Podcast: The Indian Transportation Context

This week I’m chatting with Akshay Mani, a sustainable transportation planner who has worked for Cambridge Systematics in the United States and the World Resources Institute’s EMBARQ program in India. Akshay joined us from Chennai to talk about transportation and the growth of Indian cities.

Monday Night Notes

Have you ever had a picnic on the grass on a major bridge?
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Officials in India are calling for high rises. I'm surprised they didn't go up before.
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Businesses in the UK are starting to use carshare companies instead of keeping their own fleets.
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Integrating BRT with a Metro should be a no brainer.
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I can see why folks in East LA wanted a subway. Its a dense area and it would have been nice. But whining about it and getting upset right before it opens seems a bit lame to me.
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Lots of regulation of safety on commuter rail are causing a strain.

Million Per Metro

Pinning good transit to a metro population level seems like a good idea to me. In India, regions of 1M or more population will now be eligible for 50% federal funding for a metro system if the locals paid the other half. Here in the United States, regions are lucky to get 50% funding for one commuter or light rail line. I think we should go even lower. A region of 750,000 or more should start construction so by the time that other 250,000 moved in they would have options as to where to live along the newly constructed lines.

Imagine if we had metro subways in all of our metro areas over 1 million people as a base for greater transit improvements. Considering between 1990 and 2005 about 45% of new transit trips were made on metro subway systems, it stands to reason that the construction of these networks connecting the major employment and population centers in a regions core will dramatically increase transit ridership. Look what has happened in Washington DC over the last 40 years or so. That is something we should emulate and India gives us a view into how to do it. Where's that type of vision for America?

Crushload to Death

Check out the video of crush loaded Indian Railways at the City Fix. It's no wonder more people die on Indian Rails than anywhere else in the world.

Yearly more than 3,500 people die on the Mumbai suburban railway track due to unsafe riding on trains or trespassing on railway tracks.
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Central and Western Railway was forced to release under the Right to Information Act that at least 20,706 people have died in the last five years; an average of 10 each day. The request was filed by Mumbai activist Chetan Kothari.

Obviously we wouldn't tolerate that here, unless it was in cars.

Don't Lecture If You Can't Change Yourself

In an article on the new Indian auto sensation, Projjal Dutta calls for the United States to and other countries around the world to invest more in transit to change the future land use patterns that we know will result from all the automobiling that is in front of the Tata Nano. But he calls out the government for just doing the same as it always has in the stimulus package at 80/20.

As with many other issues, the world will expect America's "talk"--say, urging China and India not to become auto-centric--to be accompanied by "walk," at home. That, unfortunately, despite early glimmers of hope, is not happening. The stimulus bill has allocated about 8 billion dollars to transit, compared with 30 billion to highways. This is roughly in keeping with the traditional 80/20 split of federal transportation funds that have been enshrined since the Eisenhower days.

I agree. We can't just lecture other countries about what they should do when we continue to fund the same levels we always have. How are we supposed to solve the problems in the world if we can't lead by example.

The president's stimulus package has put dollar commitments behind promises about promoting green-jobs and increasing renewable energy generation capacity of the U.S. Yet, despite the concern and awareness within the administration, American lifestyles are inextricably linked to very high automobile usage. Until that bull is taken by the horns, climate change cannot be properly confronted.

This is why I keep harping on the folks at SF city hall in the Emerald Aristocracy. Fake green and gizmo green is not leading by example, its just delaying the inevitable. Check out the Forbes article, it's a good read.