History As a Tool for Sustainable Transport Planning in Cities
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History as a Tool for Sustainable Transport Planning in Cities Dominic S. Aloc Institute of Civil Engineering University of the Philippines Diliman Quezon City, Philippines [email protected] Jose Regin F. Regidor Institute of Civil Engineering University of the Philippines Diliman Quezon City, Philippines [email protected] Abstract — An increasing trend of transport woes have influenced commuters to query about past development plans undertaken for and by the government. With the understanding of the context, content and sequence of these plans, comes the trail of matters regarding what plans and projects have been implemented, what were shelved, and what were significantly delayed. It has often been said that history will eventually judge the actions made during a certain time. These actions, pertaining to the decisions made in the past led to transport programs, projects and policies that define conditions experienced by the transport users today. As to what extent the effect of such transport planning decisions are felt today is evidenced by the current situation of traffic and the frustration expressed by many that has translated into various advocacies to improve transport. This paper reviewed past transport studies and focused mainly on the assessment of proposed and implemented rail plans and projects from the 1970s to the 1990s. These past studies include the Urban Transport Study for the Manila Metropolitan Area (UTSMMA, 1973), the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project (MMETROPLAN, 1977) and the Metro Manila Urban Transportation Integration Study (MMUTIS). Sustainable transportation indicators were used to evaluate the aforementioned plans that cover the social, economic and environmental issues. Such plans and programs are related to those for road transport in the same studies. Among the findings are biases for road public transport, the weakening of the Philippine National Railways (PNR), and policies that favored phasing out of the government-owned and operated Metro Manila Transit Corporation (MMTC). These effectively led to the current state of public transport in the metropolis including what are perceived as too many bus operators and a proliferation of jeepneys and UV Express vehicles while rail network development is basically lagging. The paper shows how historical assessments would allow for a clearer and more objective appraisal of transport planning that can be used to address current concerns and planning for future needs. Keywords — transport planning; history; sustainable transport I. INTRODUCTION Transportation planning, sometimes called transport planning, is a form of procedural discipline that deals with problem identification, development of alternatives, evaluation and decision-making, implementation of the best transport alternative and monitoring outcomes. There may have been variations of these series of steps but all of which generally follow the same principle — that is, to develop solutions to the problem and to decide which solution is best for implementation. In the United States, transport planning was only introduced in the 1960s after the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) integrated the process in its transport manuals. At present, the processes established by the USDOT for urban transport planning are categorized into three (3) phases [1]: (1) pre-analysis; (2) technical analysis; and (3) post analysis. Pre-analysis phase is composed of problem identification, formulation of goals and objectives, data collection, generation of alternatives, and definition of evaluation measures. Meanwhile, generation of transport and land use models is being employed in the technical analysis phase. Lastly, post analysis phase is concerned with the evaluation, decision-making, implementation, and monitoring. It is apparent that although categorized in phases, it still follows the conventional idea of transport planning. History and its assessment can be employed as a tool for transport planning particularly in understanding issues in the past that led to certain decisions being made for or against specific programs and projects. The latter includes the identification and analysis of factors affecting transport planning that includes inputs like socio-economic and land use data. History can provide a unique perspective for transport planning and help establish context for addressing current issues including those that seem to persist over many years. Pante [2], for example, compared the urban transport systems in colonial Manila and Singapore where he expounded on the relationship of technology and the prevailing social conditions in Manila and Singapore between 1900 and 1941 that led to the development of urban transport systems in these cities during that period. Meanwhile, Sartre [3] discussed both the pre-war and the more recent challenges to urban rail transport in Metro Manila and proposed criteria for good public transport. There is also the work by Iwata [4] who reviewed the history of public transportation in Manila from the Spanish colonial period to the early 1990s. The review provided insights to the development of road public transport modes such as paratransit that includes the ubiquitous jeepney. II. OBJECTIVES This paper aims to present ‘history’ as a tool for sustainable transport planning. In order to accomplish this, a review of past transport developments studies is presented. An assessment is made with focus on proposed and implemented rail plans and projects from the early 1970’s to late 1990’s. These plans and projects are evaluated in the context of sustainable transport. III. TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT PLANS AND PROJECTS IN METRO MANILA Recent history (i.e., the last 45 years) has yielded several major studies that aimed to develop transportation. Following is a review of three major studies conducted between the years 1970 and 2000. While there are many other studies during that 30-year period and beyond, these other studies mainly referred to these three. A. UTSMMA The pioneering study was conducted under the Marcos administration with the intent of undertaking an urban transport study that would recommend plans and strategies to solve the foreseeable urban expansion and traffic congestion in the Manila Metropolitan Area (MMA). The two-year study, implemented from March 1971, was called Urban Transport Study in Manila Metropolitan Area (UTSMMA) and was completed in September 1973. The Japan Government commissioned the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA), which is the precursor of today’s Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to execute the study. Generally, in every urban transportation planning process, the demography within the study area is carefully studied to assess the socioeconomic factors such as population, car ownership and occupation. These variables are essential for it influences the way an individual makes his or her trips. In UTSMMA, the socioeconomic information of MMA population was represented by 6,185 households that were randomly sampled from 686,441 households living in the Manila Metropolitan Area at the time. From the results gathered, the Japanese survey team applied the concept of travel demand forecasting to estimate the traffic demand of MMA in 1987. The processes included trip production, trip generation and attraction, trip distribution, external traffic, modal split and traffic assignment. Initially, the study area was divided into fifty-one (51) internal zones and adjacent to it are the six (6) external zones. The first trip production was calculated by occupation and by car ownership from the results gathered in the person trip survey. The correspondence was multiplied to future population both for the original and alternative land use plans. This method classified the trips generated and attracted by trip purpose on a per zone basis. An Origin-Destination (OD) table of person trips was constructed based on the transition probability between trip purposes and gravity model was performed where the time distance was decided under certain conditions and its exponent was attributed to the trip purpose relating to the zone pairs. The 51 internal zones were re-divided into 15 sectors to ease computation and the result was done for the two cases of land use plans. Some factors were considered for external traffic before modal split was employed. Future OD table per mode of travel was calculated from the OD table of person trips. The travel mode was classified into four: drivers of cars and trucks (i.e., drivers), passengers of cars and trucks (i.e., passengers), taxi passengers (i.e., taxis) and mass transit. Lastly, traffic assignment was carried out to estimate the traffic volume for the proposed transport system (i.e., expressways and subways). Given an OD pair, the closest route was used and an all-or-nothing scenario was adopted. The value of the future number of passengers of railway established from the processes mentioned above was calculated to be 6,327,000 trips/day [5]. From the existing configuration of transportation network of Manila Metropolitan Area at the time, supplemented by the output derived from the travel demand forecasting, UTSMMA was able to propose a new transport system. With regard to rail transport, the proposal highlighted the need of a railway transport system that constituted the building of a five-line heavy rail transit system and improvement of Philippine National Railways. Brief descriptions of the proposed railway transport system are as provided in Table