Cars affect health and retard growth

Cars affect health and retard growth

Traffic jams and air pollution have often been seen as symbols of economic growth. But things have got so bad in Asia that cars have become a health hazard and are retarding growth. Johanna Son of Inter Press Service reports.

MANILA (IPS): Bangkok's residents spend the equivalent of 35 days in a year trapped in snail-paced traffic. In Singapore, motorists pay stiff fees for the right to own a car because of the island's limited space. The Hong Kong governments is studying a proposal to use car ownership quotas to ease traffic jams.

To many, these traffic woes are a price wealthy Asians must pay for their economic success. That success has seen car demand surge by more than 300 percent in some Asian countries in recent years, even as Japanese and U.S. automakers square off in the booming market.

But experts see this as a symptom of a disease called 'automobile dependency' that excessively equates motorization with economic progress.

This culture of cars has left gridlocked, exhaust-choked cities gasping for air and increasingly hostile to native non- motorized forms of transport that are used by poorer segments of the population and provide jobs for them.

"We're caught in a region-wide urban traffic jam, in a mindset that motor vehicles equals modernization equals developments, "says Brian Williams, program director of the U.S.-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

Williams, who is in Manila to advise on streamlining the city's traffic nightmare, says Asia's economies could choke on their growth if they copy the West's unsustainable model for heavily-motorized urban development.

Western countries zoomed along this path till they saw that even current efforts to stabilize emission levels cannot keep pace with the number of cars being bought and used.

Williams suggests that governments use more mass transport systems, rail and buses to move people and goods in bulk, and allot resources and space for non-motorized vehicles (NMVs) like bicycles, pedicabs and rickshaws that are efficient for shorter trips or in traffic-clocked streets. But in many Asian cities, pedicabs are still regarded as primitive and urban planners map out streets with only cars in mind.

The average travel speed in Bangkok has slowed to two km an hour, but Thailand remains Southeast Asia's fastest-growing vehicle market. Some 600,000 cars are added to Bangkok's streets every year and sales for the year 2000 are forecast to reach 900,000 vehicles which is twice 1993 sales.

Japan's auto makers --- who have more than 90 percent of the Thai, Indonesian and Philippine markets -- are making Thailand their production base. Honda Motor Co. in late October said it would open a third plant there in 1996. Toyota Motor Corp. will hike production in Thailand by 50 percent over three years.

The Big Three car giants of the United States -- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler -- are also preparing to take on Japan's supremacy in South-east Asia, as demand peaks in a region expected to post 7.3 percent growth this year.

Nearly one million cars and trucks were sold in the six countries of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) last year, more than twice the 1989 level.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Overall vehicle sales in the region are expected to double by 2000. Vehicle growth in the Philippines rose by 329 percent from 1989 to 1993. In Malaysia, car sales rose by 290 percent as per capita income shot up by 30 percent between 1987 and 1991.

The solution to easing traffic congestion may not be as simple as building more highways which just produce more traffic, because they encourage people to by cars and travel more. And as highways crisscross cities, traditional modes of transport are being squeezed out from places like Phnom Penh, Dhaka and Hanoi. In Indonesian and Malaysia, communities have protested bans on pedicabs.

The car fever has also hit bicycle-friendly China, where residents and governments cadres today fancy imported vehicles and often equate bikes with backwardness. China makes 40 million bicycles a year and they are used in 60 percent of all urban trips, but bicycles are being banned from downtown Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"I think they're backpedaling," Williams says, adding that bikes may cause some congestion but are not the main culprit. "It is good to ask: who's in the way of whom?"

ITDP also says excessive emphasis by foreign funding institutions on building roads and highways is worrisome because these projects entail social costs like relocation of affected residents. Ten thousand families are being displaced for Manila's South Tollway project, designed to ease traffic on the main highway.

So far, cities going back to transport basics are mostly in developed countries. In New York, for example, housing authority officials use bicycles and bike messengers who weave in and out of traffic are have become popular. Some employers provide shower facilities for biking employees.

Here in Asia, it is Japan that is taking the lead. The country, where 1.3 million bicycle trips are made daily, is investing in urban rail systems and has started to subsidize bicycle parking.

Critics point out that many Asian cities have become too polluted or unsafe for residents to use bicycles in. But Williams says there is much room for mixing modes of transport, because "automobile-based systems are dirty and not cost-effective".

The point, he adds, is that cars are not the only ways to move around.