Remove illegal parking

The initiative of the Department of the Interior and Local Government to remove illegally parked cars on major roads is well-intentioned, but could be self-defeating if the outcome is only to give more road space to private motor vehicles. Because of the phenomenon of “induced demand,” any measure that makes driving easier by giving more space to cars only attracts further car (and motorcycle) use, eventually leaving our roads even more congested than before.

Because road space is limited, we need to use our roads so that they deliver the greatest good for the greatest number — this means prioritizing the most productive, inclusive and socially beneficial travel options on any road space. The desired outcome of the removal of illegal vehicle parking should be to enhance the safety, comfort and attractiveness of walking, cycling and public transport (instead of offering the added road space to private motor vehicles). Not only is this approach desirable from the standpoint of transportation science, it is what is required based on principles of equity and social justice.

Giving additional road space to private motor vehicles is, in effect, choosing the least efficient and most environmentally damaging application for a scarce resource; it would be a foolish and wasteful use of public assets. One road lane (3.5-meter width) used mainly by cars can move 600 to 2,000 persons per hour per direction. If the same space is converted into a pathway for pedestrians or cyclists, the same space can move five to 10 times more people. If the road space is dedicated to public transport (buses, jeepneys, etc.), the space can move from five to 20 times more people. Any investment in our roads should encourage a shift to these desirable, space-efficient and low-impact travel modes. It is a no-brainer.

Devoting any freed-up space for public transport, walking and cycling also make sense when one considers that car owners are only a small minority in the Philippines. Nationwide, only 6 percent of households own four-wheeled motor vehicles (11.5 percent of households for Greater Manila, defined as Metro Manila plus surrounding provinces). About one-third of Filipino households own motorcycles. This means that the majority of Metro Manila’s population depends on walking, bicycles or public transportation to get around their neighborhoods and cities. This segment is also the most vulnerable and disadvantaged — they should be the focus of measures to improve mobility using freed-up road space.

Pedestrians are endangered when they have to mix in the same road space with fast-moving motor vehicles. For this reason, safe pathways for pedestrians should be a part of any urban road. Sidewalks are essential because they save lives. Unfortunately, all over Philippine cities, many sidewalks have been illegally converted into parking spaces or have become part of the roadway for motor vehicles. In the absence of safe sidewalks, many avoid walking and shift to using a motor vehicle. If we want fewer motor vehicles on our congested roads, we need to rectify this anomaly and make our streets walkable.

With a wider sidewalk, shade trees and greenery can be planted. A tree-shaded street delivers many benefits for a neighborhood, foremost of which is the lowering of ambient temperatures by 5 to 10 degrees centigrade. Because a very large number of trips daily are for journeys of 3 kilometers or less (therefore, very walkable), many of these trips could be completed via walking as long as there are pathways that are safe, shaded and accessible by persons with disability.

The same arguments justify the creation of protected bike lanes out of the road space occupied by illegally parked cars. The owners of bicycles today outnumber the owners of cars by a factor of 4:1. Many more Filipinos would use bicycles to move around our cities if there were safe and continuous bike paths connecting residential neighborhoods to destinations with jobs, social services and markets. Millions of Filipinos are already using bicycles daily to travel — achieving shorter, more predictable journey times; adopting healthier, more active lifestyles; and generating savings in travel costs that can be used for food, health care, personal development or investment.

Freed-up road space should also be used to create dedicated lanes for public transport (which could include school transport and emergency vehicles), enabling them to have faster and more predictable travel times. National and local government planners should meet with public transport operators to discuss how buses and jeepneys can escape traffic bottlenecks and achieve more round trips if offered exclusive road space.

A recent concern is the fact that many jeepneys and buses are parked on public roads when not in use, mainly because they have no access to depots or garages. Instead of penalizing owners of these vehicles, local governments should help to organize common depot space for such units in every locality, so that transport services can also be better managed and coordinated. This is one way that a local government unit can help deliver better services to constituents by enabling public transport operators to be more efficient and financially viable.

Forget about removing illegally parked cars in order to offer more lanes to private motor vehicles. The focus should be on making walking, cycling and public transport safe, convenient and attractive, thereby facilitating a shift away from private motor vehicle use.

Source: Manila Times

The unintended ecological effects of roads

Some may take the view that, because of our infrastructure deficit, more is always better — that any new road or bridge adds value. But this is far from the truth. Some roads and bridges bring more harm than good.

Urban planner Nathaniel von Einsidel, explains why. Nathaniel is a fellow emeritus of the Philippine Institute of Environmental Planners and principal urban planner of Concep Inc.

Roads are generally correlated with economic development. As an urban planner, I also see roads as physical manifestations of the economic and political decisions that lead to land use change. What bothers me is that while roads are considered part of the required infrastructure for increasing productivity in a city or region, their physical structure is accepted as a benign necessity in the promotion of progress. It especially bothers me that little attention is being given to the unintended consequences of road networks, or how their expansion affects the landscapes that they bisect, because roads and their concomitant traffic introduce pollutants, fragment populations of plants and wildlife, kill animals and cause behavioral changes both in animals and humans.

Roadways have dramatic effects on ecosystem components, processes and structures. The causes of these effects are as much related to engineering as to land use planning and transportation policy. The most significant ecological impacts of roads are habitat fragmentation, altered hydrology, and increased mortality and disturbance for wildlife. Additionally, new roads tend to catalyze changes in the land use of the areas they traverse, which may also bring about negative ecological consequences.

Roads affect the abiotic components of landscapes including its hydrology, the mechanics of sediment and debris transport, water and air chemistry, microclimate and levels of noise, wind and light adjacent to roadsides. Roads can disrupt natural water flow patterns, affecting drainage and filtration. Culverts and other drainage structures can fragment streams and rivers, hindering the movement of aquatic organisms. Roads also tend to increase erosion and sedimentation, impacting water quality and aquatic habitats.

Roads are also agents of change that have both direct and indirect effects on living organisms. Roads affect animal and plant populations directly by entirely obliterating the ecosystems in their path. Road construction directly destroys habitat, and the associated infrastructure like barriers and fences can isolate animal populations. This fragmentation can disrupt gene flow, leading to inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity in isolated animal populations. Roads also create “edge effects” where conditions near the road, such as increased light, temperature and wind, differ from the interior of the habitat.

For some species, particularly small, slow-moving animals that frequently cross roads, it can be fatal. Roadkill is a significant source of mortality for many animal species. Traffic noise and disturbance also deter animals from using habitats near roads, reducing their available space and potentially affecting breeding success.

While roads have many direct ecological effects on adjacent aquatic and terrestrial systems, as network structures, they also have far-reaching, cumulative effects on landscapes. Some major effects to landscapes that directly relate to roads include the loss of habitat through the transformation of existing land cover to roads, and road-induced land use and land cover change, as well as reduced habitat for wildlife.

Furthermore, vehicle emissions release pollutants like heavy metals and hydrocarbons into the environment, contaminating soil, water and air, impacting plant and animal health. Roads can also introduce pollutants into aquatic ecosystems, affecting water quality and aquatic life. Roads also act as corridors for the spread of invasive species, which can outcompete native plants and animals. Roads also alter temperature, humidity and light levels, creating different microclimates compared to surrounding areas. Roadside soils may have altered nutrient content, pH, and water content due to pollution and changes in drainage.

While roads affect both the biotic and the abiotic components of landscapes, they also catalyze changes in land use including human encroachment in ecologically sensitive areas. It is crucial to analyze and predict the potential ecological effects of alternative transport scenarios by applying transport geography theories and road ecology research methods to advance understanding about the dynamics between road systems and landscapes, and thus help lessen the negative ecological effects of roads on the environment.

Source: Manila Times

EDSA Rebuild Opportunity

The pause in the EDSA Rebuild program ordered by President Bongbong Marcos came at the right time. As Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon underscored, a major rehabilitation of EDSA happens only "once in a lifetime." We should therefore not miss the opportunity to refashion EDSA so that it serves all of us better and correct its many defects and deficits. Before proceeding, all agencies involved should be clear on the outcomes to be achieved.

The EDSA that we need is one that is safe, walkable, green, inclusive, conducive for mass transit, accessible for persons with disability and efficient for the movement of goods and people. When road space is limited, it should be devoted to the most productive and inclusive travel modes. A lane filled mainly with private cars moves only 600-1,600 persons per hour. A lane devoted to mass transit can move 10,000-25,000 persons per hour, while sidewalks and bike lanes can move five to 10 times more people than a motor vehicle lane.

EDSA Rebuild is an opportunity for the government to give full meaning to its policy pronouncements about prioritizing sustainable transport modes — public transport, walking and cycling. Under the National Transport Policy's implementing rules, "inclusive mobility and accessibility shall be achieved through the prioritization of people-mobility over vehicle-mobility ... In addition, provision for nonmotorized and active transport, such as walking and cycling, shall be incorporated in the design and implementation of transport projects."

In addition, the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 declares that "pedestrians and cyclists enjoy highest priority in the hierarchy of road users." The principle of "moving people, not cars" is also echoed in the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan 2023-2028, which underscores the point that the safety of all road users is of far greater importance than enhancing the flow or travel speed of motor vehicles.

The logic is clear. The current prioritization of EDSA for four-wheeled motor vehicles makes little sense and is a waste of public resources when we consider that cars are the least efficient use of road space and are major contributors to urban traffic, heat, noise and pollution. Studies show that only 11.5 percent of Greater Manila households are owners of four-wheeled motor vehicles. This calls for a transformation of EDSA so that it serves the needs of the majority and the most vulnerable. Cars should be among the users of a redesigned EDSA, but not its top priority.

The painful lesson we have learned over decades is that an EDSA devoted to moving cars is one of the root causes of Metro Manila's traffic and mobility crisis. A car-centric EDSA compels more Filipinos to use a private motor vehicle instead of walking, cycling or using public transport. To reverse this, we need an EDSA that will serve the range of different travel modes while ensuring that the most efficient and inclusive ones are safe, convenient and attractive. For short distances, walking or cycling should become the preferred travel option — very much possible on an EDSA with spacious and shaded sidewalks.

We also need an EDSA that is compliant with various accessibility laws — an obligation that has remained unfulfilled for decades by the very agencies tasked with their implementation. Several laws already guarantee that public infrastructure should not create a barrier for persons with disability: Batas Pambansa 344, the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (which has the force of law in the Philippines). In this context, all agencies involved in the EDSA Rebuild are obliged to remedy EDSA's disgraceful lack of compliance, an infrastructure deficiency that affects the lives of millions of Filipinos in Greater Manila who have some form of physical incapacity. EDSA Rebuild should demonstrate how the rights of persons with disability can be fully respected on our roads.

Every day on EDSA, there are lives lost and bodies maimed, in large part because authorities continue to give paramount importance to achieving faster vehicle speeds despite the obvious danger for all road users. EDSA was a highway decades ago, but the land uses and the urban environment are significantly different today. With EDSA traversing many dense population areas and commercial centers, it needs to serve a diverse set of road users, not only four-wheeled motor vehicles. It should be redesigned as a boulevard and no longer be an expressway.

The Philippine Road Safety Action Plan 2023–2028 calls for lower speed limits. The global safety prescription is a maximum of 30 kilometers per hour (kph) on urban roads — this is what we should push for along the entire stretch of EDSA. A lower speed limit for EDSA is already mandated by law, but ignored by concerned authorities. The Land Transportation and Traffic Code requires that the maximum speed limit should be 20 kph "through crowded streets."

Joint Memorandum Circular 2018-001 defines "crowded streets" as streets "with heavy pedestrian traffic, including all streets within a 500-meter radius of schools, public transportation terminals, markets, government buildings, churches and other places of worship, recreational places, facilities frequented by the youth, parks, shopping malls, movie houses, hotels, restaurants and other public places as may be determined by the city or municipal government."

Experience already tells us that a higher EDSA speed limit is not relevant, because average vehicle travel speeds on it are already quite low (closer to 20 kph). A car on a congested EDSA gains nothing from a higher speed limit. With a lower limit, however, we not only make EDSA safer for all, we also make alternative travel modes more attractive for everyone.

A transit- and people-oriented EDSA will have a huge positive impact on the lives of millions of Filipinos. An EDSA that prioritizes public transport, pedestrians and cyclists, and empowers persons with disability will be able to move a larger volume of people and goods using the same road space. It will be safer, healthier, greener, cooler, more inclusive, more productive, more vibrant and attractive — an EDSA that every Filipino will be proud of.

Source: Manila Times