Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 65

i)  Pedestrians are not provided with safe facilities to cross roads and where road crossing facilities are provided, those facilities are often neither well designed nor safe.  In particular, the “walk with traffic” approach at traffic signals is sometimes included in schemes but stands no chance of effective utilisation due to lack of driver understanding and lack of enforcement.  Where pedestrian clearance times are provided at traffic signals, they are often insufficient for pedestrians to make the crossing in safety (e.g. Moscow);

j)  Pedestrian grade separation is provided in some cities but it is often badly sited (away from pedestrian desire lines), badly maintained and cleaned and thus makes use minimal (e.g. Colombo)

7.4.4.      A new, much more positive and proactive approach to pedestrian measures is needed. This includes:

a)  better pedestrian design guidelines and standards for dissemination to potential transport project participants;

b)  establishment of guideline procedures for dealing with street traders and street dwellers in an equitable manner (the experiences in the Colombo Urban Transport Project and Mumbai Urban Transport Project may be of assistance);

c)  increased intensity of dialogue with cities which wish to subjugate pedestrians to vehicles (apparently this issue applies in particular to China); and

d)  institutional mechanisms to ensure that public utility companies reinstate footways after works.  Developed cities have powers to impose financial penalties on utility companies if footways (or indeed roads) are (i) excavated without permission, (ii) remain in an excavated state longer than the period granted by the permission and (iii) reinstated badly.  Such powers and a mechanism should be sought by the traffic management authority of developing cities

7.5          Bicycle facilities

7.5.1.      In most cities, bicycles^[25] are forced to compete with motorised vehicles although there are exceptions such as:

♦            in a number of Chinese cities where some streets or parts of roads are allocated to bicycles only;

♦            in Latin American cities, a number of specific bicycle ways have been constructed (Lima, Bogota, Leon, etc) but schemes are few in number and bicycles are not regarded as a important mode;

♦            in Asia, there are some examples of NMT (rickshaws) and MV physical separation schemes such as in Dhaka but again these are few in number.  In India^[26], although there are many medium sized cities with very high bicycle use averaging some 20%, “bicycle tracks are not available in most cities except for cities such as Delhi, Madras and Pune and that too for very small lengths”;

♦           in Africa, it is believed that there are few bicycle facilities.

7.5.2.      Thus, bicycle facilities are probably under-represented in traffic management strategies. Conceptually, bicycles are an attractive form of transport – relatively low cost, well suited to short urban trips, environmentally friendly, very flexible offering a high degree

of personal mobility and so on.  However, as with footways, the problems faced by bicycle transport are well known:

a)  Increasing motorization (including increased motor bicycle-ization) and thus increasing safety problems for bicycles particularly at heavily trafficked intersections;

b)  Reduction in street space for bicycles as pressures for road space increase from motorised vehicles and they are given preferential treatment and road space removed from bicycles;

c)  Longer distance journeys as urban sprawl continues;

d)  Affordability of bicycles by poorer sections of the community;

e)  Social attitudes to cycling – “backward”, “second class” etc;

f)  Lack of interest by urban traffic planners and government bureaucrats;

g)  Poor physical design of bicycle facilities;