Pool Tiles With Bluestone Coping

Subsídiame Women, city, recreation and leisure

( source)

For Lake Sagaris (*)
(Article originally published in El Clarín de Chile )

The current transport situation affects women in terms of safety, but also and especially in the loss to reading, music, rest, exercise, be educated, in short, all those activities vital for physical and mental health of each. Urban transport is a gender issue for its impact on the right to recreation and relaxation.


Many Chileans who can not fully enjoy their right to recreation and rest. For women, it is particularly difficult. The solutions vary based on income and other factors such as the provision of men, and society as a whole to change. But while the urban transport can significantly improve their quality of life.

In 2001, Enrique Peñalosa, former - Mayor of Bogotá, was a pioneer in applying a new strategy. Ruled out the option spend billions of dollars in highway or a meter that would just a few miles. preferred to invest in a rapid transit system buses ( Transmilenio ), a network of bike lanes and wider sidewalks. This meant that the city could build an extensive network of nurseries, libraries and better public spaces, available today for everyone s.

is interesting to note that this effort, combined with civic campaigns, led by another Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, and work with a wide range of civil society groups also significantly improved security, lowering rates of homicide and robbery, among others.

For those living in small spaces, crowded (like "With Roof" in our social housing), improving public space with a park or a ride home enlarges. Is not the same out of your door and find a green and pleasant prospect than to have to get on a bus and travel an hour or more to reach the nearest park. Is not the same to watch your kids playing in a nearby square, have them locked in a room or wandering aimlessly through the streets.

Moreover, public policy, how are you reduce journey times and give away time and opportunities to improve health. Facilitate women's lives and can give precious hours for your own leisure, with relatives or enjoy a delicious solitude.

The integration of the bike with "zones 30" (reducing speeds to a level that eliminates most of the accidents, fatalities reduced to almost nothing, and also decreases the severity of injuries), double transit riders in all ways lower speeds, including those one-way car, and segregated lanes where speeds and other conditions of counsel, are other measures that improve the quality of life.

The theme of the bike is enjoying great interest among local authorities and government of the metropolitan region, especially under former Mayor, Adriana del Piano. It is hoped that his successor will continue and increase the momentum and funding for this type of measure, since the improvement in quality of life and urban spaces bring a better social integration and reduce violence.

A sound system of rapid transit buses is vital.

If you, as a passenger of a bus, traveling sitting comfortably, reading a book, listening to music or just dreaming with open eyes, the daily journey becomes a contribution and not something that steals your life.

If you move quietly and confidently on a bicycle, you can add a pleasant time of exercise into your daily routine while you reduce travel time. From Bellavista a journey to the center are about 20-30 minutes walk, 15-20 by taxi, bus infinite (because the service is poor, at least 20-25 in Metro (by walk to reach the station and the the destination station), but only 10 minutes by bike.

For long trips, to get to the Metro bus bike or reduces travel time and improves integration and access to the assets of the city.

For all this, in terms of gender, is particularly dramatic failure, so far, Transantiago. Only with the participation of users, particularly women, will achieve a quality system. technicians simply do not handle all the keys, since many of them do not occupy the system, and therefore lack the intimate knowledge, detailed and everyday is essential to make things work and property.

Women have other reasons to require investment and state policies to improve public transport and nonmotorized. With a double shift at work and home, is our lack of free time that is lost when we can not move smoothly and safely through the city.

(*) President
Living City Centre Gender and Equity

Husband Birthday Invitation Wording

Diagnosis and recommendations to the Minister of Transport of Chile

Promote the enactment of the law road pricing for congestion, allowing users to charge the actual costs of congestion generated by its decision mode.

Given the economies of scale making the provision of public transport when considering the user time plus the cost of operators, and given the positive externalities it produces about the use of space scarce road is justified for reasons of efficiency, subsidize public transportation.

These are the first two recommendations on the General Urban Transport System listed in the report with the analysis, diagnosis and recommendations on the development of public transport in Santiago, who made group of 12 experts appointed in January by the Minister of Transport, René Cortázar. Rewriting the two recommendations in a nutshell, the cost to society of a car trip is greater than the cost that motorists actually pay, while the cost to society of a journey by public transport is less than that perceived by its users, This is justified first and subsidize tolls applied to the second (another car on the streets means more congestion, pollution, noise and accidents for all, on the other hand, a transfer from car to transport groups represents a savings in all these variables to society).

What from the economic point of view it seems clear voice is heard repeatedly in academics and specialists in the area of \u200b\u200btransport, generated fierce opposition in much of public opinion and the political class. Congestion charging (or charging for externalities, more general), and to a lesser extent the public transport subsidy, always were and are unpopular, and we have not found a way to convince both the benefits of such measures and reduce unpopularity at levels at least in sight of road pricing as a real possibility for increasing city congestion and pollution as Santiago. The key to overcoming this situation seems to realize that "if there is a policy that genuinely enhances efficiency, then there should be some form of implement to generate support" (1), ie everything is to convince public opinion of that road pricing and public transport subsidy, we all win, because in the medium term will be shorter travel time for all (motorists who choose to pay, motorists who switch modes and public transport users) and a lower level citywide externalities (pollution, segregation, noise, accidents) . Talk about this without being told "pure theory" is a barrier that we are not yet able to overcome.

Beyond this discussion, which is the one that has transpired on this report, a number of recommendations in the field of urban transport, Transantiago and transport institutions in Chile. Listed below are some recommendations, arbitrarily chosen by relevance or novelty (excluding the recommendations on operations and infrastructure, see report):

Recommendations (excerpt)

- Introduce major changes the institutionalization of State to intervene in the urban transport system with the effectiveness, scale and consistency appropriate for the size of the problem. In particular, improve efficiency in infrastructure investment decisions and facilitate policy privilege to public transport.

- Maintain current conditions for concessions from the core units in terms of pay per passenger (PPT) and application delivery rate of the program. Fleet make adjustments necessary for each operator in order to correct existing distortions of the PPT.

- Relaxing areas of operation contracts feeder, so as to ensure that service levels remain acceptable in terms of coverage, waiting times and occupancy rates of vehicles. To achieve this it is proposed to change the current payment system to one with payment on real demand and the quality with which the service is provided. For this, the authority can define a reference set of paths and minimum service standards and the operator proposed final paths, frequency and type of vehicles, subject to compliance with maximum intervals and maximum overlap with the core and metro services. The authority is responsible for preserving the entire city a service level above the minimum. Of If this is not profitable for operators, consideration should be given to grant subsidies.

- Ensure freedom of choice for users, allowing operators to offer different types of service and different types of vehicles depending on the operating conditions (express, normal, and others).

- flexible in the market for taxis, frozen and bid today. This would enable them to operate in areas and periods of low demand (periphery, off-peak, night, weekend) where traditional mass transit is not economically viable, and absorb the unmet demand.

- The Metro must compete for funding on the basis of social profitability of their projects , with the situation based on the existence of a segregated bus corridor high capacity for surface transport wherever they want to build or extend some line.

- Incorporate in the budget law in infrastructure investment programs, in order to secure resources for programs lasting more than one period.

On the institutional, include the diagnosis made by the authors to the inefficient use of resources and decision-making product of the dispersion of powers between various agencies with responsibilities for transport in Chile, have even come to have conflicting goals, such as the MTT when he says plans to upgrade public transportation in several cities, and when it works MOP benefit even private transport at the expense of reduced access to and coverage of public transport (some urban highways as Vespucio North and South):

Diagnosis (extract)

Currently, the State has the authority to manage transport system as a whole and induce different types of development thereof, may act alone or by regulating the activities of third parties. However, the dispersion of authority to various government agencies with different priorities, resulting in uncoordinated actions, and in some cases contradictory. The powers that relate to the transport system found in the following entities:

• Ministry of Public Works (MOP)
• Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications (MTT)
• Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MINVU)
• Municipality of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago
• National Environment Commission (CONAMA)
• Ministerial Secretary Transportation Planning (SECTRA)
• Metro • Municipalities


The Transantiago Plan Inter-Ministerial Committee was composed of all the organizations mentioned above, with the exception of municipalities and, in our opinion, lack of coordination was evident: Transantiago was An example of underestimation of the importance and complexity of the issues involved in the implementation of a transportation system of the magnitude of this plan.

Recommendations (excerpt)

The definition of an institution must:
- Ensure coordinated government action in the various areas that affect system transport.
- Allow a good environment for private sector performance.

To achieve this we need to create a set of new public entities, transportation officials will call that:
a) Concentrate powers relating to the transport system, which currently are assigned to different organisms, that must be present to private. This action will promote consistency and efficiency in resource use in order to comply with the
goal of providing an adequate level of mobility for citizens.
b) Have a territorially decentralized action to fit the conditions premises and be responsible with the affected community.
c) have the financial and technical resources appropriate to the nature of these tasks.

The Ministry of Transport has never had the necessary financial and human resources, or has control over resources allocated directly to the financing of transport infrastructure in the development aspect of the system. Moreover, in the opinion of this Committee the bill creating a Metropolitan Transportation Authority, does not meet the above conditions, since among other things, not attributed to the AMT virtually no power not already on the MTT. In this sense, we the law in question is an important step in enabling better internal coordination of the MTT, but it is highly insufficient to ensure a consistent government action in the various areas that affect the transportation system.


----- (1) Phil Goodwin, Solving Congestion

Other related articles:
1. Pricing for congestion (fundamentals and explanation)
2. on road pricing and beach soccer (challenges to road pricing)
3. Preemergence (shows that the main cause of pollution due transport in cities is the car, no public transport)

Cause Of Malodorous Urine

Solving congestion, Part 1

This is a free translation of excerpts from the inaugural session chair Transport Policy, University College London (UCL), Professor Phil Goodwin .
October 23, 1997

My first approach to the formal analysis of transport was the paper of Smeed and Wardrop 1964, written before both came to UCL, surely one of the great classics among transport studies: "An Exploratory Comparison of the Relative Advantage of Cars and Buses in Urban Areas. " His argument was instant attraction (for intellectuals, not always for the politicians) of the counter-intuitive: If everyone were to travel in the slower mode of transport, the bus would travel faster than if everyone chooses the fastest way, the car.

Image: Costanera Avenue roundabout to reach Perez Zujovic, Vitacura, Santiago. (Source: La Tercera)


The reason this is true is a fundamental relationship in our area, the flow-speed curve. This shows that the more traffic there is on a road, the slower is the circulation, an effect that is more and more severe as the flow approaches the maximum network capacity, until finally the overload is so extreme that vehicles can not be moved. We can define congestion as the impedance vehicles impose on others because of this relationship. This helps us understand that the reason behind the congestion is not the work on the road or taxi or an accident: it is trying to operate with traffic flows too close to the network capacity, a situation in which any such incidents have a disproportionate effect.

Armed with this law, Smeed and Wardrop estimated that the number of cars required to move a given number of people is much greater than the number of buses, then a transfer of people from the car to bus would make traffic move more quickly in certain circumstances be sufficient to overcome the extra time waiting for the bus, walk to the destination, etc..

But there is a downside. For us it is almost always faster to travel by car, so we have little incentive to do otherwise. It's one of those cases where individuals pursuing their own good (Adam Smith ) not lead to greater happiness for the greatest number ( Jeremy Bentham). The benefit will only be achieved through intervention is in the allocation of road space, bus-only tracks, for example, or by charging.

Smeed Another important contribution was his participation in the committee road pricing, which in 1964 gave some kind of official approval to the proposal of Alan Walters on economic welfare can be increased if the-road use perceived as a good "free", was reflected in charges.

The reason why road pricing provides a benefit is congestion. Every driver, when using roads or busy streets, imposing delays on all others, and these delays are not considered by the cost driver in their decisions. Thus, some trips are made by a route that the benefit received by the driver is less than the cost (extra time) it causes the rest, so the total time consumption is higher than it should be. But so far the history of road pricing has been marked by study, flirtations, lack of support and interruptions. The reason for this, in my opinion is that nobody has taken seriously the implications of a few lines of calculation in the Smeed Report, which is somewhat obscure show that although certainly road pricing reduces congestion, most of benefits is this relief of congestion, but in the collection that is obtained, which occurs once the benefit is used.

latest analysis shows that if road pricing were applied in a way that also have environmental benefits and provided enhanced economic benefits to commercial vehicles and buses, then amplify total benefits. But the essential point is the same: to a large extent the benefits are realized through the use of money raised. This is the reason why any discussion on road pricing without special attention to the use of proceeds is inherently unlikely to generate a consensus for their support. This is an axiom of contemporary transport policy. Then

Now we have these two important propositions: congestion could be less if people use slower modes, and if you pay for something that they feel as free today (*). As policy statements, lack the appeal to transform them into manifestos. The proclaimed "slow and expensive" does not inspire. But let me suggest another axiom: if there is a policy that genuinely enhances efficiency, then there should be some form of implement to generate support: no benefit to gain, those earning more than the losers.

So why this sounds so unattractive? Where is the flaw in the argument? Where was the defect 30 years ago?

One problem was that the tools we had to understand how individuals made their choices were to go wrong and biased, and another was that the economic orthodoxy wrongly classified the collection of road pricing as a "tax." But the real barrier to implementation was that the spirit of that time was in a completely different direction. Had a more easy, comfortable, modern and entertaining way to solve congestion. Could simply "build our way." If the traffic reaches levels very close to capacity, the capacity increases. Since the late 50's onwards, the traditional transportation planning was what Susan Owens called predict-and-Provide (predict and provide). The axiom was: first predict how much traffic is going to be, then build enough road space to satisfy. This rule resulted in a rapid and massive expansion of roads and highways, now we can not imagine modern life without them. Also resulted in what now appears to be a serious error: The destruction of the heart of some of our cities to make room for new urban highways. Here, our imagination about life without them is easier, indeed in many central places capacity vial is shrinking or closing, in order to return the space to more productive use, although many historic structures are gone forever.

For better or worse, the axiom predict-and-Provide had its highest point, by one of the ironies of history in their final hour, the road construction program in 1989 based on predicted traffic called Roads to Prosperity (Pathways to Prosperity). This was the last time the government proposed a road program that tries to meet demand. It was launched with great fanfare, even though even before the proclamation was already known that such a program could not keep pace with traffic growth.

In fact, the unquestioned study showed that even a fancy program, 50% larger than Roads to Prosperity would not be able to keep pace with traffic growth.

Now, suppose that road capacity is expanded at a slower rate than the increase in traffic What next?

The result is due to arithmetic, not politics. The number of vehicles per kilometer of road could only increase, and therefore would expect the congestion to get worse (either in intensity, duration, geographical area or a combination thereof). Supply road space will not increase, because it can "to meet demand. In practice, predict-and-Provide inevitably means predict-and-underprovide (predict and subprovee). One strategy is to build roads whose base (in cities) will not improve travel conditions. We call this new realism.

mid 90's, the same idea began to spread intercity roads as well, especially after the advisory committee that will report SACTRA road construction when there is congestion, often resulting in an increase in the total volume of traffic, then a short period of relief from congestion, relegating to history untenable claim that the volume of traffic is not affected by the conditions of travel. This opened the door to recognize that the amount of traffic is, in part, a result of policies, and therefore is subject to some degree at our discretion.

So we have two propositions: we can not adjust the supply of road capacity to projected demand, and demand is not inoxerable, exogenously given, is subject to influence.

(continued)

------- (*) Finally, congestion charging was introduced in central London in 2003.