Sustainable public transport system II

My own thinking is that only public transportation systems are sustainable given our growing cities.  So sustainable public transport might be a redundant phrase :)

For me the goals of a good public transport system would be as follows

a. Accessibility - a person should have to walk/cycle/use private transport for no more than X m to reach a public transport facility.  X can be 500m or whatever

b. Cost - should be competitive end to end with a motorbike.  Two persons should find it cheaper to take a bus than share a motorbike.  3 persons should find it cheaper to take a bus than a car.  Else why would I leave my car behind.  Now congestion charges are one way of making sure of this.

c. Speed - we should be able to average 20-22 kmph end to end (combination of walk, bus, Metro)

d. Safety - both users and non-users should not fear risk to life and limb.  We could also include protection from the elements in this.

e. Seamless transfer from one mode to another.  Walk to bus, bus to bus, bus to Metro.  Means good interchange facilities around big Metro stations, good pavements.

Srivathsa

@srivathsa

Good points in your post. I am yet to take a complete look at your additions in the attached document. But, a respone to one of your comments -

Your comment -

"Two persons should find it cheaper to take a bus than share a                       motorbike.  3 persons should //find it cheaper to take a bus than a car.        Else why would I leave my car behind.  Now congestion charges are one  way of making sure of this."

My Answer -

One should not evaluate only in terms of monetary operating costs, let's say if it costs 3 persons 100Rs for an office commute by sharing a private car (fuel+maintenance+driver cost etc)but costs Rs 120 or 130 for the same 3 people for the same commute; those 3 persons will take public transport if it can provide significant time savings to the order of reducing the commute time by let's say 50% in airconditioned premium comfort. It is acually equivalent to being driven around in an air conditioned chauffer driven car, only difference being that there are 30 or 35 other people travelling in the same vehicle. Now imagine the wonders that could be done if this premimum bus is moving along at 100kmph on dedicated busways as outlined in the document, segrefated from the local non-PT traffic plying on clogged roads. I am sure there would be an overwhelming majority who would abandon their cars voluntarily in favour of faster transport provided that it is comfortable (and that is where the dependable&predictable  tailor made custom transport services provided on a common underlying infrastructure comes into play as  outlined in the document).

The current problem of  the approach in development is that private vehicle owners are encouraged by widening of roads, building high speed roadways like the NICE road, building flyovers  etc. only to land up with clogged roads in a few months with private as well as PT ending up suffering on the same clogged roads.

this premimum bus is moving along at 100kmph on dedicated busways

I think you are right - however, BRT appears to have been abandonned by the authorities for bangalore since they cite insufficient street widths. For this reason, they have embarked on exclusive track rail systems, which become additions to already existing street based systems. Further, weaning people away from private transport requires more than just provision of fast PTs such as BRT. Market dynamics come into play - strong disincentives such as much higher cost/s and longer transit times are vital. The last mile question is also difficult to address when fast PTs are designed. Metro, with feeder bus services is the chosen way by the authorities.

Sometimes I think there is a general conspiracy of automobile makers, malls and governments to keep our sidewalks and other public facilities bad, etc so that their sales keep going up :). 

I am not asking that government ban cars or bikes.  Provide people who don't want to own cars and bikes a decent alternative.  Some people complain that the Metro will not bring down traffic as people will not take it.  Well good luck to them if they still want to suffer traffic jams, etc.  Some of us will keep our car-sized egos aside and climb the Metro and get where we want to.

I used to travel to Bangkok a lot on work.  The distance from the hotel to our office was just 2-3 km.  The taxi used to take anywhere between 30 and 45 mins on a good day.  Then the BTS (sky train) opened.  Time - <10 mins door to door.  Why would I even bother to climb a taxi and then sit and fret or take my car? 

In Singapore one could go out on weekends without that feeling of dread of traffic jams, road rage, parking, indiscipline, etc (that one feels here each time you fasten your seat belt) because of the Metro and the bus service.  I am sure people in Delhi find travel easier and stress free with the Metro now going to Connaught Place and Karol Bagh. 

Srivathsa

@srivathsa

One key measure (or rather a barometric indicator) of how developed a country is in my opinion the quality of footpaths available in the cities; here is an interesting article on the lack of it in India

http://www.macroscan.com/cur/feb09/cur030209footpaths.htm

From the above article this particular sentence caught my eye -

This in turn has given rise to numerous scams around land-grabbing and insider deals, of which that related to Satyam/Maytas is only the latest. Second, both the current state government and the previous one have emphasised the ''beautification'' of the city and the creation of ''world class'' urban infrastructure.
 

He he he, i can't help but laugh, looks like our planners don't know the meaning of either the "world" or "class". Compare that with the clean and organized streets with good pedestrian facilities of one of the BRIC countries..which is Brazil -

http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=FSA/FSA017/x17082981.jpg

http://miniver.blogspot.com/2006/01/urban-design-in-rio-de-janeiro.html

Tells how much ahead even Brazil is, I think India cannot be clubbed along with Brazil and China, both of which seem to have superior infrastructure. 

rant off.

These are pictures by the street side in a village some 45km from Guangzhou. Even here, sidewalks & bus shelters are planned & maintained as well, if not better than in many major chinese cities.

Is this a developing country ? One would think that it is a fully "developed" country !

In sharp contrast, we have dirty, pot-holed alleys for roads in our villages, whilst we day-dream of building singapores & shanghais - what a joke !!

I found something interesting on skyscrapercity. Chennai seems to be building elevated high speed corridors

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=37380910&postcount=2

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=37381502&postcount=3

In my opinion one mistake they are making is that they are building  infrastructure that will be used by private vehicles as well. So, guess what, with the current rate of growth of private vehicles, even that infrastructure will get clogged in the near future (and of course exponentially greater noise and air pollution). Bangalore can try to take a similar design and scale it down to just serve public transportation buses/vans (thus hopefully translating into lesser costs than what Chennai is attempting..I am hoping ..because we would require lesser lanes and lesser number of tiers plus hopefully lesser oil bill for the city/state/country since private vehicle usage gets discouraged because infrastructure development favours fast and reliable public transportation ). 

Not convinced about my argument that Chennai's elevated corridors will get clogged in no time? then I would suggest a visit to the Freeway Capital of the world a.k.a congestion city where freeway space gets gobbled up in no time as it gets built with the end result being that nobody goes anywhere during rush hour.

Naveen

"What you state about chennai developing freeways for all traffic with expected exponential growth in traffic is an established fact world-wide. It is well known & understood that more roads & facilities mean more traffic. However, roads are also necessary for some essential uses, but must be charged for use to keep a lid on traffic growth."

My Response:  You are absolutely correct about it. The reason I highlighted the obvious fact is that we need not follow the same worldwide model of freeway development. Charging for use to keep a lid on traffic growth has also proven ineffective over time since eventually for a large number of people that charge becomes affordable and we will have many users clogging up the toll road. Private vehicle is the most inefficient use of a given surface area of the roadway. I think we need to follow a unique approach of our transportation infrastructure that rewards mass movement of people. The time wastage of let's say 50 or 60 people stuck in a bus in traffic is very bad and we cannot put a price tag or cost on it. What is the use of building a tollway and charge private vehicles for it's usage while we are not addressing the bottlenecks that impede the mass movement of people in a timely fashion?

One approach of rewarding mass movement of people on roads as implemented in the US is provision of carpool lanes; but I haven't advocated that approach because it doesn't suit Indian conditions just because of the impossible task of enforcing it.  Yeah, one way out would be to have our urban freeways built with dedicated bus lanes that are physically separated from the other lanes by concrete barriers.

"Under-charging for road use, free parking, easy availability of finance for vehicle purchase, low fuel price, low subsidies for PTs, inefficient PTs are all reasons why we have this situation in all our cities."

My Response:  First of, the reason that the PT is inefficient is because buses share the same space with other road users and are not rewarded for mass movement of people. They stop at traffic lights and get stuck at traffic jams. Now, the inefficiency of PT will change once Metro comes along, but road based PT will still be inefficient and it will not go away. Road based PT will continue to be there and will act as a complement to the Metro just because of the sheer volume of the population in Bangalore and other Indian cities. Now, since PTs are inefficient, there is no incentive for people to get away from private vehicles and such people will continue to use private vehicles and those who can afford cars can afford toll charges as well unless the toll charges are something exorbitant like Rs 5000 per trip or something like that.

Secondly, as far as under charging goes...what is the correct charge? At some point every body will be in the mind set that the charge cannot be afforded by others..so let me pay the charge on the tollway and zip along..but guess what..everybody will be thinking like everybody else so after some time ..you know what will happen.

"Travel on volvo buses costs 25rs each way for about 10km in bangalore. Here, in Guangzhou /China, the same trip by an air-conditioned bus costs 2 yuans or about 14rs, & it does the journey as fast as a car. Thus, the tendency is to use buses or the metro, rather than a car (two wheelers are banned). Further, there are additional costs for car usgae such as road tolls & parking costs that become higher as you get closer to the CBDs."

My Response:  The tendency to use cars vs PT should not be viewed in monetary costs alone or per trip monetary costs alone. There are various factors, both from a individual perspective as well as a society perspective -

           1) Time savings gained in efficient PT. This is a very significant factor

            2) Risk to life - imagine if we could provide an dependable and time efficient PT we could perhaps get more two wheeler riders off the road. 2 wheelers (and pedestrians) are at the most risk on our roads.

          3) added stress while driving/riding through our roads and the hassles of finding parking. There are studies that show direct correlation between driving stress and heart diease.

          4) added costs of private vehicle operation like insurance, wear and tear, maintenance, depreciation in value, damage due to accidents etc.

IDS,

You can get to Stockholm Central in 10 minutes because there are a million others who went off the roads and to PT.   So someone sacrificed his 30 mins for your benefit :). 

Warning - I am going to ramble a bit.

If you look at the average speed curve (I can't draw it here)

a. With no motorized pvt transport , the only means (other than PT) will be walk and cycle.  Average speed might be 6-10 kmph.  PT can chug along at 30 kmph

b. As motorized pvt transport comes in and upto a limit - average speeds increase to maybe 30-40 kmph.  PT can still chug along quite fine.  [I remember taking 190 in 1986-88 from JB Nagar to National college (~12 km) in 25-30mins or an average of 25 kmph.  Even in the early 90s I could cover BMS to JB Nagar - 14km in 35 mins.  Buses used to be actually punctual.  College would finish at 12:15 on some days.  The bus would invariably come at 12:25.]

c. And then as car numbers start increasing speed will start dropping and also pull down PT speed and therefore they need to be controlled.  Else it will become like Bangalore where if I can do 10km in 45 mins, I consider it an excellent day.

My own experience in Singapore was that whether there was a long line of cars outside my house or Orchard Road was clogged, it did not matter to me.  I had good alternatives - walking, bus (with bus lanes), MRT.  That's all we really want in Bangalore - no?.   Then the car users can fight among themselves on who should give up his ride for the benefit of other car users. 

I am also not so sure that car ownership should be some sort of fundamental right.  One should be able to prove he/she can park it within his/her premises and not utilize the road/footpath for parking - at least not the footpath.

Srivathsa

Our roads are a case of Prisoner's Dilemma (not from the law breaking part but from usage).

Let's say all of us are equally well off and we can afford cars, etc.

• If all of us use PT - best situation - lowest overall costs
• If I use PT and you use a car, I am worse off (from a pure convenience standpoint).
• If you use PT and I use a car, you will be worse off.
• If both use a car both are worse off.

We will hit a Nash equilibrium because the logical thing for me to do is to use a car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

Thus one has to make it inconvenient to use cars by a variety of policies and make it more rewarding to cooperate (in this case use PT).

Srivathsa

@IDS

"Generally PT tends to be more reach oriented than speed oriented. The congestion charge point being if you want speed pay for it. The PT point being we can reach you as close as possible and on time, if not better than private transport can, but need not necessarily be faster."

My Response

. No pun intended, but SAAAR! which part of Bus RAPID Transit (Los Angels, Bogota etc), Mass RAPID Transit (MRTS) of Chennai or Bay Area RAPID Transit (BART of the San Francisco bay area) don't you understand?  Of course there is no rule that states that PT by design has to be faster than private transport but a well designed PT system ends up being faster than private transport in a lot of  well proven cases (SF Bay area, Los Angeles, NY, London & DC to name a few cities whose PT systems I am familiar with & used; I am sure you too are familiar with these citie's PT systems). This statement is NOT based on some random preception from a die hard PT fan to prove a point but based on accurate measurements right down to the minute.  I am a normal person like most people who choses the path of comfort and least resistance . If I am given a faster alternative at a cost which is not exorbitant I will take it like the other people who take PT in the above mentioned cities. On the other hand in a city like Bangalore, if my costs of private vehicle ownership is increased then I will live with the increased costs and use private transport rather than risk my life & limb to walk (without footpaths) to a BMTC bus stand to take the dreaded undependable BMTC bus and hang for dear life on the footboard not knowing when I will reach the office. The problem in Bangalore is people shoot the messenger (BMTC) rather than fixing the underlying problem (infrastructure and urban planning). BMTC is very easily blamed but if you ask me given the pressures and the constraints I think BMTC drivers and BMTC as a whole are doing a reasonable job. BMTC drivers and conductors in my opinion are one frustrated lot with a tough job and need all the help they can get.

I am not saying cost is not a factor, but when we talk about enticing private vehicle users to switch to PT then we are talking about a set of people who have sizable disposable incomes and are addicted to cars AND can absorb increases in costs; for these people monetary costs for vehicle ownership and operation is not the only consideration. Speed, reliability, reach, safety & comfort as an overall package plays a very significant role in choosing PT.

 which part of Bus RAPID Transit (Los Angels, Bogota etc), Mass RAPID Transit (MRTS) of Chennai or Bay AreaRAPID Transit (BART of the San Francisco bay area) don't you understand?

All of these are only TRUNK routes. On the trunk routes they have priority but not the feeders. PT includes not just metro type trunk routes they also include feeders and the timing is cumulative of both. The feeders are not expected to be fast they are expected to have increased reach and drop you at the nearest trunk stop so you can do the journey on a fast route. I have lived in the Bay area and the feeders to the Bart stations arent exactly as frequent or as fast as the BART itself. THey go around the town collecting people before they stop at few BART stops. This is like comparing the time taken on London underground alone vs comparing the total time taken from origin to destination including a bus feeder segment in the route.

This statement is NOT based on some random preception from a die hard PT fan to prove a point but based on accurate measurements right down to the minute.

So you think I pulled my comparitive travel times out of thin air?

"All of these are only TRUNK routes. On the trunk routes they have priority but not the feeders. PT includes not just metro type trunk routes they also include feeders and the timing is cumulative of both. The feeders are not expected to be fast they are expected to have increased reach and drop you at the nearest trunk stop so you can do the journey on a fast route. I have lived in the Bay area and the feeders to the Bart stations arent exactly as frequent or as fast as the BART itself. THey go around the town collecting people before they stop at few BART stops. This is like comparing the time taken on London underground alone vs comparing the total time taken from origin to destination including a bus feeder segment in the route."

My Response: IDS,  trunk routes or not, does not matter. The point is well designed PT on an average for most people is faster than private transport (PT in Indian cities mostly are an exception since they are lousily designed without vision). 

For example, in the bay area, it is still faster to drive up to the Fremont station, park there and then take the BART all the way into town. Yes, i agree with you that feeder buses add to the time but I found that a car trip from my Fremont apartment took more time on quite a few days during commute hour than the other option of getting to BART station via a feeder bus then taking the BART into town. One disclaimer here...don't expect PT to be faster if you are travelling a mile or 2, as the commute distance progressively increases so does the advantage (meaning time savings) of mass rapid transport with efficient feeder services. Going by your statement, time taken to drive all the way to town must be significantly lesser than the time taken to get to BART by feeder service and then take the BART. But it actually turns out to be the same on some occassions and most occations faster to get onto a BUS and then take BART all the way to SF. Unless of course..you are in the carpool lane all the way into town and hope that there are no accidents. 

Similar scenario in LA, it is much faster to drive to norwalk let's say from Anaheim and take the metro into town or the offices near LAX airport rather than drive on the dreaded 91 and 105 freeways.

But, bottome line is, shouldn't we be taking the BART model and see how we can improve on it to fit bangalore? Perhaps by making the feeder service faster by introducing bus priority lanes and perhaps integrating high rise apartment  complexes with feeder bus stations and perhaps with the metro stations themselves. Office complexes could also be integrate into such stations. All these integrations being done via walkways. A million reasons can be cited why many of these things probably cannot be done in Bangalore..but there is only one reason why i HAS to be done and the reason is -> Bangalore is in a mess and it has GOT TO do it.

"So you think I pulled my comparitive travel times out of thin air?"

My Response: Well...I didn't say that . But, now that you mention it, who knows?. Please, let's be sensible when comparing...obviously if somebody is living 10 miles away from a BART station and away from the alignment ..had to catch a bus 10 miles south to the BART and then double back north on the BART obviously it does not make sense to compare and the time taken would obviously be more.

And last but not the least, since you have lived in the Bay Area...if BART and Caltrain weren't faster given that they both cost quite a bit depending on where you are going..you wouldn't be seeing the levels of ridership seen on them. Keep this in mind, San Jose to Millbrae takes just 50 mins in an express caltrain..try doing it in private transport in commute hour..unless you are driving at breakneck dangeorous speeds(which you can't anyways due to traffic)..it takes 1.5 hours at the least. At the San Jose end..if you time yourself correctly add another 10 mins at most to take a caltrain shuttle to/from the downtown areas where many offices are located.

Also, one more way of comparison (food for thought for all the readers) ..in both the bay area and LA, over past couple of decades as traffic has increased so have the commute times. but guess what..metro rail travel times have remained constant (yes, I am stating an obvious fact)..but again food for thought to show how progressively over time for the same commute time...private transport commute time has signficantly increased over that period compared to PT (most specifically rapid transit systems ) staying constant.

"What is the BART model? How is the metro in Bangalore not on the BART model? How does the BART model compare with the TFL model in London or the SMRT model in Singapore. Please share you thoughts."

My Response: I used the term BART model because we were on the topic of San Franciso bay area and the BART in our discussion sparked off by the term Rapid Tansit i mentioned to illustrate time savings. I don't know about singapore since I haven't visited the city, only transited the airport. As far as London goes, the system is fabulous, unique in it's own way but I haven't analyzed it in detail nor spent enough time there to compare it with the bay area BART; but London's system from my experience and from what I have heard from other localites..wins hands down as by far one of the best PT systems in the world (among top 3 or 5). As far as the "BART model itself goes it is by far the BEST PT system among the cities I visited West of the Rockies in North America (Canada and the US); perhaps Chicago and NY area are the only other cities among the ones I have visited that have comparable or better PT system. What is unique (in North America west of the rockies) to BART -

            - major BART stations like Fremont, Dublin/Pleasanton etc have integrated bus stations/bus parking for transfer to buses

          - Seamless transfer to SFO airport OR the Oakland airport via shuttle (of course daily commuters care less about this connection but still this is a very essential and good feature)

         - good connections to buses in the form of nearby (few yards walkable on safe footpaths) bus  stops at most BART stations

         -  excellent transfer in downtown SF to the SF muni which essentially gives you a wider reach in downtown SF.

         -  excellent tranfer at Millbrae to the caltrain for people commuting between downtown SF and lower west bay.

        -   last but not the least, excellent facilities for people planning to use bikes on BART http://www.bart.gov/guide... (this may not work in Bangalore though given the general lack of  civic sense in public places..but who knows...worth giving a try to give a chance to those willing to brave Bangalore's bike unfriendly streets and crowded metro stations)

I would be happy to see some such system (not exactly the same implementation) even on a miniscule scale implemented in Bangalore; basically providing seamless connection between multiple points/regions and between multiple modes of transport with rapid uninterrupted traffic flow (metro obviously has uninterrupted flow..we need to do better than the bay area and figure out a way of making buses flow without interrruptions..one solution I proposed in the initial document is busways..other thoughts are more welcome). How is the Bangalore Metro not the BART model? Well, take  one look at the proposed TTMC designs and how the one at Jayanagar has been implemented, it will tell you all - where is the seamless well thought out integration? Also, the BART provides wider reach and many transfer points to different modes as stated above. Now, there are better PT systems accross the world (London being one of them), Bangalore's current or proposed systems do not even come close.

Buses have always been (& will continue to be) the workhores of the city transport system, no doubt, even after Metro (& Monorail system/s) are built.

However, building viaducts will not be possible on most roads, other than perhaps the wider ones. Hosur, Tumkur (& probably many other) elevated tollways are being built with private investments. BRT on these is difficult as revenues will be insufficient to attract private investments.

This more or less explains why the Metro is being pursued as answers have been found for funding, despite the high costs.

 An Americans take on PT after experiencing it 

Comparing a city like stockholm which has invested in PT with Bangalore brings out some important observations

The difference is that in Stockholm they made tough choices for the greater good. They moved their air traffic away from the city instead of continuing to expand an old airport in the middle of where everyone lives. They built an extensive underground rail system which meant carving deep into the bedrock below lakes and rivers.

Both of these things happened more than sixty years ago and neither was cheap, but in the long run, they were ultimately worth it. They required sacrifices but they became gifts to future generations that people today are enjoying.