Category: traffic

Traffic planners elsewhere prepare for a post-car world

Marlen V. Ronquillo

Bill de Blasio’s New York City welcome, after his doomed presidential bid, was a court decision that sustained the car ban carried out by his city’s Department of
Transportation (DOT) on Manhattan’s busy 14th Street. De Blasio was the prime proponent of the car ban on one of the busiest streets of New York City and, probably, the entire US. Under his and the DOT’s proposal, only buses, delivery trucks and ambulances would have access to that road.

Some well-heeled residents of Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Flatiron, and other neighboring communities sued the New York City government for its supposed “arbitrary and capricious action.” Cars banned from the 14th would just create “gridlocks” in other parts of Manhattan, the court case stated. The court, which probably based its decision on solid transport science, green lighted the car ban.

Read on….

When whimsy, not transport science, dictates traffic policies

Marlen V. Ronquillo

There  is a traffic plan for  Manhattan’s 14th Street in New York City, easily the borough’s most congested road. The New York  City government is coordinating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to carry out  the plan.

And it is a direct assault on America’s much-cherished  car culture.

The plan,  so far the most radical assault on America’s beloved cars, would ban all cars from the 14th. Only three types of vehicles would be allowed — buses, trucks carrying food and other essentials and emergency vehicles.

Read on…

breaking the law with Uber

Harvard Business Review‘s Uber Can’t Be Fixed–It’s Time for Regulators to Shut It Down is a must read if you want to know why the LTRFB is right to suspend uber, and why it’s a little embarrassing how outraged many uber users are — it’s all about public service daw, and LTRFB is so palpak in public service and public transport, so let uber be.  besides the units and the drivers are so nice and mabango, not like the MRT and LRT stations and bagons that are so sikip and scary, and you have to make pila pa.

never mind that with uber, no one’s accountable in case of accident or other mishap.  never mind the horrible traffic, swollen by more than a hundred thousand uber units plying metromanila, and not enough roads.  and never mind that uber is about breaking the law.  ours is a culture of illegality anyway.  and we can rant and rave all we want about how corrupt government is, but then so are we who celebrate uber’s subversion of the law just  because it’s oh so convenient and comfortable, and oh so sosyal.

what if we were oh so outraged instead, along with the less moneyed classes, by the transportation department’s turtle pace in upgrading our decrepit mass transport systems?  imagine if we were as passionate about this as we are about supporting uber that’s really just another bunch of foreigners capitalizing, and counting, on a complicit elite, what a shame.

traffic and the class divide

stark show of the class divide:  the traffic problem solved in favor of car-owners, never mind the masses of public transpo commuters who are oppressed, disenfranchised, marginalized enough.

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