Thursday, January 20, 2011

Counterintuitive trues about urban transport


Enrique Peñalosa (former mayor of Bogotá) presented a pleasant lecture at LSE titled: Politics, Power, Cities. Listen to podcast here (approx 91 min).

Here are some interesting snippets (They might look obvious to some of you. But do they look obvious to you mayor?)

  • What creates traffic is not the number of cars, is the number of trips and the length of trips.

  • Mobility and Traffic Jams are total different problems that require different solutions. Reducing car use is different than solving Traffic Jams.

  • To solve Traffic Jams is, in fact, to facilitate car use.

  • The only way to solve Mobility is with public transport. This will solve Mobility but not Traffic Jams.

  • The only way to solve Traffic Jams is restricting car use. And the most obvious way to restrict car us is restrict parking.

  • To park is not a Constitutional right anywhere.

  • For public transport the most important thing is Density.

*ps. I agree with these statements ("counterintuitive trues" as said Peñalosa). And I don't think they contradict the ideia of polycentric cities.

*ps2. He didn't say much (nothing) about land use... I missed that.