Traffic, mobility, and accessibility

Last week, we talked about the ultimate goal of transportation - which is to provide people the ability to reach locations for economic productivity, as well as goods and services. The main hindrance to this, or at least, the most commonly identified culprit, is congestion, a.k.a "traffic jams." This is happening in Manila as well as in Cebu, albeit, in varying degrees. But traffic jams are merely symptoms of deeper transportation problems. We usually fail to address the issues because of mistaken appreciation of the root causes of the problem.

While we often see the transportation problem either that of the traffic or mobility perspectives, the ultimate goal is really accessibility. The best way to differentiate them is through the way we measure each. Traffic is simply the movement of vehicles, and the more (and the faster that) vehicles pass through a given road, the better. The measurements are traffic counts and travel speeds. From this angle, we can readily see that the only way to solve any transportation problem is to build more (or widen existing) roads. This is also the most popular one judging from comments of many people, especially those who own cars.

Mobility is the movement of "people" or "goods," measured in person-trips, freight-ton-trips, passengers-per-hour, total travel time, etc. Because the transporting the most number of people in the least time is the goal (rather than vehicles), mobility favors public mass transport over cars or even taxi services. It also considers walking and cycling as part of a person's trip as well as "transfers" and connections between modes, and thus goes beyond simply building more roads or widening existing ones. Mobility measures the fastest, and the easiest, way a person can transfer from point A to point B. Maybe also the most reliable.

But planning-wise, especially on the long-term, accessibility is the ultimate goal. That's why land use really plays a primary role as the influential driver of how the transportation system will look like. While the transport network influences land use, the opposite is also true, and even more important, but less acknowledged, by authorities and citizens alike. It's not just the zoning (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) issue, but the deliberate intention (or lack of it) of creating self-sustaining communities. May I ask our male readers how many of us go to Ayala or SM to get a haircut instead of the neighborhood barbershop?

Students go across half the city to attend elementary or high school, when establishing schools, even private ones, in each barangay will eliminate these trips. Each morning throngs of people cross the two Mactan bridges, in both directions, to work (or study) on the other side. It's not only land use but the whole economic system and job creation as well. But encouraging transit-oriented development will help much in decongesting cities and make it more livable to its citizens. The goal is more compact, mixed-use, walkable communities, which reduces the amount of travel required to reach opportunities.

But we have to break existing mindsets first, one characterized by frustrations because "my car is caught in traffic." And it's going to be a slow and difficult transition - first, from a mindset obsessed with traffic to one that considers mobility, then later, to expand that to one which looks at the whole picture of accessibility. It will be a long journey, but it has to start somewhere, sometime. Might as well be now.