure will them-selves greatly affect travel behavior and inuencethe modal split*.

This section looks at what happens when differenttypes of infrastructure (together with a different setof encouragements or endorsements from the side of the authorities) has been offered to the residents of diverse cities. While urban planning issues are con-sidered in section four and specic transportationsce-narios are covered in section ve, this section wishesto illustrate how policy decisions have shaped townsand cities in very tangible ways: provided here arereal examples from around the world.

2 Infrastructure and policy making: Hard choices and far-reaching consequences

2 Infrastructure and policy making:Hard choices and far-reaching consequences

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Los Angeles and Venice: covering the wholespectrum

Los Angeles, USA, is often considered the mostauto-centric city on the planet, whereas Venice,Italy is the foremost carfree city. These two cit-ies therefore function as the two ends to a kind of spectrum, that cover many cities in between, and

that offer us a clue as to what results when citiesand infrastructure are built up in certain ways.

Greater Los Angeles is the home to 17 millionpeople and nearly as many cars. This city has inmany ways been developed with the automobile inmind. The city is criss-crossed by multi-lane high-ways and multi-layered exchanges, on-ramps, off-

ramps and every possibly road-based infrastruc-ture you can imagine. Much of the city is on thegrid system, with wide, heavily trafc roads to befound every few kilometers. Modal share* of pub-lic transport is extremely low, however recently,some improvements have been made to the publictransport service. Shopping has been designed al-most exclusively for the driver. In relatively dense

neighborhoods, shops that are close to the streetlack an entrance from the street, one can only enterthrough the parking lot in the rear. In lesser denseneighborhoods, a large parking lot separates thestreet from the store entrance. In both cases, thepedestrian shopper is at a distinct disadvantage.Being a pedestrian, in fact, can come close to beingconsidered a suspicious species: Police have beenknown to pull up to pedestrians and question them,simply for walking instead of driving on the sideof a busy road.

Venice, on the other hand, has been favored by his-tory with the ideal conditions for being a compact,beautiful carfree city. Due to the system of water-ways and the medieval nature of the buildings inthe city, it was never practical to give it over toautomobile transport, and so it was able to remaina splendid city, that today attracts large numbersof tourists. Being a fairly small city and owning a

unique set of characteristics and history, the Ven-ice model has not been replicated on such a scaleelsewhere, although the appeal of a carfree historiccity setting can be witnessed in many great citieswhich have chosen to limit or banish car travelfrom their historic centers.

While these two cities can not be treated exclu-sively in a black and white manner, as Los Angeles

does obviously have some positive characteristicsand Venice some negative ones (and they are alsosituated in otherwise very different settings) it doesnevertheless illustrate a very important principle:What gets built usually gets used. If you buildhighway after highway, you are inviting a highlevel of highway users. If instead, you developquality cycling infrastructure, you make it easy for

people to ride their bicycles, and they will do it. Itthen follows logically, that an appropriate policymust precede the adoption of development plans,as these will necessarily have far-reaching effects.

In between Los Angeles and Venice there is awhole host of other cities that can provide bothgood and bad examples of how infrastructure and

policy have helped to shape the way that cities are.Thus, a number of different cities are visited in thissection, as we take a look at how infrastructure andpolicy decisions have shaped their paths.

Bogot, Columbia

Bogot, the capitol of Columbia, is a city witharound 8 million inhabitants. Historically, it isa poor city which has seen a lot of crime as wellas transportation chaos. From the middle of the1990s, two mayors began to implement programsof change. The rst one was Antanas Mockus, whogoverned between 1995 and 1997, and set the tonefor what would eventually happen, under the leadof Enrique Pealosa, the transformation of a cityby ushering in sweeping urban infrastructure andtransport reforms, and become a global successstory, without parallel anywhere for the kind of changes seen in a large city in such a short time.



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A few of the results from this period: daily time lost to congestion was cut by a fullhour transport speed increased by 43% air pollution lowered by 16% fuel consumption lowered by 10% modal share of bike use jumped from 0.3 to 5% car use in peak times lowered by 40%

deadly trafc accidents down by 13% homicide rate down by 12%

Since Colombian laws bar an incumbent mayorfrom being reelected, in 2001 Antanas Mockus waselected for another term, to continue the same pro-grams. Pealosa, who had by now acquired a namefor himself internationally, was invited around the

world to give lectures and presentations on theBogot miracle.

Looking back to the period around 1998, beforeany of the great changes had been implemented,the city considered a proposal by the Japanese In-ternational Cooperation Agency (JICA) to engagein a massive highway building program. However,the city decided against this, and came up with a

plan of their own. Over 1200 parks were created.The famous TransMilenio - Bus Rapid Transit(BRT) system was created (more about BRT insection ve). Car use was restricted, based on li-cense plate numbers. Carfree Sundays were intro-duced, where every weekend and holiday, morethan 100 kilometers of main roads are enjoyed,without a car in sight, by around two million of its inhabitants. Playgrounds of equally high quality

were built in rich sections of town and poor sec-tions of town alike. In places where JICA advisedfor the building of highways, 17 kilometers of pe-destrian streets and a 45 kilometers worth of greencorridors were brought to life.

Bogot has not allowed itself to rest on its accom-plishments. The plans exist to continue the trends

for many more years. On one Thursday, in Febru-ary of 2000, the entire city was run without carsused anywhere. This happened in a city about fourtimes the size of Budapest, Hungary! This was thenestablished to become a yearly practice, after ap-proved in a referendum. Future plans are to bancars altogether from the streets every weekday be-tween 6 AM and 9 AM as well as between 4:30 PM

and 7:30 PM, on weekdays, from 2015 onwards.At this point, it is expected that the TransMilenioBRT system will move more than 80% of the cityspopulation, and that the bicycle network will alsobe further expanded.

Everyone now acknowledges that the quality of lifein Bogot has drastically approved. It used to be acity where its citizens were unhappy in, but now,Bogot citizens are proud of their city and lookingtowards the future with optimism.

Induced travel

Trafc induction* is a phenomenon that is observ-able in those places where roads are widened to ac-commodate more trafc ow. What happens is thatin the short term that this new road space itself actu-ally generates more vehicle trafc, and in the longrun it also implies higher car ownership and lower


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density settlements. The effects of this can be seenon a very advanced level in many cities through-out the USA, where cities sprawl in all directions,with primarily low density settlements, too low tosustain an adequate public transport system, yethigh enough to generate lots of vehicular trafc.The opposite of trafc induction is trafc evapora-tion*, which is what happens as you narrow roadsor remove large amounts of trafc, and it results in

less overall trafc. This is looked more thoroughlyin the next section, along with examples.

It appears that many cities in the USA have in factreached a point where they are beginning to turnaway from such car-oriented developments as havedominated most of the twentieth Century, and at-tempt to even reverse many of the trends. Some

cities, like Fresno, California, have recently in-stalled anti-sprawl new housing legislation, whileTucson, Arizona has plans to greatly improve thepublic transport network, and build both sidewalksand bike paths. It is especially noteworthy that LosAngeles is beginning to follow a different path, bysetting up both light-rail and heavy-rail systems,as well as the BRT system. Several cities in the

USA are now implementing or planning to adoptthe BRT system. Yet the American model still stands as one of themodels for urban development in much of theworld, as the following example illustrates. It shouldhowever also be noted that the successes of Bogot,Columbia and Curitiba, Brazil are being duplicatedin many cities around the world as well, from manycities in South America and North America, to Ja-karta, Indonesia, and several other cities in Asia.

In many cases, municipalities end up waiting un-til it gets so bad, that something has to be done.Retrotting a city to improve its structures andincrease the modal shares of public transport andnon-motorized transport* can sometimes be ex-pensive (even if the only real way forward). Theexample of Bogot illustrates that not only willthey be spared such costs in the future, they have

already saved a tremendous amount of money by

not investing in a massive road building program,nor carrying out an expensive, limited-use under-ground mass transit system.

While this section has hopefully provided a clearpicture of the relationships and the effects associ-ated with providing any infrastructure for our cities whether it be roads and parking spaces on the one

hand or high-class mass transit options and bikingpaths on the other the next section will go on toillustrate what actually happens when car-relatedinfrastructure or road access is reduced, and townsbegin to orient themselves towards a more sustain-able and people-friendly pace of life.

It should also be noted that positive sustainable ur-ban developments are happening in many places inthe world, in both rich and less rich countries, whichcan be seen in Appendix B. A nal example in thissection comes from Groningen, Netherlands.

Groningen Europes bicycle capitol

In Groningen, the Netherlands seventh largestcity, the main form of transport is the bicycle.Some time ago, very high trafc congestion ledcity planners to dig up city-center motorways.They set about creating a car-free city center. Now


Parking Policy in Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok has highly congested trafc, and also a veryhigh rate of 338 parking spaces per 1,000 central district

jobs, which is practically on the same level of most UScities, but far higher than the rates found in Singapore,Tokyo or Hongkong, which average only 67 parkingspaces for centrally located jobs. The results are that thecenter is dominated by cars, whether parked, movingor sitting in gridlock. The parking policy also extends to

parking facility requirements for new buildings, whereparking might dominate the rst 10 levels, if it is a high-rise building. The ensuing congestion can be predicted,then, when many of the buildings residents leave ev-ery morning for work, one by one, trying to exit the

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Groningen, with a population of 180,000, has thehighest level of bicycle usage in the West. 50% of the trips in the city are made by bicycle.

Since 1977, when a six-lane motorway intersectionin the citys center was replaced by greenery, pe-destrianization, cycle ways and bus lanes, the cityhas experienced a remarkable recovery. Rents arehigh compared to the Dutch national average, the

emigration to other parts of the country has beenreversed and businesses, once in revolt against carrestraint, are eager for more of it. As Gerrit vanWerven, a senior city planner, put it, This is not anenvironmental program, it is an economic program.We are boosting jobs and business. It has beenproved that planning for the bicycle is cheaper thanplanning for the car. Proof of this lies in the fact

that requests regularly arrive from shopkeepers, re-questing bans on car trafc on their roads.

The bicycle has become the focus of the citystransport system. All across the city roads havebeen narrowed or closed to trafc, cycleways havebeen constructed and new houses built to which theonly direct access is by bicycle. Out-of-town shop-ping centers have been banned. Cars are sometimes

forced to take detours, where the cycling networkcontains the easiest access to the city center. Thisis achieved in part by dividing the center into fourzones, with sector borders that can not be crossed bycars, thus there is no through trafc in the center.

Groningens ten-year bicycle program has aver-aged roughly 30 million, but every commuter carit keeps off the road saves at least 250 million a

year in hidden costs such as noise, pollution, park-ing and health.

Cycling in Groningen is viewed as part of an in-tegral urban renewal, planning and transport strat-egy. Separate cycle ways, advanced stop lines attrafc lights, and right turns at red lights are com-mon. New city center buildings must provide cycle

parking facilities. There are tens of thousands of parking spaces for bikes, either in street racks orguarded parking the central railway station hasroom for over 3000 bicycles.

We dont want a good system for bicycles, wewant a perfect system, says Mr. van Werven. Wewant a system for bicycles that is like the German

autobahns for cars. We dont ride bicycles becausewe are poor people here are richer than in Eng-land. We ride them because it is fun, it is faster, itis convenient.

Adding highway lanes to deal with trafc conges-tion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.

-Louis Mumford

Trafc evaporation the concept

While new concepts often require some time totake hold and become widely accepted, this isslowly but surely happening in the science of roadand trafc management. In the past, when a givenroad reached its limits as to how much trafc itcould handle, the common response was to either

3 Trafc Evaporation

3 Trafc Evaporation

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build a new road or widen the existing one. Whilethis sometimes brought initial relief, it also broughtpuzzlement and frustration, since after not too long,trafc levels would come increasingly close to for-mer times, and the local government would start totalk again about more road building.

But this has now been turned on its head. It hasbeen getting more and more evident in recent years

that if you build a new road to meet expected traf-c ows, the very existence of the new road is astimulus for trafc growth. This became clear, forexample, when following the construction of theM25, the orbital motorway around London. Peoplethen also began to realize that while building newroads generates trafc, restricting access to roadsactually decreases trafc. In a given situation,

when roads have been closed, and access (espe-cially to city centers) has been restricted, after theimmediate changes that required some adjustment,the measurement of overall trafc volume for thegiven area reveals that there has been a systemwide decline of trafc levels. This includes eventhose roads nearby to the closed off area, whichwere expected to become extremely burdened by

trafc. This phenomenon has received the nametrafc evaporation *.

It has been observed that when drivers are sudden-ly presented with a new scenario, and have to makea choice of which method to choose in a changedsituation, then a shift to another mode of transportor even a reduction in the overall travel amount oc-curs. If public transport or cycling become easier incomparison to driving around a closed-off city cen-ter, for instance, the same person who before natu-rally reached for the car keys, will now think twice.In many cases, when the former convenience of atype of trip suddenly becomes less convenient, afrequent response has been to reconsider makingthe trip at all.

One particular situation has occurred numeroustimes: A road or even bridge was closed for thesake of reconstruction, during the reconstruction it

was noticed that life seemed to carry on just newithout that particular artery, and so city hall madethe decision to keep it permanently closed. Or inthe case that it was later reopened, a perceptibledegree of modal shift had already occurred, and theformer levels of trafc were not again reached.

First hand evidence

An excellent body of research has been compiled,documenting this phenomenon in several Euro-pean cities, and presented in an EU publicationtitled Reclaiming city streets for people Chaosor quality of life. The very convincing research isleaned on heavily here, and several examples arequoted from this book.

Here, two examples are given, of Nrnberg, Ger-many and Strasbourg, France. It should be noted,however, that there are several other interesting ex-amples in this study, ranging from the small Finn-ish town of Kaajani to a bustling neighborhood inLondon, England.

Background

In the early 1970s, the city center of Nurembergin Northern Bavaria, with its narrow streets, his-toric monuments and shopping areas, was facinggrowing problems of trafc-related air pollution,causing decay of historic buildings, health con-cerns, and excessive trafc congestion in the citycenter.

The strategy: Civilizing Urban trafc

Since the 1970s, the city authorities have adopteda progressive strategy to give priority to more sus-tainable, less polluting modes of transport, to pro-vide better access to shopping and ofces within thearea, and to improve parking space management.The removal of car trafc from the city center wascarried out in phases, culminating in the closure

3 Trafc Evaporation: Case study 1: Nrnberg, Germany

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of the last major trafc corridor through the citycenter between 1988 and 1989. Access for publictransport was still permitted. In 1989, followingwide ranging consultation and a close vote by thecity, the pedestrianization was made permanent.

Over the next 10 years, the area has been trans-formed in six phases into an attractive pedestrianprecinct, buildings have been renovated, street furni-

ture upgraded and artworks introduced. The area hasbecome a pleasant place in which to stroll and enjoystreet cafs free from pollution and congestion.

Popular support for the pedestrianization schemehas been proved to be strong. Proposals to reopenthe Rathausplatz/Theresienstrasse through road tocar trafc following a change in political leader-

ship of the city in 1996 were not realized due topublic objection.

Results

First two months after Rathausplatz/Theresien-strasse Square closure to trafc:

increase in trafc congestion;

the municipality faced considerable critical op-position from the public and the media.After 68 weeks

trafc adjusted to the new situation and thecongestion problems were resolved; support for the scheme grew as the advantagesof the project became clear, especially in springtime when people could enjoy urban street life.

Extensive trafc monitoring was carried out to as-sess the impact of the road closure on trafc in thehistoric center. The actual trafc reduction (21 176)in the historic city center was twice as large as thatpredicted. By 1993 a total of 36 044 vehicles haddisappeared and gures (although incomplete for1997) suggest a further reduction in trafc levels.In order to see if the missing trafc was being dis-placed to roads inside the outer ring road, screen linecounts at the citys 12 bridges were carried out. Thestatistics show that rather than an increase in traf-c ows, there was an overall reduction of approxi-

mately 10 000 vehicles between 1989 and 2000,despite an overall increase in car ownership duringthis period.

The role of a brave leader

What is the role like of the town authorities, whoare considering such aspiring goals? It is not al-ways easy to push through with an initiative that

does not at rst appear very popular, but in the end,it can be quite rewarding. Here is an observation onthe challenges that a city authority might face:

Taking capacity away from the dominant road user (i.e. theprivate car) is a brave decision for an authority to take. Logicsuggests that if a network is already congested, the removalof capacity can only exacerbate the situation. Public concerns

usually focus on predictions of trafc chaos and adverse eco-nomic impacts. In the face of such reaction, planning authori-ties and politicians may lose courage and abandon proposalsto reallocate road space. In such circumstances new ideas,such as the concept of trafc evaporation (which challengesthe assumption that trafc congestion will necessarily worsenif road capacity is reduced), can lend valuable support as to thetechnical feasibility of creative trafc management solutions.

Background

The city of Strasbourg situated on the banks of the River Rhine is characterized by canal and

river crossings and historic buildings and monu-ments. The city center, located on an island,has been designated a world heritage site byUNESCO. During the 1980s, the city was fac-ing growing trafc-related problems: frequentcongestion, air and noise pollution, and high ac-cident levels. The city center was becoming lessattractive to visitors. In addition, the scope forproviding more space to accommodate growingnumbers of private cars was limited due to thehistoric street pattern with its monuments andhistoric buildings.

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The strategy: The Urban mobility plan

The main aim of the plan was to reduce thedominance of the private car and to increase theuse of more sustainable forms of transport, pub-lic transport, cycling and walking, in the citycenter.

In the early 1990s, a decision was taken to build

two new tramlines serving the city center. How-ever, in order to create the road space required, itwas necessary to reallocate highway space fromprivate car trafc to make way for the new tram-ways. The rst step was taken in 1992, and in-volved the extension of the trafc free precinctin central Strasbourg for a trial period. This traf-c free zone was subsequently made permanent

and was further extended with the construction of Tramline B.

In addition, through trafc access to the city center,which represented almost 40 % of general trafcows, was removed. Access to districts of the citycenter and parking facilities has been made possiblevia a number of loops, however it is not possible

to pass from one district to another. Through trafcis directed towards large boulevards on the outercircle or bypasses. Provision has been made for re-stricted local and delivery access in the heart of thecity center. Parking charges have been introducedin the city center, resulting in a faster turnover, andtherefore more efcient use of space. Cyclists andpedestrians have free access to all areas.

The rst tramline, Tramline A, was opened in1994, followed by Tramline B which was com-pleted in 2000. Park-and-ride sites have been builtalong the new tramway lines, the parking ticket isalso the tram ticket for all the parked car passen-gers. Provision for mobility impaired passengershas been made at tram stations and on tram trains.Opposition to the scheme was considerable, in par-ticular from retailers in central Strasbourg. Theyfeared that during the works to install the tram,they would lose business as access was reduced to

city center shops, which did in fact occur. It wasalso feared that pedestrianization of the city centerwould prevent customers from visiting their shopsas cars were prohibited from this part of the city. Astrong anti-scheme campaign was mounted.

An extensive consultation process was undertakenwith local residents, businesses and local associa-tions, and an active awareness-raising campaignwas undertaken by the city authorities in partner-ship with the transport operator. It was the rst timethat a French city of this size and importance had

challenged its citizens habits to such an extent.

A communication strategy was developed, usingmagazines and local daily newspapers, (CUSmagazine, Dernires Nouvelles dAlsace) andposters displayed around the city. The campaignhad a symbol, Bruno the bear, which served as avisual aid during the project works. Bruno guidedcar drivers and pedestrians around the road diver-sions, and he also informed them about how theworks were progressing. A phone center was set upto deal with questions and complaints.

3 Trafc Evaporation: Case study 2: Strasbourg, France

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Results

In 1990, approximately 240 000 private vehiclesentered Strasbourg city center; in 2000, this owwas approximately 200 000. Estimates suggest thatwithout the implementation of the mobility plan,the number of vehicles would currently be 300 000.While it is not possible to estimate how much of this missing trafc has displaced to other streets,it is clear that the strategy reallocating road space toother more sustainable modes has been successful.

The predicted trafc chaos did not occur. Afteran initial settling-in period drivers adjusted tothe new road layout. Public transport services have clearly beneted.Tramline A carried over 68 000 passengers/dayduring its rst year of operation, and it is esti-

mated that the tram led to a 17 % reduction intrafc entering the greater Strasbourg area. Park-and-ride use has increased. There has been a signicant shift in modal splitfrom the private car to more sustainable modes:in 1989, 72.5 % of all trips were made by privatecar and 11 % by public transport; in 1999, 60 %of all trips were made by private car and 30 % by

public transport. The number of trips made by bicycle has in-creased. The success of the strategy to date has provid-ed the stimulus for a further two tramlines to becompleted by 2010.

Resistance eventually turns to acceptance

It is only natural that citizens will protest to such mea-sures at the beginning. They might be afraid of trafcchaos or simply of facing restrictions as a car driver.Shop owners especially become worried that theywill lose business. In the case of the well-being of ashop, it is interesting to note that often a shop will dobetter once it nds itself in a carfree or trafc-calmedarea. There are also some interesting ndings, linkingshopping habits with volume of trafc, which can beseen in the graphic about empty shops. But note alsoa conclusion from the above mentioned EU study:

In the majority of the case studies, planners and politicianshave encountered opposition on two main counts: rstlythat existing congested conditions will be made worse andsecondly that retail trade will suffer. In some cases the pro-tests have been very powerful. In each of the examples, along period of consultation and extensive communicationscampaigns have been undertaken, in some cases lastingmany years. At the end of this consultation period, despiteopposition, the road space reallocation has gone ahead. Inall cases, after an initial settling-in period, the predictedtrafc chaos did not materialize and a proportion of the traf-c disappeared. The scale of the impacts on retailers is moredifcult to judge; however in the majority of cases, trade hasimproved. The overriding motivation in all these exampleshas been a vision and commitment to nding more sustain-able and socially inclusive transport solutions. The aim hasbeen to improve the quality of life of those who visit, workor live in the city.

The trust of a city is formed over time from many,many sidewalk contacts... Most of it is ostensiblyutterly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all. The

sum of such casual, public contact at a local lev-el... is a feeling for the public identity of people,a web of public respect and trust, and a resourcein time of personal or neighborhood need. Theabsence of this trust is a disaster to a city street...

Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change fromwhich a citys wealth of public life may grow.

-Jane Jacobs

The viability and the benets of trafc evapora-tion* were presented in chapter three. Based uponthis, we can make the case that the next step is toinitiate a plan of trafc calming, with the goal inmind to provide the city residents with more spaceto play and move around, to reduce the ailments

associated with pollution, to cut back on the num-ber of trafc accidents, and to bring more quiet tothe neighborhoods. The good news is that this isactually doable and that where it already has been

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done, the results are tangible! This section will pro-vide many different methods of trafc calming aswell as suggestions for positive lling-in of traf-c-calmed areas.

Limiting car access to center

Each and every town, no matter what size, can ben-et greatly from turning their center into a carfreezone, with pedestrian streets, cafs, shopping dis-tricts and historical areas. This trend has becomequite popular all over Europe as well as elsewherein the world, that it almost needs no additional ef-forts to explain. Every year, numerous cities areadded to the list of towns with largely carfreecenters or extensive walking districts. Where thishasnt happened yet, it is being planned. For the

city that has not made such a move, this would bethe very rst place to start. For once the city cen-ter has been turned into a place where both localresidents and visitors can stroll around, sit in ca-fs or shop, all to mere sounds of other strollers or

perhaps a gurgling fountain, nearly every residentin the city will come to enjoy the benets of a pe-destrian center and will begin to spend more andmore time there.

In the case of large cities or cities with an inordi-nate amount of trafc, the quickest possible solu-tion for a city-wide reduction in trafc is to initiateeither temporary or partial bans or set up a systemof congestion charges. Banning cars from centralareas can happen in different ways: One of themis to regulate which license plates may enter thecity on what days. Several Italian cities permitodd-numbered plates to enter on certain days of theweek and even-numbered plates to enter on otherdays. If owning more than one car is a common oc-currence (or could turn into one), a way to prevent

tactics for getting around the ban is by assigningthe same category of license plates to the multiplevehicles of a single owner. This will also discour-age drivers from purchasing a second vehicle forstrictly that purpose.

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Temporary bans on driving through the centermight involve closing off streets for certain hours,for instance on evenings or weekends. The city of Bogot, Columbia enacts a car ban on all the majorstreets in the center of the city, every Sunday, forseven hours during the day. A city might considerclosing off certain streets every day after 7 PM, orperhaps for the whole day on either Saturday orSunday, or both. Another possibility is to removethrough trafc* entirely, allowing only local resi-dents to access their homes. A variation on this isto allow 24 hour access of a street for residents, butlimit the times that other vehicles may enter.

Congestion charge* is an option of charging a certain

price for entry into the central zone, at any time of day. It has become well known that London, Eng-land implemented such a system, and this scheme hasturned out to be wildly successful. Trafc in the cen-ter has been reduced by 18 % and congestion by 30%.Many other cities around the world are now consider-ing or beginning to implement a similar scheme.

Traditional trafc calming

There are a whole host of devices that can be im-plemented in a given neighborhood to limit the

speed of vehicles passing through and decrease theappeal of driving in a given area. A speed bump(sometimes referred to as a sleeping policeman) is just the tip of the iceberg!

Apart from putting speed bumps in the road to slowdown the approaching car, some of the other typesof physical changes to the environment could in-clude: Street narrowing or offsetting the center line,with obstacles on different sides. This might includea tree or protected group of potted owers that jutsomewhat into the road, so that the car must slowdown to drive around it. The space given to the car isconstant, simply the car must perform in an obstaclecourse, while moving down the street. A bottleneck*is another type of narrowing device, where the en-trance and exit to a street section has been narrowed,

thus reducing the speed of trafc moving in and out.In general, the use of both obstacles such as vegeta-tion, painted lines or art installations can all functionas trafc calming tools, and much room exists forcreativity to be applied.

Road or entrance closures also work wonders. In thiscase, at a given intersection an entrance to a street

might be closed to trafc, which turns the street intoan effective cul-de-sac. Travel to this street willthus be reserved exclusively for local residents oroccasional visitors. If the street is two-way, a par-tial closure would involve allowing only one-waytrafc at one end of the street, while keeping bothways open at another. A two-way street might alsobe turned into a one-way street, adding either more

sidewalk space or a bike line. If the principle aimfor a certain street is to discourage through trafc,this could be done by turning different sections of the same street into one-way sections, however ip-ping the direction at various intersections, perhapsa middle section could be completely closed to allbut bus trafc, by the use of electronically control-lable movable barricade. This has been done forinstance on Rday street in Budapest, where busescan trigger the lowering of the barricade. In the cityof London, there are many neighborhoods with one-way streets, dead-ends, and a maze-like structure of

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streets, that through trafc is next to impossible, andthe residents are thankful for that.

It should be noted that the design of neighborhoodsbased on the grid scale*, as is the case of manysprawling North American cities, virtually turns allof the streets in the grid scale into through streets,meaning that few neighborhoods are spared of noise and pollution. The gradual organic develop-ment of city neighborhoods into non-linear ways,over time, appears to be the healthiest kind of de-velopment. If whole areas of town must be devel-oped over a short period of time, it would be wiseto pay attention to the outlay of streets, with theaim to create as many trafc-calmed areas as pos-sible, as well as a sizable amount of high-qualitypedestrian space, including also pedestrian streets

and carfree housing. The less through trafc affect-ing the neighborhood, the better. This will need tobe well integrated with public transport stops aswell as bicycle and walking options, which is dis-cussed in the next section.

Slow zones, wide sidewalks

Tempo 30 zones* have become popular in manyneighborhoods over the past several decades. Thisis an addition to physical trafc calming devicesin residential neighborhoods, where regulations areset for a tempo 30 on most of the streets in a certainarea. Upon entering the area as well as at variousintersections, large signs show that this is a trafccalming area. In Berlin there are even signs calling

on drivers to keep to the speed of a pedestrian. If the sidewalk is ush level with the street (just adifferent color), and pedestrians are encouraged tofeel comfortable walking across the street as theyneed to, slow moving drivers will be on even great-er alert to watch out for pedestrians, thus makingthe roads even safer, providing the local residentswith a feeling of safety and comfort in their com-munity, and reducing the number of accidents.

Sidewalks should be as wide as possible, to enablepedestrians the opportunity to move freely in their

neighborhood and to encourage pedestrian trafcto local destinations. While cars dont necessar-ily need to travel side by side, people often like towalk side by side or in groups, and this can becomequite frustrating if the sidewalk is too narrow to dothis, or if cars are parked in such a way as to makethis impossible. It is thus recommended for streetswhere the curb is low enough and the street archi-tecture could potentially tempt a driver to park onthe sidewalk, to erect bollards* perhaps just thesize of a small tree stump to keep drivers to theedge of the sidewalk and allow pedestrians maxi-mum use of sidewalk. There are various types of

bollards, and if a nice variety is chosen, they can

also have the potential to make a street even moreattractive. Also grassy strips as well as painted col-ors on the street or sidewalk can act in a similarway to bollards.

Reclaiming space

In trafc-calmed neighborhoods, cars only reallyneed slightly more than their own width, thus it isrecommended to allot the space of the road that acar might use to the bare minimum, which will it-self act as a trafc-calming device, since cars need

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extra room to go at higher speeds. The space re-gained will gladly be welcomed by both pedestri-ans and cyclists. In the case that about a meter to ameter and a half is freed up from what was alreadya one-way street, this can efciently be convertedto allow for counterow* bicycle trafc. As we willlater read about counterow bus lanes, so bicyclescan also safely travel in the opposite direction of car trafc. On busier streets, all that is needed isto paint a white line on the side of the road. Eventhis is simply for the comfort of the cyclist, as themere presence of cyclists riding counterow willcause drivers to be more cautious. However, inthe case of trafc-calmed neighborhoods, wherethe speed of vehicles do not exceed 30 kph, it isnot even necessary to create special bicycle lanes.These can however be added in the case of long

distance bicycle routes, mixed neighborhoods withsometimes large ows of trafc, or simply just atintersections. Studies have indicated that counter-ow bicycle trafc, if anything, will produce moresafe streets than were there before. In any case, itis a highly recommended to add signs at the begin-ning of one-way roads, indicating that bicycles areallowed to travel both directions. This is especially

to alert car drivers to the presence of other modes of transport that they will be sharing the road with.

Although it has been noted that car owners are fa-mous for grumbling about losing parking space, innarrow historical neighborhoods (as for examplethe inner sixth district in Budapest), there is oftenso little space to begin with, that parked cars often

take over the majority of the given space. For thosepeople who do not drive, the space that both parkedand moving cars take up is one of the worst punish-ments for simply living in the city. Where it couldbe possible, removing parking space on at leastone side of a street could greatly increase the vi-brancy of a neighborhood - either a bike lane couldbe added or the sidewalk widened, or both. In traf-c-calmed neighborhoods, additional pedestrianspace will bring the greatest benet. Many streetsare nowadays being retted to accommodate morepedestrian and cyclist trafc. On a grand scale, a

recent example of this is the Magenta avenue inParis, where a formerly busy thoroughfare wasconverted into a trafc calmed street, with cyclelanes installed and ample extra space given to pe-destrians. Another example is Seoul, South Korea,where a busy highway going through the center of the city was removed, and in its place footways andbikeways were installed, and an underground riverwas allowed to ow on the surface again.

A unique approach: Shared space

In the northern towns of Holland a special approachhas been successfully tried in attempts to tame traf-c. This approach is called shared space, and it op-erates on the principle that all of the modes of traf-c must equitably share the given road space and

become more aware of the trafc all around. Thisis done in the unique manner of removing all traf-c signs, stop lights and other devices. While thereis a certain element of trafc chaos that resultswith this, it inevitably becomes a slowed-downchaos, and results have shown a drastic reductionin trafc accidents. In places where vehicles av-eraged speeds of 60 kph, the new scheme has cut

this down to just 30 kph, yet at the same time al-lowing for a more efcient navigation of the town,and there is no overall added travel time. This ap-proach, developed by Hans Monderman, is nowbeginning to tried out in other countries as well,such as Germany and Austria.

Allowing creativity into neighborhoods

In neighborhoods where a concerted effort is beingmade to provide more quality space to pedestriansand cyclists, the possibilities could be explored toallow creativity full ow. This could involve, forinstance, interesting foot and bike paths with lotsof variety. This doesnt mean that a bike path needsto make wide swerves and detours, to the annoy-ance of a cyclist who just wants to get from A to B,but it can involve creative ways and combinationsof paths and path design, in some cases even withsome variance from a straight line, as long as the

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pavement is color-coded (usually red) or otherwisequite well-marked. Bike paths can, for instance,be built to go places that cars can not go, such ascutting through a road closure, or taking a shortcutthrough a narrow alley. One attractive opportu-nity for both cyclists and pedestrians is the maxi-mum ability to utilize greenways* paths movingthrough or adjacent to green areas, be it a forest ora park connecting urban settings or the use of spacenext to a defunct railroad, or perhaps the beautifulareas following a stream or river, or for that matter,any body of water.

The Australian transport specialist and author of Reclaiming your street David Engwicht has pro-posed a whole range of ways that streets can beturned into interesting and friendly places, by the

means of creative methods of rearranging a street.His principle message is that before resorting to allof the expensive ways of changing the architectureof a street, many cheap and colorful ways can beexplored, that allow for the involvement of the lo-cal residents in designing and creating these spaces.He has also noted that if only traditional measuresare applied to reduce some number of trips, but if

there is no positive, regained space to ll the gap,then simply more space has been freed up to even-tually be consumed by other automobile trafc.Thus, to encourage a more permanent and positivechange to take place, streets need to be reclaimedby making them more colorful and allowing for abustling of community life and of exchanges.

Many of the ideas are as simple as adding colorand objects to the street: putting different furnitureor artworks on the street, hanging banners acrossthe street, painting designs or patterns on the street.For example, an interesting sculpture or three-di-mensional artwork in the middle of the road willboth make this particular street more interesting forthe pedestrian and cyclist as well as motorist, and it

will also be a curiosity to cause the driver to slowdown. It has been demonstrated that various col-ors and objects act psychologically on the driver,producing very noticeable results in a reduction of

speed. Furthermore, the citizens of the neighbor-hood who worked together to recreate their streetcan also be proud of its new look and both enjoybeing on the street more, while being safer at thesame time. Where possible, it is good to changethese on a regular basis, to keep things interesting,

and to make sure the drivers wont become tooused to the obstacles. It is therefore also possible tocombine the psychological component the art anddesigns with the physical components of objects inthe road.

Further steps

If a town has already come a long way in providingquality urban landscape and sustainable modes of transportation possibilities or if a rather auto-cen-tric community develops the urge for a radical shift then a next step can be to provide a larger carfreearea, perhaps with the goal in mind to produce anentirely carfree center or even a carfree city. Onedevice that several communities are employing as

steps in this direction can be seen both the emer-gence of carfree housing of which the Vaubandistrict of Freiburg, Germany is one of the largest or ecological city designs.

4 City Spaces

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Carfree settlements within a larger city usually in-volves a new development, where compact housesare created without parking spaces or wide roads.Proximity to public transport is a must, as theneighborhood or housing area should have easyaccess to the town center and other transport hubs.Cycling and walking is naturally the most common

way to move around in such communities.There is also plenty of preparation work that hasbeen created for entire carfree cities, of which a lotof credit goes to Joel Crawford, author of CarfreeCities. In such cities many compact neighbor-hoods are connected by rail or subway hubs, andmoving between different neighborhoods has been

made easy, without even the need for changingbetween different lines. While neighborhoods arecompact enough to offer quality public transport,there is still a lot of green and open space, howeverdivided equally throughout the neighborhoods.Freight can be taken care of on a smaller scaleby carrier tricycles, or on a larger scale by freighttrains. Since cars are generally not in use (except

for emergency vehicles), there is a high quality of life and few problems with mobility issues. Neigh-borhoods have mixed uses, and most needs can bemet without long trips required.

While not completely carfree, ecocities or dense,mixed-used city design, (as espoused by a move-ment known as New Urbanism), offer many im-provements over conventional city arrangements,and make a concerted effort to reduce heavy trafc,reduce pollution and waste, and save on things likeenergy, and allow for rich community life. Someof the components that t into such a vision are: accessibility for everyone city in balance with nature preponderance of short distances minimized energy consumption strong local economy built and managed with inhabitants public space favoring pedestrians, cyclists, public transport health, safety, well-being

More information on the different trends and possi-bilities for urban development can be easily foundwith the help of the reference section in Appen-dix 4. In most cases, representatives of the differ-ent trends and organizations listed are happy to becontacted and will be able to provide even moredetails than can t here.

When I am travelling in a carriage, or walkingafter a good meal, or during the night when I can-not sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas owbest and most abundantly.

-Woodrow Wilson

An integrated transport picture

One of the most fundamental prerequisites for sus-tainable urban development and encouraging trendsof sustainable mobility is by ensuring a high qual-ity level of public transport. And when considering

public transport, the rst thing that should be estab-lished is that an integrated plan for public transportshould be combined with an overall vision of gettingaround easily and safely in the community.

5 The transport picture


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In order to achieve an integrated plan for publictransport the term intermodality* offers a clue: Bycombining public transport means with walkingand cycling possibilities, the overall functional-ity and attractiveness of the transport picture andavailable options are greatly increased. It is alsoimportant that various forms of public transportdo not compete with each other, but complementeach other. For example, if you have a train linethat runs parallel to a bus line, you will be offeringriders the best service if you present them with thetrain, for example, as the quickest means to movebetween intermediate and distant locations, andbuses to transport the rider between short distancesor to locations that are not served by trains. Thisis the standard practice in countries like Germanyand Austria. Furthermore, local bus routes can actas feeder routes* to long-distance train service.This means that a rider might start a journey at abus stop just around the corner, be transported to atrain stop 1-3 kilometers away, and then ride a trainfor half an hour to an hour. Perhaps, to get to the -nal destination, the rider needs to use the bus again.If this type of a combination trip involving bothbus and train is viable for a specic community,

then the next step is arrange for a pricing and passsystem that allows the rider to buy just one ticketor pass that is valid for the whole trip. This willboth make the life of the rider easier and encour-age greater use of public transport. Many cities arealready using a city-wide fare card, that works onall types of public transportation.

Combining bicycle options with public transport isnot something to underrate. A study in Chicago in1980 found that increasing bicycle access to pub-lic transport was the most cost-effective way toreduce auto emissions, in other words to increasemodal share* of public transportation use. In otherwords, if you make it easy for cyclists to use publictransport, the popularity of public transport will in-

crease. What are the ways of doing this? One wayis to allow bicycles on as many different forms of public transport as possible. Bikes on trains arealready very common practice in many places. In

fact, some countries are even considering to al-low bicycles on Intercity trains. Next, bicyclescan usually t onto metro trains fairly easily. Al-though, sometimes rush-hour restrictions need tobe applied. But many metro systems, for examplethat of New York City, have allowed bicycles onthe subway. Bicycles on bus racks is also gain-ing popularity. There are special bike racks thatt onto the front of buses and can hold up to twobicycles at one time. This setup is especially usefulfor bus routes that end somewhere outside of town,where there no further transfer options. This way, atwenty minute walk to the nal destination can beconverted to ve minute bicycle ride.

Trip Combinations

We have already considered a full trip combiningbus and train intermodality*. It might look like this:

1.local bustrainlocal bus.

If we add bicycle use, then we get this:

2. bicycletrainbicycle

3. bicycletrainbicycle on busAnother way to encourage intermodal types of transport is by installing bicycle storage facilitiesnear to stations and major bus hubs. This shouldalso happen together with providing easy access bybicycle and by foot to stops and stations. That way,cycling to a station, storing the bicycle and then

boarding a train can become a common and easypractice for many people. Also, if the communitysupports a bicycle lending system, then even fur-ther combinations are possible.

4. walkbustrain5. walktrainbike6. biketrainwalk

7. bustrainbike (lending/rental system)

It should become clear here that many differentcombinations are possible, and that the more that



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intermodality* is stressed as a viable option in acommunity, the better the arguments are for peopleto choose an option that suits them, and then leavetheir car at home.

Fair pricing for maximum use

At the same time, to make these options really pop-ular, it is best if prices are kept low. For instance,allowing bicycles on buses and trains will pay foritself, it is not needed to charge heavy ticket pricesfor such options. In fact, the possibilities will bemost fully taken advantage of if the price for trans-porting a bicycle is kept to a minimal, or in somecases even allowed for free.

Surface transport systems

Surface public transport modes traditionally in-clude buses, trolley-buses, trams, light-rail. Thissection highlights Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), buslanes and light rail.

As can be seen with the story of Curitiba and Bo-got, BRT (see box) is one of the newer and excit-ing developments in the realm of public transport.In effect, a city can run an express bus system on

completely separated bus lanes, reaching both thespeed and level of efciency of that of a conven-tional metro system, costing from 40 to even 400times less the price of a metro line. In order for aBRT system to work well, attention must be givento ensure all of the necessary components: buslanes must be completely separated from trafc,and boarding should be made from a special plat-form, insuring both easy access as well as conve-nience and style. Also, routes must be well chosento serve the overall transport needs of the city andto connect with the other modes of transport. In thecase of Curitiba, Brazil, per capita gasoline con-sumption was seen to drop by 30% in connectionto the excellent bus service.

In considering bus lanes, whether belonging to aBRT system or a conventional bus route, coun-terow* bus lanes can be considered as a way to


Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

BRT is an excellent example of technology that wasdeveloped in the South, and has now grown to suchan extent, that many countries in the north are bothstudying and implementing BRT systems. Its origins canbe traced to Curitiba, Brazil, and together with Bogot,Columbia make up the two most famous cities operat-ing BRT, which have inspired dozens of other cities, inboth the South and the North. The special attraction ofBRT is that it delivers subway quality mass transit ser-vice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional subway sys-tem: CompareUS$1 to US$5.3 million per kilometer (asis seen in Latin America), as opposed to roughly US$60to US$200 for subway system infrastructure costs per1 kilometer. BRT systems are able to achieve the ef-ciency of a subway system by operating on completelysegregated busways, receive prioritization at intersec-tions and employ rapid boarding, by use of elevatedplatforms. In fact, many stations are covered and evenresemble a subway or light-rail stop, thus it is some-times called a surface metro system. In Sao Paulo andBogot, BRT is able to transport over 35,000 passengersper hour. When Bogots system is completed in 2015,it will serve 5 million passengers daily in a BRT networkof 22 lines and 388 kilometers. Wherever BRT systemshave been implemented, they have been so popularthat additional lines are planned or already under con-

struction within only the rst few years of operation.

Groningen, photo by Justin Hyatt


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prevent misuse by car drivers. Physically, whatthis means is that the bus lane carries buses goingin the opposite direction that the general trafc is

going. While this has been proven to be safe andwork successfully, it carries the additional benetof keeping cars out of the lane. The important thingto watch out for here is to ensure bus stops witheasy access at street level.

Tram and light rail systems make up another al-ternative to building an expensive metro system.

These can also be built at a fraction of the cost of ametro, and can carry more people than a bus. Lightrail systems can be especially useful for connectingurban with suburban areas as well as quickly cross-ing unpopulated intermediate zones, such as is thecase in Poznan, Poland, where trams rush througha greenway*, without stopping. It has also beennoted that trams provide an atmosphere of vibrant

street life. On streets where there is a certain levelof commercial activity, if we add a tram, whichproduces a familiar jingle, and we add people wait-ing at a stop or platform, we get both a feeling of

community and of general excitement enveloped inthis particular urban scenery.

Priority at trafc signalsIt is important to note the option of trafc light pri-ority systems that can complement trams, BRT aswell as conventional bus routes in short, any sur-face transportation system. Trafc light priority forpublic transportation means that trafc lights areengineered to turn green for an approaching bus or

tram, therefore minimizing dwell times* of publictransport. This enhances the attractiveness of pub-lic transport to its users, and similar to a bus lane,creates the afliation of a public transport offeringan advantageous way to get around. This is alreadyworking in a number of cities. Predictability and frequency of service

In order to facilitate a reliable public transportationnetwork outside of large cities, it is advisable to en-sure good connections between both cities and the


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Sustainable Mobility Guide for Municipality