The costs of congestion

Streets Blog has reported on the report that New York City residents save at least $19 billion each year by driving less than other Americans http://bit.ly/b7AByO. The Report is by CEOs for cities at http://bit.ly/bAlH0g.

This is really interesting because it puts a cost on not doing things. For example the average New Yorker drives on average 9 miles a day instead of the American Average of 25. This equals a saving of €48 billion. Petrol saved = €2.4bn. These are staggering figures.

This is the type of analysis we need to make sensible decisions about cities and transport. Various associations can we quickly tell us about the costs of a traffic jam, but they equate this to a need to address that problem through good infrastructure.

This is particularly important for light rail/metro vs. bus arguments. This was highlighted at the Irish Planning Institute conference last week with regard to transport options for Belfast. The only figures presented are those of infrastructure cost. The bus is cheaper - go figure. But how many people does a bus get out of their cars, what is the cost of reserving that bus lane? Buses have very low capacity, and get stuck behing each other at bus stops. What about image and environment, and city competitiveness. Quality Bus Corridors are a great improvement, but the service is still a longway off rail.

If city streets are viewed as an asset, buses get to use that asset for a very low/ unquantified cost. In Dublin we have so many buses on street that I think they're having a negative impact on the main city thoroughfares.

New Rail Station-Clongriffen, Dublin

Its great Minister Dempsey has just opened a new DART station at Balgriffen http://bit.ly/cCQ6MQ paid for by Gannon Homes, in turn paid for by NAMA in turn paid for by tax payer (isn't public private partnership great!). However, how on earth did this thing cost €22m. It ain't exactly Penn Station!

I'm throwing my arms around Paris

..as Morissey put is so eloquently in the superb 'Years of Refusal'. I was fortunate enough to visit the city over the last few days with my family. No sense of recession here. The unrelenting beauty of Paris as an urban place is quite humbling, and for all other places a lesson. The quality of the place is not only a reflection of wealth, but it also clearly endemic to the sustainable urbanism and the maintenance of that wealth. How to even express it? Hundred's of year of looking after a precious place, looking after every detail, keep people living there. The showy stuff like the Eiffel Tower (read Guggenheim Bilbao) and the palaces are nothing without the background streets. Everything that we need to learn about urbanism already exists, and has been tried and tested...and its living. Of course sitting on the RER out to Disneyland there's many sides to Paris, and not everyone enjoys the privileges of living in the centre. btw. the people were lovely.

Would you put a bus route through a shopping mall?

There are 2 designated Major Town Centres in the local authority area of DunLaoghaire Rathdown County Council, Dundrum Town Centre (an enclosed regional scale shopping centre) and DunLaoghaire - a traditional town centre with a main street. Both have rail links to Dublin City Centre. But only one has the joy of a 20 tonne bus zoomin down the middle at 30 miles an hour every 10 minutes. One of these centres is increasing rents by 100% in the middle of a depression, the other is on its knees. Clearly theres many factors why DunLaoghaire is suffering, but this has got to be a factor. If you don't put customers first (as they do in a shopping mall), and even worse, make the place dangerous and uncomfortable to walk around(despite wasting a fortune on expensive paving) its no wonder the place suffers. When I talk to retailers, they always say that parking is the problem, but cars don't walk into shops.