An increasing public transport share in urban areas is the result of the projects implemented by decision makers, but in order to encourage public transport, the authorities have to analyse the city’s challenges to answer the needs of the citizens.
The urban mobility development programme is set up by planning good practices considering the integration and evaluation of the principles they rely on. Present at the “Railway Days” 2011 Summit, Wioletta Szymanska, Project Manager at the Regional Environmental Centre, explained the challenges that cities have to face for having a sustainable mobility, the necessity of the authorities’ interest in increasing the share of public transport, as well as the importance of the authorities being aware of the citizens’ needs in order to be able to provide the right services.
Railway Pro: How can transport authorities serve mobility needs better?
Wioletta Szymanska: The most important problem for transport authorities is to analyse the current situation and ask the citizens what they need. The services offered should meet these needs, should be of the highest quality possible and should reflect the real needs of the citizens. Studies on the current situation and public surveys may be of help and may give important input in the process of continuous improvement of services provided. An important element is also to be in a constant dialogue with the city development planning units, so that future urban development plans are reflected in the future development public transport plans and vice versa, and in the end all citizens can benefit from the public transport.
Railway Pro: How can the citizens be encouraged to change their behaviour and to give up individual motorized means of transport in favour of public transport?
Wioletta Szymanska: First of all, citizens must be offered a good quality public transport, which should be quick, clean, reliable and comfortable, and thus would become a real alternative to a private car. This includes giving the public transport priority on the streets (priority lanes), separating routes of buses, trams from the car traffic and making public transport more accessible to everybody, especially to persons with reduced mobility (elderly people, disabled people, young mothers with children, etc.). This should go hand in hand with limiting the car traffic within the city and introducing strict parking policy to free space for public transport and pedestrians.
The other very important issue is to change the mentalities of the citizens by implementing the awareness rising campaigns on the negative impact of the motorization on the environment, on benefits of using public transport. At the same time, it is very important to improve passenger information system about public transport routes and ticketing fares, so the citizen can easily find out how she/he could get to a destination without the car.
Railway Pro: What are the challenges for a city to have a sustainable urban mobility?
Wioletta Szymanska: When striving for sustainable urban mobility, a city has to face many challenges. The lack of sufficient funding, and here we can find bud-getary shortcuts, problems with subsidies, depending on the political cycle, lack of capacity for absorbing EU funds and lack of experience in attracting private funding. There is a lack of political support and high dependency on the “political cycle (e.g. elections) – good mobility planning needs long term planning, but priorities are changing because depend on the political option and this created difficulties in preparing long term plans, which also reflect on the financing. The lack of coordination and cooperation between the different departments (traffic department, planning department, investments department) – lack of ‘a habit’ of cooperating and lack of appropriate mechanisms, lack of institutional capacity – municipalities are very often understaffed and need more training, and experience exchange, are other challenges that the cities has to face.
Railway Pro: What can you tell us about shifting from private to public transport to increase the social relations ?
Wioletta Szymanska: Unfortunately, in many countries, a private car is still perceived as a symbol of higher living status and thus higher social comfort. However the benefits of using the public transport are clear: less pollution and cleaner environment, more space available for pedestrians as a result of more efficient use of urban space and less cars, less driving stress and increased safety on the streets due the decreased number of cars, increasing the travelling comfort – time if the trip can be used for reading, etc. as opposite to driving the private car. The citizens must be aware of these benefits and here is the role of municipalities, and other organisations to be active in conveying this message to the citizens.
[ by Pamela Luică ]Share on:
