The Ideal City for Transport

Enrique Pealosa was the mayor of Columbias capital city, Bogot, for the period 1998 to 2001.
He is popularly known for solving the mind-boggling traffic problems in the Capital district.
The problem of mobility, for him, is not merely a matter of money or technology; it is matter of
social justice and equality itself. In his words, an advanced city is not one where even the poor
use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport. What this tells us is that our
commonsense notions of mass transport are often misleading.
In a major city like Amsterdam, where the average incomes are significantly higher than those of
people in American cities, an estimated thirty percent of people tend to use bicycles instead of
cars. In this sense, the market-economy model is something we should not be referring to
because it may not provide us with the best means of development for the public at large. In a
market model, we would focus not on building bikeways, but more roads and highways for cars.
The Road should be distributed more fairly between cars, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians. In an
ideal city, cars alone should not have privilege over other travelers. A poorer person can never
afford a car and lives off bus travels. These bus travels are inexpensive but, in most cases, they
are hampered by frequent traffic jams. More people comprise the space for buses, but they share
road space equally with cars. This means that roads should more egalitarian distributed. This is
also the case with pedestrians, who are often at the mercy of vehicles. Pedestrians are often
robbed of a dignified travel, where they are reduced to zig-zaging their way through traffic in
major cities. Pedestrians are a major part of travelling. They too deserve privilege as much as car
travelers do. A true democratic setting then must focus on sidewalks. As Pealosa put it, In
terms of transport infrastructure, what really makes a difference between advanced and
backward cities is not highways or subways but quality sidewalks.

Arif Hasan argues that such megacities as Manila, Cairo, Tehran and Bangkok, are currently
worse off in terms of traffic problem compared to Karachi today. This is in spite of the fact that
these cities are abundant in expressways and flyovers. Karachis cannot be compared in this
respect with the infrastructure of these cities. This belies our assumptions that building more
highways and flyovers will simply solve our problems. If we are to learn anything from
Pealosa, simply building bigger and newer roads and expecting our traffic problems to be
solved is like trying to put out a fire by gasoline.