| 520 Ringkasan/Abstrak/Intisari | THE SEARCH FOR EQUILIBRIUM IN PEOPLE MOVEMENTS
Suyono Dikun, PhD Transportaion Bureau, Bappenas
The Wisdom :
Our unity as nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods .... Together, the uniting forces of our .communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear- United States, Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts (President Dwight D Eisenhower message to Congress, February 22, 1955)
While our world is now in the process of shrinking and reshaping due to the transport technology, our big cities, paradoxically, are enlarging, and overcrowding in such a way that even the same technology is not able to overcome time and distance.
It is the movement of people that matters, not the movement of such mechanical deices as motorized private vehicles.
Urban transportations (and its related issues) is perceived to be a domain where complexity and mega-conflicts prevail : population concentration vs employment deconcentration.
Urbanization vs rural empowerment
Old fashioned, "power approach" law vs development, "welfare approach" law."academic thought" spatial planning vs economic driven urban activities. Economic growth vs regional disparity. High intensity of development vs land carrying capacity land use vs transport services (endless cycles) vehicle movement vs people movements mass rapid transit vs urban expressway comfort movements of the affluent vs forgotten transport disadvantages no government intervention vs redistribution of income environmental depletion vs taking nature into account
Problem Statements ( in Search of the Equilibrium)
1. The problem of urban congestion has become so great that we are coming to the conclusion that there could be sufficient highway space and parking capacity to permit the movement of all people in private cars.
2. Expressways and parking facilities not only will solve the problem of congestion but will actually make it worse. Elaborate urban expressways are futile because of the tremendous reservoir of traffic waiting to absorb any new street capacity.
3. Those who try to accommodate private cars "is doomed to inevitable failure; the better they do their job the greater will be their failure".
4. The cities just cannot resign themselves to private cars and let mass transportation slide to ruin and extinction, They must preserve mass transportation or stagnate. Downtown is doomed to die unless cities streets movement of people rather than movement of vehicles.
5. Neither private cars nor mass transportation nor any other mechanical contrivance can solve the problems of urban congestion. As a solution of the traffic problem these devices are pure deception. Putting the emphasis on supplying transportation facilities rather than controlling the demand: serves only to aggravate congestion is long , as nothing is done fundamentally to rehabilitate the cities themselves, the quicker will people forsake them and the greater the problems for those left behind to cope with.
6. Private cars and mass transportation are both guilty of promoting congestion; and that have resulted in the .successful attempt to crowd too many people and too much economic activity into too little space.
7. Metropolitan areas face difficult task of arriving at decisions than will determine the physical and financial future of tomorrow's city.
8. Emphasizing expressways and parking facilities to accommodate private car use, or modernizing mass transportation facilities to reduce the number of vehicles entering the city? Or will solutions depend instead on the extensive replanning and rebuilding of the city?
THE EQUILIBRIUM
The solution of urban transport massive congestion does not he in ;her two extremes MRT or Urban Expressways.
The solution lies in between, not only between those two system but in the equilibrium among transport supply systems, between supply and demand slides, between capital and non-capital management strategies, between public and private initiatives, and between growth and environmental quality.
The equilibrium is represented by an integrated, intermodal transport system which is safe, efficient, reliable and professional, where urban trip makers can have modal choice given by economically competitive services and their perceived travel time values.
For our big cities, the equilibrium can only be achieved by undertaking reforms and restructuring of our institutional settings dealing with urban transport, legal and regulator frameworks supporting the system, capacity building of the human resources, pricing and cost policy of urban travels, management skills and software's, and private sector participation.
The center point is of course of having a strong political will, emerging to the surface because of professional support systems, provided by professional transport groups/ organization. |