Sustainable Transport Campaigns This Past July, My Path Was Blocked by the Roads
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SUSTAINABLETRANSPORT Number 8 Winter 1998 Upward Mobility in South Africa Central Europe: Notes from the Underground p. 4 GEF’s Transport Project in Tehran p. 10 South Africa’s Workbike Project ITDP p. 8 Institute for Transportation & Development Policy SUSTAINABLETRANSPORT Organizing Pedestrians, Cyclists, and Bus Passengers It’s a Matter of Life and Breath Letter from the Executive Director While bicycling through Prospect most bicyclists fear for their lives and thus livable cities by providing technical assis- Park, Brooklyn on a Saturday morning refuse to operate them on most major tance to sustainable transport campaigns this past July, my path was blocked by the roads. Being struck by a motor vehicle is in developing countries and in Central yellow police tape of a crime scene. likely to be the second leading cause of and Eastern Europe, redirecting the fund- Behind it, flecks of blood on a dented van, death in developing countries by the year ing of major development institutions long skid marks, a detective surveying the 2020, according to the World Health towards more sustainable transport pro- scene. The following Monday I learned Organization. jects, and sponsoring demonstration pro- that the driver of the van, who was taking Transportation is not a free market. jects which show how scarce development a “short cut” through the park on a car- Private motor vehicles dominate because dollars could be better spent. free road at 65 kilometers per hour with a they make the streets too polluted and cracked windshield, was given a $45 ticket dangerous for non-motorized alternatives, Demonstration Projects for his negligence. I also learned that In India, ITDP’s USAID-funded cycle Rachel Fruchter, the bicyclist he hit, died. rickshaw improvement project is under- Dr. Rachel Fruchter was an eminent way, teaming American human-powered physician and AIDS researcher. vehicle designers with veteran engineers Transportation Alternatives, our local from the Asian Institute for Transport partners who are campaigning for car-free Development. In Delhi we have contacts parks, organized a vigil at City Hall, not with the operators, owners, and manufac- only for Dr. Fruchter, but also for the over turers of cycle rickshaws and are prepar- 180 less well-known pedestrians and ing a modernized yet low-cost vehicle cyclists killed by motorists on the streets based on their input. In Agra, we are of New York each year. designing a high-end vehicle to the speci- In New York, as in most major cities, fications of the Tourist Promotion Board there are some crazy bicyclists and some that will protect the Taj Mahal area from crazy drivers. But while heedless bicyclists smoke-belching vehicles, and will demon- primarily endanger themselves, drivers strate the technical and commercial poten- are operating a potential murder weapon. tial of human-powered technologies. On a residential street in Brooklyn, I saw ITDP’s team will arrive in Delhi and Agra an old man thrown into the air and killed in January. by a motorist going nearly 100 kph. Last In South Africa, ITDP’s demonstra- week I saw a small child dart into the road tion project in cooperation with Mondi after a rubber ball, only narrowly averting Recycling, funded by the International death. Arcane state laws make traffic Lightening the load of the poor in India Foundation and the Tucker Foundation, calming illegal in New York City, as roads gave workbikes to the collectors of recy- have to be designed to accommodate and because they pay nothing for the extra cled materials. The workbikes increased minimum speed limits. The punishment road space they consume. The fear and the income of their workers by two to for manslaughter by car is a minor traffic anger that we pedestrians and cyclists feel three times, and convinced Mondi to citation. every day at being treated as second class expand their fleet of workbikes to three The problem is not only America’s. citizens, when one of our friends is killed, other sites. The project also helped to con- Affordable transport is threatened in or after we’ve languished in bed with vince several other small businesses in South Africa by terror perpetrated by a asthma or bronchitis, occasionally boils Johannesburg and Soweto to use work- paratransit industry which sees the bicy- over— as it did at the Critical Mass ride in bikes for various service sector jobs, and cle, correctly, as a threat to their monop- San Francisco this year. This anger can be Coca-Cola is considering setting up a bev- oly. Worldwide, women cyclists are destructive, or it can be channeled into the erage distribution facility using work- threatened with physical violence from increasingly popular citizens’ movements bikes. Also, a container of recycled US their male partners fearful of the greater for sustainable and safe transport. bikes is en-route to the African Cultural autonomy a bicycle affords. In Managua, ITDP promotes safer and more Center in Soweto, where we will be Matteo Martignoni 2 WINTER 1998 ContentsSustainable TRANSPORT Number 8 Winter 1998 is a publication of: The Institute for Articles: Transportation and Development Policy 115 W.30th St., Suite 1205 Budapest Metro: Trojan Horse from European Union 4 New York, NY 10001 Tel. (212)629-8001•Fax (212)629-8033 Prague Threatened by Auto Mania 5 email: [email protected] Managua Plans to Bike Around Transport Pitfalls 6 Editors: Walter Hook, Paul S. White Art Direction: Cliff Harris Making Bikes Work for South Africa 8 Board of Directors: Tehran Clears the Air 10 Keith Oberg, President Jakarta: A City in Crisis 14 Inter-American Foundation Matteo Martignoni, Vice President The Trans-Israel Highway: An Update 19 International Human Powered Vehicle Association Features: Walter Hook, Secretary Executive Director, ITDP Letter from ITDP's Executive Director 2 Jon Orcutt, Treasurer News Briefs 12 Tri-State Transportation Campaign Michael Replogle New Titles 22 Environmental Defense Fund John Howe Bulletin Board 23 Professor, IHE Delft Setty Pendakur Chairman, NMT Committee establishing a repair and storage facility which published a major article on the Transportation Research Board, in early 1998. cover of a major Warsaw daily paper Professor, Univ. of British Columbia In early 1998, ITDP and the pointing out that the privatization of the Ariadne Delon-Scott Association of Mozambican Women highways in Poland allows private Specialized (AMRU) will also implement the World investors to profit at taxpayers’ expense. Elliott Sclar Bank’s first Mozambican non-motorized The Campaign is making enormous gains Professor, Columbia University transport promotion project. The project in empowering people threatened with David Gurin includes low interest loans for purchasing relocation from highway projects, forcing Acting Commissioner of Planning, bicycles, training in importing and assem- Poland’s motorway development policy City of Toronto bly, and training for city traffic officials in to be much more democratic. All views expressed in the articles in this publi- bicycle planning, safety, and promotion. In Southeast Asia, thanks to support cation are the views of the authors and not from Changing Horizons of the Tides necessarily the views of ITDP. Sustainable Technical Assistance to Sustainable Foundation and the New Land Transport welcomes submissions of articles about non-motorized transportation and infor- Transport Campaigns Foundation, ITDP is providing technical mation about sustainable transportation activi- In Central and Eastern Europe, assistance to the national chapters of the ties worldwide. thanks to support from the Rockefeller Sustainable Transport Action Coalition for Brothers Fund, ITDP’s work with the Asia and the Pacific Rim. We’re also ITDP is a non-profit research, dissemination, and Hungarian Clean Air Action Group has working with the Philippines Sustainable project-implementing agency which seeks to pro- mote the use of non-motorized vehicles (NMVs) substantially delayed the construction of a Transport Forum to organize key partici- and the broader implementation of sustainable major unneeded highway between pants into a national campaign. In transportation policies worldwide. ITDP is regis- Budapest and the Ukrainian border where Indonesia, we developed relations with tered in the United States as a charitable the highway threatens a parallel rail corri- the Indonesian Transport Society which agency eligible for tax-deductible contributions under the Internal Revenue Service code. dor— thus freeing up funds for rail, pub- will hold a forum on non-motorized trans- Members include bicycle activists, transportation lic transport, and debt relief. It also initiat- port, and laid the groundwork for a planners, economic development specialists, ed a major public debate in the newspa- Sustainable Transport Coalition there. In small businesspeople, environmentalists, and pers over the Municipality of Budapest’s Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ITDP and SUS- other professionals, primarily but not exclusively expensive plans to build a fourth line of TRAN made television appearances and U.S. citizens. the Metro (See article). addressed ISIS, a major think tank, on the ITDP also worked closely with the economic disadvantages of auto-depen- Cover photos: Paul S. White Polish Ecological Transport Campaign, continued on p.16 Printed on recycled paper 3 SUSTAINABLETRANSPORT NOTES from the UNDERGROUND million to BKVs annual costs. BKV has a Budapest Metro Expansion: loan agreement with the World Bank that it will raise fare revenues sufficiently to cover 50% of its costs by the year 2000, Trojan Horse from the European Union and to maintain the system in good work- ing order. For BKV to meet both the cost by Walter Hook recovery target and the maintenance requirements implied by the World Bank loan, fares will have to be increased another some 87% by the year 2000. This Environmentalists and citizens ed than last year due to a 5% reduction in would certainly further hurt ridership, but groups opposing the Budapest Metro the vehicle fleet and a 7% reduction of the at least would bring the system into good plans? You read it correctly.