Car free day

 Last Saturday, 22 September 2012 was the world car-free day. People, communities, cities and countries from around the world organise events to celebrate and promote sustainable mobility.

Gratz, Austria

 While the idea of restricting car access to specific streets or parts of the city even for just a few hours of a single day per year is pretty old, it was back at 1994 that a formal world day started to be organised. In 2000 the European Commission adopted the idea and funded the whole project under the title “In town without my car”. The campaign was a huge success not only in Europe but also in other countries. Since 2002 cities in Europe celebrate the “European Mobility Week” an annual event in September around the "In town without my car!" day. By 2008 more than 2100 local governments from 39 countries participated either in the single day celebration or the whole mobility week.

The first Australian Car Free Day was held in the City of Fremantle on 29 November 2000. Fremantle tried again on 2001 and 2002 organising the “Shed your car day”. Other cities in Australia tried to organise similar events but without coordination amongst them and not much success.

Pedestrians, bicycles, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation are encouraged on these days. People have tolerated too long congestion, air pollution and all other side effects of car traffic in the cities.

As the theme and logo of this year’s European Mobility Week says “Do the right mix”.

At the same time that neoliberal policies and austerity measures deepen the economic crisis in Europe, 

extending it into a social crisis, there are still a few lessons that we can learn from their practices towards a new culture in urban mobility.

Texting while driving. OMG not LOL!

While I was driving to get to a site inspection today I stopped at a  intersection with traffic lights. When I turned my head to my right, I noticed that all three vehicle drivers waiting at the lights at the lane next to me where texting. Heads down looking at their mobile phone which they were all holding with both their hands were clearly typing SMS text messages or using any other keyboard related application. Especially with the new smart phones there is a big number of very popular mobile phone applications like email, internet browsers, facebook, twitter, etch that you can use. 

http://wordproverb.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/texting-while-driving.html

I was puzzled at first that all three drivers were doing the same thing. I thought that it was a rare coincidence and it had to do with the traffic lights. Stopping on a red light may make people thing that they have the time to send a quick message or check if that email they have been waiting has come through. But then when the signals turned to green at least two of them that I managed to follow as we were driving parallel at the same direction kept the mobile phone on their hand and were driving with the other. One of them kept typing and occasionally looking at his phone. 

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/02/michigan-bans-texting-while-driving/

This is outrageous. People buy smart phones but they are not so smart themselves. Texting while driving is not only illegal in Queensland (300$ fine and 3 demerit points) and whole of Australia but is also considered more dangerous than drunk driving. Driver distraction and inattention have a detrimental impact on road safety.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/38509/texting-while-driving-increases-crash-risk-by-23-times-study

And while numerous road safety campaigns focus on this issue, the numbers of drivers texting while driving increase. Even though that last year stories of drivers’crashing while texting messages like "I need to quit texting, because I could die in a car accident" made the news. Different solutions with the help of technology were proposed, such as mobile phone deactivation or voice control texting. 

But the question still remains: Do we need someone else to take care of us? Why can't we just do the right thing and don’t use the mobile phone while we are driving?  Why do we prefer OMG rather than LOL?

Bruce highway road trip

 A few days ago we made our first Australian road trip. From Brisbane to Airlie Beach on a total distance of more than 1200 kilometres if you include the deviations to other beach side locations like Hervey Bay or Emu Park. And that’s just the one direction total distance. The trip was very interesting through the most beautiful landscape of central Queensland. 

The basic route from Brisbane up north is through the (in)famous Bruce highway. When I first heard of Bruce highway I though of Bruce Almighty and in certain parts of the trip I wished that I had Bruce Nolan’s abilities to transform things around me.

The thing I wanted to transform the most was the road itself. Bruce highway, named after the former Queensland and federal politician Henry Adam Bruce who was the state Minister for Works when the highway was named after him, in the mid 1930s. And in some parts Bruce highway seems to have remained in 1930’s.

The first part of Bruce highway, from Brisbane to Noosa Heads is a dual carriageway and at that point is that the good news for motorists ends. That is the same point that the good news for Queensland wildlife ends as well. I haven’t seen so many dead animals, mainly kangaroos in the side of the road, ever before. It seems that the “respect for our wildlife” signs don’t do much help here. The highway is a regular deathtrap for so many wildlife animals and it is very strange that it lucks protective fencing especially at some parts that passes through the forest.

Unfortunately Bruce highway raises serious safety issues to drivers and the innovative fatigue – trivia signs don’t seem to help so much. They are really interesting and they provide some trivia knowledge about Queensland but they can’t be considered a safety measure.

 

On the contrary safety measure can be considered the median treatment on some parts of the highway on the road from Curra to Cooroy. 

 

Safety measures are also the overtaking lanes. Especially these were a lot of help when I had a B-double truck tailgating me at a speed of more than 100 km/h. 

 

The Bruce highway is used by up to 170,000 vehicles a day. While it is just 32% of the total length of Queensland highways it is accounting for the 51% of casualty crashes during 2003-2007 and 59% of deaths. These statistics are only second worst to the Pacific Highway that links Brisbane with Gold Cost. 

Queensland Government is working with Australian Government to upgrade Bruce Highway. Together they have developed Bruce Highway Upgrade Strategy, which identifies priority investments for the Bruce Highway. Over the next 20 years Bruce Highway will see 340 kilometres of highway duplication, bridge replacements, intersection upgrades and other safety improvements. 

I am afraid that in a state that railroad is not much developed, these upgrades are not enough and the level of service that Bruce highway provides will keep undermining growth in Queensland and will keep putting people and animals in great danger.

Olympic Games traffic

I am watching the Olympic Games 2012  opening ceremony and as always my mind goes to transport and traffic. 

The Games being such a huge event, involving thousands of participating athletes, coaches and spectators are such a great challenge for the transportation planners and traffic engineers of each hosting city. 

Even in the hosting city selection procedure, transport and traffic is the second most important aspect of the candidate cities’ proposal after venues. Cities are struggling to persuade the “immortals” that they can manage traffic during the Olympic games in a way that not only will be effective but also sustainable. The games provide the opportunity for the cities to build new transportation system like the Athens Metro and tram. 

But even big transport infrastructure projects like public transportation systems and construction of new motorways and arterials are not enough to ensure that athletes would not need two or three hours of travel to get to their Olympic venue. Transport planning, traffic management and mobility management plays a big role in this task. After all, transportation network capacity is not designed to support all this additional demand for travel. 

One of the traffic management measures used, is sending a significant percentage of the Olympic city’s residents away from the city or having them stay at home. Usually this is achieved by giving civil servants mandatory leave and generally by making it so much more difficult for people to travel to their usual every day destination, so they will prefer to go on holidays or stay home. Again Athens was an example for this with so many Athenians spending their days during the Olympic Games in the islands.

The objective is to enable athletes and officials to get to their events on time. This is accomplished by installing Olympic lanes. Roads or traffic lanes reserved for accredited Games vehicles – athletes, officials and of course sponsors – as well as emergency vehicles. In London there are 30 miles of Olympic Lanes installed mainly on some of the city’s main arterial roads, marked by white Olympic rings painted on to the road. 

No one else is allowed in these lanes, not even black taxis or bicycles and this raises discomfort, protests and even extreme police actions that don't exactly promote the Olympic spirit.  

Trying to achieve optimum traffic management is not an easy task as some of London’s biggest traffic engineering gaffes show. 

Olympic Games have blown out of proportion during the last decades thanks to the commercialization spirit. The sponsors and the often greedy national Olympic committees push to include more sports and more athletes to the Olympic Games and finally cities that host the games do not benefit from them overall.At least it seems that they benefit from some improvement to their transport systems and the added experience in mobility management.

Traffic and wildlife

A few days ago we went with the kids at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to visit this great place and view up close Queensland wildlife. 

tree kangaroo

cassowary

And when we were admiring the tree kangaroos and the cassowary  I remembered how impressed I was when I first saw the wildlife warning signs.

kangaroo - camel -cassowary - wild horse - koala - wombat

And there are also the "care for our wildlife" information signs.

echidna - tree kangaroo - duck - small bird - possum - lizard

In Greece there is only one wildlife sign depicting a deer and it is representative of all wildlife animals even though there are only a few deers left; some in Mount Parnitha near Athens and more in Mount Rodopi near my former hometown Kavala. 

 

There is also a warning sign with a cow on it representing all livestock animals. 

This is similar to the livestock warning sign in QLD.

Unfortunately there is no sign depicting a bear which is the animal more endangered by road traffic in Greece. Just yesterday two young brown bears were killed in the road near Kastoria another northern Greek city that I love and have family at. 

Wildlife protection is one of the most important sectors in environmental protection and sustainable development. Sustainable mobility can play a big part in this cause not only by putting up signs to warn drivers for the presence of wildlife but mainly through planning and design of infrastructure that does not invade wildlife habitat and protects these sensitive ecosystems from collateral damage.

BRT or LRT? Busway or Light Rail?

Few days ago I went back to the Gold Coast for a technical seminar on the new Light Rail Project that is now under construction there. The stage one of the project will cost $ 1 billion to deliver a 13 km route between the Gold Coast University Hospital and Broadbeach. This new public transportation system will commence operations in 2014 well ahead of the Commonwealth Games that Gold Coast will host in 2018. The system in this first stage will consist of 14 trams and 16 stations and it is expected to move 50,000 passengers a day with a capacity to cater for up to 75,000 passengers a day.

The trams are constructed by Bombardier and are 43.5 metres long, 2.65 metres wide and can travel at speeds up to 70 km/h. The trams are the latest generation of FLEXITY 2 Light Rail Vehicles that are used in Croydon and Docklands in London, Nottingham and Manchester, Blackpool and Lancashire. The unique feature for the Gold Coast trams will be of course the Surfboard racks.

This new system will be the first light rail system in Queensland. Previous attempts to propose planning and construction of such a system in Queensland’s capital city Brisbane were unsuccessful. Public spending in transportation is directed to the bus system like the CityGlider and CityCats. 

In the traffic engineering – transportation planning community there is a big and long standing debate on the benefits of light rail systems against bus rapid transit systems. The BRT or busway as they are called in Australia is at the moment the preferred choice in Brisbane. Personally I am not sure that there is a clearly superior system between the two. Probably it depends on the urban environment and the characteristics that those systems are to be designed and operate. And while busways are usually less expensive to implement and more flexible and adaptive to changes, the light rail systems give the city a world class image lift and support residential and commercial development along its stations.  

After all, the way busways work in Brisbane, some times they give the impression that we do have a light rail.

  

Charming cycling? Not in a helmet!

Riding a bicycle is one of the most sustainable mobility choices. Cities and people can greatly benefit, if they can raise the mode share of cycling. Australia in general and Brisbane specifically has a very small bike share even thought the last few years a lot of effort has been put in increasing bicycle use. You can see all the bikeways  and shared paths on Brisbane in the maps that provide information on on-road and off-road bicycle lanes, bike shelters and cyclepods to make your ride or walk safer and more pleasant.

Yesterday there was a very interesting event in Brisbane – which unfortunately I was not able to take part. Brisbane Bike Over Speed. Cyclists in their normal cloths, their work outfit or their best suits cycled through the City and South Bank just to make the point that cycling is not only for the “hardcore - lycra wearing – Tour De France looking” cyclists. See the video of their playful ride:

Some of them were riding CityCycle bikes. CityCycle is a very good initiative that can help raise bicycle use across the city. When I first saw the yellow bikes, similar to those in Paris and in Dublin, I thought: Way to go Brisbane. The next couple of days I subscribed to City Cycle and now I use the yellow bikes regularly. That is, I try to use them every day but it seems that quite a few days I am not able to do so because I can not find a bicycle with a helmet in the bike rack. That is one of the biggest reasons that the overall daily trips of CityCyle remain so low. Dublin Councillor Andrew Montague shares his experience about the bike share system in Dublin and compares it to the one in Melbourne which is so similar to CityCycle in Brisbane. The video is from MikeRubbo artist devoted in promoting "the beauty of the body of the bike".

And then browsing about cycling and the city I found this TEDx video of   Mikael Colville-Andersen, filmmaker, photographer and urban mobility expert from Copenhangen, Denmark explaining with lots of research and data “Why We Shouldn’t Bike with a Helmet”. Interesting comments, especially those concerning Australia.