AITPM@IPENZ Day 1

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and the honour to win the AITPM New Zealand Study Tour Award. This award gives the opportunity to an AITPM member to have the conference registration costs, reasonable travel & accommodation expenses to attend the conference and accommodation costs for an additional two days in the conference city fully paid by AITPM.

Wellington is a lovely city, relaxed but yet vibrant, with a very friendly atmosphere.

It kind of made me homesick as it reminded me a bit of Kavala. Harbour town build amphiteatrically around the water.

Wellington though, has some amazing museums with astonishing Maori art and artifacts.

The highlight of the CBD tour was the cable car ride. Wellington's cable car is more than 110 years old.

Networking with my New Zealand (and a few Australian) colleagues was fun with activities like the geocaching/ treasure hunt at Zealandia and a bridge building competition that proved that traffic engineers and transport planners are not only good in planning and designing bridges but also at building them.

This first day was very promising. I hope the rest of the IPENZ Transportation Group conference is as interesting and as fun.

Tolls on roads or tolls on fire?

I was looking the other day at these pictures that were circulating the Internet and at the same day I read about the toll price hike on Brisbane's toll roads.

Source

Apparently it seems that the pictures are taken back in July 2013 when protesters in SP-332 Highway, Sao Paolo, Brazil set 8 toll booths on fire. The protests are ongoing, in several Brazilian cities, initiated mainly by the Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement), a local entity that advocates for free public transportation. The demonstrations started as a move against increases in bus, train, and metro ticket prices in some Brazilian cities, but soon included other issues such as the high corruption in the government and police brutality used against some demonstrators.

The same happened recently in Maharashtra, India, where protesters against  toll roads vandalised booths in Kolhapur. In the center of their protests were the cost of everyday transport and the political nexus between the ruling parties and contractors.

Source: The Hindu

That of course reminded me of all the problems with the economic crisis back in Greece. A similar protest movement named "I don't pay" ("Δεν πληρώνω") was initiated at 2008, even before the big crisis hit Greece as a protest mainly for paying tolls in the extremely unsafe Athens - Patra highway. Soon with the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) demanding more public revenue from almost every aspect of life in Greece, toll booths start appearing every 20-30 kms in existing and similarly bad condition roads, with toll prices rising almost every 6 months.

Historically toll roads started becoming a problem in Greece, when the Greek government decided to package maintenance works in sections of the highway network with the existing toll plazas and contract it out to the private sector. In order to make it more attractive, the contracts allowed for more toll booth locations and regular raises in prices. Soon the situation got out of control and the cost of travel for those toll roads went through the roof. When the "I don't pay" movement started and for a long period after that, a significant percentage of drivers were getting off the car, raising the boom gates and passing through the tolls without pay. The fact that the Greek legislation has not been adapted to this new regime and the cost of individual prosecutions made it even easier to avoid paying tolls.

Now some years later, the Greek legislation has changed to include privately run tolls and police have targeted toll evasion, so this practice has mostly phased out. But the cost of tolls is still ridiculously high and drivers just avoid the toll roads, or even worst the sections of those highways with tolls. Lots of different maps have appeared on webpages and facebook pages with detailed directions on how you can travel from Athens to Thessaloniki without paying the tolls. Of course this wasn't particularly difficult as even Google Maps has a tool where you can get directions between two places by avoiding tolls.

A few days ago there was again a series of demonstrations near Athens where people from a nearby village that their free access to the majority of the road network including the road to Athens was removed, protested and set the toll booths on fire. Police made many arrests, including the Mayor of the regional council.

Of course  highway traffic between the two biggest cities in the country, diverting through small villages and rural areas, is not only a highly unsafe practice from a road safety perspective but also highly uneconomical with lost hours and reduced productivity that sums up every day. It is also a bad use of road infrastructure with road wear shifting towards local government controlled and funded minor roads.

Unfortunately the extreme neoliberal policies of Troika are only concerned with the fiscal side of the economy, mainly the deficit and don't care about other aspects like unemployment, economic growth or even debt to GDP ratio let alone aspects of life like road safety.

Unlike Greece that is no longer a sovereign state anymore, in New Orleans, USA people in a referendum held on May 4, 2013 defeated the toll extension and officially ended tolls on the Crescent City Connection. The referendum was defeated by an overwhelming 78 percent of voters.

The discussion for road pricing has been going on for quite a while. Trying to find a fair pricing system is a matter of extensive research and work throughout the world. Cities like Singapore or Oslo have opted for congestion pricing.

Others like Brisbane, have opted for tolling new infrastructure like the ClemJones or Airport link tunnels while always providing a toll free alternative.

One thing is quite certain though: Road access can't be treated as another consumer product. Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right and road pricing should always include a free alternative. Excessive toll prices would eventually affect other aspects of life and the cost paid might be a lot higher than the toll revenue.

Moving around Sydney.

For the New Years Eve holiday period I took the family to Sydney on a city trip. I only had been to Sydney just once before on my trip to present the on-line mobility management toolbox at the AITPM conference in 2012. At that time I didn't had much chance to explore the city so this year I was keen to explore the traffic and transport in the city.

Moving around the city, I was quite impressed not only by the major attractions, the landmarks and the beaches but also with the extended public transport system. Although I was stunned to see and learn that the monorail was dismantled; buses, trains, light rail and most of all, the Sydney ferries all played a major role in discovering the city as a tourist.

In my previous time in the city I didn't have the chance to take a ride with the monorail system so I was quite disappointed when I found out that it no longer exists let alone operate. The funny side of the story was, that I was looking for it just outside the Haymarket station, looking at one of the maps at a light rail station. Apparently while the system was removed, the maps remain the same indicating the line and stations of the monorail system. I don't have the details of the removal project so I can't really say if that was a good or bad decision, but I must say that a lot of people would miss the monorail. Looking at the amount of pictures of the system in the Internet and sites like Panoramio it looks like it was a popular tourist attraction on it's own.

The Sydney ferries were my favourite transport mode in the city. The beautiful scenery along Sydney Harbour and Parramatta River and the views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge are worth the slightly  more expensive ticket. Different but equally attractive is the night ride. I suggest to take the ferry to Manly so you can get a different view of the city.

Of course when considering moving around Sydney by public transport as a tourist, the best option is the one day MyMulti pass. With this ticket you can travel unlimited across the city for a full day (to midnight). Sydney Transport  has also a very good offer for Sundays called Family Funday Sunday where for $2.50 per person, your family gets unlimited travel on all trains, buses, ferries and light rail in Greater Sydney provided by a bunch of different operators. Another good choice for Sydney visitors is the free city CBD shuttle bus that runs every 10 minutes on a loop from Central Station to Circular Quay via George Street (both directions).

Sydney has a lot of common traffic and transport practices with Brisbane. But it also has a few differences that caught my attention. I have written in an old post about Dragon's teeth, the markings around school zones. Another interesting difference that I noticed was the footpath arrangement, where at least at the suburb where I was staying, was different than the usual Brisbane footpath. The concrete strip is located adjacent to the property boundary and not at the middle of the verge. Personally I like this arrangement and I think it allows for better landscaping with tall trees.

Sydney's inner suburbs have a unique character as they preserve to the most part their architectural heritage. Some of the traffic calming I saw also looked  quite old. They feel in line with that historical character as they are not the standard precast ones that lately have prevailed.

Of course not all traffic and transport parameters in Sydney were world class. Sydney's congestion is notorious and visiting the city at a holiday period helped me avoid all that. Another bad example of mobility management were the parking meters and the parking management system in general, outside the Botanic Gardens. Having to pay at a specific parking pay station for a number of bays can be quite confusing especially if you have parked at the outermost of the lot. In this area Brisbane's parking management system is a lot more advanced.

On the other side in Brisbane we don't have a parking facility like the Sydney Opera House underground parking. Although, that too has gone into receivership, it is a really beauty architecturally and a brilliant transport design. It's innovative double spiral design can accommodate approximately 1200 vehicles in 12 stories.

I can understand the frustration of everyday commuters facing delays on their trips to work or home. After all Sydney is an Alpha +  global city where traffic and transport improvements are a constant requirement. To me Sydney was a great trip experience and a great place to visit or live.

Final destination: Changi airport.

I just came back from a leisure trip to Singapore and it was very interesting to notice a few things about air travel. Generally air travel is something that transport planners and traffic engineers are often professionally involved. Planning and designing airports, forecasting air passenger traffic and coming up with solutions for trips between terminals are some of the areas that a transport planner or a traffic engineer may provide his/her services. Over the last decade there were many changes in this field with most of the changes relating to  airports.

Airports are starting to become more significant than ever with some of them starting to become a destination of their own. This appears to be one of the top emerging travel trends. Air travel security checks and changes in airlines charging systems require passengers to be at the airport a long time before their flight. Long distance travel and airline alliances affect also the average time passengers spend as stopover between destinations. Competition between airports and the drive for alternative revenue has made airports reinvent themselves and change dramatically what they offer to passengers.

Changi International airport is probably the leading example, having won 430 awards since 1981, including 30 'Best' awards in 2012. The variety of services and experiences offered to passengers is beyond expectation. And the even more amazing thing is that the vast majority of them are free of charge. Depending on how long your stay in the airport is you can surf the Internet either from Internet stations or with Wi-Fi, visit and enjoy a number of different gardens that include a fantastic butterfly garden, get foot massage at Foot and Calf Massage stations, play a wide selection of Xbox and Playstation games, catch a movie at a movie theater or even get a 2hour Singapore Tour. And I repeat all of the above are offered free of charge.

Art and architecture is another field that airports are concentrating. Changi airport makes the list for the world's most beautiful airports. You can find amazing art pieces throughout the terminals with the Kinetic Rain installation catching the eye.

On top of these offerings the airport takes quality control and benchmarking very seriously, with numerous touch screens located in every spot of provided services for passengers to give their quality ratings.

Source

 The contrast with Darwin International airport which was my stopover on the way to Singapore was disappointing. There isn't really much to compare but the locked electricity wall sockets were the highlight of the terminal along with the almost torn apart sofas.

Choosing a flight in the near future, will become more and more affected by issues like stopover time but it seems that in certain occasions people will choose to ignore that in order to visit and experience airports as destinations. World airport competition is fierce and Australian airports although not centrally staged as Changi, need to keep up realising that the old philosophy of airport design is now obsolete.

Roadside memorials - safety warnings or hazards?

I was reading the other day about the decision of Queensland Motorways, the private company that operates some of the most important highways in the state, to remove roadside crash memorials from the Gateway and Logan motorways.

Although Qld Motorways stated that they understand that is a difficult and sensitive issue and that they tried to contact families that are related to the memorials, they remained firm to their decision not to allow or tolerate such memorials from now on.

Roadside memorial for a victim of the Pacific Highway. Photo: Dallas Kilponen DAK

The main reason behind the decision as quoted by Qld Motorways was road safety:
"Parking and walking along the motorway to maintain, establish or visit a memorial is an extremely unsafe activity, particularly with traffic moving at speeds of 100km/h" and "Roadside memorials present a visual destruction to drivers and create the potential for physical objects to harm road users by shifting onto the road surface." 

That article reminded me of all the roadside memorials in Greece, one of the countries that unfortunately has a high number of road crashes and road fatalities. In Greece most roadside crash memorials are like small churches while here in Queensland are usually just crosses or even a bunch of flowers taped to a post, a guard rail or a tree. Members of the family of the person or the people that were killed at the road crash maintain the memorial and in the case of miniature churches in Greece this is something that happens frequently as they have a small oil lamp that they keep lit.

Source:  Miniature churches in Greece

In other countries they erect different type of monuments and in some occasions they install a road safety warning sign. In a  bicycle specific practice widely known as "ghost bikes" people install white bicycles at the crash site.

Source: Roadside memorial blog

Source: Wikipedia

In Australia there was a big rise in roadside memorials since the 1990's. There is even a dedicated site that lists most of the Australian roadside memorials but whithout  much information for Qld.

This is yet another traffic issue that is controversial. According to the families that erect and maintain those memorials, they do more to combat the road toll than expensive government campaigns or flashing billboards. "They make everyone out on the roads think and slow down, because they represent a real loss. It makes more of an impact".

And this actually has merit and that is why erecting roadside memorials is not always illegal. Some of the US states like Colorado, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin ban such memorials. Different US states and world countries have different regulations regarding the memorials.In Queenland, Transport and Main Roads has a policy that regulates roadside memorials. According to it roadside memorials should be contained within the following dimensions:

    height 750mm
    width 500mm
    depth 400mm (below ground level).

In the interest of the safety of other road users and the safety of persons installing memorials, there are a number of locations where the placement of memorials is restricted. Examples of locations where memorials are not permitted include:

    motorways and freeways
    traffic islands
    medians
    roundabouts
    where they may interfere with any traffic control devices.

I hope sooner than later vehicle technology advances, driver education and investment in road infrastructure will make roadside memorials obsolete and part of human history. Until that day, families taking care of the memorials need to be cautius so there is no need to duplicate them.  Regardless of state or private company regulations, roadside memorials will be there to remind us that driving a car, a bike or any short of vehicle comes with risks and dangers.

Segways on the footpaths.

It's really funny that now that I'm working with heavy vehicles and dealing everyday with road access to some of the largest vehicles in Australia like ABB quads, the smallest of transportation vehicles caught my attention.

I am talking about Segways in Brisbane and electric bikes/scooters in the Gold Coast.  Just recently Queensland government announced that from 1 August 2013, approved Personal Mobility Devices (PMD) can be used on road related areas such as footpaths, bike paths and shared paths. At the moment Segway is the only PMD that has been approved but other similar devices like gyro-stabilised electric unicycles can be approved and until then can only be operated on private property.

There are certain conditions under which Segways are allowed to operate in Queensland. Those include among others the use of helmet (no surprises there), give way to pedestrians and having a warning device as a bell or horn. There is a speed restriction of 12km/h and you shouldn't be driving past a "PMD prohibited" sign.

Queensland police has adopted Segways on a 3 month trial for use on Brisbane's South Bank and Cairn's Esplanade. Officers are actually allowed to reach 20k/h when chasing a bad guy.

This whole PMD issue is not really new to Qld and Australia since mobility scooters, motorised disability wheelchairs and electric bicycles were allowed to travel on road and on the footpath for quite some time now. These vehicles need to achieve specific performance based standards and are limited to 200 Watt of power where the new PMD's don't have that limit. Segway seems to have far more power than that.

Other countries around the world allow Segways on the streets and footpaths under various conditions and contrary to the urban myth the inventor of Segway didn't die riding one of his inventions. 

And then, the other day while driving back from the beach at Surfers Paradise I saw a bunch of teenagers lane filtering and even moving from the pavement to the footpath on electric scooters. Those vehicles looked a lot like regular scooters although I noticed that they had pedals. It appears that they are available for hire without a drivers licence and they have less than 200 Watts of power.

They reminded me of my first vehicle the Honda Camino which I used to drive to school everyday between the ages of 16 and 17 back in Kavala Greece before I replaced it with the at the time very popular "ducks" Yamaha Townmate. They both had 50cc petrol engines and you needed a special drivers license issued by Greek Police to drive them.

 
As I said in an older blog post, I believe that scooters and even Personal Mobility Devices can provide better alternatives to urban travel than the car. And while I don't think that we will see a lot of Segways in the next years travelling on our footpaths it is certainly an idea worth exploring.  

Moving around Perth.

I just returned from Perth where I attended the AITPM 2013 national conference. While I spent most of my days there attending the conference, I had a day and a half to visit the city centre, the beach and Fremantle.

Perth is a magnificent city that supports a high quality of life for its residents. Perth was ranked as the 9th most  liveable city in the world at the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest livability ranking. This ranking assesses living conditions in 140 cities around the world for 30 indicators across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure.Perth is the 4th Australian city in this ranking bellow Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and above Brisbane.

Focusing on mobility management, Perth ticked all the right boxes in terms of public transport, street calming and livable streets. I really liked the traffic calmed streets in the CBD, around the main pedestrian streets (or malls as they are called in Australia). The use of pavers for the surface of pedestrian crossings creates a pedestrian friendly street environment.

In Fremantle this idea goes a step further. Pedestrian streets and traffic calmed streets with street furniture and landscaping along with well preserved heritage buildings create an atmosphere that goes beyond a typical port town and place Fremantle at the top of Perth attractions and places worth visiting. On a Saturday with the market open and everyone enjoying a coffee or a beer under the sun, you feel so relaxed that you start thinking that Perth is definitely a place worth considering moving to.

 Street artists painting in the street or playing music enhance this atmosphere.

  

 

Unfortunately as a typical Australian city there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to cycling and cycling infrastructure. Perth has very low percentage of people cycling to work at 1.3 %. The percentage of people using public transport for their every day trip to work is much higher at 12.7 % lower than Brisbane but on a upward trend which is expected to further rise in the near future thanks to the new free for all CAT (central area transport service) bus lines. Perth operates a Free Transit Zone ( FTZ ) where within the Perth city centre travel on public transport is free. 

To travel within this zone you can simply hop on any train, bus or CAT. You are not restricted to the amount of times you can use this service and no tickets are required. The FTZ includes City West and Claisebrook on the Fremantle, Midland and Armadale train lines, the start and finish of the FTZ are clearly marked, on the train stations and bus stops.

My tour around Perth ended at City Beach where looking at the sunset over the Indian Ocean on a clear and warm winter day I thought that won't be long before the day that I will return there to explore further this wonderful part of the world.