Transport

Los Angles is given around the world as the example of how metropolises should not be. An everlasting sprawl of low-density housing bound to the private car as solely mean of transport. This planning ‘aberration’ will be able to go on as long as gas will be affordable. Energy abuse, as far as there will be no regulations against it, does not affect the thriving Los Angeles economy (GDP similar to Spain). The argument of unsustainability if such was the usage behavior of the 7 billion car owners there will be in the planet in 2050 does not affect individual attitude of Los Angeles residents.

However Los Angeles does not need to be like that. Its industrious past has left an important legacy of rail tracks all over the metropolitan structure. Those tracks, put to passenger commuter service would provide a numerous set of residential and productive centralities in the urban continuous BUD typology. Transport and land use should be integrated to have a success story.

If that is possible and simple why doesn’t it happen? Los Angeles has discussed many times the alternative Transit based metropolitan strategy. Words have not turn into action. It is neither the possibility nor the capacity that is missing. It is the value system and life style priorities of its residents. It is the Social Capital what is missing.

Snapshots are quick Metro-Matrix approaches to specific urban areas or metropolises. They are an introductory analysis that will require much more research both to contrast the hypothesis and to define a more precise proposal regarding layout of matrix lines, location of centralities and other infrastructures as rail tracks intermodal stations, etc.

Since the 1785 Jefferson American Grid most of American urban development is established by this reticular system. Colonial America nevertheless followed a more organic approach as a natural settlement process on the East Coast. The linear location of the main centers (Boston, New York, Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC) of the huge conurbation determines the dominant directionality of an almost perfect straight NE-SW diagonal line.

The increase of traffic and the need to multiply transport infrastructures has created a parallel system of highways and rail-tracks to that main directionality. The Atlantic Cost and the Appalachians parallel lines create the secondary transversal directionality. Both form the natural reticula. Waterways nevertheless, run across the natural reticula in a north/south direction.

The existing rail tracks from Baltimore to Frederick and back to DC create the potential loop for a commuter train system that will allow for the TOD location of the expected new settlers in the area the next 20 years: 1 million? Future extensions of the rail system as well as the reticular road system will allow for a sustainable development of 30.000 inhabitants TOD centralities away from the family house extensive urban sprawl.

Maputo is growing by a 4% annual rate. That is 50% in ten years from 1997 to 2007. With an actual population now close to 2 million inhabitants we must plan for a 4 million population in a short time and a 8 million in the long term.

This urbanization process is consistent with the low urbanized rate of the country (30%) but a rapid economic development (Annual +7% GDP) from a low GDP per Capita (600 USD). A more equilibrate urbanization has to be achieved among the secondary urban areas of the country. Specially in an elongated country (2.750 km long) with an eccentric capital location (a port related to strategic maritime routes around Good Hope Cape)

Meanwhile Maputo has to be prepared to house such large growth. Orbital Radial system cannot adequately respond. However Chinese eagerness to provide finance and build road infrastructures is not enough to provide for that sustainable future. A rational long-term vision must be provided and short term/sight infrastructure can harm, rather that benefit the metropolitan and national development.

Rail commuter is to be praised compared to many other African capitals. Frequency can be improved to build up a transit oriented development metropolis. Centralities have to be established in coordination with Land Use policies and management capacity: Economic activities, Social facilities and Housing density essential part of those centralities. We will have then Maputo… on tracks.

Addis Ababa is promoting its master Plan to be finalized in December 2013. The strong investments in Public Transport Infrastructure (LRT and BRT) need to be complemented in the long term with a truly 'Metropolitan' Mass Transit mode like the Commuter Train or Metro. A World Class Metropolis as Addis Ababa can not only rely on urban modes as the BRT and LRT. It needs a Metro, and the tracks of that Metro are there.

Addis has to understand it's structure. The star shape proposal of the 2001 Plan is today obsolete. The North Mountains to be protected provide Addis with a ‘T’ structure instead of a ‘Star’ shape. This feature has a secondary important effect. It takes Addis away from a radial-orbital to a linear-reticular one. Transport planners have understood that. Physical Planners have to become aware of it and plan Addis accordingly.

This Diagram of Addis, Metropolitan 'smilies' approach presented in this heading, provides the clues to understand the ‘meta’ structure of Addis and thus the simple growth decisions that derive from it. That is the essence of the Coup d'Oeil (Clausewitz) in Metropolitan Planning.

We have attached a file to this entry of just images. No words. Food for thought. For those who know Addis and understand planning could be enough to spring a discussion: Structuring axis? New Centralities? Growth areas? Integrated transport systems? Housing developments? Productive-activities strategy? All hints within the slides.

The structure of Nairobi Metropolis is a cross.
The four main urban corridors to Thika, Athi River, Limuru and Ongata Rongai, form a quasi perfect cross dividing Nairobi in four quadrants: North, East, South and West. Every quadrant has a different ecosystem, different directionality, and has to be planned in account of that.

The completion of the mobility structure for Nairobi must have two strategies:
1) The mass public transport: The development of centralities around the commuter stations along the branches of the cross (3) to prioritize rail access to Nairobi Center.
2) The road network: The formation of a consistent mobility network by completion of the short missing links across the existing dominating directionalities of the quadrants (3)
The result will be a homogeneous a resilient (stable equilibrium) mobility network linked to the metropolitan axes of the cross. The axes would be served by the commuter train service for access to the CBD.

The territorial (land-use) evolution of the structure will have two main tendencies:
1) The CBD economic activity expansion southwards, across the actual buffer of the Central Station and in the direction of the airport.
2) The housing land provision in response to the annual growth and need for 2,5 sq. km of new urban land. The infrastructure for that provision would be a reticular metropolitan network to the eastwards flat, featureless and environmentally poor land.

The Nairobi Propositive Analysis proposal to reshape Nairobi Metropolis on first a linear, then later reticular, structure was well accepted in-housed by the several administrative layers of the Kenyatta Government. This has to take shape through the development of the commuter train service, whose rail track layout reflects and coincides with the inner metropolitan structure of Nairobi.

Each station of the commuter train becomes an alternative centrality in the new metropolitan structure of Nairobi able to attract and to foster economic and commercial development, social facilities and housing provision. This decentralized poly-nuclear subsystem will take part of the pressure off of central Nairobi, multiply diverse location accessibilities and ease land prices and traffic congestion.

Development of these centralities (infrastructure investment, land management, social and economic governance of urban units) is the next step in this transformative process.

Rwanda is leaping ahead with double-digit annual growth figures. Will it be a template for other African countries? Development requires infrastructure, coordinated infrastructure with a long-term vision. Not disaggregated piecemeal shortsighted incrementalist decisions. Rwanda Government is in the right path. This report presents the completion of the National infrastructure policies that are now under way with a long-term integrated vision.

Infrastructures: Rwanda primary backbone and excellent secondary road network will require a new layout, independent from interferences, to achieve full development. The size of the country allows for 30 km interurban connections (IE: Kigali-Muhanga) in the 15-minute range, not 1 hour: a network independent from city centers and urban areas.
Infrastructures must achieve synergies. Main highways, trains and airports have to be synchronized with the urban structure, avoiding dispersion of efforts.

Housing: Expected urban growth will move 2 millions Rwandese to cities in the next 8 years. This will require the production of 70.000 housing units every year, of which 50%, 35.000, in Kigali and 2.500 units each year in each of the 14 secondary urban centers. Houses for the 60-dollar month lower income migrants. Only a small percentage will be provided directly by the private sector to the higher incomes. Direct involvement of the public sector will be required for the production of at least 50% of those figures. With 10.000 USD units in a 5.000 USD/unit serviced land these 35.000 (really) affordable housing units will require an annual finance of 600 million USD: 8% of the GDP and 25% of the National Budget. Can the Rwanda afford it?

Rwanda can neither afford reports that discuss the need for further reports, reports that take 5 years to bring any implementable solution. Rwanda has no time for that. Kigali doubles every 9 years. Every year 35.000 houses are not built, the deficit will grow and the burden put on the future, until that future is at risk. If 35.000 houses a year is a difficult task (now producing less than 9.000) what about 70.000, or 140.000?
Reports should set up straightforward solutions. They should frame and balance the problem in the large context even though quantitative precision is later required to maximize investment efficiency and budgetary accuracy. We embrace reports that take risks being direct and clear, reports that are applicable for policy making and not just for expert discussion. We think those reports are the useful ones for Rwanda. That is our bet.

The objective of this study was to assess the effects of transportation of marketable eel (0.15 kg) in the Netherlands with respect to welfare. Eels (Anguilla anguilla) were obtained from a commercial farm and acclimatized for 7 weeks at the laboratory.
Fish were transported according to regular commercial procedures. The animals were placed in water-filled transport tanks on the trailer. Fish density increased from 72 kg m
-3 (husbandry) to 206 kg m-3 (fasting) and was further increased to 270–290 kg m -3 during transport. Fish transport
lasted 3 h after which the eels were returned to laboratory recirculation systems to measure parameters indicative of stress load, i.e. mortality, plasma cortisol, lactate and non-esterified fatty
acids (NEFA) as well as gill morphology. Samples were taken at 0, 6, 24, 48 and 72 h after transport in transported fish and  on-transported counterparts (controls). Transportation affected water quality within known tolerable limits. No mortality during or after transport was observed. After 6 h, plasma cortisol levels had returned to baseline. However, energy metabolism had increased suggesting that transportation of eels resulted in an increased energy demand that lasted for at least 72 h in the fasted animals. Thus, it is conceivable that exposure to adverse conditions, prior to stunning/killing, in a slaughterhouse may result in allostatic overload in eel.

A review of the third known representation of a three wheeled mobility aid and the first with a practical application.  This paper is to encourage discussion on the British Museum item GR 1996. 7-12.2 It discusses the representation, gender, age of object, physical impairment, walking aids, fashion, hairstyle and general purpose of the model in the context of the evolution of three wheeled transport history.

The blurring of rural and urban space in Sub-Saharan Africa has been a topical theme in recent years. Under economic duress, occupational distinctions between the two have tended to disappear. It is often inferred that burgeoning trade and service sector activities have encouraged greater personal mobility and rural-urban linkages as heightened movement of economic actors bridge the physical distance between town and countryside. Meanwhile, the theme of globalisation applied to Africa has tended to suggest that physical distances are contracting as cyberspace and mobile phones spread. But amid this debate, the fluctuating cost of oil as a key determinant of physical movement and distance perception has largely been overlooked. This paper examines Zimbabwe’s rural and urban economies’ vulnerability to international oil price fluctuations. Possible future oil price trends and their effect on African development are probed.