John Poorman made some important revelations in his paper entitled ‘Societal Demands on Transportation: Addressing an
Artificial Dilemma,’ published by ITE Journal, December 2001, pp 34–37. He said, “Transportation is integral to culture and both reflects and influences societal values. Transportation is at the same time a highly individualized and a tremendously collective
endeavour….Much like the planning textbook ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ example (in which farmers, by pursuing their own individual objectives, collectively lead to the destruction of the town common through overgrazing), transportation systems that develop
without an explicit integration of and safeguards for other social values run the risk of damaging the way of life they are intended to
support.”
Poorman advised that planners should follow a shades of gray philosophy of ‘what makes sense,’ scaling investments to the physical context, system function, funding availability and priority of competing needs. Terms like these appear anathema to our decisionmakers, who seem to prefer phrases like ‘Government has decided,’ ‘projects to be done at the same time, ‘is committed to fast-track,’ and ‘private financing is not needed as Government has the money.’ Common sense and simplicity, though, seem to be in short supply. For non-auto transport technology, like rapid rail to be successful, it must be autocompetitive. This means that it must be widely available, and provide a superior level of service, in at least some respects, in comparison to personal auto use. It must be so good that it will be chosen by large numbers of people for a wide variety of trips.
The car has allowed many to travel where they will, in comfort and a level of security, and mostly at a time of their own choosing. Most people will simply not give up the convenience of their cars, despite the huge traffic congestion being both caused and experienced by them, except perhaps if penalties are imposed on them as a congestion alleviation device to coerce them to change their mode of transport. Some persons I consider to be in the know have shared with me that they believe that in TnT rapid rail will be able to encourage many persons to leave their cars at home. They believe that people will leave their cars for rapid rail, but will not do so to travel on a bus. I understand where they are coming from. Our bus, maxi, and taxi transit service has never been user friendly, nor has it ever been given priority treatment.
So transit usage in TnT is not attractive and would only be used by those who do not have access to a car. For example, we have never given transit vehicles that operate in significant numbers first priority when there are not enough lanes. We have not yet provided transit priority treatments such as, queue bypasses and high occupancy vehicle (HOV) and / or transit lanes, and pre-emption signal control at intersections along the Priority Bus Route (PBR) favouring transit. In fact, the PBR is a classic. I believe the intention by the planners was a good one, to create an exclusive busway, and thus the name. However, the PBR has never functioned as a busway, nor was priority ever given to transit management along this roadway. We do not have a culture of locating transit stops where they make the most sense for transit, nor of widespread use of dedicated stops, but we have always expected to be picked-up or dropped-off any at point along a route.
We have never sought to facilitate pedestrian flow near transit stops / stations but have always focussed on accommodating the vehicular traffic needs. We have never insisted on having sidewalks and appropriate lighting, so people can conveniently walk to and from transit stops. Therefore we have never seriously sought to make transit attractive and easy to use to potential patrons; providing clean and comfortable vehicles in good condition; providing convenient and comprehensible routes, easily located stops / stations and information sources; providing frequent and easily obtained schedules: and providing attractive, clean, well lighted transit stops / stations; with friendly drivers, information operators, security personnel and others who represent the transit service provider. Provision of adequate maintenance and personal security continues to be very poor. Do we believe that a new technology will suddenly create a new attitude?
Will there be a continued behaviour of pushing and shoving, and disregard of formal queuing in access and waiting areas? Or will a better attitude be inculcated, and if so, how? Remember the rapid rail system will be government owned and operated, so will we stick chewing gum under the seats, or vandalise the furniture? Rail tracks and associated areas need to be immaculately clean, so will we be able to rise above our generally accepted habit of flinging litter from the vehicle? Or will there be exclusive coaches at differential fares for lower, middle, and upper classes? Will we be able to prevent people from running across the rail tracks, or ‘liming’ along the rail routes? Would we have sufficient systems in place to minimise threats to national security along the routes? Our Transportation System is in Crisis - 36 While planning systems of advanced technology, we should also not forget that for these systems to work effectively we have to create a quality environment that represents a behavioural standard that we would like to exhibit or that we would expect to be exhibited by those around us