Michael Replogle

Sustainable Transportation Strategies for Third World Development

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Principles and Strategies for Sustainable Transport Development

The World Bank has identified three principles it believes should guide the development of urban transport in most cities-- 1) Economic viability, 2) Financial viability, and 3) Efficiency (5). This list omits two other principles that are essential to sustainable transportation development.

Environmental viability should be included as another basic principle for transportation development. This principle might be included within a very broad definition of economic viability through the incorporation of all externalities in the economic calculation. However, this would presume that all environmental values can be monetized, a questionable assumption of costbenefit analysis.

Equitability or Effectiveness should also be a basic principle for the evaluation of transportation projects and programs. This principle would measure the degree to which a transport system or project meets the basic mobility needs of the population, including low income individuals, thus accounting for distributional impacts.

Environmental groups, private voluntary development organizations, human rights groups, and those advocating the interests of lower-income people should seek to have these principles incorporated into the transportation policies at all levels.

A number of alternative transportation policies have been suggested in recent studies (1,8), including some funded and published by the World Bank (13,14) itself. Among the most important strategies consistent with the notion of sustainable are the following:

• Alternatives Assessment. Impact statements should be required for all transportation projects funded by the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other development lending institutions. These statements, somewhat akin to the Environmental Impact Statements required under the U.S. National Environmental Protection Act of 1972, would identify alternatives to the proposed project and the anticipated impacts of the proposed and alternative projects on the environment, on other potentially competitive transportation modes (including non-motorized), on the poor, and on long-term foreign currency requirements. These impact statements would be useful in gaining information on alternative transportation strategies, which need to be tailored to local circumstances. They would help to identify the costs and benefits of different strategies over time. Such impact statements might be required as part of legislation funding various aid programs. A process for public review and comment on these statements should be required.



• Access to Tools for Mobility. Programs need to be developed to enhance the access of the poor to low-cost vehicles and efficient carrying devices. Such tools can have a major effect on the labor productivity of the poor and their access to services and local markets. The productivity of women in collecting water and cooking fuel, which in many places requires many hours of labor each day, can be greatly improved with such tools.



• Access to Credit in Small Amounts. The provision of low-cost credit for the purchase of bicycles, carts, pack animals, and similar vehicles, should be a high priority to ensure that more of the poor have access to affordable mobility. In Hyderabad, India, commercial banks were encouraged to lend to rickshaw operators for the purchase of vehicles. In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, a credit union of tricicleros helps finance vehicle purchases and a tricycle assembly project. Such lending programs, targeted to micro-enterprises, can provide major stimulation to local economic activity.



• Local Production of Low Cost Vehicles. Most countries should be encouraged to develop local bicycle assembly and cart production capabilities for domestic use. This can create significant employment opportunities. Even if all of the bicycle parts must be imported, these imports can continue to generate productive outputs for some time, rather than being spent on a single trip, as petroleum imports are. Several countries have fostered domestic bicycle manufacturing industries with varying success. Mexico and China have both offered subsidizes to their bicycle industries to enhance access of lower income people to this mode and encourage domestic production. The attempts of Tanzania and Mozambique to establish protected domestic bicycle manufacturing were failures due to low product quality and high costs of local parts manufacture. However, by starting with small, low capital cost assembly workshops and only gradually assuming the production of selected bicycle components, countries with little or no industrial base can begin to develop appropriate domestic transportation vehicle manufacturing capabilities with low risk (8,9).



• Infrastructure Needs. Transportation investment policies need to be reprioritized to place more emphasis on roads and trails suitable for low-cost vehicles. In urban areas, street space needs to be reallocated to enhance the safety and viability of non-motorized modes. Sidewalks, footpaths, and pedestrian / bicycle under and over passes crossing congested arterial roads need to be incorporated as standard elements of urban transportation planning to devise more equitable and sustainable transport systems.



• Land Use. Urban land use planning needs to move away from the encouragement of spatial separation of economic activities and residential locations, except for heavy industrial uses. Mixed land use patterns with greater decentralization of employment can reduce the need for motorized commuting and foster greater community integration. When cities grow ever larger, it is desirable to locate employment clusters along rail nodes and in corridors well served by rail or bus public transportation, with affordable housing nearby and also transit accessible.



• Auto Use Restrictions. The automobile should be subject to far greater restrictions in dense central city areas. Area licensing schemes, as used very successfully in Singapore, should be more widely adopted, along with more widespread automobile free zones.



• Pricing and Subsidies. Taxes on automobile purchases and operation, particularly for private use, should be increased sharply to reflect the true costs of automobile use on the urban environment. Subsidies for automobile use of urban road space should be eliminated. Taxes on bicycles, public transportation vehicles, and non-motorized vehicles should be eliminated or sharply reduced to enhance their affordability by the poor and near-poor. Public transport pricing should encourage economic use of resources while maintaining basic access for the poor. Innovations in services and modes should be encouraged by allowing private sector competition.



• Road Standards and Maintenance. In countries where capital is insufficient to meet the basic transport development needs of the poor majority, road construction standards should be reduced and more labor-intensive lighter weight motorized and non-motorized vehicles should be favored over very heavy weight vehicles. Exceptions to this would be for certain types of raw material and bulk commodities transport on selected routes, and in some cases this traffic might be well served by rail. These strategies can create jobs and substantially reduce the costs of roads. Wear and tear on roads varies by the fourth power of axle weight. Frequently, only the largest corporations and those dependent on them (a usually influential and sometimes sizeable minority in developing countries) benefit from heavy truck traffic. It makes no sense to build roads unless they will be properly maintained. Road weight standards need to be set and enforced, and the costs of road maintenance should be bourne by those imposing the most wear and tear on the roads.



• Land Distribution. The development of new roads should be accompanied whenever possible by land redistribution and the ensurance of secure land tenure to those living near the new roads. Without this, most benefits of the new roads will accrue to those who own the land or who have the capital to take advantage of increased market access. In country after country rural road programs have simply pushed those at the bottom of the economic heap onto more marginal lands, creating injury rather than benefit as the larger landowners succeeded in driving off subsistence producers from what has often been ancestral land. Major transportation investments without development of an equitable system of land distribution inherently will increase inequality and economic stratification.



• Public Education. Diverse programs and actions should be undertaken to influence public opinion in favor of less resource intensive transportation modes and to promote traffic discipline and safety in the operation of both motorized and non-motorized modes.



• Transport Priorities in Development and Relief Projects. Higher status people, such as rural extension agents in health, education, and agriculture, should be afforded bicycles to enhance their productivity at low cost and to counter low status associations that human-powered modes have in many countries. For the cost of sending one jeep front office of a development project, a whole fleet of new all-terrain bicycles can be sent to provide mobility to project participants, organizers, and agents. Food distribution efforts in famines should incorporate human-powered utility vehicles where appropriate to augment other transport resources, especially where trucks cannot go.



• Professional Education. Transportation professionals at all levels should be encouraged to take non-motorized and informal modes of transport seriously when collecting and analyzing data, when designing facilities and policies, and when evaluating alternative solutions to mobility problems. Textbooks designed for traffic planning in the highly motorized and affluent United States are inappropriate for transport planning in India, Mexico, or China.



• Research, Development and Demonstration. There should be more funding for research on transportation problems in developing countries and more encouragement of South-South technology transfer. Relatively small investments could produce significant improvements in traditional carrying devices and vehicles powered by humans, animals, wind, and sun, extending their range and utility at low cost. Funding is neededto support demonstration projects for the transfer of emergent low-cost transportation technologies. For example, All-Terrain Bicycles, a recent commercial innovation, offer much greater performance than traditional bicycles. While multiple barriers impede the diffusion of such new technologies, demonstration projects can help identify and overcome these.



• Institution Building and Community Participation. There should be more encouragement for the creation of locally-responsive appropriate technology research and training centers to study and respond to local needs, including those in transportation, and to build community leadership and skills. Transportation projects should be designed in consultation with representatives of the poor and the users of slow transportation modes to identify alternative strategies for mobility enhancement, unmet travel needs, and ways of making projects most compatible with the interests of all potential users.