Transport

To measure the real impact of transport services, affordability needs to be part of the equation

A woman inside a station of the Transmilenio BRT system in Bogota, Colombia.

Differentiating between effective and nominal access

A couple of months ago, one of our urban development colleagues wrote about the gap between effective and nominal access to water infrastructure services. She explained that while many of the households in the study area were equipped with the infrastructure to supply clean water, a large number of them do not use it because of its price. She highlighted a “simple fact: it is not sufficient to have a service in your house, your yard, or your street. The service needs to work and you should be able to use it. If you can’t afford it or if features—such as design, location, or quality—prevent its use, you are not benefiting from that service.” To address this concern, the water practice has been developing ways to differentiate between “effective access” and “nominal access”—between having access to an infrastructure or service and being able to use it.

In transport, too, we have been exploring similar issues. In a series of blog posts on accessibility, we have looked at the way accessibility tools—the ability to quantify the opportunities that are accessible using a transit system—are reframing how we understand, evaluate, and plan transport systems. We have used this method that allows us to assess the effectiveness of public transport in connecting people to employment opportunities within a 60-minute commute.

Incorporating considerations of cost

Yet, time is not the only constraint that people face when using public transport systems. In Bogota, for example, the average percentage of monthly income that an individual spends on transport exceeds 20% for those in the lowest income group. In some parts of the city, this reaches up to 28%—well above the internationally acceptable level of affordability of 15%.

, and is key to increasing access to services and opportunities. But is it enough to bring women closer to jobs?

A World Bank study in Argentina highlighted that women “have more complex travel patterns, travel more, and have more travel needs at off-peak hours, which are often not related to work and associated with fixed destinations (e.g. child care).” As a result, they are constrained to smaller commutes and, by association, fewer employment opportunities. In addition to using public transport at different times, frequencies, and for alternate purposes, data from other countries also indicates that .

To dig deeper on this and identify what kind of complementary interventions could help ensure mass transit investments bring women the best accessibility benefits, we conducted preliminary research in Mexico City with support from the World Bank Youth Innovation Fund.

Our primary objective was to figure out what encourages or inhibits women’s use of mass transit systems, and to understand how these systems influence their decisions to find employment or better employment.

Daniel Mennerich/Flickr — Photo: Eduardo Santillán Trujillo/Presidencia de la República del Ecuador

It’s easy for me to take public transport for granted: a mere 5 minutes’ walk from my office at the World Bank Headquarters, I have access to 2 metro stations served by 4 different lines that offer easy connections to many parts of the Washington DC area. There is a sense of comfort in knowing that, despite the occasional hiccups that we all love to complain about, metro provides a safe and reliable way for me to commute to work every day.

In Quito, Ecuador, many people don’t have that luxury. Granted, there is the notable Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) that operates high-frequency services on dedicated lanes and has significantly reduced travel time. But the system is already crowded, and has exceeded its capacity: during peak hours, each bus carries an average 175 passengers, well above the 165 maximum capacity leading to overcrowding due to a huge flow of passengers.

According to 2010 figures, Ecuadorians owned 71 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, significantly higher than countries like Bolivia, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Angola, which were respectively at 68, 57, 45, and 31 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants. In 2010, the government introduced Road Space Rationing, a plan that aims to reduce traffic by limiting the number of vehicles on the road within a certain area based on license plate numbers. These are great initiatives, but more is needed in view of how fast Quito is growing.

On November 26, 2016, UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon will convene the first-ever Global Conference on Sustainable Transport, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. What is at stake in this capstone two-day event? What fresh developments might it yield, and how might it change the dynamics for transport?

The new transport agenda. A number of earlier high-level events—including the UN Climate Action Summit, the OECD/International Transport Forum, and the Habitat III Conference—helped give a long-needed boost to the visibility of transport in the international arena in 2016. The events also helped position transport within the current set of global commitments that include the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris climate agreement, the Decade of Action on Road Safety, and the Habitat III New Urban Agenda. The forthcoming Ashgabat event will put front and center one simple notion: for the next 15 years, the transport agenda will be framed by that set of global commitments. The commitments define the space within which governments, international organizations, the private sector, and civil society will have to act on transport. And they will dictate the future size and direction of transport funding.

This is a paradigm shift. Previously, the transport agenda was defined by the goal of providing access to transport infrastructure. Under the new framework, the international community has committed itself to much more. First, the issue is no longer simply access but equitable access for all. Second, other, equally important objectives have been added, including the efficiency and reliability of mobility services, transport safety, and decarbonization. In sum, the internationally accepted transport agenda concerns more than economic and social development; it is also about being part of the climate change solution.

The 70’s were waning and the loudspeaker was still blaring disco. The celebration in this middle class New Delhi neighborhood was noticeable. It was a party to welcome a new car, which like a new bride was decked with marigold garlands. Neighbors had joined the obligatory prayer ceremony in anticipation of a festive lunch. The auspicious coconut was broken and a plump lemon crushed under the tire to ward off evil jealous eyes. A child birth in this neighborhood was rarely celebrated as grandly. Maybe unlike a baby, the car had come after ten long years of excruciating wait and bribes.

Below the garish decorations, the car was technologically from the World War era. Adorned with cheap interiors. It was pretentiously named “Ambassador” and for 50 years, it reigned as the queen of Indian roads. It should have been named “liberator” instead. It liberated the aspiring middle class from the indignities of soul crushing congestion and the curling stench of the Delhi Transport Corporation buses.

When it came to public transportation in pre-1990s India, the bus was a metaphor for socialism, where everyone riding was equal and equally miserable. The car on other hand signified individual liberty, a symbol of capitalism. This fundamental struggle and human desire to balance liberty and equality has historically and philosophically defined the debate on the preferred mode of transportation, Public-Private Partnerships and the role of Information and Communication Technologies.

Roads are the dominant means of transportation worldwide. They connect people, communities, and markets together—bringing opportunities to the poor and enabling broad-based economic growth. Yet . Although solutions are available and progress has been made, . Urgent action is needed if we are to achieve the Sustainable Development target 3.6 of cutting the number of road fatalities in half.

As things stand, . To see how many road deaths there are in your country each year, click here. And that’s not all: for every death in a road crash, there are generally at least 20 times as many injuries.

In many countries, school children have to gamble their lives to get an education, crossing against speeding traffic to get to school. Approximately 500 children die every day in road crashes, with many of these deaths occurring when children try to cross the road on their way to and from school. Click here to see Luc Besson’s striking 3-minute film on this situation.

. Rapid motorization in developing countries, when it takes place without effective road safety management and infrastructure, contributes to the epidemic of road deaths.

. While you will probably not notice it, the aircraft you board will boast green technologies from wing tips to landing gear. It will fly on the most direct and fuel-efficient route, use more biofuels, and the airline will purchase carbon credits to compensate for the carbon emissions generated by your trip. In fact, , capped at 2020 emission levels.

– making aviation the world’s seventh largest emitter - a number anticipated to rise exponentially in the coming decades as more and more people choose to fly to their destinations. Today, an aircraft with 300 passengers traveling from Paris to New York emits approximately 100 tons of carbon dioxide, or as much as emissions from 22 cars in a year. And because the emissions happen higher up in the atmosphere, the impact on global warming is greater than emissions on the ground.

Earlier this month, 191 countries belonging to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) adopted an agreement to stop future emissions from rising above 2020 levels. This is the latest measure by the industry aimed at curbing emissions, a step in the right direction given that air traffic is expected to double by 2030.

Next week, the international community will gather at Habitat III - the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development - to discuss important urban challenges as the world’s cities grow at an unprecedented rate.

Today, 54% of people live in cities and towns. Cities can be magnets for population growth and offer opportunities for jobs and social empowerment; but they can also be a source of congestion, exclusion and impoverishment. Which path of urban growth will prevail depends, in large part, on the quality and availability of mobility solutions. Transport is a structuring element of cities.

The reality of mobility in today’s cities is alarming— especially when measured against the four criteria that define sustainable mobility.

Imagine landing in the wee hours of the morning into Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata, India. As you leave the airport in a taxi, you find yourself stuck in heavy traffic and this at 4:00am in the morning! It does not take long to realize that you are sharing the roads with other early rising passengers riding in cars and buses, but also with a long queue of freight trucks, which seem to be the majority of vehicles along the road. Why are so many freight trucks winding through the city center? You soon learn from the taxi driver that some of the trucks are heading to, or coming from the famous ‘Barabazar’ market, but others are heading towards Kolkata port.

As your taxi leaves the line of trucks behind, you realize that you could be in any port-city in India or, for that matter, in China, USA or Europe. The types and number of trucks, and the freight carried may vary, but the challenges of port-generated traffic affecting the city hinterland is common. Of course, urban mobility solutions are multi-dimensional and usually include complementary strategies, investments and actors. However, the root cause of port-generated city traffic is simply a product of conventional port planning.

In Kolkata, the problem of port-generated traffic could get worse with the completion of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor and National Waterway 1 (Jal Marg Vikas project). However, thanks to an innovative port-hinterland connectivity solution, supported by the World Bank, the ports of Kolkata and Haldia will dramatically increase their capacity while solving the issue of port-generated traffic. This is great news for the many truck drivers, who can often take a whole night just to get in queue to enter the port.

At the recent Climate Action 2016 Summit, several key stakeholders joined the World Bank Group in a call for global and more concerted action to address the climate impact of transport, while ensuring mobility for everyone. In a month from now, the High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport, which was established by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for three years, will release its conclusions on what actions are needed to support “more sustainable transport systems”. This will lay the ground for the first UN Global Conference on Sustainable Transportation on November 26-27, 2016, in Ashgabat. As the HLAP is finalizing its report, here are four things that the new Global Action Agenda should not miss.