WRI Blog News

City dwellers in London enjoy a sunny public space. Photo by Chris JL.

Today TheCityFix is celebrating. We are ranked as one of the Top 20 Websites for Urban Planners for the second year in a row. This is a great compliment to our authors and contributors. We want to learn more from you on which topics you want covered, and want to keep you engaged by inviting you to contribute or comment, so that we stay at the forefront of environmentally sound practices and sustainable development in cities.

Since our launch in 2007, we have been working to provide you with up-to-date news, cutting edge ideas, and effective policies for sustainable urban development. Our contributors are transport experts and specialists from around the world, including engineers, entrepreneurs, urban planners, and researchers, who explore environmentally and socially responsible ways to make cities better places to live.

Our most popular posts this past month included The car is the cigarette of the future, which discussed Jaime Learner’s bold vision for the future, where personal cars will be socially stigmatized; a post which trumpeted Lahore’s new metro bus system- the first mass public transit system in Pakistan; and our Friday Fun Infographic: How our cities are shaping us, showing the impacts of urban sprawl on our health. We’re delighted to cover such a wide range of topics in sustainable urban development for a knowledgeable and engaged readership.

The ranking was established by Global Site Plans, an environmental branding firm, with the assistance of Alexa International Rankings.

 

A road safety audit can help make sure that the most vulnerable users of the road, such as pedestrians, are kept safe. Photo by Mira on the wall.

When people think “road” they think “automobile.” Roads are most usually designed with cars in mind, and the most vulnerable users of the road – pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists – are often neglected. Currently, 70% of traffic fatalities world-wide involve vulnerable users of the road. When the needs of these vulnerable users are addressed, it is often in an ad-hoc manner. Sometimes crosswalks or bike lanes are added after a road is built, which leads to crosswalks that are too long, or bike lanes that disappear every few blocks. In other instances, streets heavily crossed by pedestrians may still have a barrier in the median of the road, with no pedestrian crossings for several blocks. This forces pedestrians to jump over the divider as they cross, which can be extremely risky.

Road safety audits – inspections of road design with safety in mind – are an important tool for improving road safety, since they examine a project from the point of view of the road’s most vulnerable users. In developing countries like India, where the volume of pedestrian traffic is very high, it is even more important to perform these audits.

“Pedestrian fatalities account for the largest share of traffic fatalities in most Indian cities.”

A road safety audit is a systematic assessment of a road design project from the point of view of safety. It looks for possible safety risks in the design, and suggests recommendations on how to address them.

Since pedestrian fatalities account for the largest share of traffic fatalities in most Indian cities, an audit gives high priority to pedestrian safety. Audits ask questions such as: Are there complete sidewalks free of obstacles? Are there adequate and appropriately located pedestrian crossings? What’s the distance to the closest pedestrian crossing?

Audits in India

In a developing country, the issues are often more complex than merely checking if road design standards are met. A high volume of pedestrian traffic and mixed modes of transport, with vehicles of different sizes and speeds, make it difficult to design roads which cater to everyone’s needs. Poor traffic enforcement and poor street conditions at the edge of the street, where the sidewalk would normally be located, make road safety audits even more necessary. Sometimes the pedestrian area is left unpaved or dirty, forcing pedestrians to walk in the street, with the traffic. A road safety audit helps to prevent such problems by identifying the issues in the early stages of the project, when it possible to make inexpensive changes to a problematic design.

“A high volume of pedestrian traffic and mixed modes of transport, with vehicles of different size and speed capacity, make it difficult to design a road which caters to everyone’s needs.”

Mumbai, India, which has a metro-area population of over 20 million people, is in the process of redesigning the roads along a prominent metro rail corridor which runs east to west through the northern part of the city, as well as a monorail corridor, located in the western part of the city.

As part of this redesign, EMBARQ India is spearheading a Road Safety Audit of the plans, in hopes of improving safety and accessibility for all modes of transport, especially for commuters to and from the metro rail stations. One proposed recommendation is to include a wide sidewalk free of all obstacles, which will run the length of the corridor. Another recommendation involves extending the curbs at several intersections, which will force vehicles to slow down when making a turn, as well as reduce the distance a pedestrian must cross. The audit has also led to a recommendation to add high quality pedestrian crossings, at least every 80 meters (87 yards) and at every intersection. These specific changes will help to make pedestrians and drivers safer, in the most efficient way possible.

An early audit saves money and lives

A road safety audit is an essential part of the road design process, since it helps to make sure the road designer’s goals are aligned with safety needs. Without such an audit, the road designer has two main goals: keeping costs as low as possible and ensuring that the design meets government standards. Often, the legal standards are not specific or robust enough to keep pedestrians and other vulnerable users safe. An audit goes beyond the standards and looks at specific issues which may need treatment, regardless of whether those changes are required by law.

“Often, the legal standards are not specific or robust enough to keep pedestrians and other vulnerable users safe.”

When these issues are pointed out at the design stage, it is easy to make changes. The curb can be extended, the sidewalk widened, or a pedestrian island inserted. Altering a design after the road has been constructed can be extremely expensive, often prohibitively so, not to mention dangerous for road users in the meantime.

Conducting an audit at the design stage saves money and lives. EMBARQ India’s preemptive work auditing the plans for the metro rail corridor will help ensure that the project meets the needs of all road users- drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike.

DataParis maps the secrets of the city using open data and metro stops. Photo by Zilverbat.

Data visualizations and apps that rely on open data have become popular tools in the past few years. Data visualizations are wide ranging, from maps of traffic fatalities or wind patterns to diagrams of the atmosphere or infographics showing how urban sprawl affects our health. The ability of data visualizations to communicate complex information in a fun and accessible way has made them good tools for explaining data to a broad audience. The rise of open data – data made freely available to everyone without any copyright restriction – has spurred the creation of tools like DataParis, which maps the secrets of the French capital using open data and metro lines.

Recently, The New Yorker featured an interactive data visualisation which mapped the median household income surrounding each stop on any given metro line. Using open source data from NYC Open Data and the U.S. Census, it demonstrated startling income disparities throughout New York City. Inspired by this, four students from the Paris-based Hetic School of Internet, Communications, and Information Technology, decided to create a data visualization which would help viewers to discover Paris through the demographics surrounding each metro station. By combining a map of the Paris Metro with open source demographic data (e.g. the proportion of retired, single, married people, political opinion, cost of housing etc.), its creators hoped to create a fun and interesting way to understand the makeup, and disparities, of their city.

What does DataParis tell us?

The four students – Gilles Bertaux, Remi Fayolle, Vincent Garreau and Robin Lambert – started their project by searching for ways to highlight inequalities in Paris by using Open Data. They used data from The French Institute of Statistics and Economics (INSEE), the Paris Transport Agency ( RATP) and the  Secretary of the Interior, giving these dry numbers a sexy second life.

DataParis plots this data across a map of Paris, with points representing each metro station. Each demographic indicator is represented by colorful circles: Political opinions are red and blue, areas with more second homes are dark orange.

Gilles Bertaux, one of the designers of DataParis, said the project was meant to be “fun and pedagogical”. Indeed, at the crossroads of design, fun and science, DataParis is an appealing way to give people access to information that they otherwise would not have been able to visualize or even understand. With DataParis, people are active users of the data, choosing what they want to see on the map and which sets of data they want to juxtapose.

Though this data visualization is an interesting tool, we have to be careful not to draw hasty conclusions or judgments from reading these maps. The creators of DataParis remind us that “this data visualization is not meant to be a precise study. It is intended to show general trends based upon reliable data.” With that in mind, lets take a look at something we can learn from DataParis.

The Center of Paris as a Second Home?

As the maps shows, most of the apartments and homes which serve as secondary residences are located in the core of Paris, revealing one cause of the existing tensions in Paris’s housing market. In 2009, 14.3% of the homes in the city were either second homes or simply empty. This statistic has raised many questions and debates about the scarcity of affordable housing. The French Minister for Territories Equality and Housing – Cécile Duflot – is expected to announce measures addressing the affordability of housing in Paris within the next few months.

This is the era of open data

Recently, many institutions have been working to make open data even more accessible and useful.

During the 39th G8 Summit, June 17th-18th, 2013, G8 Presidents signed a Charter on Open Data, highlighting access to information for all as a way to promote entrepreneurial, civic and social innovation. The potential of Open Data is fully recognized as an agent of change and innovation.

Open Data, coming to a smartphone near you

Paris Transport agency – RATP – encouraged citizens to use its data to create independent smartphone apps that will help to ease transport problems. The Agency launched a contest to create an app from the data made available by the RATP. Several innovative apps were born out of this contest. The webapp TimeReader offers reading material calculated to last the exact length of one’s trip on public transport. Another project, “Boîte à Sardines” (squashed like sardines) uses open data and crowdsourced information to notify users, in real time, how crowded any given metro line might be.

Apps, visualizations, and infographics are just a few of the uses of open data. As more data becomes publicly available and technologies advance, the public’s understanding of their surrounding city will likely get better and better, provided we use this data with care.

An ever growing Mumbai has an ever increasing traffic problem that requires urgent attention. Photo by Tom Spender.

Mumbai in western India is the commercial capital of India. A tiny island, the city has grown prodigiously in the past few decades. Unlike Manhattan, Mumbai is no grid, the organically grown city winds and sprawls. Fortunately, Mumbai has enjoyed strong public transport services since the 19th century. A good chunk of the population depends on the public transport system- both suburban trains and buses to commute daily. Road space is sparse and traffic immense. Current estimates indicate that over 400 motorized vehicles are added to Mumbai’s streets every day. The challenge in Mumbai is two pronged: maintaining a dependable, financially viable and extensive public transport system and ensuring traffic conditions are bettered.

BEST Problems

Urban transport companies across India are finding it difficult to stay afloat in the face of increasing fuel costs and accumulating losses. The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), Mumbai’s public bus provider, is no exception. However, unlike a lot of other Indian cities, the BEST has an extensive network across the city and its suburbs, carrying millions of passengers annually. However, the agency’s high ratio of employees to buses means operating costs are very high and BEST struggles not to lose money every year. The agency owns a fleet of over 4,700 buses, which serve 365 city routes along 70,000 kilometres daily. Not all of these buses are run daily due to a lack of road space; with a portion of the fleet being grounded in depots each day.  With 11.2 employees per bus, the agency has the highest employee to bus ratio in India.

To combat this, the agency has been undertaking reforms in the last five years. BES has concentrated on raising new sources of revenue with advertising on buses, leasing buses to airlines for transport; adding new buses and converting the fleet to natural gas and introducing smartcards. Recently the BEST along with NMMT and MBMT (bus providers in Navi Mumbai) collaborated with EMBARQ India to conduct two workshops training drivers in both undertakings to unique driving techniques to reduce fuel consumption and increase efficiency.

“Good licensing system, along with good enforcement initiatives, and good signage and road markings, will have a tremendous impact on driver behaviour” - Vivek Phansalkhar, Commissioner, Mumbai Traffic Police

Traffic woes

With vehicles constantly being added to the streets, the number one problem for traffic management in Mumbai is enforcement. Given the sheer volumes of traffic, there is always a shortage of policemen manning junctions and arterial roads. At any given time, the traffic police have more than 1,000 policemen on duty manning roads and junctions. In such conditions, Vivek Pnsalkhar, the commissioner of the traffic police, has the unenviable job of keeping traffic moving, in a lawful and efficient manner.

Pnsalkhar explained that the city is working hard towards solving these traffic problems. He said, “We hope and believe that with the small steps that are being taken, there will be a visible impact. We believe that a good licensing system, along with good enforcement initiatives, and good signage and road markings, will have a tremendous impact on driver behaviour as well as pedestrian behaviour. We are attempting to guide this behaviour towards safer travel, easier travel, better travel, and happier travel.”

Vivek Phansalkhar, Joint commissioner of Mumbai’s traffic police, coordinates thousands of traffic police daily. Photo by EMBARQ India.

Reforms for agencies such as BEST and traffic conditions are made difficult by the multitude of agencies in Mumbai that deal with such transport issues. Plans are underway to create a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) that will unify all major stakeholders under one umbrella.

The road to transport efficiency is a long one. Mumbai, like many urban centers across India, is finding innovative means to deal with explosive population growth, and hundreds of vehicles added to the road every day.

 

Many thanks to Divya Kottadiel, EMBARQ for her contributions to this article.

A passenger peruses books at a “Book Stop” in Sao Paolo. Photo by Parada do Livro.

What if bus shelters were also mini libraries? What if, while you waited for the bus, you could pick out a book, and take it with you on your way to work?

This is the proposal of two university students from Sao Paulo, Brazil: Helena Aranha and Helena Nabuco. Their project, Book Stop, is working to install shelves stuffed with literary works at ten bus stops across Sao Paulo. The Book Stop is an example of a public improvement project enabled by crowd funding, where citizens interested in encouraging reading could donate as little or as much money as they wanted to.

The goal is to encourage reading in Brazil, a habit which is not as popular or widespread as some would like. According to data from the third edition of “Retratos da Leitura no Brasil” (Portraits of Reading in Brasil) made in 2011 by Instituto Pró-Livro (The Book Institute), only 18% of Brazilians consider reading a pleasurable activity and the number of non-readers (people who have not read any book the last three months) increased from 45% to 50% in the last four years.

Another startling, but seemingly unrelated statistic, is that the average citizen of Sao Paulo spends an average of two and a half hours sitting in traffic every day. Book Stop works to alleviate two problems at once: improving the experience of sitting on a bus stuck in traffic while encouraging citizens to enjoy reading.

The books on Books Stop’s book shelves come from donations by individuals, cultural centers, organizations, and the passengers themselves who take and leave books as they please. The first bookshelf design has already been installed at a stop in Vila Mariana, and the other nine are on the way.

Whether the books will be returned by their readers is unknown, but Aranha and Nabuco like to think that people will see the value in the shared public property, and return the books they’ve borrowed so that others can enjoy reading them too.

This blog post was initially published in Portuguese on TheCityFixBrasil.com

Auto-rickshaw drivers wait at a stop light. Metershare, a ride sharing app, helps commuters in Mumbai to coordinate shared auto-rickshaw rides. Photo by Phil Marion.

Carpooling is not a new idea. In order to save money, reduce congestion, or simply use a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane, friends and neighbors have been sharing rides for a long time.

For a country like India, which is expected to become the most populous country in the world by 2025, and for which the number of cars on the road grows every year, solutions like car sharing can’t come too soon. As smartphone penetration increases across India, the solution to gridlocked traffic may lie in apps and other new technologies.

Metershare, a new app developed by students in Mumbai, India, takes ridesharing to the next level, encouraging strangers going the same direction to meet up in order to share a taxi or an auto-rickshaw. By encouraging users to share something other than a personal car, the app offers a solution to Mumbai’s congested streets.

Many ways to share

Efforts in alternatives to car ownership have taken hold around the world in developed and developing countries alike. Companies like Car2Go or Zipcar offer the chance to drive cars shared with strangers, but not to share rides. In Beijing, the government has tried to reduce the number of cars on the road by simply assigning its citizens different days on which they are allowed to drive. In Washington DC, in response to HOV lanes, strangers carpool by “slugging”—riders line up at an appointed slugging stop, and drivers who need that extra passenger drive by and pick them up. Think of it as controlled hitchhiking for commuters.

Uber, an app which connects its users with independent, user-rated “drivers” makes similar attempts at connecting drivers with riders. Uber operates in cities around the world, but this app focuses more on “riding in style” than saving money and fuel. Consequently, Uber operates in cities where you would expect to find citizens with disposable income and an interest in having the appearance of a “private driver”—Munich, Singapore, and San Francisco among others.

Metershare, which is currently in beta testing in Mumbai, uses similar technology, performing much of the same functions as Uber, but to a very different end. This ridesharing app is geared towards the developing world. Its creators, Rishabh Jhunjhunwala, Nisarg Shah, and Nilesh Dungarwal, designed the free app after experiencing their own frustrations as students dealing with the cost of transportation and India’s congested roads.

New technologies

The app enables users to create and share rides with fellow passengers traveling on the same route. After meeting up, the passengers share a cab or rickshaw ride, and the fare. In order to facilitate this, the app relies on a host of new technologies, including Facebook (for user identification), Google maps (to identify routes), and Google “auto-complete” (to ensure that users are identifying their location using standard terms). After inputting “to” and “from” locations on the map, the app presents users with all existing available rides on the same route. A user can join one of these rides, or create his own.

Nilesh Dungarwal, founder of Metershare, says “the app’s purpose is, in part, to connect riders in order to reduce the amount of traffic on Mumbai’s congested streets.” In addition to offering cheaper fares, the app has particular features which may account for its successful debut in Mumbai: female riders may specify that they only want to rideshare with other women, and users can choose whether they want to take a taxi or an auto-rickshaw.

Apps like Metershare have only been possible within the past few years, as smartphones penetrated the market in India. Mobile phone penetration in India is about 26% right now, according to some estimates, and that includes phones which wouldn’t have the capability to run an “app.” But smartphone use is on the rise. Anticipating, or perhaps spurring this, Google announced that it is going to open one of its flagship “Android Nation” stores in New Delhi later this year. Google has already opened one of these stores in Jakarta, Indonesia, and plans to open more of these stores in India, which are geared specifically towards allowing individuals in developing countries to try the android phones prior to purchase. India had an estimated 70.6 million  3G subscribers in 2012—that’s a 3G penetration of just 6%.

While it is likely that smartphone users are concentrated in cities, and that the percentage of smartphone users is much higher than 6% for cities like Mumbai, smartphone solutions to problems with traffic and pollution will likely be dependent on how quickly smartphones spread.

A growing need

The app’s founders point to obvious advantages of car sharing beyond the reduced fare: reducing road congestion, fuel consumption, and improving air quality. Its common sense that reducing the number of cars on the road is good for all of Mumbai’s citizens, but Nilesh, Rishabh and Nisarg have found an innovative way to help make this happen. The app, which debuted on April 8th, already has 1,000 downloads, but it will need a lot more to make a dent in Mumbai’s streets, which Rishabh Jhunjhunwala pointed out, is “one of the busiest cities in the world.”

A man boards the Janmarg BRT, one of the many advanced bus systems proliferating throughout India. Photo by Meena Kadri.

On Saturday, June 1, Bhopal, India became the most recent city to debut a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, during the trial launch of the first section of a 23 km (14.3 mi) corridor to be fully completed later. Despite complaints of traffic problems during construction, the 6.7 (4 mi) section of Bhopal’s BRT was completed successfully and on time, in part due to strong political leadership, help from experts in BRT construction, and the recent launch of Indore’s successful BRT system.

Bhopal is the capital of Madhya Pradesh in central India, and the second largest city of the state with a population of 1.9 million. Currently, 150 city buses form the primary public transport system in Bhopal, supported by mini-buses and shared auto-rickshaws. Funding for the BRT corridor is provided by the Central Government of India under its flagship JnNURM investment program, and will help city buses bypass traffic congestion, providing faster, more reliable transport for the people of Bhopal. During the trial run on the short section, buses traveled the length of the corridor at an average speed of 12.4 miles per hour, a 27% improvement over the speed of the current city bus service. In short: the new BRT line will leave people with more time to work or spend time with their families.

Under the watchful eye of administrators and planners, buses ran along the 6.7 km stretch from Regional Research Laboratories to Misrod, a southern suburb of Bhopal. The larger 23 km corridor, intended to be the full Phase I of the Bhopal BRT project, will extend from Misrod to Bairagarh, Bhopal’s central train station, and run through the core of the city. This route through the central business district sets Bhopal’s new line apart from most of India’s BRT systems, which are designed primarily to serve the suburbs.

Indore’s BRT, iBus, provides an example

The successful launch of an 11.4 km iBus corridor in Indore, the economic hub of Madhya Pradesh, has played an important role in catalyzing the launch of Bhopal’s BRT line. The inaugural phase of Bhopal’s advanced bus system has been five years in the making, and marks the second BRT system in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

Strong political leadership and expertise

The rapid completion of the 6.7 km section of the BRT demonstrates the advantages of strong political leadership. Despite complaints that construction of the line was causing traffic problems and congestion, BCLL (the city transit management agency) persevered and the project was completed on time. By focusing efforts on the completion of the initial 6.7 km section, BCLL was able to quickly debut the line, and begin trial runs. Within the next three weeks, the section will be fully operational. Meanwhile, the city is already working towards completing infrastructure on a second portion of the corridor.

On the morning of the launch, representatives from EMBARQ India assisted local officials in getting operations off to a smooth start and establishing parameters for data collection, system analysis and improvements. Their expertise in launching BRT systems helped to make the project go smoothly.

With this launch, Bhopal joins the ranks of Indian cities with advanced bus transit. There are currently thirteen cities in India with BRT lines which are either operational or under construction. Eight additional cities are in the planning stage. For India, a country with a growing population and ever-present traffic woes, BRT systems may provide much needed relief.

Ranping Song

This week China launched its first pilot emission trading program. This development is potentially a major marker in China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Shenzhen Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) program will cover some 635 industrial companies from 26 industries. This is the first of seven proposed pilot GHG cap-and-trade schemes in China, which China has been developing since 2011.

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Jonathan Moch

China is attempting to dramatically increase the country’s renewable energy supply by 2015. Recently released data shows that China made progress towards reaching this goal in 2012. China continues to make large investments in renewable energy, with over 80% more investment than the U.S. last year. China remains the country with the world’s most installed wind capacity, and it is neck and neck with the U.S. in terms of installed solar PV capacity.

read more

An old billboard in Peru now draws water out of the air, purifying it into drinking water. Photo by UTEC.

Next Tuesday, the Boston Society of Architects will team with curator/designer Scott Burnham to launch “Reprogramming the City: Opportunities in Urban Infrastructure” an exhibition on creativity in urban design. The exhibition will run from June 25 to September 29, 2013 in Boston’s BSA Space gallery. The exhibition is designed to celebrate cities as centers of innovation and showcase the way that different cities around the world have creatively re-purposed urban design elements to serve new functions.

Burnham, who has over 15 years of experience in urban design across the globe, writes that the exhibition will “offer unique perspectives on how the existing hardware of the city can be reprogrammed to increase its functionality by employing a new ‘software’ of imagination and resourcefulness. It is about designing, developing, and creating with the city, rather than for it”.

The exhibition will feature a mix of videos, photos, models, and architectural renderings of design elements from over 40 cities, all of which have taken obsolete pieces of the built environment and re-imagined them in bold new ways. These three examples of urban ‘reprogramming’ instantly caught our eye here at TheCityFix.

Lima produces drinking water out of thin air

Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) partnered with international advertising agency DraftFCB to turn an old billboard into what is essentially the world’s tallest – and most unusual – well. Peru, a country that gets less than two inches of rain per year, has long struggled to provide clean water to many of its poorer residents. In rapidly growing Lima, this often means that communities on the fringe have had to harvest polluted water from unsafe wells or simply go without.

To address this issue, UTEC capitalized on the fact that Peru has an atmospheric humidity of roughly 98%. To convert that atmospheric moisture into water, the billboard uses a process called reverse osmosis, which purifies the water and stores it in 20 liter tanks. Residents can then access the water through dispensers at ground level. The university reports that the project generated 9,450 liters of water in its first three months. To see it in action, view the video below, produced by UTEC [Spanish].

Umea, Sweden fights seasonal depression with phototherapy

Innovation is not limited to the world’s megacities: small and mid-sized cities are getting creative, too. Umea, Sweden – a university town of about 117,000 residents – is taking unique measures to counteract the long, dark winters that plague the Nordic nation. Energy company Umea Energi installed the phototherapeutic lights at bus stops throughout the city to give residents a boost of energy throughout their day. During the winter, Umea gets roughly five hours of sunlight per day. Phototherapy aims to combat this by projecting light with a small amount of UV radiation to make up for what people miss once the sun sets.

Bus stops throughout the city are equipped with phototheraputic lights. Photo via Umea Energi, by Johan Gunseus.

Hong Kong greens city stairways

Ultra-dense and ultra-hilly, the mountainous terrain of Hong Kong has long posed challenges to urban planners and designers. The result is a network of staircases and escalators that help pedestrians navigate from peak to peak throughout the city. Until recently, these staircases were constructed primarily using concrete, with little thought given to how they might function as public spaces. In order to make these spaces more inviting and livable for the people that use them daily, Hong Kong’s Edge Design Institute created a series of public art installations that act as benches and incorporate plant life at the same time. The installation, which Edge calls the “Cascade”, is made of brightly colored wire mesh, and is woven into the stair railing. Pictures of the finished product (completed in 2006) can be found at the project’s website.

Is there a ‘reprogrammed’ design element in your city? Leave a comment below and tell us about it!

Cyclists ride in Copenhagen, the second most bike-friendly city in the world. Photo by Copenhagenize Design Co.

Last month, Copenhagenize Design Co., a consulting firm specializing in bicycle advocacy, announced their ranking of the 20 most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. Though dominated by European cities, the list has inspired cities around the world to work towards being more cycle-friendly.

The Copenhagenize Index of bicycle-friendly cities uses a system of points, awarded in 13 categories. The categories included the usual suspects, such as bicycle culture (do regular citizens bicycle or only sub-cultures?), bicycle facilities (are there readily accessible bike racks, ramps, space for bicycles on trains and buses?), and traffic calming (what efforts have been made to lower speed limits and calm traffic?). Some of the criteria were surprising: cities earned points based on the political climate regarding urban cycling, the comprehensiveness of a city’s bike share program, and on the ratio of male to female city cyclists. In addition to the points awarded for the thirteen criteria, a substantial amount of bonus points were awarded for “particularly impressive efforts or results.”

These bonus points helped some new cities to make their way on to the list. Rio de Janeiro, which is ranked twelfth, gained bonus points for “particularly innovative planning projects, social acceptance, and political will.” Seville, Spain also benefited greatly from the bonus points, ranking fourth on the list in part because of an 80 km bike path which was completed in one year.

Seville is a good example of a country which has worked hard in the past few years to improve its bicycle-friendliness. Since 2006, the bicycle’s share of transportation in Seville has increased from .5% to 7%– a striking increase. This is accounted for, in part, by the city’s successful new smartbike bike-sharing system.

Despite bonus points for quick action and innovative thinking, strongholds of bicycle-friendliness- like Amsterdam and Copenhagen- remained at the top of the list. In their press release, Copenhagenize acknowledged that these cities “coasted to their placements based on status quo more than innovative thinking [or] the eagerness to move forward that we see in other cities.” Obviously, maintaining a bicycle-friendly city is important work, but the newcomers to the list are more exciting. “The emerging bicycle cities,” wrote Copenhagenize, “are not just transforming their own urban landscape; they are inspiring cities around the world in showing what is possible in a short amount of time. These are the visionaries.”

In an interview with The Atlantic, Mikael Colville-Anderson, CEO of Copenhagenize explained the importance of these Emerging Bicycle Cities: “The cities that are moving fast are the ones who are keeping bicycle users safe and encouraging them to ride,” says Colville-Andersen. “Political will is important, but it’s the planners and engineers who need to google ‘Cycle Track Best Practice’ and start presenting these ideas at meetings.”

The list has almost no representatives from developing countries. But many developing cities are working hard to be competitive the next time such a list is released. In Turkey, where none of the cities were even indexed, let alone ranked in the top twenty, efforts to increase bicycle-friendliness continue. Turkey’s ministry of Environment and Urban Planning recently announced that it has allocated the equivalent of 1.5 million USD towards improving bike paths throughout Turkey. Istanbul’s Metropolitan Municipal Environmental Master Plan calls for the construction of at least 1,000 km of bike path.

Efforts like these are happening in developing countries around the world as “the renaissance of the bicycle continues unabated.” Still, there is much to be done before these developing countries can compete with Denmark, France, and cities throughout Europe according to Copenhagenize’s current metrics. Perhaps there is a need for a different list, which emphasizes innovation and recent progress more heavily. It could be called, “The World’s Newest Bicycle Friendly Cities.”

The current ranking is the second list published by Copenhagenize. The first was published in 2011.

This post was originally published in Turkish by Esra Suel for TheCityFixTurkiye. To read the original, visit http://thecityfixturkiye.com/2013-copenhagenize-bisiklet-dostu-kentler-endeksi/.

Users wait to board the crowded Metrobus in Mexico City. Photo by EMBARQ Mexico.

Increasing the use of public transport is a hot topic in the urban transportation world, and improving the experience of riding bus rapid transit and metro systems seems like a good way to do so. But it is not always clear which improvements are most desired by the riders themselves. Users often complain about being excluded from the decision making process or feel that their concerns are not being addressed.

Are planners and users on the same page about how best to improve public transit? To find out, I decided to conduct a little experiment. The idea was simple: ask regular BRT users and experts one question: If you could change 3 things about your BRT system, what would those be?

Experts and users alike highlighted three key areas in which they would like to see improvements: the timing of the buses, the payment system for riders, and the physical comfort of the experience.

Knowing when the bus comes

Bus frequency appears to be a recurrent problem for users. “It is very common to see 5 Metro buses passing one after another, and therefore they would be half-empty. Sometimes, however, it takes up to 20 minutes until one passes” says Antonio Olvera, from Mexico City. Experts, like Juan Carlos Muñoz from the BRT Excellence Center in Santiago, Chile are aware of this concern. Says Muñoz, “there should be a control scheme that provides reliability to the trips.” Efforts to solve this problem include apps such as iTransantiago, which provides BRT users in Santiago with timely information about bus arrivals. The LA Metro system provides another solution: a 15-minute map showing buses that arrive in less than a quarter of an hour. Still, the need for regular, predictable arrivals will eventually need to be met.

The need for a more equitable payment system

“I would like to add an annual or monthly payment system, just like the ones in Europe” says Ana Mendez from Lima, Perú. Garrone Reck, technical director of Logitrans Consulting in Curitiba, Brazil, expanded on the idea: “There is a need for a policy of discount in the frequent users tariffs. Lower tariffs in the non-peak times could attract more passengers during the idle times, and serve as incentive for time schedules migration, adding flexibility” to the system. Latin American agencies have had a hard time determining reasonable prices that please both the operators and the users of public transit systems. Some transportation experts believe this is linked with the structure of national financing systems for public transport agencies. Most transport agencies in Latin America run under a principle of self-sustainability, meaning they receive very limited subsidies from the government, if any, once they start operating.

Making buses more comfortable

There is a pressing need to increase the comfort level of the buses. All of the interviewees, both experts and non-experts, spoke of lower occupancy rates, and therefore more space. Many of the suggestions from users addressed similar issues of comfort, including enlarging popular stations, and increasing both the number of buses and the size of each bus. Cities like Lima are already implementing these changes, making improvements to stations such as Angamos by the end of the year.  Some other cities have turned  to bi-articulated buses to meet demand for more space, as in Curitiba, Bogotá and São Paulo, but many other cities still don’t have them. Making buses more comfortable helps people enjoy their commute, and discourages the use of alternative, individualized methods of transport.

Users and experts alike not only spoke of comfort, but the importance of giving the buses a modern feel. Some of the suggestions centered around improvements to lighting, protection from the sun, and even providing WiFi.

Among planners and users there is a common desire to improve BRT  timelines, payment system, and comfort. Users can be sure their thoughts are being heard and their needs are being advocated for by the transport experts in Latin America. SIBRT and EMBARQ Brazil are working on a satisfaction survey to make sure that users can continue to contribute their feedback.

Thank you to Ana Mendez, Antonio Olvera, Garrone Reck (LOGITRANS), Juan Carlos Muñoz (ALC-BRT) , and SIBRT for their contributions to this post.

Two cities in Brazil have turned to the internet to improve cyclist safety. Photo by Fora do Eixo.

One of the best modes of transport for a sustainable world – one that offers health benefits, increased mobility, and reduces pollution – is too often sidelined, ignored, or downright dangerous to ride. Of course, we’re referring to the bicycle.

While traditional solutions to bicycle safety issues have focused on better road design and changes to the built environment, a few Brazilian cities have found another way to increase bicycle safety: the Internet. Collaborative websites for the cities of Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro have sprung up to help protect cyclists on the road by providing crowd sourced, up-to-the-minute data and alerts.

Bike Crimes Porto Alegre

Lucas Panitz, a geographer and researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, is the creator and designer of  “Bike Crimes POA”, a collaborative tool that allows users in Porto Alegre to report road hazards, irregularities, bike thefts, and other threats to cycling safety.

Among Bike Crimes’ many features is a tool which allows users to receive immediate alerts every time a report is filed within 20 kilometers of locations they specify.

In a recent interview, Panitz described how this tool not only helps users, but will help planners gather important data as well. “It is possible to know where the accidents happen and at what time of day they occur most,” he explained, “It also helps us to know where there are problems on the bike paths and where there is the most risk for cyclists.”

Ciclista na Pista

Panitz helped to design a similar system for the city of Rio de Janeiro. This platform, called Ciclista Na Pista  (“Cyclist on the Track,”) was developed in partnership with geographer Carla Hirt, a native carioca. The idea is the same: to contribute to greater safety for bicyclists – in real time – through online reports and alerts. Both Bike Crimes and Ciclista na Pista take advantage of recent advances in open source mapping technologies and platforms, and are free to use and maintain. Both are downloadable as an app for iPhone or Android.

This post was originally published in Portuguese by Luisa Zottis for TheCityFixBrasil. To read the original, visit http://thecityfixbrasil.com/2013/06/12/plataformas-online-pela-seguranca-sobre-duas-rodas/.

Jaime Lerner is the father of Curitiba’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system and believes car culture will soon be a thing of the past. Photo by Thomas Locke Hobbs.

According to Jaime Lerner, car exhaust is the new second-hand smoke. The visionary architect, urban planner, and former mayor of Curitiba has long been outspoken about the growing social stigma around private vehicle usage. In fact, Lerner predicts that the private car will soon become a societal nuisance on par with smoking in public: “You can use it”, he says, “but people will be annoyed by you”. In a speech at last week’s III Congress: SIBRT Best Practices in Latin America, Lerner doubled down on this claim, stating that “there is no future for cities if they depend only on cars”.

Despite Lerner’s certainty, private vehicle ownership in Brazil has steadily increased in past years. According to the World Bank, there are currently 209 private vehicles per 1,000 people in Brazil, up from 164 ten years ago. Over the same period, demand for public transport has fallen 33% from 60 million passengers per day to 40 million. So what makes Lerner so confident that private vehicles will soon be shunned in favor of public transport? According to him, he’s got three main allies in the fight against car culture: increased congestion, environmental awareness, and high quality public transport.

Traffic and congestion

Imagine standing in a 50 square meter room with one person smoking a cigarette. Now imagine standing in that same room with 50 people all crammed in tight together, all smoking cigarettes, and you can’t leave. For Lerner, that might as well be the experience of being stuck in traffic: jammed in with no escape, forced to steadily breathe in exhaust fumes. But he predicts that the public backlash against increasing traffic is not far off. Though car ownership rates in Curitiba are higher than the national average, the Transportation Research Board reports that 70% of commuters there use public transport as their primary mode of transportation. The next step, says Lerner, is that these commuters won’t even buy cars in the first place. If Brazil and other cities can deliver on Lerner’s idealized view that transport users “shouldn’t have to wait more than a minute” to catch their bus or train, this shift may be happening sooner rather than later.

Environmental solidarity and the sustainable cities movement

Coupled with the everyday response to frustrating traffic and congestion is a growing sense of individual environmental responsibility. Lerner posits that there are three main issues facing cities and citizens as they interact in the world: “mobility, sustainability, and tolerance”. In order to confront these challenges, it is “crucial to have solidarity”, he says. Brazil’s environmental movement, which Lerner is credited with catalyzing, is responsible for making citizens more aware of the negative impacts of private vehicle use – poor air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, the decline of public space, and overconsumption of natural resources to name a few. According to Lerner, as long as the movement maintains solidarity, this awareness will soon translate into a shift away from private vehicle use.

Responsive and high-quality public transport

Perhaps the most crucial element of Lerner’s strategy to dismantle car culture is his goal to significantly increase the quality and responsiveness of public transport systems. Lerner conceives of a world in which transport and urbanism are inherently integrated – where transport systems are the backbone of sustainable, accessible cities. For that to happen, public transport can’t just be an option, it has to be the best option. That’s why Lerner currently serves as the honorary president of SIBRT – the association of Latin American Integrated Transport Systems and BRT – an organization dedicated to promoting best practices in bus rapid transit (BRT) and integrated transport systems, which Lerner pioneered. A quality user experience, say Lerner and SIBRT, is the key needed to coax society out of the car and into the metros, buses, and bike lanes of today’s sustainable cities.

No matter the issue, for Jaime Lerner, timing and expansive thinking are key: “Sometimes we have good ideas, but we need to start to innovate. We have to be quick in in order to avoid our own bureaucracy. … We often think in terms of problems, but what is our dream?”

Thank you to Anais Cisneros, Ryan Schleeter (EMBARQ) and Fagner Glinski (SIBRT) for their contributions to this post.

An elderly couple crosses the street hand in hand. Photo by garryknight.

Inspired by the article The Next Big Infrastructure Crisis? Age-Proofing Our Streets from The Atlantic Cities

Think back to the last time you helped an elderly person cross the street. In most cases, you’ll remember making it up and over the opposite curb with just seconds to spare before the wall of rumbling oncoming traffic got their green go-ahead signal. Now, as this memory dawns on you, have you ever stopped to think about why this always seems to happen? Well, there’s a reason.

Our Streets are Designed for Younger Legs

For a long time, it’s been assumed that people cross the street at a pace of about 4 feet per second. Crosswalks are timed using this number. However, most 80-year old people don’t move at that pace anymore. In fact, a better crosswalk speed would be one closer to 3 feet per second.

A few decades ago, this simply wasn’t something that had to be worried about. In the 1960’s, the majority of people didn’t live past 70, or 75. Today, the vast majority of the baby boom generation will age well into their 70’s and beyond. Between now and 2031, there will be 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, by which point every one in five people living in America will be older than 65. As these generations age, the demographics of entire cities will age with them.

Working to Keep Elderly Pedestrians Safe

When organizations work toward protecting vulnerable road users, their efforts benefit the elderly even if the changes weren’t developed specifically with them in mind. Since the elderly are one of the most vulnerable groups of road users, any change that is made to positively impact pedestrian safety will also automatically mean a positive change for elderly pedestrians.

A one second difference in the timer of a crosswalk might seem small, or even insignificant, but it’s become only one small piece in a much larger and deep-rooted issue. Are there benches available to stop and catch your breath? Is there a cut in the curb for a walker? Age-proofing our cities is likely to prove quite the challenge to urban design, and unfortunately in most places we’re incredibly ill-prepared.

The most decline is found in the “oldest of the old,” who don’t tend to leave their homes as often as younger people. When a bank or supermarket closes in a neighborhood, they’re the population that is affected. This has strong implications for future urban planning.

However, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab and the AARP, a nonprofit membership for people age 50 and over that is dedicated to enhancing quality of life as people age, have been able to give us a better insight and understanding than we ever have before of how elderly people get around and exactly what it is they might need. “Walking audits” of individual streets and intersections are conducted by the AARP, traveling on crutches and walkers to document uneven sidewalks or missing bus benches. The AgeLab takes it a step further, with AGNES, its Age Gain Now Empathy System suit that allows a nimble 20-something body to mimic that of someone closer to 75, and experience the strength, mobility and vision loss that comes with it.

A Benefit for One is A Benefit for All

With the data and findings from research such as this, cities can take steps toward creating more age-friendly environments for their rapidly aging populations. These changes would be beneficial to all residents, not just the elderly. Think about a curb cut-out, for example. Everyone uses it, not just people with strollers or wheelchairs. The same concept would transfer to covered bus stops, tree-lined streets, well-lit subway entrances and clearer road signs. Did you know Times Roman style is easier to read than Sans Serif?

Type face style is only one example of how a change to improve quality for one group would in fact improve quality for all groups. Taking the changing world and its demographics into consideration when planning our urban areas, and tweaking what already exists, is beneficial to everyone in the long run. After all, eventually we’ll all be old one day and find that these seemingly small issues aren’t so small to us anymore.

A family navigates the streets of Tehran, Iran’s capital city. Photo by kamshots.

Located in central Asia, with the Caspian Sea forming its northern border and the Persian Gulf to the south, Iran has been a crossroads of human civilization and transport for centuries. Soaring peaks, central basins, vast expanses of desert – not to mention susceptibility to earthquakes – have demanded ambition and ingenuity from history’s urban planners and transport authorities, who engineered such marvels as the capital city of Susa, over 6,400 years old and one of the world’s oldest urban centers; the  5th century BCE Persian Royal Road – capable of carrying a rider 1,500 miles [2,400 km] across the empire in nine days, rather than the usual 3 months required; the famed Silk Road – a trade network already over 1,200 years old by the time Marco Polo embarked upon it in the late-13th century CE.

In more recent years, Iran’s share of its population living in cities has more than doubled, growing from 28% of the nation’s total population in 1950 to 71% in 2009. This number is expected to reach 86% by the year 2050. Iranian transport experts Norman Doege and Arman Fathejalali explain the implications of this trend:

This rapid and uncontrolled urbanization of the last decades caused huge challenges for cities. Specifically environmental problems, high energy consumption and CO2 emissions, informal settlements, urban poverty, growing transport demands, and a lack of infrastructure. Moreover, the negative effects of the last decades’ car-oriented planning activities are now becoming obvious: high fatality rates, air and noise pollution, massive energy consumption, social and economic exclusion, accessibility issues, low density and segregated settlement patterns, and, quite often, deficient public transport systems.

Yet, despite these challenges, the the 8.2 million inhabitants of Tehran, Iran’s capital city, have witnessed stunning growth in sustainable transport infrastructure. Over time and with great effort, Tehran has transformed itself into an example of sustainable transport. Here are three ways the city made it happen.

1. Can you spare 10 cents?

A trip of any distance on the Tehran Metro will set you back only 1,000 Iranian Rials (about USD$0.10). That beats out the cheapest metro trips in Dehli, India (USD$0.15); Caracas, Venezuela ($0.24); and Mexico City ($0.23). Also, did we mention that seniors ride free? The equitability of the Tehran Metro is reflected in the nearly 2 million passengers that use it every day, and the 459 million riders yearly.

A ride on the city bus, meanwhile, costs around 200 Rials (USD$0.02), although Lonely Planet cautions non-Farsi speaking travelers that, “buses never show their destinations in English and numbering is inconsistent.” Most travelers, however, are pointed in the right direction by bus drivers and station managers.

2. Natural gas-powered

Iran leads the world in having the largest fleet of natural gas-powered vehicles on its roads – currently numbering around 2.86 million. The number of natural gas fueling stations is predicted to increase to more than 3,000 in 2013. While this may seem odd for an oil-rich nation which produces over 4.23 million barrels of oil per day and sits atop the world’s 5th largest oil reserves, Iran has very few domestic refineries to turn crude oil into gasoline or diesel. Moreover, this OPEC giant also happens to contain the world’s second largest proved reserves of natural gas, after Russia. With international sanctions driving up oil prices, Tehran commuters like Sasan Ahmadi, who own natural gas vehicles, can still get to work on less than a penny (USD$0.01) per mile under current government subsidies.

Key policy drivers, explains the Natural Gas Vehicle Association, “ are much the same [in Iran] as elsewhere in the world – economic savings and energy security with environmental gains providing an additional fringe benefit.”

3. International recognition

The city of Tehran came in as a runner-up at the 2011 Sustainable Transport Awards, organized by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP). In terms of transport policy, the city of Tehran has set itself apart from its peers in the region, implementing aggressive traffic-control policies and promoting the use of public transport modes, such as bus rapid transit, metro, and the MetroBike bike-sharing system, which debuted in 2009.

According to the award citation:

“Tehran is also one of the few cities in the world to implement a congestion charge. Their congestion charging system builds on what had been a “restricted zone” in central Tehran. In July 2010, Tehran instituted a congestion charging system, using camera-based license plate recognition technology to monitor and enforce. Drivers are required to buy a pass (available annually, weekly or daily) in order to enter the charging zone. Exemptions are made for emergency vehicles, diplomatic vehicles, public vehicles including buses and taxis.”

Since then, the city has continued to improve its transport infrastructure, expanding its bus rapid transit (BRT) system coverage and integrating fare systems between bus and rail services. Which leaves TheCityFix wondering, what else don’t we know about sustainable transport in Iran?

Iranian natives and world travelers: do you know something we don’t? Leave us a comment and start the conversation!

By Catherine Easton, Natalya Lozovaya, Peter Veit

(Original article posted on WRI Insights on June 13, 2013: http://insights.wri.org/news/2013/06/ending-resource-curse-c...)

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, took a significant step toward promoting transparency and reducing global poverty. He announced yesterday that Canada will implement mandatory reporting requirements for Canadian extractive companies operating both in-country and abroad.

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Melanie Hart

This past weekend the White House announced the signing of a new agreement between the United States and China on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are highly potent greenhouse gases commonly used in air-conditioning units and refrigerators.

This new agreement is very big news.

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Trevor Houser

China’s 12th Five Year Plan includes an array of energy targets that it hopes to achieve by 2015. The targets, such as increasing the share of non-fossil energy to 11.4% of the total energy supply and cutting the economy’s carbon intensity by 17% by 2015, are part of a larger plan for China to reach a 40-45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020 relative to 2005 levels. ChinaFAQs expert Trevor Houser has crunched the numbers provided by China’s National Bureau of Statistics and come up with a report card on the country’s progress towards achieving its climate and energy goals.

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2013 STA winner Mexico City impressed the committee with its extensive BRT system, Metrobús. Photo by ITDP.

EMBARQ, together with the rest of the Sustainable Transport Award (STA) Committee, invites you to nominate your city for the 10th Annual Sustainable Transport Award. Nominations open on Monday June 17th and will be accepted online until September 13th, 2013. More info and nomination form here.

The award

Established in 2005, the Sustainable Transport Award recognizes profound leadership and vision in sustainable transportation and urban livability, and is presented to a city each January for achievements in the preceding year. Nominations are accepted from any interested parties, including government, non-profit/NGOs, community groups, academic institutions, who have a working knowledge of the city’s projects and can provide verifiable data and contact information for the city.

The award is given each year to a city or major jurisdiction that has is implementing innovative transportation strategies. These strategies should improve mobility for all residents, reduce transportation greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and improve safety and access for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The selection committee

The STA Committee includes the most respected experts and organizations working internationally on sustainable transportation. Committee members are:

• Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)

• EMBARQ at the World Resources Institute

• GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)

• Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Center (CAI-Asia)

• Transportation Research Board Committee on Transportation in Developing Countries

• Clean Air Institute for Latin America

• United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD)

• Transport Research Laboratory

The award winner and honorable mentions will officially be announced at an evening reception at the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Conference in January 2014. Finalists will be notified by November 2013.

Last year’s winner

Last year’s winner, Mexico City, implemented many projects in 2012 that have improved livability, mobility, and quality of life for its citizens, making the Mexican capital a best practice for Latin America. The city expanded its BRT system, Metrobus, piloted a comprehensive on-street parking reform program (ecoParq), expanded its successful public bike system (Ecobici), and revitalized public spaces such as Alameda Central and Plaza Tlaxcoaque.

For more details on the Sustainable Transport Awards, and to nominate your city or any city, visit staward.org, or contact Jemilah Magnusson, Communications Manager at ITDP.