ITDP India

Promoting sustainable and equitable transportation worldwide

Leadership Matters: Kunal Kumar IAS in conversation with Shreya Gadepalli

by

How can Indian cities embark on a journey of sustainable development? What challenges do local governments face while implementing innovative solutions for urban development? How difficult is it to drive a national mission in a vast country like India? How can cities in India and across the world respond to climate change?

These are fundamental questions for any student of urban development. Kunal Kumar IAS, Joint Secretary, Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of  Housing and Urban Affairs, discusses the roles, experiences, and challenges for government officials and institutions in an exclusive conversation with Shreya Gadepalli, the South Asia Programme Lead, ITDP.

Drawing from his early experience as the Municipal Commissioner of Pune, Kunal Kumar highlights the importance of democratic participation in the city’s meteoric rise as a haven for sustainable urban growth. Mr. Kumar especially stresses the need for administrators to build coalitions and act as anchors to achieve the grand visions for the city’s development. Most importantly, the effective use of communication in getting people to understand policies and governance measures go a long way towards their successful implementation.

In his current role in the national government, Mr. Kumar believes that strategic assistance—which involves giving freedom and enhancing the adaptive capabilities of cities to experiment—needs to be prioritised for the growth of the urban system as a whole. Moreover, Mr. Kumar also highlights how decentralisation must become a key feature of governance. The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic confirm this trend. Cities that were flexible and adaptive enough to take decisions were able to effectively contain the spread of the disease. 

Lastly, Mr. Kumar argues that for the sustainable growth of cities in the country and across the world, there is an urgent need to leverage data and digital technologies today to enhance decision making. Evidence-based policymaking in a participatory manner must become the norm for policies and planning in the coming years. 

Written by Avishek Jha

This video is a part of MOBILIZE Virtual 2020: Building Collective Action for the Next Decade.

Spotlight on Pune

by

Every year, the Sustainable Transport Award is given to a city that has implemented innovative projects to improve mobility,  reduce air pollution and greenhouse emissions, and improve safety and access for pedestrians and cyclists. Pune was awarded the Sustainable Transport Award 2020, making it the second Indian city after Ahmedabad to win this award. 

In the last two decades, Pune has shown an extraordinary commitment to improving sustainable mobility for its people by taking steps to improve walking, cycling, and public transport across the city. This transformation has only been possible through Pune’s relentless efforts to expand sustainable transport infrastructure by allocating resources, implementing institutional reforms, and building capacity. Over the years, the city has forged partnerships with technical experts, civil society groups, and educational institutions to transform Pune into a lighthouse for other cities.

In this video, Pranjal Kulkarni—Senior Research Associate, Urban Development at the ITDP India Programme—takes you through Pune’s journey of ensuring safe, affordable, and sustainable transport with a showcase of the city’s achievements in non-motorised and public transport, and exclusive interviews with the city’s officials who have enabled the city’s dramatic transformation.

Written by Avishek Jha

This video is a part of MOBILIZE Virtual 2020: Building Collective Action for the Next Decade.

MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam: Making space for Mobility in Booming Cities

by

ANNOUNCEMENT: MOBILIZE is the annual sustainable transport summit of ITDP, which brings together urban transport and development practitioners alongside world-class researchers to celebrate best practices and accelerate implementation of sustainable transport projects.

Each year, ITDP and the Sustainable Transport Award Committee select a city that has implemented innovative sustainable transportation projects in the preceding year. These strategies improve mobility for all residents, reduce transportation greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and improve safety and access for cyclists and pedestrians. The winning city and honorable mentions are honored at a ceremony in Washington, DC in January.  The winning city hosts MOBILIZE later on that year.

Leaders from Dar es Salaam receiving the Sustainable Transport Award in Washington, D.C (PC ITDP Africa)

Over the last year, Dar es Salaam has launched a series of transformative improvements to transit, cycling and walking, the most important of which is the Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, or DART. These efforts have made Dar es Salaam the first African city to win the prestigious Sustainable Transport Award in its 14-year history. The city will host the Mobilize Summit from 26-28 June 2018.

Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transit system (PC: itdp.org)

What makes MOBILIZE unique is its structure. The summit gives transport professionals and researchers from around the world an opportunity to experience the STA winning city as a learning lab with lessons on how to get world class projects implemented. Interaction between researchers and practitioners foster greater global resource allocation toward the goals of making streets, transport systems, and cities the best possible places for people.  

Learn more about MOBILIZE agenda, speakers, and registration details at mobilizesummit.org.

MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series: Sameer Sharma – Secretary for Smart Cities, India

by

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a splash two years ago when he announced a plan to tackle his nation’s expected rapid urbanization. 100 smart cities would bloom across the world’s second most populous country, with the first 20 serving as “lighthouses” that would inspire the estimated 4,000 cities that are home to one-third of the population – a share that is expected to climb to over 40% by 2030.

Enshrined in a flagship program called the Smart Cities Mission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched a city challenge with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. In an effort to change entrenched corruption at the municipal level, cities would compete against each other to deliver the best proposals for a share of a whopping US$15 billion allocated by parliament.

As the ministry’s Secretary for Smart Cities, Sameer Sharma is at the nerve center of this massive undertaking. ITDP spoke with him about how India has refined the smart city concept.

ITDP: The theme of the recent MOBILIZE Santiago conference was “just and inclusive cities become the new normal.” How do Indian cities measure up to this ideal?

Sameer Sharma: India’s Smart Cities Challenge invited cities to propose developments that transform existing areas, including slums, into better-planned ones, or explore the potential for new development of greenfield sites outside city boundaries to accommodate a growing urban population. Apart from setting the core objective of improving basic hard and soft infrastructure and introducing smart solutions to Indian cities, the Smart Cities Mission set out a broader ambition to “improve quality of life, create employment and enhance income for all, especially the poor and the disadvantaged, leading to inclusive cities. ”

Contrary to the assumption that smart cities project would only be taken up in affluent areas, most cities have chosen neighbourhoods with substantial slum areas, dense and ill-provisioned inner city zones, and railway stations. For example, slum redevelopment forms a major component of the Ahmedabad plan. The redevelopment proposal for Wadaj slum includes housing for 8,000 slum dwellers and development of a community centre, schools, aanganwadis [mother and child care center], and complete infrastructure improvement including open spaces in the area. 12 out of the 20 lighthouse cities have cumulatively proposed affordable housing projects offering around 55,000 housing units.

Pune, one of the 20 lighthouse cities under the Smart Cities Mission, has started revamping DP Road as part of its Smart City proposal, which includes 45 km of street redesign and retrofitting

ITDP: What do you see as the role that the national government should play in helping cities achieve these goals?

Sameer Sharma: The London School of Economics studied India’s Smart City Challenge and found that it was perceived as being instrumental in promoting a degree of agency and flexibility for city governments and encouraging them to take initiative while operating within an established federal framework. Many respondents felt that the competitive component of the Smart Cities Challenge allowed cities considerable space to develop their proposals. This greater flexibility was also reinforced by the encouragement to identify financing mechanisms independent from state or national sources.

The Smart Cities Mission was perceived as a localized program that gave city governments the space to shape their city’s proposals without much intervention from the central government. This can be attributed to the center’s capacity building initiatives, and the competitive format itself that generated enthusiasm and involvement at the municipal level. On the whole, the central government’s role in the competition phase appeared to be limited to competition guidelines and capacity building exercises through which it shared best practices, ideas and modes of financing projects. Overall, the Smart Cities Challenge signaled a shift in the balance of power between city, state, and central government.

How do you define smart cities? What are the key things that make a city smart?

A smart city has a different connotation in India than in, say, Europe. Even in India, a smart city means different things to different people and the conceptualization of a smart city varies from city to city, state to state, and region to region, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, and resources and aspirations of the city residents. No single definition can capture the diverse conceptualizations of city residents, especially in the unique Indian culture containing dynamic, diverse, and contextual rules in use. A survey by the Center for Study of Science, Technology & Policy found that there are nearly four-dozen ways of defining a smart city. Therefore, the Indian Smart City Mission did not start with a definition of a smart city but invited cities, through a competition, to define their idea of “smartness” and the pathway to achieve it.

As a result, drawing on the Smart City Challenge proposals, the following definition has been derived: The Indian Smart Cities Mission adapted and redefined the global discourse around ‘Smart Cities’ to create its own unique take on a ‘Smart City’, one that features but is not centered exclusively on technology and includes a strong emphasis on area-based development, citizen preferences, and basic infrastructure and services.

Two trial runs were organised by the Chennai Smart City Ltd. to test the proposed design for the pedestrian plaza in T.Nagar. The 700m stretch was bustling with activity and shoppers during both trial runs – a hit amongst the public.

What cities around the world are you most interested in today? Who is doing innovative work in your field?

Several cities are doing remarkable work in the field of ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’ urban development. I am impressed with Copenhagen on walkability, Adelaide for place-making, integrated command and control centers in New York and Berlin, how Oakland has tackled liveability, Bilbao’s strategies for urban renewal, and Barcelona’s overall urban transformation.


Is the challenge approach fueling innovation within Indian Cities?

An important innovation in the competition process was that it allowed state governments to select cities to participate, while municipal governments had to demonstrate enthusiasm in order to be successful. A second innovative development of the Smart Cities Challenge was that it sidestepped the issue of forcing state governments to devolve funding by allowing convergence of funding from other schemes. By requiring agency and alignment from both city and state, the Smart Cities Challenge encouraged cooperation and led to increased municipal initiative while allowing the continued role of the state government.

Related News

More News >

MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series: Marielle Franco – Councilwoman, Rio de Janeiro

by

Brazil is in a state of political upheaval and economic crisis, and just one year after the Olympics, the situation is not much better in Rio de Janeiro. The state government is bankrupt and a new conservative mayor is pushing back on the city’s progressive gains. However, there is a powerful voice in the chambers of city council, one with a biography different from the deep pockets and private school education of your typical Carioca politician.

Marielle Franco was born and raised in Maré, a complex of favelas on a tidal flat near Rio’s international airport. She became a mother at age 18 and raised the child on her own, managing a scholarship to a prestigious university. From a job as a preschool teacher, she got drawn into politics and ten years ago began working for the upstart leftist Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL in Portuguese). Last year, she won a city council seat – one of just six women on the 51 member council – and represents the voice, and daily lived experience, of the city’s black and brown women. For example, she has pushed for Rio buses to stop anywhere along a route so that women have a shorter, and safer, walk home at night.

ITDP: The theme of MOBILIZE Santiago was “just and inclusive cities become the new normal.” To what extent does Rio de Janeiro reach this ideal?

Marielle Franco: Rio de Janeiro is not a fair, democratic or egalitarian city and unfortunately, with regard to mobility, it remains an unequal city as well. There is an investment in some [richer] areas, for example, Center and South Zone, to the detriment of a part of the West Zone, speaking specifically of the neighborhoods of Santa Cruz and Cosmos, for example.

What did you learn from Santiago’s experience here at MOBILIZE?

I’m impressed with Santiago. It’s a city where you can experience urbanity on foot and experience a good integration of modes, especially the subway. It was always surprising to look at the Andes from a subway station as well! MOBILIZE was also a great opportunity to talk to people who have been involved in urban intervention projects, actions, planning and research.

Marielle and staff from ITDP Brazil on the MOBILIZE Santiago cycling tour

How does the experience of being born and raised in Maré give you a different perspective from most people who work for the city?

From lived experience. In the day-to-day of those who need to take long commutes, a large part of the everyday occurs on buses and in the subway. The waiting hours, the difficulty to get information on the best route to take and the experience of taking the wrong route and having to make unnecessary transfers happened often. Until I went to university, I did not know the city even though I was born and always lived in Rio. Access to opportunities expands when you expand your knowledge and explore the world.  Otherwise, if you do not have these experiences of how to get to the hospital, for example, or to the movies, or university, if you only stay in one part of town, you take transit less and have less experience with the city. This is not only my experience- hundreds of thousands of women do this every day, struggling to get around the city. This makes me more qualified to demand action from the city and to change public policy based on those experiences.

Rio has built a lot of transport over the last five years, specifically BRT. How do you assess the impact of these megaprojects on the lives of low-income communities and residents in the city?

For a moment of great investment in urban projects and after such major events, the expectations were for better results. But what do we see today? The choices made have not been discussed with the population as they should, and despite the promise of increased circulation, I think unfortunately what has remained as an [Olympic] legacy is a greater violation of social rights, and not a more democratic circulation by the city.

TransOlímpica BRT Corridor in Rio next to a 6 lane highway

What would you change about the way Rio goes about urban planning in order to improve the lives of low-income people in Rio?

To start, I think the guidelines for greater access and rights to the city are already in a master plan that is not followed. I think the challenge is to think from the demands that already exist, to rethink favela priorities – sanitation, for example, and other fundamental rights. This, of course, is part of integrated planning. With what is provided in the master plan, we must build dialogue with the population, which is after all who uses and who seeks the services. It is fundamental to think, for example, “is it really a priority to expand line four of the subway to the” Recreio dos Bandeirantes neighborhood? “This is a proposal that has been reinforced by the municipal transportation secretary and the deputy mayor. It is time to look at the whole of the city, and with this logic, benefit a larger population. Investments should focus on another part of the west, which is not Recreio. It is a question of how to start from a place of the demands we have- the demands of favelas for basic rights.

How are Brazilian cities functioning within the current political climate and in the midst of the economic crisis?

I think Brazilian cities are undergoing a reorientation. The crisis is also a creative opportunity. If you have difficulty then you also need to reorganize. For example, look at the self-organizing of motorcycle taxi drivers or of social movements themselves. The current political situation interferes directly in the lives of all. Unfortunately, the experience of living in public spaces and circulating around the city is impaired, but I think we can make a qualitative leap thinking about the alternatives. That is if there is a dialogue between civil society and public power, if there is planning, if we talk about financing. I hope that in the crisis we can think about bettering the coming years by building a more accessible city and reducing travel time, guaranteeing the right to the city in its completeness.

MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series: Paula Bisiau, Department of Transport- Buenos Aires

by

With the recent election of former mayor Mauricio Macrí as president, the city of Buenos Aires should now have greater support from the Argentine government. Down at the local level, meanwhile, the city of 3 million continues to push for innovations that will bring Argentina’s capital and largest city into the 21st century. On the transport front, a young, dynamic official is leading the way. Paula Bisiau, Assistant Secretary for Sustainable Mobility, has a handle on everything that porteños (the city’s inhabitants) can count on to help them get around this charming South American city. Visitors may be captivated by tango and parrilla, but they should also pay attention to bike share, BRT, and pedestrianization.

Paula spoke to us about MOBILIZE Santiago‘s theme, “Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal” and the future of BRT & cycling in Buenos Aires.

ITDP: The theme of MOBILIZE Santiago is “just and inclusive cities become the new normal”. How does Buenos Aires’ transport system live up to this ideal?

Paula Bisiau: Having a good network of diverse and well-connected transport is part of having an inclusive and fair city. So, in that sense, Buenos Aires has worked hard for at least 8 to 9 years to improve its public transport network. The reality is that in Buenos Aires, the use of public transport is very high. Almost 80% of trips are completed using public transport, on foot, or by bicycle. This means that in Buenos Aires we can talk about a city, in that sense, as fair and equitable because there is public transport throughout the city and the cost is relatively low.

Then, there is the whole accessibility point of view, the inclusion of all people with different abilities. In that sense, we still need more work. However, we have begun to design the streets and sidewalks so that they can be crossed by children, the elderly, and people in wheelchairs.

What other cities around the world are the most interesting to you in the area of mobility?
Recently I was in two cities that were very interesting: Copenhagen, obviously, on the one hand, and Tokyo on the other. Tokyo is very different, but with a spectacular subway network, and especially with lots of information facilitated by technology. I was astonished by how I was able to get around so easily and plan my trip within a city I didn’t know, in a country where obviously I didn’t speak the language.

I also find Paris interesting and innovative. And what I find interesting about a city like Paris is that it’s a city that preserves all its heritage and history, but constantly renews itself. This power of renewal is very interesting. They started with Paris Plages, then what they did with Les Berges de la Seine was also very innovative. Other cities had already done what they did with bike share. But what they did was fill the city with public bicycles everywhere. And they encouraged all that in a city that was already fully built, which already had many residents and businesses everywhere.

To name a Latin American city, I would say São Paulo also has many innovations for being a megalopolis. I was there maybe two years ago for the first time, and the truth is that I was amazed. Their transportation is also spectacular. But still, they still have things that are not as good as they could be, like urban highways. Not that everything is fine, but as big as the city is, they are still doing a good job. For example, on road safety, they took certain actions that are not easy to take politically, like reducing the maximum speed. And those are difficult political measures to take. But they did so, and thanks to that, they managed to reduce the number of road casualties. Cities have to take risks on new measures in order to improve.

In 2014, Buenos Aires won the Sustainable Transport Award for giving Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world, a transport and pedestrian makeover. Three years later, how are these interventions improving the quality of life in Buenos Aires?
The implementation of transit on Avenida 9 de Julio translated into shorter trips for those who used public transport, because all the buses that passed through downtown are now funneled onto the 9 de Julio Metrobus [BRT]. There was a reduction of almost 50% in travel times.

Road accidents were reduced because the average speed of cars was reduced. Within what is called the pedestrian zone, the maximum speed is now 10 km per hour.  The entire downtown area was once very noisy and heavily polluted. The air and noise pollution levels dropped a lot. Before it was impossible to even have a conversation there.  Now there is economic development, adding life beyond the offices and banks.  Nightlife is beginning to come up in that neighborhood and we hope soon enough that will create the possibility of people moving downtown.

Buenos Aires continues to roll out new BRT stations in its Metrobus system (Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Wikimedia Commons)

What is the next big mobility project around the city?
We’re continuing to develop the Metrobus network. Along 9 de Julio you have the Bajo [Lower] area, near the port. We are adding Metrobus to Bajo and that is also going to be an important change. We are also pedestrianizing part of the area on the other side of 9 de Julio, where the Palace of Justice is; another area where there are also many pedestrians.

There are also two new projects: One that is called Paseo del Bajo, in order to get the trucks out. Buenos Aires is a port city and we have many trucks coming from the port. For that, we found a solution to stop them from going through the city. This project broke ground in May and will be finished in two years. The other is a new regional rail that will connect the Constitución area with the Retiro area.

A cyclist takes advantage of new protected bike infrastructure (Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Wikimedia Commons)

Has the number of people that use bicycles in Buenos Aires grown in the last few years and if so, why?
Yes, mainly because we started building cycle tracks in the most populated areas of the city, places where people go to work and where people live. We started in downtown and continued to the periphery of different neighborhoods. Today we have 180 km of bike lanes and cycle tracks in almost every area of the city.

The number also increased thanks to the public bikeshare system, Ecobici. A lot of work went into education and promotion. We convinced the city of the idea of ​​cycling by talking about cycling in every sector.  However, if I were to give you one main reason, people did not ride a bicycle in Buenos Aires because of road safety issues. In fact, we conducted surveys, and people already owned bikes.  Buenos Aires is flat and has a relatively pleasant climate. The main reason they weren’t using it was because of road safety.

Ecobici used to operate on a valet system, now it has docking stations. What was the impact of this shift?
Regardless of how it works, the system itself is very popular because it is free. Today, we have more than 200,000 users who have taken more than 5 million trips. We are working to build out the system with 200 stations and 2,500 bicycles. We currently have 1,900 bikes.

Last year was a difficult time for us because of vandalism and theft. That was something we had not planned for and that had not happened in other cities. This, for example, made us stagnate on the number of bike trips in the year 2016. Now in 2017, we are growing again.

Taking out a bike from Ecobici’s new docked system (Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Wikimedia Commons)

Do you think that Ecobici will ever go dockless?

We’re studying that. First we want to finish installing these 200 stations that we have planned. Then we want to understand what new technologies are being implemented in other cities around the world. When we think about the growth of this system, we want to move toward what is more innovative and what is working best. Because of our vandalism experience, I have to see to what extent it can work in Buenos Aires, but it seems fantastic to me- much more flexible as a system. All of us who think about transport think this way: having innovation that is flexible because cities are dynamic, technologies change, and we have to be open to adapting.

[one_fourth][/one_fourth] This interview is a part of the MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series.  In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where we will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflecting on MOBILIZE Santiago’s theme: Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal.  To learn more about MOBILIZE Santiago and how you can register to attend the summit in Chile, visit mobilizesummit.org.

 

MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series: Simon Lusby, Transport for London

by

Founded in 1863, the world-famous London Underground, also known as the Tube, may just be the planet’s most iconic subway system, from its “mind the gap” warning to its circular red logo to its storied history as a bomb shelter during World War II. While it transports a hefty 1.37 billion passengers annually, up on street level, the city’s equally iconic red buses – many of them the ever-popular double deckers – host more than 2 billion passenger trips per year.

Enter Simon Lusby, a senior strategist at Transport for London, the British capital’s transit agency. He’s part of the surface transport team, which means even if the Tube is the symbol of London mobility, he is working daily to make sure the bus system is just as much up to snuff.

Lusby spoke to us about how London’s bus system fits with MOBILIZE Santiago‘s theme Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal,what he hopes to learn from the annual MOBILIZE summit in June, and the future for buses in London.

Simon Lusby, senior strategist at Transport for London, the British capital’s transit agency

ITDP: The theme of MOBILIZE Santiago is “just and inclusive cities become the new normal”. How does London’s transport system live up to this ideal?

Simon Lusby: How we’re planning transport needs to be as inclusive as possible. The new approach to street design (the “Healthy Streets Approach”), for example, is all about inclusion of everyone on the street. Not just one mode, not just healthy people, but actually getting more people out there and making spaces available for everyone.

I think London fits within that quite nicely, with that not only becoming the norm but also being the expectation here. Our bus network is very much at that level. For example, it’s already wheelchair accessible and our passengers are representative of Londoners. So from that point of view, I’d say London could be one of the flagship places where “just and inclusive cities” becomes the norm.

What are you hoping to learn from the city of Santiago’s transportation experience at MOBILIZE?

Listening to Santiago, I’m interested in buses. London has a very developed bus network but we need to look to other cities where they’ve had to address many of the challenges we currently face. London is still improving our approach to multi-modal development and that’s what we need to be learning from other cities. That’s what I hope to take away from MOBILIZE – like integration of public transport, particularly with cycling.

What cities around the world are you most interested in today, as in who’s doing the most innovative work in your field?

In terms of bus rapid transit, there is actually a lot of it here in the UK, like in Cambridge and Manchester. I’m more interested in a few key things. One, is integrating buses with cycling. Seattle has done that quite well. Another is thinking about how do you stretch corridors together. How do you get bus transit through a really, really dense metropolitan environment? I’m quite keen to gain some more experience from New York on this. I also want our London Underground users to feel like they are still part of the same public transport network and have options on how they can travel when they transfer to a bus.

New bus revenue generation project livery trial on the 150 bus, Barkingside, London. ©Transport for London

You’ve mentioned buses a number of times. How has Transport for London been so successful increasing public transit mode share, especially on buses?

Without buses, there are areas where one has very little public transport. But now there are bus routes everywhere. 95% of households live within 4oo meters of a bus service. So that goes to show that this network we’re covering is more abundant than people had ever thought.

We’ve got control of the bus network and some of the road space, which has been central. Starting in about 2000, Transport for London put in a lot of buses and that made the services far more reliable. Then in 2003 came the congestion charge. People have to pay to enter the center city, which means that there are very few private cars in the city and that helped the bus network again hugely. Simple things like contactless payment – the Oyster card – made it far more seamless between using the Tube and using the bus.

You know the bus is coming during the day. You don’t have to mess around with schedules or anything like that. There’s probably going to be a bus arriving in a few minutes. Unfortunately though, that high frequency costs money and we still have to continue to adapt our network to support the Tube and the new Elizabeth Line. It’s an underground train line between Heathrow east London via Canary Wharf that will absorb the Heathrow Express from the airport to Paddington Station. It will become the city’s main line, carrying twice the capacity of the other lines. But you can’t build one of these every year. It takes a lot of time and money.

With flashy new infrastructure like the Elizabeth Line coming in, what is the importance of a bus-based transport for a city that has such an extensive subway system?

That goes back to the original question of inclusiveness. If you pulled out the buses, which are completely wheelchair accessible, you’re no longer inclusive. So we tend to maintain bus lines even directly above Tube lines because you need that accessibility and people rely on it. When you think about how many different layers there are in the Tube, going deep down into the stations, for some people you don’t want to be going up and down all that.

New Northern Ticket Hall opened at Victoria Station ©Transport for London

How does Transport for London collect data on bus ridership?

We have our Oyster Card, which is a tap-on, tap-off system that tracks journeys. That means we don’t know the Tube route you took, we just know what station you went in and what station you come out of.  From that Oyster data we can then understand connections like bus to Tube to bus. We’ve also got iBus which allows us to check the speed of the bus. We can then look at the speed of that service for any delays, as well as gaps between service that are impacting on ridership. If something goes wrong on the Tube, like delays, we can calculate fairly accurately how many people will be affected. So we try to take the knowledge we’ve learned on the Tube and apply it to bus.

 

[one_fourth][/one_fourth] This interview is a part of the MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series.  In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where we will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflecting on MOBILIZE Santiago’s theme: Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal.  To learn more about MOBILIZE Santiago and how you can register to attend the summit in Chile, visit mobilizesummit.org.

MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series: Daniel Chatman

by

Transportation scholar Daniel Chatman’s latest research builds on two decades of experience looking largely at the U.S. context. Chatman has studied how people get to their jobs and what that means for metropolitan economies. He has investigated traffic patterns, job sprawl, and mortgage subsidies for homes in high-density neighborhoods with good transit access. In 2013, he and a co-author argued that transit could be producing as much as $1.8 billion annually in economic benefits for cities.

Daniel Chatman will be speaking at MOBILIZE Santiago on urban development and dynamic cities, including national social housing policies and the integration (or lack thereof) of transit and access.

ITDP spoke to Chatman from office at the University of California-Berkeley, where he teaches in the Department of City and Regional Planning, to discuss his work and reflect on this year’s MOBILIZE theme, “just and inclusive cities become the new normal”.  

Daniel Chatman, Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California-Berkeley

ITDP: Your research has shown that transportation can allow for higher densification of cities and therefore higher productivity due to agglomeration economies. Are U.S. cities finally waking up to those benefits?

Planners throughout the United States are all being trained to believe things like smart growth and public transportation is a good idea however, cities don’t necessarily believe this is true. And the reason cities don’t is because people don’t, and the reason that people don’t is because people have their own concerns. They’re focused on their immediate impact of various kinds of funding and investment decisions, and those are neighborhood-level impacts in many cases. In some cases, people do believe and are willing to support massive sales tax increases, for example, in places like Los Angeles and Seattle.

And yet, as to whether that support ends up translating into actual major changes in densification of cities and in ridership at all, that’s a separate question. We have a lot of regulations that get in the way of those benefits being realized.

The fact is that, yes, in the United States, we have higher productivity in denser cities that have better transit systems. But if you look at those cities, you also have increasing income polarization. We have both of those things partly because housing is really expensive in those same places.

Planners tend to be on board because they believe in the power of cities. But sometimes our vision of beautiful cities with great amenities is a vision that’s more geared towards higher-income people, so you want to be careful about it.

How can we convince cities that parking reform is one of the best ways to improve equity in cities?

Off-street parking requirements increase the cost of housing, especially in dense environments. It’s not uncommon to see construction cost requirements for structured parking of $60,000 per space. That’s a lot of money.

Those requirements are an equity issue because of the housing cost, but they’re actually more pernicious than that, because they change the sort of housing that’s developed in the first place. Developers are more likely to build luxury housing in response to having to provide two parking spaces per unit.

There is some evidence that parking requirements in some places are a bigger constraint upon densification than anything else. That is to say, it isn’t the height requirement, existing zoning allocation,  or the by-right density, it’s the parking that stops people from developing as densely as they would.

What sort of impact do you think that federal funding, or lack thereof in the current political climate, will have on transport planning in U.S. cities, and can they move forward anyway?

There are lots cities that were already moving ahead without federal funding, which is now a smaller fraction of all new transit starts anyway. Even though I’m critical of how transit projects have been funded by the federal government, it’s not as though putting all the money into roads is a good solution either.

The current political climate is going to have a negative impact on city sustainability. For example, the Trump administration was considering this trillion-dollar infrastructure plan the Department of Transportation put out a 50-slide list of potential projects. Most of it was maintenance and construction of roadway facilities. I don’t think that’s a positive thing, but I do think that it’s not going to have as big of an impact as it might have 20 years ago, because of the fact that cities have been looking for, at the state and at the local level, alternative funding sources and are increasingly relying on them.

Ultimately, the smaller cities will be the ones who feel the pain more, because it’s the bigger cities and the more affluent states that are going to get away with these sorts of tax increases that fund transportation. The outlying areas will suffer more.

[one_fourth][/one_fourth] This interview is a part of the MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series.  In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where we will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflecting on MOBILIZE Santiago’s theme: Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal.  To learn more about MOBILIZE Santiago and how you can register to attend the summit in Chile, visit mobilizesummit.org.

 

 

Santiago: Winner of STA, Host of MOBILIZE 2017

by

Bus Rapid Transit (km) 92 | BRT Passengers (per day) 50,000 | Bike Share Stations 175 | Total Bike Share Bikes 2600 | Total Cyclist (per day) 40,000| Cycling Infrastructure (km) 36 

Santiago, the Chilean capital with an urban population of five million, and a metro area population of over seven million, is a beautiful old-world city enjoying a modern day renaissance. Despite the city’s attempt to improve transport for its people through its BRT Transantiago in 2006, it had been lagging behind other cities in the region on cycling and walking.

However, between 2015-16, non-motorised (walking and cycling) and public transportation in Santiago underwent significant development, transforming the city into a haven for its citizens. Santiago was thus announced as the winner of the 2017 Sustainable Transport Award (STA). The city will be hosting ITDP’s annual sustrans summit MOBILIZE between June 28 – 30, 2017.

Our Indian government also aims to implement such people-friendly mobility initiatives through the Smart City Mission, and can draw on the lessons of Santiago at MOBILIZE. Amongst other attendees from India, Sameer Sharma, Additional Secretary & Smart City Mission Director, MoUD will also be at the summit. As a speaker, he will be sharing his thoughts on how a city can be made inclusive through principles of mobility and access.

Car ownership has soared in Chile over the past decade along with the economy, with the number of cars bough increasing each year from 2003 to 2014. Greater Santiago is now home to seven million people, and four million cars. However, the last few years have seen considerable changes. Owing to the significant improvements in transit, cycling & walking, and the overall public realm, as a result of the city’s Integrated Mobility Plan, more Santiaguinos have shifted to these modes to get around their city.

Santiago’s Calle Aillavilú, in the central market of the city, has been transformed from a derelict, car-congested and unregulated parking lot to a pedestrian-friendly oasis. The street was repaved, lighting improved, new trees were planted, and most importantly, cars were removed. Except for the scheduled delivery of goods, no motorized traffic is allowed. Calle Placer, one of the busiest pedestrian streets during a popular weekend market, is now completely closed to cars on the weekends, with a 2.2 million USD investment by the city for improved sidewalks, lighting, and sanitation.

On Sunday mornings, cars are banned from 40 kilometers of Santiago’s roads. Around 30,000 people take to those vehicle-free streets on bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, or simply on foot. The Car-Free days in many Indian cities have also been highly successful and can be scaled up, learning from Santiago. 

The redesigned Plaza de Armas in the city centre, to prioritise pedestrians

Other public space improvements include an investment in 100 sqm. of new green spaces in historic residential neighborhoods, revitalizing a previously abandoned area, and the re-design of the Historical Center’s main streets, featuring more sidewalk space, improved lighting, beautification, and a “complete streets” redesign for public transport exclusive corridors in the most active pedestrian zone in the country.

Cycling mode share has doubled since 2006, with the number of cyclists on major routes growing by 25 percent a year for the past two years. The City has backed up this achievement with new sustainable transport policy changes and education programs. In April 2015, the National Ministry of Housing and Urbanism created a detailed standard of design for high quality cycle lanes, even piloting it in a major street near the presidential palace. The policy redistributes road spaces to create more space for cyclist. This standard was quickly adopted by Santiago, and the city has managed to increase cycling trips from a negligible 150 per day to over 5000 per day.

Cycle Lanes in Santiago

This number is expected to further rise with the growing popularity of BikeSantiago, the city’s bike share program, which accounts for 50 percent of the increase. Santiago also gave support to BMov Trici, a free bicycle taxi in the historic city center operated by a private company, supported by advertising, that encourages cycle use and provides a non-motorized alternative to taxis.

The city has also adopted a pilot program of cycling games in kindergarten to help introduce cycling early in life and a traffic education program at primary schools to create better cyclist behavior.

The cycling games program intends to familiarize children with cycling culture and safety

With all these efforts to improve the quality of life for the people, Santiago won STA 2017 and will be the site of Mobilize 2017, ITDP’s annual Sustainable Transport Summit, supported by the Volvo Research and Education Foundations. This event will give international transportation researchers and professionals an opportunity to experience this emerging city as a learning lab for best practices in sustainable transport. For more information, visit mobilizesummit.org

 

ITDP’s annual sustrans summit MOBILIZE in Santiago this year

by

For three days next month, 200 urban transport and development planners, practitioners, and officials, world-class researchers, and NGO representatives will convene in Santiago to share opportunities, challenges, and study the example of Santiago as an international best practice in pedestrian, cycling, public transit, and policy. Organizers expect representatives from around 20 nations to attend the MOBILIZE Summit, June 28-30, to be held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Speakers will include Dr. Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities at The London School of Economics, Laura Ballesteros, Undersecretary of Planning for the Secretariat of Mobility of Mexico City, Shin-pei Tsay, Executive Director of the Gehl Institute, and Dr. Sameer Sharma, Additional Secretary & Smart City Mission Director, Ministry of Urban Development, India.

(Left to Right) Philipp Rhode, Laura Ballesteros, Shin-pei Tsay and Sameer Sharma

MOBILIZE is an annual summit organized by ITDP. The summit aims to elevate the winner of the annual Sustainable Transport Award. MOBILIZE spotlights the achievements of the winning city and gives transport professionals and researchers from around the world an opportunity to experience the city as a learning lab with lessons on how to get world class projects implemented.

Last June, Santiago was announced as the winner of the Sustainable Transport Award, selected for major improvements in pedestrian space, cycling, and public transit, by a committee of international transport experts. Together, the STA and MOBILIZE highlight an elite group of international cities that inspire and catalyze more cities around the world to implement transport solutions of their own.

Director of Mobility Miguel Olivares accepting the award award from STA Committee Chair, Michael Kodransky, at the ceremony in Washington, DC

“MOBILIZE will bring together leading thinkers and city shapers for a capacity building opportunity using Santiago as a learning laboratory. Santiago was chosen this year for implementing strategic projects that focus on improving walking conditions as a top priority,” said Michael Kodransky, Chair of the STA Committee and Head of MOBILIZE, “Walking infrastructure and access to transit stations are a big concern for cities all over the world. Santiago has made walking, cycling, and public transit in the city center a key component of improving quality of life and easing congestion. The lessons and challenges from Santiago will surely resonate with other municipalities.”

Participants, including representatives from the Municipality of Santiago, Santiago Metro region, and the Chilean Ministries of Transport and Housing, will spend half the day in workshops sharing ideas and best practices in sustainable transport, development, and urban planning, and half the day on site visits in and around the city, including visits to Transantiago, the public bicycle and cycle network, and a walking tour of the newly-redesigned streets in the city center.

“We are very pleased to participate in MOBILIZE, and welcome participants to this key global summit on sustainable transport. This June, the eyes of the sustainable transport community will be on Santiago, and those who visit us will find a very interesting opportunity to learn from these new changes and advances that our municipality, and the city region, have made,” said the Mayor of the Municipality of Santiago, Felipe Alessandri.

ITDP is organizing the summit in partnership with the Volvo Research and Education Foundation (VREF), and additional sponsors, and is consulting with a local host committee as planning moves forward.

  • Mayor Felipe Alessandri, Host
  • Juan Carlos Muñoz, Chair, Director of the Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence
  • Claudio Orrego, Intendant of the Metropolitan Region
  • Paulina Saball, Minister of Housing and Urbanism
  • Claudio Olivares Medina, Bicivilizate

2017 will be the second annual MOBILIZE Summit. The first was held in 2016 in Yichang, China by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in co-operation with VREF and the City of Yichang. More information on MOBILIZE Yichang is available.

Sustainable transport and development professionals interested in attending should contact Nora.Pena@itdp.org to request an invitation.  Members of the press interested in attending should contact Jemilah.Magnusson@itdp.org . For more information, visit mobilizesummit.org.