Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 71

vehicles and they are given preferential treatment and road space removed from bicycles;

§  Longer distance journeys as urban sprawl continues

§  Affordability of bicycles by poorer sections of the community

§  Social attitudes to bicycles – “backward”, “second class” etc

§  Lack of interest by urban traffic planners

§  Poor physical design of bicycle facilities

§  Security of bicycles against theft (at terminal points of journeys etc) and personal security of users

§  Bicycles can be competitive and complementary with other modes in meeting personal mobility needs and should be treated as an integral part of the traffic management system.  Strategies should be designed to capitalise on their strengths such as usefulness for short trips, non polluting, affordability, small scale freight etc

§  Some countries do not regard bicycles as a viable, long term transport mode.  Thus care must be taken to ensure that this is not a self fulfilling prophesy and that bicycle schemes are planned to meet a real (or a realistically assessed) need and are not constructed in locations which are “easy”, an inconvenience to no one (basically cars) and are of little value to users and potential users

Demand management

§  Demand management, particularly congestion pricing, will have a positive poverty impact.

Generally, it is the rich who own and drive cars and thus (i) the direct costs of congestion charging are not borne by the poor (ii) public transport improvements should be integral parts of a congestion pricing scheme and will assist the poor and (iii) revenues from congestion pricing can be used to improve the quantity and quality of public transport.

General traffic management measures - have positive and negative poverty impacts:

§  some traffic management measures are directed primarily towards cars (e.g. junction capacity improvements) but will assist buses as part of general traffic; thus, while poverty impacts may be secondary, they will still be positive;

§  in some cities, traffic management has sought to provide more car lanes at the expense of pedestrians or bicycles; not only are poverty effects negative but the measures are not likely to meet the "people" objective;

§  ATC is almost universal feature of traffic management strategies and is probably essential to any well traffic-managed city.  ATC has been criticised as "car orientated" and without positive poverty impact.  Benefits are most likely to accrue to all traffic but this will include buses and in some cases, bicycles.  In developed countries, ATC techniques exist to emphasise bus operations and these may be appropriate in more advanced cities although in the first instance, buses are best assisted by physical bus priority lanes and busways

Bank traffic projects and poverty

§  In principle, most recent Bank traffic components of projects are consistent with a "poverty approach" as most include measures for buses, pedestrians and to a lesser extent, bicycles/NMT.

§  However, while such measures are included in current Bank projects, in the context of any city, they are relatively small in scope.

Bank traffic management projects will always be limited in numbers and scope.  The Bank role, in the context of poverty impact and traffic management, should be to promote the case for traffic management for buses-pedestrians and where appropriate NMT and to ensure that these modes are at the forefront of traffic strategy discussions in cities

Evaluation

§  Traffic management schemes usually result in high economic rates of return when assessed on a conventional basis.  To ensure that schemes are "people " and not "vehicle " orientated and that poverty impacts are included as a valid part of the assessment, evaluations should include person time costs.  Even then, there are measures which are difficult to assess by conventional economic means notably bicycle and pedestrian schemes (although many of the latter are often justified on reduction of accidents alone) and a more comprehensive, objective lead framework approach should be considered. Research

§  There are no known studies or research on the impact on poor people of urban traffic management; case studies are needed