COVID-19 and Inclusive Mobility

Let’s go back to the start, just before the outbreak. The car-centric transportation world view controls how people move within the city. Except for a few cities in the world which espouses an “Inclusive Mobility” agenda, the rest of the world’s megacities and even the smaller ones always look at the private cars as the basis for policy formulation and planning. They’ll deny it but the form and shape of the infrastructure, network systems, and operations, belie it.

A pandemic will readily expose this bias. Of course, the reaction was understandable, from the health point of view. Pandemics are powered by infectious transmission which is aided by close contact and enhanced by transportation. As we have stated last week, it is possible now to go to any place within the world in 24 hours, how much more for any place in the city. And having the car which can go anywhere helps that.

The first reaction? Close public transportation. Of course, it’s a valid concern, it’s not called mass transportation for nothing. Huge capacities are attained by people riding close to each other. So, the first action is to prevent that by stopping public transportation. Forgetting that it moves more than 80% of the city. But the question was left unanswered – how will those 80% move? Meanwhile, private cars are allowed to continue. They’re safer, right? Relative to public transport, yes. So, the 15% to 20% who own cars are allowed to continue moving while around five out of every six persons in the city have to walk to get their supplies --food, medicine, etc. That’s inequality! The bulk of a city’s person-trips are on private cars, causing the congestion in the first place. When public transportation is stopped, there’s still congestion. But if we ban cars and allow public transportation, you will have no traffic at all! Maybe, there’s a reason for it, but it disenfranchised the majority who don’t own cars, letting them walk and making them suffer more than they already did in the first place!

Meanwhile, a scheme to control cars was belatedly instituted but this cut the volume by at most 43% of the normal traffic. We could have cut it down to 20% - 33% (using the Manila vehicle reduction scheme) or even much lower, 10% to 15%, which would have been the most effective. Buying essentials will only generate that much person-trips anyway; home-to-work trips were drastically cut-down. And “socially distanced” public transportation schemes could have been instituted to cater to non-car-owners, like other cities did. They’re still residents of our city, you know, and deserved mobility, too. That’s what we mean by “inclusive” – caring for all members of the population and not forgetting the disadvantaged groups. We may need to think hard and plan on how to, but that we should do, for they deserve our concern. Governance is not a knee-jerk reaction, propelled by personal perspectives, but with a general concern for all.

My belated birthday greetings to Samuel Ken Villarete (yesterday). May God always bless you, my son.