Global Transport Issues
Volume 4, Issue 2, September 1996
In this issue:
This newsletter draws attention to transport issues and challenges in both North and South which, though they vary in circumstance and intensity, highlight common underlying causes. The value of networking becomes more apparent when it is realized that problems such as pollution, isolation and discrimination against rural people's transport needs are areas where we must all learn from each other to find solutions.
From time to time, people in the wealthy countries of the world worry about what would happen if everyone in the world were to enjoy their material standard of living. A few years ago this concern focused on refrigerators and the threat posed to the ozone layer by the CFCs they contained. Now it is cars.
Since 1950 the world's car population has increased 10-fold to almost 500 million. Over the same period the number of people who do not own cars has doubled - from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. The car ownership growth rates are now highest in the poorest countries; China's car population is estimated to be doubling every three or four years. And everywhere politicians are urging more. Where will it end?
The UN medium projection for the world population in 2025 is 8.5 billion. The United States now (1993) has 194.6 million motor vehicles of all descriptions (755 per 1000 population). Should the whole world succeed in catching up with the United States, by 2025 there would be 6.4 billion motor vehicles. London parking meters are 6 meters apart, allowing 167 vehicles per kilometre parked end to end. Thus 6.4 billion vehicles parked end to end would stretch 40 million kilometres. If stationary they could be accommodated on a motorway around the equator 1000 lanes wide. This scenario does not of course represent the global upper limit to the growth of car dependence; the car population of the United States is still growing.
There are environmental reasons for attempting to dissuade the South from trying to achieve North American levels of motorization. If the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are right, it would accelerate global warming - the impacts of which would bear much more heavily on the poor than the rich. One obvious difficulty with this argument is that wealth and car ownership are highly correlated. By the time a nation achieves American levels of car ownership, it is likely to be close to American levels of income. The poor are never likely to be persuaded by the argument that they must remain poor because the global environment could not stand the strain of their becoming wealthy - especially if the argument comes from a country such as Britain which is still planning to double its level of car dependence.
But there is, I believe, a compelling argument why countries which currently enjoy a low level of car dependence should not seek to emulate our example. In 1950 the average Briton travelled about 5 miles a day. Now the number is 25 miles a day, and is forecast to rise to 60 miles a day by 2025. The average figure for hundreds of millions of people in poor countries is less than a mile. What would happen if all were to catch up? The symptoms of social pathology now manifest in highly mobile societies permit a good guess.
It would be a polarized world. About a third of the world's population will never be old enough or fit enough to drive - they will be too young, too old, too nervous, too short-sighted, too disabled or otherwise disqualified. Their disadvantage will increase as car dependence increases. They would become dependent for their mobility on the withered remains of public transport or the good will of car owners.
The world would become one continuous suburb. The traditional city, built for people not cars, could not exist.
Street life would disappear. The spread-out scale suited to cars would defeat pedestrians, and traffic would make cycling too dangerous. There would be no local shops to walk to.
Geographical communities would be drained of their social content and left with CCTV and 'neighbourhood-watch' to guard their possessions.
Travel opportunities would be destroyed. The cultural and linguistic diversity in the world –the experience of which provides the motivation for much travel– would be obliterated by the rising tide of tourism.
Fragile ecosystems would be destroyed. Wilderness retreats with access to it. The provision of parking and road space for more than ten times as many motor vehicles would require paving much more of the world.
Even if technical fixes could be found for all the environmental problems of extreme car dependence, the result would still be a societal disaster.
John Adams is a reader in geography at University College London. Based on 'Can Technology Save Us?', published in the June 1996 issue of World Transport Policy and Practice.
A call for participation in an inter-regional research programme...
Women and men have differential access to and use different types of transport (e.g. women use donkeys and men, bicycles). They frequent different paths or tracks and require transport services at different times. Development of rural infrastructure also has differential impacts on the transport burden of women and men. (See Project effectiveness –women carry the load in Forum News 4.1.)
The Forum Secretariat proposes to conduct a research programme with the objective of developing an understanding of the impact of transport and 'non-transport' interventions on the gender allocation of the transport burden.
The programme will culminate in two workshops –one in Asia and one in Africa– in the third quarter of 1997. The outcome of the workshops will be practical guidelines for incorporating gender concerns into the planning, design and implementation of rural accessibility interventions.
The programme will also encourage national organizations to set up country workshops for women's groups. These will feed the information coming from the research to the groups, and encourage them to campaign for better transport.
There will be a researchers' meeting held in each region early in 1997. The case studies developed by researchers will generate the key issues for discusssion at the workshops.
The Forum Secretariat would like to hear from organizations and individuals in Asia and Africa who are interested in participating, and submitting papers.
For more details please write to the Forum Secretariat.
The Malawi National Forum Group met on 1 March 1996 and elected a committee. The group comprises about 15 members from both government and non-government organizations. Jones Nyasulu was elected as Chairman. The group would like to work in close liaison with other Forum groups. It faces the immediate task of working out terms of reference and a work plan. A national transport policy is being drafted and a paper on rural transport policy has been written to supplement it. The challenge facing the NFG is to see that key elements from the rural transport policy are included in the main document and linked to overall national development plans.
Contact: Mr Jones Nyasulu, Economic Planning and Development, PO Box 30136, Lilongwe 3, Malawi. Fax: 782-224.
A n initial meeting of interested people from government and non-government organizations took place on June 4, 1996. It was agreed that the Local Government Engineering Department would take the lead in convening meetings. The PRIP Trust, as a keen supporter of forums and network initiatives, showed keenness to participate in and support the NFG. The LGED will convene a larger meeting at the end of July.
Contact: Q.I. Siddique, Chief Engineer, Local Government Engineering Dept., 5/7 Lalmatia, Block-B, Dhaka 1207.
The Sri Lanka Forum Group's initiative in stimulating a pilot community bus scheme has resulted in the community collecting (from their own resources) a third of the cost of the bus. The NFG will work with the community to create awareness of alternative modes of transport, to develop an organizational framework for running the bus and to raise the balance of funds.
The Sri Lanka NFG was represented by Ranjith de Silva, Transport Programme Manager, IT Sri Lanka, at the meeting on participatory planning of rural infrastructure, organized by ESCAP and the UNDP in Vientiane from July 1-3. He was able to share his experience of rural transport issues at the meeting.
Contact: Convener, National Forum for Rural Transport, Mrs M.J. Sahabandhu, Director, Planning and Research, National Transport Commission, 19 Charlemont Road, Colombo 6, Sri Lanka. Fax: c/o IT Sri Lanka 941 577-458.
The Kenya NFG has expanded its membership to include learning and research institutions (the geography department and Institute of Development Studies, both of the University of Nairobi). Kenya Draught Animal Technology has also joined.
Plans to host the First National Workshop on Rural Transport and Development between 30 September to 4 October 1996 are proceeding well.
A productive one day seminar took place on 19 July, when areas of key importance to the development and effectiveness of the NFG were discussed, and preparations begun for the National Workshop.
Current challenges for the NFG are to further expand its membership; to strengthen co-operation with other agencies, programmes and the private sector, and to facilitate the incorporation of rural transport issues in national planning processes.
Contact: David S.O. Nalo, PO Box 51163, Nairobi. Fax: 254 2 217-452.
Smoke-free vehicles in smoky Kathmandu
Nepal has become the first country in South Asia to operate the SAFA tempo (a battery-driven three-wheeled vehicle). The SAFA tempo, which has been operating through the initiative of the Global Resource Institute with the financial assistance of USAID will now be taken over by the Nepal Electric Vehicle Industry (NEVI).
At present, eight SAFA tempos have been running in Kathmandu for the last six months. These will be increased to thirty in the near future. The Executive Director of the Global Resource Institute, Dr. Peter Moulton, said Kathmandu City is the first city in south Asia to run smoke-free vehicles which are environmentally, technically and economically feasible. NEVI Managing Director Bijay Man Sherchan says the main objective is to wipe out air pollution in Kathmandu and slowly decrease dependence on imported petroleum.
During the six successful months of its operation, the SAFA tempos have covered a distance of 75,000kms and provided services to about 200 000 passengers. At a time when Kathmandu is being badly polluted by other diesel and petrol vehicles, this has at least checked air pollution to some extent. NEVI has the funding to build more vehicles, expand SAFA tempo services by building charging stations and convert about 3000 vehicles in Kathmandu currently running on petrol and diesel.
The SAFA tempo has a 600kg capacity and runs at a speed of 40km per hour. It consumes about 150-200 watts of electricity per hour.
Speaking at the handover ceremony, United States Ambassador Sandy Vogelgesang said the trial operation of SAFA tempos had been successful from all points of view and Nepal could now begin to promote and export such electric vehicles.
L.D. Hada, Managing Director, Transport Study Group of Nepal. Fax: +977-1224
Ropeways - a useful technology from North to South
Transport of goods in mountainous areas of Europe has often made use of ropeway systems. These are ropes or steel cables which are used to raise loads (such as provisions and building materials) up the mountain or to lower loads (such as milk and other agricultural products) down the mountain. The classic modern ropeway is the ski-lift, but whereas the ski-lift is a sophisticated device, goods ropeways are relatively simple, as well as cheap to construct and maintain. They remain appropriate where the volume of traffic is small. Swiss and Austrian farmers and foresters in Germany and elsewhere use goods ropeways today.
Transport in the Himalayan countries is a major development issue. The government of a country like Nepal is constantly under political pressure to build roads. The roads are often too expensive to maintain as a result of constant landslides and flood damage. One solution is to combine a road network with ropeway spurs - the roads are built in the larger valleys where they can be maintained, and further reaches to villages are completed with ropeways.
At present, goods are carried by foot to the villages. Ropeway systems can be designed to increase the amount of employment by porterage in a given area, owing to an increase in volume of traffic, while reducing the physical stress of porterage on steep sections of the routes.
Nepal has several examples of working ropeways, including one which has been used to bring goods to Kathmandu since the 1920s. In 1993, floods damaged both the Kathmandu access road and two of the ropeway's towers. The towers were replaced within 24 days allowing the ropeway to supply food provisions to Kathmandu, while the road continued to be impassable for much longer.
Although cheaper than roads, the greatest obstacle to village access by ropeways in Nepal is cost. If manufactured locally, such systems could be affordable. Very small ropeways are used to cross rivers, so local manufacturing knowledge exists to a certain extent. A team of technologists from Warwick University and Intermediate Technology showed that European technologies could be adapted for local manufacture. One proposal was to form a collaboration between Nepali and Swiss manufacturers, such that early systems in Nepal would use European expertise and some European components. Cost projections showed that first systems might be built for one third of the cost of a European system, approximately £10,000 per km, in comparison to £30,000 per km which is the average price of existing ropeways in Nepal.
If anyone is interested to read more on this topic, a very useful report is available, entitled Ropeways in Nepal, by Dipak Gyawali and Ajay Dixit (March 1996).
Adam Harvey may be contacted through Intermediate Technology Consultants. Fax: +44 1788 540-270 e-mail: itdg@gn.apc.org
China will close 1,566 passenger stations, nearly a third of its stations, in a move to bring the state-owned system into the market economy. Closure will affect small stations which average only twenty passengers a day. The rationalization programme will also close 1,607 small-scale freight stations this year and a further 1,042 freight stations in 1997.
At the same time, China is heavily promoting the private use of cars to build up its automobile industry. Government ministers state that a modern economy could not exist without a powerful automotive industry.
Source: SUSTRAN Secretariat. For information about SUSTRAN - A Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia and the Pacific, contact A. Rahman Paul Barter, CO-ordinator, SUSTRAN, C/O Asia Pacific 2000, PO Box 12544, 50782 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Tel/Fax: 603 2532361. e-mail: sustran@umpap.po.my
A competition has been launched in Nairobi to design and build a vehicle that has high load capacity, low maintenance requirements, runs at low speeds and is affordable to the 'average Kenyan'.
The idea was born during a brainstorming session at an Inventors and Innovators Association of Kenya (IIAK) workshop held at the University of Nairobi last December.
'During the session, one of the issues that came to the fore was that there exists a yawning gap between the handcart and the cheapest pickup for the purpose of transporting agricultural, industrial and commercial goods, especially in the rural areas', said promotion committee chairman, S.M. Wahome.
He went on to say that there is an estimated 100000 handcarts in the country, which means they play an important role in the economy. But since they are muscle- or animal-powered, they are too slow and hardly economically viable. Many Kenyans cannot realize their potential because of this transport handicap, and without their participation, industrialization for Kenya will remain a dream.
Mr Wahome said the solution is for the African “to produce a vehicle for himself that will be devoid of ...expensive cosmetics and designed to serve his needs. In Kenya, the Jua Kali have entrepreneursÉwith high levels of creativity. In this competition we will be challenging them to seek solutions to problems in the rural areas".
Interested entrepreneurs are requested to get in touch with IIAK through Box 57225, Nairobi. Fax 251-223. The competition is open to individuals, firms and institutions.
(extracted from the Daily Nation, Nairobi, July 17 1996. Original article by Gakiha Weru.)
External costs of transport in Europe
It is general knowledge that motorized transport causes environmental damage by polluting the air, contributing to global warming, emitting noise and causing accidents. Economists call this damage 'external costs', because they are paid by the whole society and not by the individual polluter. The question arises, how high are these costs and how can they be internalized?
The International Railway Union initiated a study on these external costs in 17 European countries, carried out by the Institute for Economic Policy Research IWW (Karlsruhe, Germany) and by INFRAS (Zurich, Switzerland). In 1994 the total external costs for goods and personal transport by road, rail, ship (inland) and aeroplane amounted to US $340 billion. If this amount is set in relation to all goods and services produced in Europe, the environmental costs comprise 4.6 per cent of GDP. More than 90 per cent are caused by cars, trucks and buses, firstly because they carry the largest share of the transport volume and secondly due to the fact that road transport causes greater external effects. The environmental costs to transport one person with a car over 1000km amount to $60, while a bus costs $25 and the railway only $12. Freight transport produces even larger disparities. 1000tkm by trucks cost $72, by rail $9 and by ship only $7.
What can be done to reduce the environmental damage caused by transport? INFRAS and IWW argue that external costs must be internalized. This means that every polluter pays for the damage he causes. This can be achieved with ecological tax reform, including an increase in fuel tax, emission-dependent registration charges for vehicles and a change in the insurance system. Once the prices are set right, more people would use environmentally friendly means of transport like bicycles, buses, railways or ships.
The study is available in English, French or German. Price 50 ECU (ÅUS$60) International Railway Union UIC, 16 Rue Jean Rey, F-755015 Paris, Tel: +33 144 492-030, Fax: + 33 144 492-039.
The national debate in the UK about future transport policy is in danger of overlooking the special circumstances and needs of rural people, being too dominated by urban considerations and urban voices, or recent rural newcomers placing a heavy emphasis on conservation. But the countryside is not just a green lung for towns or a rest home for older people.
It is where 20 per cent of the UK population live and work. There is net inward migration, and rural businesses are making an increasingly important contribution to the national economy.
It should be remembered that rural businesses and residents are more dependent on transport than their urban counterparts. The customers of rural businesses are more dispersed, rural people travel 50 per cent further than urbanites and their journeys are 40 per cent longer. For most, private transport is the only available and economically feasible means of travel.
Calls to stop all expenditure on road improvements are too simplistic when related to rural circumstances. Many of the more economically disadvantaged rural areas still have poor roads. Measures to reduce traffic congestion and pollution should be targeted where the problems mainly arise - in and around towns. Generalized measures such as increases in fuel tax bear disproportionately on rural businesses and residents, who seldom have an alternative to private transport. Despite this, 20 per cent of rural households are without a car and almost one-third of parishes are without a daily bus service.
Few villages have a bank or a doctor, only half have a school and most people work elsewhere. Lack of personal transport limits access to jobs, services, education and training, and bears particularly hard on those who are young, old, sick or disabled.
Our policy paper, Rural Transport - The Vital Link, calls for a three-pronged approach to tackle these issues:
Richard Butt, Chief Executive, Rural Development Commission. (The above is a shortened version of an article which appeared in Rural Focus, the magazine of the RDC. Copies of the policy paper, Rural Transport - The Vital Link, are available free from Rural Development Commission Publications, Freepost SA122, 141 Castle Street, Salisbury SP1 3BR. Fax: 44 1722 432-773.
The work of the Secretariat is now in full swing. Thank you to everyone who filled in the questionnaire about a Journal on Rural Transport and Development. It seems that many people are keen to have such a journal. We will explore the possibilities further and keep you informed. Meanwhile Ana is updating our list of members –so if you have any changes please send them in. As part of our information strategy, we will work at developing an 'expert selection' of some of the best writings on rural transport. Since few of these are published documents, the first step will be to develop an annotated bibliography. Niklas will be responsible for this and we hope to have a good selection made by the end of the year. Meanwhile, I have been providing support to the NFGs in Kenya and in Sri Lanka. I also had the opportunity to attend the Transport Sector Strategy Consultative Workshop in Colombo, organized by the Transport Studies and Planning Centre of the Sri Lanka Ministry of Transport in collaboration with the UNDP and the World Bank. The conventional approach dominated the workshop, but members of the National Forum Group were able to have their voices heard and it is now more than likely that rural transport issues will have some mention in the country's transport sector policy. I am also co-ordinating the research programme on gender and transport (see page 2), and hope there are many of you who will take an active interest in this. Please keep writing in. We need as much feedback as we can get...
December's newsletter will take water transport as its theme. Please send in your articles, letters and notices on this subject, and responses to the current issue, to the address below. To give you time to plan your piece, we intend to advertise two themes in advance from now on. So, March 1997 issue will be about donor agency initiatives.
This issue was edited by Ros Patching
This newsletter receives financial support from CIDA.