By Dr Frank Lai
(www.its.leeds.ac.uk/people/f.lai)
This is a partner university in Taiwan where we have teaching collaboration. Third visit here in the last five years. I received a very warm welcome and met plenty of familiar faces. Had really good discussion on strengthening collaboration and further.
Prof Kuancheng Huang, Director of International Affairs at the College of Management, and me
By Ian Philips
(www.its.leeds.ac.uk/people/i.philips)
Over the weekend I attended Hacking the Smart City. It was a Hackathon event designed to bring together those interested in developing and using a series of spatial information visualisation tools developed by CASA (the Centre for Advanced Spatial analysis at UCL.
The event began with a presentation of CASA’s work in visual analytics, data sensing and extraction, crowdsourcing, digital social research and geospatial modelling. Here’s are a couple of examples of the kind of thing CASA does: The CityDashboard is designed to be an at-a-glance view of eight cities around Great Britain. It combines official, observational and social media data into a single screen, the dashboard, which updates continuously as you watch it http://citydashboard.org/london/map/
They have also been working on real time visualisation of the tube in London http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78y2kdLUV-U.
The participants then got into groups to work on one of a series of smart city challenges. I got involved with a group which was looking at Pigeon Sim. http://vimeo.com/41552761. Pigeon Sim allows you to fly through the Google Earth landscape. It uses games console motion detectors to pick up the motion of the user. We were working on code to try and record and map the route taken by the user. I see many data gathering applications for this. For example, you could ask a participant to fly their route to work whilst giving a commentary about how likely they would be to cycle each segment. Unlike GPS traces or cycle along research this gives an opportunity to gather data from non-cycling potential cyclists in a safe way. There seems to be all sorts of potential for using a tool like this in participatory research.
We didn’t work on this over the weekend but Pigeon Sim could also be developed to visually inspect large data sets. Pigeon Sim’s Developers have projected data into the sky above points of interest. This offers exciting possibilities for explaining findings. For example if a researcher were trying to communicate a complex transport network model to a planner or policy maker a Pigeon Sim fly through, with summary data superimposed over the GoogleEarth map, could show them where things are happening making a model more accessible. (CASA Maptube is another visualisation tool – shape files can be overlain over Googlemaps and accessed through the web e.g. http://www.maptube.org/home.aspx).
Also during the event I followed a tutorial by Steven Gray http://www.stevenjamesgray.com/blog/2013/10/28/data-hacking-and-the-city-workshop-ucl-casa-conference-2013/ one of the CASA staff which allowed me to set up a twitter listener and then display the location of the Tweets on a Google map Another group also worked on displaying results in real time. I made a quick example to see if I could pick up any reference to SMIDSY incidents (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/SMIDSY.) The disruption project https://twitter.com/Disruptionproj has collected Twitter data, there appears to be lots of scope for collecting visualising and sharing data on a range of transport issues.
More information on the event and details of all the challenges available here http://www.geotalisman.org/hacking-the-smart-city-7-to-9-nov-2013/
Professor Greg Marsden
The final day of my visit was a series of stimulating discussions with staff at the Singapore Land Transport Authority Academy and the Authority itself. The Academy does a great job in training up leaders in the region in good implementation practice.
The context in different countries matters a lot but many of the problems are, at heart, the same. Three weeks ago in London at the TomTom UK traffic summit I chaired a discussion about the new shared mobility paradigm and the truly multi-modal traveler experience. You could argue Singapore is a lot further down the line to getting there… However, they face the same issue which is that we still plan and analyse transport systems on a modal basis and we aren’t good at putting together an understanding of end to end journey experience.
The system here is excellent. However, that doesn’t stop complaints – so apparently the better the quality of the system the higher the demands of the travelling public. That’s an interesting conundrum to solve. I wonder how much people are really prepared to pay for? The new Snap and Send system for people to send in geo-referenced pictures of potholes and other transport breakdowns is apparently very popular. A challenge to all local governments and transport operators to match!
We also discussed similarities and contrasts in the future mobility trends which are considered important in Singapore and Europe. An island state that does not have a car industry can take a much more dispassionate view about electric vehicles – although that doesn’t mean nothing is being done.
Licensing and ERP!
My final transport reflection is the renowned ERP system. The current cost of getting a vehicle license in the auction is around £35k and the purchase tax for the car is around 1.2 times the price of the vehicle. It is clearly a luxury purchase. So, whilst variable pricing is in play it must be to the most price insensitive people on the island for the most part. Despite the high costs the youth apparently still aspire to car ownership. Ouch!
The day ended with a lovely meeting with some of our alumni (pictured below). I taught Esther and Puteri – but it was great to have an opportunity to meet Sing who set up the ITS division in the LTA and is now chair of ITS Singapore. Ban Cheng was instrumental in organizing my visit and was a great help to me! There are lots of opportunities for ITS to do more with the LTA and the Academy so I hope this is the first of many visits by ITS staff.
Professor Greg Marsden
Today was a chance to experience and hear about the Singapore experience with integrated transport. One of the main things that hits you when you get here is sheer volume of construction work on-going. The challenge for the Singapore Land Transport Authority is one of keeping their existing customers happy whilst catering for the growth.
One of our alumni Mr Tan Ban Cheng (Transport Planning and Engineering 1994) gave me a tour of the MRT and one of the LRT systems which feeds the North East Line. The pressure on land space makes for high densities anyway, but great attention to detail is given to building the initial infrastructure so it can take high rise development.
View from the LRT line – Everything is TOD!
The system is very clean, well organised and efficient. Some interesting innovations are also going on around peak spreading (free travel for very early arrival and small discounts for shoulder of peak arrival at many stations). Despite this, issues such as overcrowding and occasional system failure and an increasingly vocal public mean that the new Master Plan has been developed to try and put customers more at its heart and to try and encourage more people to access the MRT by bike and walk.
I had a great walking tour with Ban Cheng in the evening and made a reasonable fist of eating my noodles with chopsticks. The picture below shows Ban Cheng outside the old GPO building. Whilst there were a few such buildings in that district, a 180 degree turn would have shown the Singaporean equivalent to Canary Wharf. Tomorrow concludes the visit with a presentation and discussions at the LTA Academy.
A very generous host
Professor Greg Marsden
Today was a chance to see a bit of Delhi and to experience a bit more of the transport system. It started however with front page headlines of “Blame Game over thick smog cover”. Arguments about whether the smog resulted from Diwali celebrations, burning of straw in nearby regions or the emissions from cars were put forward. It seems like a combination of those factors with the winter weather (short sleeves and quite mild…) have contributed to recorded levels 15 times the safe standard for Delhi (1554 micrograms per cubic metre). Not good news for anyone living here.
My trip out began with a visit to the recently refurbished and beautiful temple for Emperor Humayan. Since the 1100s it appeared that each new dynasty would set up its own palace area along the river.
I also got chance to visit the Lotus temple and a national craft market as well having a taster lunch of Southern Indian cuisine with Sanjay. The variety of flavours and dishes that comprise a meal seem in stark contrast to the UK!
I then got the chance to ride on the Delhi Metro. It covers around 180km and around 2.5million passengers per day. It was modern, fast and comfortable – although crush loading and sharp elbows around the interchanges are every bit as prevalent as any major Metro system you might think of. Mass transit systems such as these are very expensive (and there is a big expansion programme underway). However, it is difficult to see any other transport solution for a city of 16 million which is still growing.
That takes me to my reflections on getting around on the road network. The traffic generally follows the lanes with a bit of creativity and a lot of horn. There was perhaps a bit more on-coming traffic in our lane than I am used to… What is amazing to watch (when it works!) is the mix of traffic. Three wheel cycle freight bikes with a tonne of steel on them, cyclists crossing 4 lanes of traffic, auto rickshaws, people sat side saddle on the parcel shelf of motorbikes without helmet, powerful buses and a mix of cars all competing for the limited space. I was struck by the countdowns on traffic lights – for the drivers not the pedestrians. These were particularly useful so that drivers could turn off their engines during the 3 minute cycle times of the lights – but they also acted as a chequered flag to some effect! I wonder if the lone contra-flow cyclist in 3 lanes of traffic made it home? Did the guy with 2 dozen eggs on the footplate of his motorbike have them scrambled? Whilst it all seems to function as a bit of a slow dance, it is easy to see why the safety record is as it is.
My final reflection on Delhi was the rather surprising news that the Supreme Court had allowed four wheel traffic into the Delhi BRT corridor and this seems to have halted progress on further BRT schemes until after the election. Apparently an individual can raise a Public Interest Liability claim and have it heard by the court. Whilst they had asked for BRT to be removed and the court had not gone that far, it seems peculiar that the judiciary should extend itself to the details of policy rather than whether the existing rules allowed for that policy to be implemented. That would be a worrying trend. It does go to reinforce the importance of winning the public debate.
Next stop Sinagpore – where I am visiting the Land Transport Authority and some ITS alumni (some of which have done great things in the LTA). I will be presenting on the Disruption project – so a fairly formidable task of explaining what the Singaporeans can learn from our experiences with snow and ice!
Professor Greg Marsden
Today was a full on workshop around how to progress an integrated urban transport programme for Indian Cities. There are 53 cities of more than a million population and ten with a population above 3 million. Clearly the problems of congestion, air pollution (not just the post Diwali induced smog), traffic safety and equity and inclusion are as chronic here as in other rapidly developing economies. An interesting paradox was suggested that perhaps because still less than 50% of the population of most regions is urbanized, the importance of urban development remained to be firmly embedded in policy.
SPA and ITS Leeds Seminar
The morning keynote was given by the Dr Sudhir Krishna, Secretary of the Ministry of Urban Development in India. He reflected that post independence cities in India were left to grow rather than being shaped. In addition, India is a country with many laws which have often seen statutory bodies established to oversee implementation. This makes pulling the organizations together challenging – there are around 25 agencies involved in transport in Delhi for example.
Other contributions mapped out the scale of the problem facing Delhi (10% growth in vehicles, 70% of air pollution from vehicles and one fifth of all of India’s road fatalities) but also a vision to do things differently. Ideas include more effective corridor planning, better multi-modality around the 68 Metro stations and a zero fatality aspiration. My contribution (view below via link) to the discussion was to highlight that the problems are multi-faceted and so we need an integrated approach to tackle these problems. The toolkit of interventions requires major new investment, renewal and upgrading, freight management, urban design and travel demand management policies. This set the scene for the afternoon discussion which asked how 25 agencies might be brought together to make some of these things happen. It also brought discussion around key gaps – such as the absence of a clear parking policy for the city.
Delhi AM Transport policy experiences
The afternoon’s workshop focused on possible institutional frameworks for improving urban transport. 29 years ago at the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi a proposal was made for the adoption of Urban Metropolitan Transport Authorities (UMTA). The 2006 National Urban Transport Plan put this in motion with some funds being channeled to those states that demonstrated these UMTAs had been established. Despite this, around one half of local planners are not aware of the national policy and within those that are 90% report facing difficulties in implementing it. A Presentation from Ishita Chauhan showed that of the 11 cities with UMTA most have very infrequent meetings, as yet have not secured legal status and therefore have delivered comparatively little on the ground.
I reviewed the experience of Transport for London and what I took to be the successful elements of an urban transport authority. These were:
Looking at experiences from Manchester (UK), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Bangalore (India) drawing on work by recent Leeds PhD graduate Fatimah Kamal I suggested that the absence of most of these ingredients explained the comparative failure of UMTA in India. However, Kuala Lumpur and Manchester have not got all of the powers of Transport for London. Governance reforms need to be seen as a process and provided they have sufficient powers to make a difference at the outset, credibility will build and other powers may be absorbed (as has been the case in London). Presentation available below at link.
Delhi PM Transport Institutional Frameworks
I was surprised by the apparent lack of urban transport technical capacity in the cities. The best planners and designers are apparently more likely to take jobs in the major highway construction programmes or consultancies where the career paths are clearer. Transport for London is, in my view, a really dynamic and sector leading organization that people are attracted to work for (which doesn’t mean it won’t have the problems that any organization faces but…). Without a clear UMTA related career trajectory this appeared more difficult to achieve.
There were many interesting analogies and sayings used during the day. One which stuck was that “Indian soil is most infertile for co-ordination”. Whilst the thirty year struggle to improve urban transport governance continues I saw a willingness today to innovate and to make progress with some of the key ingredients even if it is not the complete package. A greater political understanding of the importance of integrated transport and land-use planning for the economic prosperity, environment and well-being of the cities is perhaps necessary to reinforce why these reforms will really make a difference. A great programme put together by Dr Sanjay Gupta and hopefully a springboard to more collaborations.
After a full day I am looking forward to a bit of a rest while the rest of Delhi celebrates the festival of brothers and sisters. Tomorrow I take a bit of a tour of the transport network and some of Delhi life before moving on to Singapore. From UMTA challenges to a global leader in integrated planning and delivery!
Arrived into the impressive Indira Gandhi International Terminal to temperatures in the high 20s – somewhat of a culture shock! Less surprising was the massive BMW advert which greets you at all major low carbon hubs nowadays.
Indira Ghandi International
This evening I had the chance to meet with alumnus Arnab Roy (2007-08) who has worked for Atkins in the UK and then back in India looking at Personal Rapid Transit opportunities. Most recently he has been working for Embarq on a BRT implementation project in Indore (http://embarqindia.org/node/96). The complex institutional structures have made delivery a real challenge (a judge recently ruled that any four wheeled vehicle can use the ‘dedicated’ lanes). Early patronage figures are promising however!
Meeting at the Indian International Centre
I was then hosted for a dinner by Dr Sanjay Gupta and his lovely family. As well as being treated to a range of spectacular local dishes, I was able to exchange with Sanjay on urban transport priorities in India, the 29 year history of urban metropolitan transport agencies (with still relatively limited implementation). I also got a great insight into the festivals that go on around this time of year (having narrowly missed the Diwali celebrations) and the importance of family even in mega city life.
My generous hosts
Tomorrow sees the all day seminar where I have two slots and a panel role – so earning my keep I hope. I’m interested to see whether what I think is interesting to share on institutions is what the local experts also think is important.
Professor Greg Marsden
I’ll be blogging this week about my trip to Delhi and Singapore. In Delhi I’ll be giveing two presentations at a high-level workshop on ‘Transport Policy and Institutional Framework Imperatives for Mega-Cities’ run by Dr Sanjay Gupta from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. Sanjay also visited ITS Leeds as a Commonwealth Scholar this time last year so it will be great to see him again. I expect he’ll be wearing a few less jumpers than he was in Leeds.
Late on Wednesday I fly on to Singapore where I will be presenting to the Land Transport Authority on transport disruption drawing on a £1.2m multi-institution project (www.disruptionproject.net). I will also get a chance to see the latest multi-modal initiatives underway in Singapore and to understand more about their strategic research programme. ITS has always had strong links with Singapore LTA with many alumni in senior positions there and I am really looking forward to seeing what they have gone on to achieve.
More to follow.
Considering how many of Britain’s rich and powerful take the train to work, it seems odd to describe rail commuters as hard done by. And yet some undoubtedly are. Last week the government announced the latest round of fare increases: an average rise of 4.1%, rising to as much as 9.1% on some routes.
This comes as successive governments have tried to increase the proportion of the costs of the rail network paid for by passengers rather than taxpayers. According to the Office of Rail Regulation, the taxpayer contributed £4 billion towards the costs of the rail system in 2011/12 compared with 7.2 billion from rail passengers. To address this, fares have been allowed to rise by more than inflation.
The measure of inflation used is the Retail Price Index (RPI), based on the price of a basket of goods. This year the government is permitting an increase of RPI plus 1% (a total of 4.1%). The additional money is passed through to the government, so the train operator does not directly benefit.
As part of its franchise agreement with train companies, the government regulates certain fares: season tickets on commuter routes and off peak returns on longer distance journeys. Regulated fares account for roughly half the passenger revenue of the rail system, and it is these that have been increased. Other tickets, including advanced purchase tickets and first class fares, are unregulated.
Who takes the hit?
Train operators in London and the South East earn around half of the UK’s overall rail revenues, mostly from commuters. This figure reflects the expensive season tickets, long journey times and high rail usage among commuters in the area. Of the rest of the revenue, more than two thirds comes from users of long distance services. A comparatively small amount comes from commuters into other cities.
Increasing rail fares is a relatively progressive way for the government to raise revenue. London commuters tend to be better off than most, while long distance services are heavily used by business travellers. Leisure trips are the other main long distance journey purpose and these are optional; if people cannot afford the trip, they can simply not take it.
However, these figures are averages. What about people working in London in low paid jobs? Many commute considerable distances because they cannot find a job locally, and they cannot afford to move closer to the centre. These are the people who will really be hit hardest by these increases.
We do not yet know what the actual increases will be station by station. Train operators are allowed some discretion in the amount by which they increase individual fares, provided that the average increase does not exceed the regulated level.
But passengers from stations like Reading, Brighton, Luton and Chelmsford currently face an annual season ticket rate of £3500-£4000 for a London commute, suggesting that they are likely to end up paying £150 or more per year. Some will face an even steeper increase.
Feeling the squeeze
Increases in rail fares are nothing new, of course, even when adjusting for inflation. But the current economic climate is the key difference this time round.
The normal trend has been for disposable incomes to rise faster than inflation, meaning that an increase of RPI plus 1% would typically lead to rail fares actually taking a smaller share of people’s incomes than in the previous year.
However, the current recession has seen disposable incomes rising by less than the rate of inflation. According to the Office of National Statistics, real average hourly earnings have fallen by 8.5% since 2009.
As people are able to buy less and less with their wages, so rail fares are taking a steadily increasing share of commuters’ incomes. We can expect these latest increases to hurt far more than those in earlier years when real wages were rising.
There is another aspect to steadily rising rail fares. Partly because of decisions the government has taken to hold down increases in fuel tax, the overall cost of motoring has risen far more slowly than rail fares in this period. This relative price rise has not stopped rail continuing to gain traffic at a time when road traffic has stagnated.
This leads us to the key question of what our rail policy is actually for. Do we want fares to encourage rail traffic to divert to road, rather than vice versa, with the resulting consequences for congestion, carbon and the environment more generally?
Unless rail fares policy is carefully thought through as part of a policy for pricing all modes of transport, commuters will not be the only ones hit by high fares; the whole country’s transport system will suffer too.
Professor Chris Nash
www.its.leeds.ac.uk/people/c.nash
23 August 2013
By Astrid Gühnemann
Thankfully, after my travel disruptions from yesterday our colleagues from LASTRAN were able to reschedule our planned meeting. We had an intereresting talk about possible options for co-operation between LASTRAN and ITS. After that, I gave a seminar to staff and PhD students at LASTRAN.
As can be seen from the coats in the pictures, temperatures in Porto Alegre are currently nowhere near those in Rio, and – typical of many countries with few cold days – the heating systems cannot quite keep up. Now I am off for a couple of days holiday at the Iguazu Falls. We have been told it’s almost as cold there, so bringing a warm jumper was really worth it.
That’s it from me for this time. Goodbye, Astrid
PS: The last three posts were delayed due to lack of internet. Iguazu Falls are not quite as cold as Porto Alegre, but very, very wet.
itsleeds 