Wisdom lies somewhere between fixed ticket pricing and free public transport.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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On the one hand fixed ticket pricing may assure good quality transit service but struggle to lure enough commuters, on the other hand free public transport may defy its purpose due to deteriorating quality of service.

Thinking of barriers to modal shift i.e. shift from private vehicle to public transport, the factors may include, fare, quality, frequency, coverage, commute time, waiting time among others. Price may be overarching and most important criteria (barrier or enabler), and might dictate modal shift. Thinking of price, especially fixed price, it may act as a barrier for entry to public transport and shape the behaviour of citizen. The moment a person or millions of youth over the time, start a working life in a city, they decide the best possible and economic option to commute to work. Calculating monthly public transport expense is easy, i.e. multiply fixed return fair price to number of commute days (even if subsidised its still fixed). If their calculation shows private transport (personal or shared) as cheaper option, they are most likely to choose bike/ car/ shared car as their preferred mode of daily commute. Then they are more likely to eventually buy their own car as well. Then there is no looking back, if discouraged to take public transport to work in first few instances, for any reason, its most likely that they may get accustomed to comfort, convenience and routine of travelling by car for life and never to give consideration to using public transport again for their routine commute. They may possibly even become brand ambassador of car, or shared car, or electric car; still a car.

One way a public transport can make practical sense for such millions of people making wrong choices, is if people are given a deal, a surety, that there is a chance that their effective monthly travel expenses may still come down, that their daily fair will get reduced as a function of occupancy of public transport; and never go higher than the fixed price. That is, ticket prices are likely to reduce in real time if buses or metro or tram are running under-capacity. Real time reduced price will encourage more people to opt for public transport and public transport will benefit from increased ridership. This is a win-win situation for citizens and public transport agency, agencies who are seen running their fleet without sufficient passengers many a times, everyday, over and over again, over years; loosing thousands and millions of potential latent commuter footfalls every month.

It cant be stressed enough that dynamic real time ticket pricing with a max price cap equivalent to current fixed price, is something that public transport authorities must consider for implementation, at least for pilot test of 3 to 6 months.

Author: Anoop Jha

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

Please Note, that I am also conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com 

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets 

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional 

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#publictransport #fare #ticket #travel #urbanplanning #transportplanning #Rotterdam #Hauge #Hague #Utrecht #Netherlands

Meaning and benefits of public transport goes beyond what is usually understood or quantified.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Public transportation system is versatile and agile, not only as a mode of communication, but it also presents an opportunity-scape that resembles city itself. Public transport can also be seen as a public space in motion, having several traits like a public square or public plaza. Transport system or rolling stocks also serves complementary urban landuse functions. For instance sometimes like "office", as so many business calls are made and emails are send from within the fleet system of public transport, on a daily basis, across the world. "Institutional", like Library, considering all the book chapters completed by scores of commuters while travelling in metro, tram and buses. "Commercial" considering all the money spent on online shopping and e-commerce while completing journey in public transport. Also "dining" for example, scrolling through menu and placing food order online while travelling in metro and tram, timing order and tracking delivery perfectly, so that your hot meal also gets delivered by the time you reach home. Or “theatre” considering all the movies streamed during travel in public transport, not to mention in a rather very different ambient setting than typical original landuse.

Public transport sometimes also challenges the notion of "what should be" when it comes to design of architectural spaces, for instance "library” is always designed with an idea of maintaining 'pindrop silence' within the space, considered conducive for study, then what about millions of books being read by people on the go world over, while commuting in the public transport, reading  digital or hard cover book, few para or a few pages a day to slowly complete the book, be it fiction or science, that too right within the bustling chaos and white-noise of public transport. 

Public transport can be considered a microcosm and miniature reflection of city in which it is situated. Taking clues and inspiration from multi-functionality and multidimensionality of public transport system, it would be worth revisiting traditional design and planning role and values around public transportation system.

Author: Anoop Jha

************************************************

[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

Please Note, that I am also conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com 

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets 

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional 

My LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha/

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#publictransport #urbanplanning #urbandevelopment #urbanmanagement #urbandesign #architecture #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch  #Alkmaar #Leiden #Noordholland #Northholland #Tilburg  #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

Possible pathway for resilient public transportation system:

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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A resilient transportation system is one–

a) that is made of entire low capacity to high capacity public transportation system, and has such system under single apex governing entity, for better control, cross-subsidisation, and better access to fund due to critical mass (applicable in both mono and multi-stakeholder arrangement)

b) that includes even last mile connectivity in its project scope, offering matching service experience (often excluded and usually only limited to feasibility studies or sometime complemented with poor last mile fleet services)

c) which still plans for future growth and expansion even when battling with low ridership at any moment

d) mobilises sound instruments beyond transit infrastructure, rolling stock and fleet, like TOD, value capture, rail and metro station real estate lease, advertisement space lease, monetising experience etc.

e) which forms partnership with other forms of complimentary transportation service providers and competitions like app based cab service, rideshare, micromobility services, bicycle rental; especially for seamless connectivity, healthy mutually rewarding competition, and making use of anonymised data for passenger flow modelling, network analysis and empirical predictions

f) which has opted for digitalisation of governance and operations from customer centric services, to network management, to unified cashless ticketing system, to fleet management and tracking, to predictive maintenance, to fleet automation, to on-demand services

g) which focuses on customer service, customer acquisition and customer retention in all separate target age, gender and ability groups and creates channels to actively seek passenger and anonymous feedback

h) which has excellent online and offline information dissemination and audio-visual display system and hence can devise flexible network configuration and flexible coach configuration without disappointing customers, required to respond to fluctuating demand, many a times experienced due to seasonal and diurnal variation, route characteristics and force majeure event; required to stay financially afloat (system that not just focuses on expansion, but one that is able to sequester as well)

i) finally, public transportation system, which may consider to experiment with real time flexible ticket pricing based of fleet occupancy level using gamut of technological aids like sensors and analytical cameras.

Additional thoughts on real time pricing for public transport system can be found in my other Linkedin article here [https://lnkd.in/eaa28zat]

Author: Anoop Jha

************************************************

[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

Please Note, that I am also conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com 

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets 

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional 

My LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha/

************************************************

#publictransport #metro #tram #bus #transitionpathways #transportplanning #automation #technology #micromobility #bicycle #rideshare #fleetmanagement #networkanalysis #ret #ns #urbanplanning #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch #Alkmaar #Tilburg #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

City’s problem isn't congestion; problem is the way we approach to solve the congestion!

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Majority of city's problems can be solved by simply restructuring policies, but physical infrastructure is more lucrative an option for many.

You can pump millions of dollars in augmenting and upgrading city infrastructure, of course you should, but city in its functionality will still remain a mess and increasingly convoluted unless you pause and think that what has been wrong with our planning approach, why it is that our planning solutions always seem to lag far behind the pace of growth, is it revenue constraints? No! Is it land constraint? No! It is nothing but common-sense deficit. It’s simple, if it doesn’t work go back to the drawing board, put you approach up-side-down or whatever, something different need to be introduced; at least as an experiment.

Our conventional planning approach borrowed from industrial age has remained more or less the same since decades, that is to put it crudely "Planning means addition", more people - let’s make more housing, more congestion - let’s make more flyovers, more heat let’s put more air conditioners and so on.

Building another affordable housing is not a problem but it’s also not the solution. Building another flyover will of course ease the traffic for sometime but it is also not the solution which cities are looking for. The single largest criteria of a livable city can be effortlessness of any city, but effort seems to be the mandate of our city life.

Have we ever considered why such sheer number of people are heading to metropolis in the first place apart from recreational purposes, it’s not because metropolis provide better employment opportunities, it’s because we simply fail to provide livelihood opportunity in small towns and villages. Can we suggest something to calm down this vary pace of regional population flux, instead of simply focusing on making another housing colony here in every metropolis, can we propose something which will help people earn their livelihood in the place of their choice not only in the place where they often come to struggle and survive.

Have we ever considered before making another flyover that why so many people and car out there on the roads in the first place, is it really necessary in this so called wired era for every single individual to commute to work to accomplish a job, is it that being physically present at a specified location every work weekday is of such monumental importance in a time of century were everyone claim to be virtually connected to everyone and having access to the resources of whole world on their finger tip. Considering this can we suggest something to reduce the very need or frequency of people to come to streets, people who commute to work 5-6 days a week or 24 to 40 hour a week.

Why people have to waste a substantial portion of their productive lifetime commuting on city roads or tracks, commuting long hours to work mostly doing nothing, may be listening to music or playing video game on their tab, why to commute to work unless they work in a factory like production environment.

You see we are so caught up in the debate of public transport vs. private transit vs. walkability that no one is willing to ask this fundamental question why does every one of you have to commute almost every day for the purpose of work choking almost every street of city, why have we created such system or business environment or society in general. We simply can’t seem to think of any other possibility than expanding infrastructure trying to meet the pressure of self imposed need of commuting for work.

Whether travelling through private or public transport or walking to work, it’s still a waste of precious time, energy and resources. Can you even imaging the lost opportunity cost of millions of people spending several hours commuting to work-home-work almost every day of their productive life. After decades of industrialization is it still so important even today for 200 employees of a random organization to agglomerate everyday at a specific place called office at a specific time to accomplish some work, majority of which can be done from anywhere in the world, majority of which on majority of days does not fundamentally demand physical presence of worker or employee in office. Can’t we instead of simply expanding the city and transport network think of reducing the number and frequency of trip to work? Can’t we think of increasing the share of recreational trip and reducing the work trip instead of aggressively focusing on increasing the share of public transport?

No alt text provided for this image

This conventional additive approach of planning is a vicious cycle of inefficiency perceived as virtuous cycle and promoted relentlessly without delving deep into the roots of problem and without pausing and questioning the inertia of planning process. Instead of this additive approach, a supplementary approach of planning is needed for fostering and supporting equitable growth across the region, and at the same time conventional planning wisdom which is dear to many, need to be questioned!

Author: Anoop Jha

Possible pathway for resilient public transportation system:

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

A resilient transportation system is one–

a) that is made of entire low capacity to high capacity public transportation system, and has such system under single apex governing entity, for better control, cross-subsidisation, and better access to fund due to critical mass (applicable in both mono and multi-stakeholder arrangement)

b) that includes even last mile connectivity in its project scope, offering matching service experience (often excluded and usually only limited to feasibility studies or sometime complemented with poor last mile fleet services)

c) which still plans for future growth and expansion even when battling with low ridership at any moment

d) mobilises sound instruments beyond transit infrastructure, rolling stock and fleet, like TOD, value capture, rail and metro station real estate lease, advertisement space lease, monetising experience etc.

e) which forms partnership with other forms of complimentary transportation service providers and competitions like app based cab service, rideshare, micromobility services, bicycle rental; especially for seamless connectivity, healthy mutually rewarding competition, and making use of anonymised data for passenger flow modelling, network analysis and empirical predictions

f) which has opted for digitalisation of governance and operations from customer centric services, network management to, unified cashless ticketing system, to fleet management and tracking, to predictive maintenance, to fleet automation, to on-demand services

g) which focuses on customer service, customer acquisition and customer retention in all separate target age, gender and ability groups and creates channels to actively seek passenger and anonymous feedback

h) which has excellent online and offline information dissemination and audio-visual display system and hence can devise flexible network configuration and flexible coach configuration without disappointing customers, required to respond to fluctuating demand, many a times experienced due to seasonal and diurnal variation, route characteristics and force majeure event; required to stay financially afloat (system that not just focuses on expansion, but one that is able to sequester as well)

i) finally, public transportation system, which may consider to experiment with real time flexible ticket pricing based of fleet occupancy level using gamut of technological aids like sensors and analytical cameras.

Additional thoughts on real time pricing for public transport system can be found in my other Linkedin article here [https://lnkd.in/eaa28zat]

Author: Anoop Jha

#publictransport #metro #tram #bus #transitionpathways #transportplanning #automation #technology #micromobility #bicycle #rideshare #fleetmanagement #networkanalysis #ret #ns #urbanplanning #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch #Alkmaar #Tilburg #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

Some embedded economic bias in road and transportation planning and policy to ponder.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Speed Breaker experienced differently by different price range cars; flat monetary penalty imposed on breaking any particular traffic rule experienced differently by different income group, one segment better protected while on road due to advanced safety feature of their car compared to not so privileged vehicle owner, VIP and reserved parking spaces in public domain and within public institutions, those opting public transport not out of choice or sense of responsibility but out of economic constraints, those opting private transport not out of ignorance but by choice since they can afford, similar workplace cutoff arrival time or same flexi-hour for those who are insulated from weather while on road (car) and those whose journey is tough and gets Interrupted due to changing weather conditions (bike/ bicycle), those who can afford to take shortcut toll route vs those who cannot, road tax which is not linked to intensity of vehicle usage but type and number of vehicle ownership and some more.

One or many or all may be applicable to any given city and needs a serious thought and deliberation on subject by planners and policy makers.

#transportplanning #urbanplanning #publictransport #tranport #road #design #architecture #economics #carbonfootprint #publicpolicy

Historic shift in city planning approach!

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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When cities first started getting planned, it was more of a mechanical, analog and hardware approach, i.e. provision of basic minimum urban palpable elements driven by understanding of functional, social and cultural requirements of specific time period in history, configured in either abstract to subtle to articulate manner. City planning outward appeal, urban fabric and urban growth pattern kept getting readjusted as per need of changing time including industrialization, high speed mobility, migration, environmental awareness etc. but the approach of urban planning more or less remained same as always in spite of all the buzz, talk and interpretation by intelligentsia labeling same as new age of urban planning.

Historically only two major, distinct and realistic but mostly invisible shift in planning approach were felt in true sense; one when country administration changed from monarchy to democracy in multiple parts of world and the other when city planning approach shifted from analog to digital - where former shift in approach prompted a whole new set of governance redefining context, perception and necessity of urban planning while impact of later approach is yet to realise it's full potential.

#urbanplanning #townplanning #smartcity #urbandesign #iot #ict #digitaltwin #digital #urban #cityplanning #publictransport

Democratizing the process of urban planning - crowdsourcing of ideas!

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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"Too many cooks spoil the Soup" May not be the right connotation when it comes to urban planning, we require as many minds and diversified experiences as possible to do the justice to a city which is either yet to be planned or being redeveloped. Community participation and early brainstorming is the key to a successful city planning, like secret ingredient of an exceptional recipe! 

In terms of community participation the focus should be scale, hetroginity and intensity of citizen engagement in planning process. In terms of early brainstorming, all concerned citizens - "considering every citizens is a stakeholder and a client" - can be given opportunity to participate in urban planning process, that too very early when the plan is still in nebulous state, not only after draft masterplan is ready. Also, urban planning process should either come out of planning studio amidst community or planning studio should open it's door to welcome community and individual user level ideas.

For example, thinking of people who could not contribute or has limited say in urban planning process till date except some advanced countries, but they do have specific expectations from their city like all the workforce who are involved in navigation (drivers), delivery (courier and food delivery guys) they can contribute in re-strategising ease of navigation and legibility of city; those in healthcare (doctors, first responders) they can help define/ redefine emergency response routes and ease of healthcare access in terms of landuse structuring and PSP facility locations; those in safety and security (police, traffic police) can help in vulnerability and black spot mapping of city and forming corresponding spatial security and surveillance requirements; those in F&B industry (mall owners, retail, restaurant owner, cook, food vendors) can help redefine new age of intensive urban cultivation, shortening farm-to-plate food supply chain, and propose innovative ways of urban organic agriculture for self-reliance and food security; those in science (mathematicians) can help streamline city traffic by running complex mathematical models and deep algorithms; those in creative fields ( artists, designers) can help reboot, reactivate and conserve cultural and artistic heritage of a brownfield city or can lay the foundation of a new vibrant culture for a greenfield city, and so on; all above inputs to be curtated by urban planning professionals.

Additionally, there is need to make use of unfathomable descrete or curated data that already historically exists around specific city and embodiment of empirical data that exists around the world wrt city planning affair in general.

Author: Anoop Jha

#urban #urbanplanning #city #townplanning #syatemthinking #utopia #smartcity #governance #idea #crowdsourcing #architecture #streets #publictransport #bicycle #transportplanning #sustainability #foodsecurity

PUBLIC TRANSPORT - Revisiting fundamentals

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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- There is no such thing as over creation of public transport infrastructure as where it is actually needed no amount of infrastructure is enough; still if you witness a ghost metro anywhere know that it's just bad planning.

- Know that not everyone rides a public transport out of choice or environmental awareness; for some there is no other choice

- Lack of last mile seamless, quality and safe connectivity to doorstep is single most deterrent towards use of public transport

-They might not disclose, but they should reach break-even much before projected time, and why not, as crowd keeps overwhelming the public transport system, pusing frequently the boundaries of design safety. Their perplexity, they can't show in their financial modeling sheet that design safety compromise of public transport system will be a frequent and regular phenomenon.

#publictransport #transportplanning #urbanplanning

The success of new concepts of city development usually either depends on wider demographic coverage or awaits a technological renaissance!

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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“Walk to work” has been a bit of an old concept, made popular by real estate advertisements while selling housing inventory way back. “15-minute city” comes to the rescue, but should possibly come with a disclaimer that it may have certain demographic and geographical relevance. That is because, a large part of the world and scores of cities may still not be prepared to immediately embrace the poised city planning concepts like above due to multiple structural challenges including real estate unaffordability, the uncertainty of job location over the years, dual and multi-income households, budget deficit etc. Thinking of a dual-income nuclear family and multi-income joint family for instance, at least one or several of such family members might still have to travel long distances to places of work, 5 to 6 days a week, these families may also not be getting time or have the motivation to visit recreational places, parks, sports centres etc., even in walking distances, due to work-life imbalance.

Thinking of millions of those who will still willingly prefer to use e-commerce sites for shopping or use food delivery apps instead of going out. Thinking of all those paying all the bills from home and those who never really required to visit utility kiosks, banks, post office, ATMs or municipal offices, for many of them the distance of neighbourhood facilities may not be of much importance.

It is noteworthy that while there are forces on one side trying to make cities accessible, meaningful and vibrant for wider demography, at the same time there are reverse combined forces of commerce, industry, real estate, and employment market instilling juxtaposing demographic changes, i.e., either forcing people to commute long distances causing exhaustion or making them habitual of a sedentary lifestyle.

The last real changes in city planning concepts that actually altered the urban morphology altogether across the world were driven by technology like high-speed transit and mass transit options. We are fortunately standing at a crossroads when real changes in urban morphology and urban management will possibly again be visible and will be driven by the force of technology only. Many such concepts being already tested in smart city pilots (#autonomous ground and #airmobility etc.) as well as city-scale projects, (#micro-mobility, #MaaS, etc.) as well as some new social change concepts seem to be finding ground (remote working, hybrid working, remote learning, etc). This new technological renaissance to be witnessed through aid of #startupecosystem #ML #AI #IoT ect.

Author: Anoop Jha

#urbanmanagement #urbanplanning #urbandevelopment #walktowork #15minutecity #smartcity #livinglab #infrastructure #UMD #WFH #micromobility #publictransport #MRTS #Rotterdam #France #Paris #Hague, #Eindhoven #Amsterdam #Netherlands