Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 94

10.8       Contracting out and new forms of traffic management institutions

10.8.1. It is common in both developing and developed cities to contract out to the private sector specific tasks such as operating parking or maintenance of traffic signals.  In some developed cities, the contracting out process has been taken further and has been applied to a broad range of traffic management planning, design and implementation functions.  In other countries, notably Brazil, independent traffic companies or institutes have been created and full scale contracting out has been used (Vila Velha, Chapter 4). Both actions – contracting out to independent institutes and contracting out a wide range of functions - may have application in developing cities particularly to overcome traffic management staffing issues (poor municipal salaries and lack of career paths).

10.9       Traffic calming

10.9.1. Speed limits and controls are powerful actions in reducing the severity of accidents. Speed limits on main roads must be enforced by the traffic police.  In developed countries there is increasing use of remote enforcement using cameras, number plate recognition etc.  Such means need full and accessible driver licence-vehicle ownership records and these are often not available in developing cities although may be possible in some more developed cities.

10.9.2. Traffic calming can also reduce traffic speeds and has found increasing use in developed cities over the last 10 years.  On main roads, various measures exist to reduce speeds and warn drivers of approaching hazards (such as changes in road texture or colour or markings: speed may also be reduced by the linking of traffic signal timings to control and maintain a desired safe speed of traffic progression).  On lesser roads, a wide range of physical traffic calming measures for speed control (and in some cases, to limit traffic volumes) has been used, particularly in European cities.  Measures include road narrowing, indirect road alignment, speed control humps-tables of various forms, roads width which prohibits use by certain classes of vehicle (usually trucks) etc.  The measures are described in more detail in Chapter 6.  Some of these measures will find

application in developing cities but a high standard of design is required to ensure that the measures do not themselves (i) adversely affect buses (poorly designed speed humps and buses are incompatible) or (ii) introduce new traffic hazards or (iii) result in increased environmental damage, for example, as vehicles slow or stop and then immediately accelerate after speed humps, thus increasing emissions.  While the principle of traffic calming appears to offer advantages, more research is needed to determine the impacts of such measures in developing cities and the design standards and criteria appropriate for application.

10.10      Bicycles

10.10.1. In developing countries, particularly in Europe, there is an increasingly positive attitude towards encouraging bicycle travel.  Bicycles are efficient for short-medium journeys they are flexible, affordable by all but the poorest sections of society, emission-free and, with good planning, do not add to traffic congestion.  There is scope in developing countries for better use of cycles.  This does not mean that European or developed city standards should be adopted - design standards consistent with developing countries opportunities and constraints need to be applied.  Care must be taken to ensure that bicycle schemes are planned to fulfil a real (or a realistically assessed) need and are not implemented in locations which are “easy”, an inconvenience to no one (basically to cars) and thus are of little value to users and potential users

10.11     The potential for transport telematics