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From vehicles to people

Ensuring democratic access to the territory for the majority of the population, using innovative mobility tools that make it possible to overcome the dependence on private vehicles in favour of public transport. This is the main goal of those who today have the responsibility of remodelling cities, explains One Works Transport Planner, Ana Paez

Let me begin by asking what you think the future of mobility will be? Now if you were born in my generation, the 80’s, probably in your mind it looked like the flying vehicles of Back to The Future, or if you belong to Z Generation, it may look something more like the Hyperloop. In reality, we know that the first option ventures into a world of technology that, although fascinating, is also volatile and uncertain. For governments it may be hard to justify the risks of investing public funds in solutions whose success cannot be measured today, and later we look deeper into the steps taken in the fields of MaaS, as well as, a vast array of driverless technologies which may result in new modes of transport in the future.

The second option instead prioritizes speed rather than connectivity and we know that within urban fabrics this results in segregation. One thing they both have in common is that even if successful implementation was carried out, the capacity of these systems is very low and implementation could be very expensive. Resulting in a system that transports the few who can afford it. Instead, we should keep in mind that technology and innovation within the transport field should be in the service of a greater purpose, and by this, I mean ensuring democratic access to the territory for the majority of the population.

For this to happen, I believe we need to change our approach. The traditional approach to transport engineering was a car-centered model in which the focus was on moving vehicles by granting capacities and speeds through the implementation of infrastructural projects, which were often short sighted rather than being part of a comprehensive long-term strategy. The focus of transport planning should instead shift from planning traffic to planning mobility & accessibility, from vehicles to people. We are now focused on granting accessibility and raising quality of life through a comprehensive planning process that is not only interdisciplinary, but that also involves citizens through participatory design and takes into account socio-economic components. This new model has the potential to re-shape our cities supported by a context sensitive planning process. In which main objectives are: better connecting people, making places more accessible, and ultimately enhancing quality of life in communities around the globe.

 

The focus of transport planning should shift from planning traffic to planning mobility & accessibility, from vehicles to people
Ana Paez
One Works Transport Planner

Placing the importance of ensuring democratic accessibility and the willingness to change approach at the center of future developments may bring you to pose the following question: ‘in which kind of territory may these two components come together to have the greatest positive impact?’ The answer, I believe, lays within the territories of the informal city. This is an issue that I personally know very well being born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. The capital city has a declared population of over 2 million people, but an estimated population that could be as high as twice that figure, and an outstanding 60% residing within informal settlements. To make matters worse, decades of transport planning focused on building infrastructures to ensure capacities for private vehicles have risen barriers between the formal and the informal city, in the form of highways.

The paradox of this story is that most informal dwellers work within the formal city and struggle daily to gain access to job opportunities. So, in the future do we want to go on planning for barriers or is it time we start planning for links? I personally believe that we should plan for a future in which accessibility is granted so that every individual has equable opportunity to reach their full potentials regardless of their social background or race. Keeping the future we would like in mind, lets instead look at what is happening in the world today. In the last decades population growth has been mirrored by a relentless increase in motored vehicles. Today there are 1 billion cars on the road and although European and American markets have remained steady, we see that within the developing world car sales keep rising dramatically. This is partially due to the fact that in many of these countries’ household incomes are rising in cities that have not been provided adequate mobility solutions, and thus they rely on their ‘own means’ which translates to private vehicle increase. If business went on as usual, developing countries could potentially reach the motorization index of the western world.

To make matters worse, decades of transport planning focused on building infrastructures to ensure capacities for private vehicles have risen barriers between the formal and the informal city, in the form of highways

As a result, if trends are not reverted, we could soon find ourselves facing the largest wave of motorization in history. In order to prevent this catastrophic scenario, there needs to be global shift of mind, in which citizens worldwide go from private vehicle dependency on to public and sustainable active modes of transport. But for this to happen, it is up to us as transport planners to pave the way. And we are doing so, not only by changing our approach but also by supporting it with ‘Data’.

Geographic mobility data, such as human and vehicle movements, have become increasingly available due to location-aware technologies. But Data can be much more than an abstract figure meant to inform economic feasibility and overall system optimizations. When imbedded in a comprehensive approach, Data can give us key information into people’s daily life and the constraints they face when moving through the city grid. It can inform a finer planning process that steps away from a detached transport engineering approach to get closer to real life dynamics. In doing so, it enables us as mobility planners by giving us the necessary insights into a population’s movements and desires, so that truly effective mass transit can be implemented.

There needs to be global shift of mind, in which citizens worldwide go from private vehicle dependency on to public and sustainable active modes of transport
Caracas case

Petare Slum located in Caracas, Venezuela, is the largest slum settlement on the capital, today home to over 1.2 million people. It is one of the clearest examples of urban tissue division between the formal and informal fabrics. The divisor line is constituted by the highway Francisco Fajardo that cuts through the east of the city. This represents a physical barrier that segregates the slumsʼ population by separating it from the formal tissue. These physical characteristics of the place worsen problems of social character by relegating a part of the population to an improvised urban tissue without planned mobility or services, in general precarious life conditions. The analysis of occupied vs free areas of the current condition developed into an urban proposal, composed of a series of strategies who’s objective is the healing of urban spaces, and the provision of services within them while promoting community interaction and organization through participatory design.

Pedestrian crossings on Main Av. Petare-Guarenas, Caracas
Digitalization in Nairobi

In 2012, the Digital Matatus Project was launched as a collaboration between Kenyan and American universities, supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. It focused on capturing matatu transit data for Nairobi, developing mobile routing applications, and designing a new transit map for the city, using cellphone technology. Matatus are privately owned mini-buses in Nairobi, Kenya, which are very popular because they are affordable and convenient, thus over 70% of Nairobi’s population uses matatus as a form of transport. However, the matatus system has numerous challenges typical of an informal transit system: lack of access to timetables, routes, and stops. The project aimed to address the challenge that transit data for matatus a core part of Nairobi’s transportation system was inaccessible, inconsistent, and unreliable. The objective was to solve these problems using digitization, as well as provide a resource to the city government for improved planning (for example, the map was used to help guide the development of a bus rapid transit system for Nairobi). To collect the data, students from the University of Nairobi rode all of the matatu routes using an app to collect data points such as routes, stops, and visual notations (signs and shelters). Once the data was collected, the team held workshops convening various stakeholders in Nairobi’s transport sector to gain better insight for reading the GPS data collected through the app. The data then needed to be cleaned and formatted to General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)—a common format for public transportation schedules—so that it could be used more easily with mapping tools. The team worked with a group of transit specialists and advocates to develop a modified, flexible GTFS standard that could work for transit systems with a large amount of informal transit, like Nairobi. The data was then processed according to the new GTFS standards and released in the form of a paper map and transit apps. The City of Nairobi has recognized the importance of the digitization process and is using this data to create a new trip planning tool for the city.

Learning from the success story of Nairobi, several other cities in Africa are planning to map their informal transit sector as well (Source: ‘Best practices for improving performance: data-driven transportation’, published by the Rocky Mountain Institute).

By Ana Cecilia Paez (from Domus Air n.5)

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