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.