Abstracts: Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000

  • Contents
  • Editorial of this issue
  • Abstracts, Volume 6, Number 1
  • Abstracts, Volume 6, Number 2
  • Abstracts, Volume 6, Number 3
  • Abstracts, Volume 6, Number 4
    • Issue Contents

  • Editorial
  • Sustainably Distributed? An environmental critique of the UK Government's 1999 White Paper on Distribution
  • Mobility & Accessibility: the yin & yang of planning
  • The Vasco da Gama Bridge on the Tagus Estuary: A paradigm of bad decision making, but good post-evaluation
  • Pedestrian priority planning principles
  • Let's Bike - The 10 Point Pedalling Action Programme to support cycling
  • Notes for contributors

    • Abstracts

    Sustainably Distributed? An environmental critique of the UK Government's 1999 White Paper on Distribution

    by Francis M Vanek

    The recent UK Government White Paper entitled "Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy" is reviewed from the perspective of achieving sustainability. After highlighting the content of the strategy which pertains to reducing environmental impact, two shortcomings are identified and discussed: (1) the lack of a long-term strategy for reducing environmental impact, and (2) the failure to address spatial spreading of freight transport patterns. Additional long-term policy measures and an expanded list of sustainability indicators are then proposed.

    Keywords: air quality, CO2 emissions, distribution, energy efficiency, freight transport, sustainability

    Mobility & Accessibility: the yin & yang of planning

    by William Ross

    The concepts 'accessibility' and 'mobility' are central to urban and transport planning, and although they are often used interchangeably, they convey fundamentally different concepts. For example, mobility, especially when excessive, can have a negative connotation, whereas accessibility is always seen as making a positive contribution to a community. In investigating the relationship between mobility and accessibility it emerges that planning policies which favour the one, act against the other, and the two can be seen as opposites.

    Keywords: accessibility, choice, indicators, mobility, planning,

    The Vasco da Gama Bridge on the Tagus Estuary: A paradigm of bad decision making, but good post-evaluation

    by Joćo Joanaz de Melo

    The Vasco da Gama bridge over the Tagus Estuary was one of the most polemic projects ever built in Portugal and indeed in the European Union. Benefiting from significant funding from the Cohesion Fund, the project failed to uphold its main declared objectives (decongesting the old bridge and providing a north-south link around Lisbon), and its location was the worst of three alternatives regarding land management, nature conservation, transportation system and cost. It was nevertheless forwarded by the will of the very powerful Portuguese Ministry of Public Works (against opinions of almost everybody else), aided by the unwillingness of the European Commission to withdraw financing. However, the public outrage raised around the project both in Portugal and in Europe, not only for the sloppy decision but also for illegal impacts during construction, led to several stringent control and compensatory measures, unprecedented in Portugal and rare in Europe.

    Keywords: Cohesion Fund, Environmental Impact Assessment, European Union, Lisbon, NGO, Tagus Estuary.

    Pedestrian priority planning principles

    by John Seaton

    Despite the good intentions of all involved in the planning, design and development of transportation infrastructure, it has generated problems. Some have contributed to international concerns about environment, health and sustainability. Others generate significant negative impacts and impose tremendous costs on communities. In the context of transportation, the significance of the interaction between facility users and the site, space, speed and surface characteristics of the particular facility cannot be over-stated. The respective influences of these criteria are paramount to the safety outcomes of all users. Australia has adopted the movement of people and goods in lieu of vehicles as the fundamental transport infrastructure design/development criterion. Its support and implementation will require planning that considers all criteria and characteristics in a manner somewhat different to that adopted in the past. If it doesn't, nothing will change.

    Keywords: Pedestrians, planning, site, space, speed, surface.

    Let's Bike - The 10 Point Pedalling Action Programme to support cycling

    by Ulrike Huwer

    At the 11th VeloCity Conference in Graz and Maribor, in April 1999, experts, lobbyists and users from all over the world exchanged their experiences and developed ideas. As the potential of cycling has not been exhausted in any country, a 10 Point Pedalling Action Programme was devised. It includes basic requirements for the greater promotion of the bicycle in policy development and society. Image and use of the bicycle must be improved and necessary infrastructure must be provided.

    Keywords: Bicycle, cycling, infrastructure, planning, VeloCity

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    Lead Editorial

    It is now quite clear that the UK Government has completely lost the plot in its attempts to deal with traffic and transport problems. It has rejected traffic reduction targets after initially agreeing to them, it has rejected lower speed limits on rural roads and through villages and it is now devoting its efforts to making the purchase price of new cars lower. As if this wasn't enough to signal a major political withdrawal from the electorally difficult territory of reducing our dependence on the car the Government has now refused to become involved in the European Car-Free Day planned for 22nd September this year. It takes the view that this is essentially a local matter and must be decided by individual towns and cities.

    This re-positioning of a Government that was elected in 1997 with one of the biggest majorities in parliament ever seen in the UK is full of lessons for the world of transport policy. The UK has no shortage of good ideas about how to solve transport problems. The history of exceptionally innovative traffic analysis and understanding is peppered with the work of Smeed, Buchanan, Mogridge, Roberts, Adams, Hillman and others; all of whom have shown that it is not possible to have our cake and eat it in terms of ever-rising rates of car ownership and use and ensuring that towns and cities are livable and desirable. This wealth of intelligence has had to come to terms with the political realities which in the main lean in the direction of more cars, more use of cars and a staggering underestimation of the damaging consequences of this auto-centred approach.

    The main lesson to be drawn from this history is a hard one. Progress does not come from clear, articulate analysis. The Government knows about the health impacts of traffic, the rapidly escalating problems of climate change and the impossibility of paying for and maintaining transport infrastructure up to the task of 100% car ownership, car parking requirements and use of cars for every trip greater than 50 metres. It knows that new roads do not solve traffic congestion problems and do not bring about the economic miracle that is supposed to follow a new road. It knows that poor people suffer more from appalling noise, air quality and traffic danger environments than do rich people. Contemporary highly paid professionals are just as adept at escaping from the highly unpleasant world of traffic (which they create) as were their Victorian predecessors in escaping the dark, satanic mills (which they created). We have an overload of information and a deficit of backbone to do anything about it.

    There is a glimmer of light in what is going on elsewhere in Europe. The enthusiastic application of car-free days in France and Italy is certainly not a fully packaged transport solution but it is showing millions of people the kind of world that normally doesn't even begin to penetrate the consciousness of those locked into car dependency. This is the sadness of the UK's thoughtless denial of 22nd September. Car dependency is a psychological problem and the start of any solution has to be the growing awareness that things could be better if there were fewer cars around or if ordinary, everyday journeys could be made by an alternative to the car. The main positive lesson of the dreary history of traffic and transport policy in Britain in the last 50 years is that we have to find ways to show that there is a huge improvement in health, quality of life, sociability and neighbourliness just around the corner and it is there to be liberated if only we can put the genie back in the bottle and get on with a life that celebrates the joy of human contact, the richness of public space and the pleasure of being freed from servicing the metal box that offers so much and yet delivers so little.

    Writing in 1933 in Street Traffic Flow (p. 375) Henry Watson concluded his analysis with: 'In the future the central areas of great cities will be closed to private vehicles of limited utility'. Almost 70 years later we are still waiting. I wonder what Henry Watson would have made of our craven inability even to think of one car free day in a year.

    John Whitelegg
    Editor
    World Trasnport Policy and Practice

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