The Connectivity Declaration - Walter Hook, Executive Director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

Dreaming a new DetroitWalter Hook, Executive Director, ITDP

Detroit, November 2010

Is this the future?

Robert Crumb (1988)

Times Square, 1985

Or this?

Or this? Hundertwasser’s

Vienna

Or this? Rem Koolhaas’ Netherlands

MOD POD-TIME SQUARE IN HARBIN Ceate a mobility, aceesibility and people-oriented square

Project principlesCreate An interaction, civic and cultural central square3. people-oriented designs-activities for summer, night

time, winter-Abundant sitting and amenities -implement an attractivenight lighting scheme

Melbourne revitalizes downtown (Gehl)

Critical trends:

• Bus rapid transit• New pedestrian-oriented spaces • Bike sharing and bike networks• Parking reform

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiated in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974

Basic Bus Rapid Transit: Quito

Road Configuration:

Lanes of mixed traffic

Bus express lane

Central median location removes conflict with turning vehicles, double parked taxis and delivery vehicles, etc. Left turns normally prohibited where possible!

Stations feel like metro systems: station floor level with the bus floor

Bogota TransMilenio

Passengers pay at the turnstile, not the bus driver: passengers board all doors at once.

Quito, Ecuador

Porto Alegre, Brazil

Size and number of doors is more important than bus size.

TransMilenio buses have 4 x 1.1 meter doors

Guangzhou BRT day I: no guidance system.

One station in the middle or two on the curb side

Difficult to transfer

Stations are Narrow Impossible to reconstruct for higher volume

Requires special buses.

Buses only operate on BRT corridor or have doors on

both sides.

Quito Line 1 Quito Line 2

BRT in the United States

Las Vegas, Nevada:

Eugene, Oregon

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles Orange Line

Cleveland, Ohio

Mid block station location increases the level of service for both buses and

mixed traffic at minimal pedestrian inconvenience

Bus stop – Intersection interference

Bus stop before intersection, buses waiting at light can disrupt functioning of the bus stop

Intersection

IntersectionBus stop after intersection, buses queuing at stop disrupt intersection

Direct service full featured Bus Rapid Transit

Special concerns about BRT in the USA

• Low demand• Strip mall development form• High labor costs• Administrative rigidity

TransJakarta

Mexico City Metrobus opens 2004

Ahmedabad opens first full featured BRT in India, 2009

Majority is surface median stations with at-grade crossing

Segregated median bus lanes

Level boarding 900 mm

Guangzhou decides to build BRT on high demand corridor, 2006

Guangzhou BRT opens 2010, 800,000 passengers per day

Real time passenger information

Full integrated with Metro, at 4 stations

China: this is the competition

What’s happening at the next station down…

Flexible Operation

优点： 专用走廊，走廊内 Guangzhou and Cali, Colombia, are the first BRT systems to combine full BRT features with ‘direct’ routes

210

560 Route using corridor /route length more than 30％

BRT Vehicle ， can leave corridor

Don’t need feeder

296

561 242

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

BRT expansion after “Gold Standard” BRT Projects

Wor

ldw

ide

com

bine

d le

ngth

of

BR

T s

yste

ms

(km

)

after Curitiba

after Quito, Bris-bane, & European cities

after Bo-gotá

Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya BRT becomes first full BRT in Africa, Opens 2009

41

Combining Trunk, Feeder and Complimentary Service: Johannesburg: A good option

Downtown Johannesburg has crime problems. Rea Vaya station areas become secure havens

• Pre-paid, level boarding

• Secure

• weather-protected

• Aesthetically pleasing

The Stations are World Class

Central verge configuration on narrow downtown one way streets is daring and innovative

The Taxi Transition:

Bus operators are former minibus taxi operators from 10 competing ‘mafias’. This was KEY to political success

Transport minister of the city had her house attacked, and 2 security guards were killed.

Guangzhou, China’s new pedestrian promenade along rediscovered ancient canal, Opened Nov 2010

Gehl Architects · Urban Quality Consultants · Gl. Kongevej 1, 4.tv · 1610 Copenhagen V · Denmark · www.gehlarchitects.dk

think

New pedestrian street, Guangzhou, China.

Every Chinese city has new pedestrian zones

Mexico City Centro Historico Newly Pedestrianized Streets

Cities rediscover pedestrians

The magic of waterfronts is being rediscovered from London to Guayaquil (below)

Victoria, British Colombia, CanadaSource: Curbless Streets/Shared Space in Urban Contexts, Background, Issues & Examples, July 2007

de Brinkgood, Netherlands Odense, Denmark

Shared Streets

Hans Mondermann develops shared street concept

Shared Streets Appear in Guangzhou, China

New Kensington High Street. Children bike safely in the MIDDLE of

the road....

Poor people can lower cost of living by bicycling. Slums of Bogota

After a decade of tearing out bike lanes, China is rebuilding them

Guangzhou, first new bike lane on a major arterial since the early 1990s

Delhi builds first modern Indian bike lanes, 2008

Paris’ new bike lanes

New York followed with major initiative starting 2008

Car Free Days: Mexico City emulates Bogota

New York copies Bogota and

Mexico

New York’s Summer Streets Programs: Over 1,000,000 people participated in 3 Sundays in August

Bike sharing takes off globally after Paris Velib opens

Lyon’s new waterfront w/

bikeshare

Milan, Montreal, Washington DC, Stockholm, and dozens of other cities in Europe

Then Hangzhou becomes largest bike sharing system in the world,

2009

ModelRio launches bike sharing, 2009

Mexico city launches bike share, 2010

Guangzhou bike sharing opened in August, now 5000 bikes

Road Removal:

Highway tear-downs have become fashionableSeoul, Milwaukee, San Francisco,

New Bikestation Long Beach, CA, Adjacent to Blue Line Light Rail

Sao Paulo

• 11km bike lanes along the river

• Bike trips increased from 0.3% to 0.6% of total trips over a decade

BEFORE

AFTERAFTER

Breda, The Netherlands

Multi-modal Station with P&R

Hamburg, Germany (Altona District)

Parking Podiums

Chicago Bangkok

Detroit?

Chicago privatizes downtown parking

Supply Caps• Hamburg: Sealed inventory

in Central Business District at roughly 30,000 spaces in 1976

• Zurich: “Historic Compromise” instituted in 1996

• Amsterdam: Every spot created off-street should remove a spot from on-street.

Imagining the city we want…

Ahmedabad (current site)

Ahmedabad (rendering)

Bimal Patel, HCP Design and Project Management

Johannesburg (current site)

Johannesburg (rendering)

Osmond Lange Architects, Ikemeleng Architects

New York (current site)

New York (rendering)

Architect: Michael Sorkin Studio

Guangzhou (current site)

Guangzhou (rendering)

Urbanus Architecture and Design

“Until we know what kind of city we want, we cant decide what sort of transportation system we should have.”

Enrique Penalosa, ITDP President, Former Mayor, Bogota, Colombia

www.itdp.org