Asia’s public transport systems limit social distancing

By: Crispin Maslog

Crowded public transport systems preclude social distancing in post-COVID-19 Asia.

With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic still uncertain, one thing is becoming clear — the new normal will include social distancing. The unique challenge is how to achieve social distancing in the chaotic public transport systems of Asia’s densely populated cities.

The social distancing issue looms large as we realise that eight of theworld’s ten biggest citiesare in Asia. The ten according to population size: Tokyo ( 37.4 million), Delhi (29.3 million), Shanghai ( 26.3 million), Sao Paulo (21.8 million), Mexico City (21.6 million), Cairo (20.4 million), Dhaka (20.2 million), Mumbai (20.1 million), Beijing (20 million) and Osaka (19.2 million).

To start with, the bulk of Asians live in slums. The corona virus lockdowns should acknowledge the fact that millions live in crowded homes and communities. So, the first problem is how do you implement social distancing under these conditions?

“To start with, the bulk of Asians live in slums. The corona virus lockdowns should acknowledge the fact that millions live in crowded homes and communities. So, the first problem is how do you implement social distancing under these conditions?”

克里斯平·马斯拉格（Crispin Maslog）

Social distancing in crowded spaces

According to social sciencedata，大约三分之一的亚洲人（从印度尼西亚21％（印度尼西亚）到55％（孟加拉国和柬埔寨））生活在拥挤的贫民窟中。（1）

Some 20—30 per cent of them rarely travel outside their neighbourhoods. They stay in and around their homes, earn their living washing clothes and gardening for rich neighbours, babysitting, peddling food and knickknacks in the streets, pedal biking to the local market, managing tiny neighbourhood stores, scavenging for junk and food in the garbage dumps.

The traffic problem is for the next 40—60 per cent of the people who have regular jobs and commute to work daily. The question soon will be on how you will travel in thesecitieswithout bumping or leaning into someone before you reach your destination.

Innovative solutions to over-crowding

The city planners (like those in Manila) are coming up withinnovative解决方案时使用相同的道路空间。他们说，一种方法是减少交通流量。大城市的地铁列车和公共汽车在19日危机之前已被最大程度地利用，并且已经人满为患。出租车是一样的。

因此，现在他们计划通过使人们每周工作三天而不是六个，但每天需要更长的时间来减少每日交通。这样，他们只有一半就来到大城市。这将使乘客流量减少50％。

Another way to cut the traffic volume is to stagger school schedules. Schedule classes for the lower grades in the morning, upper grades in the afternoon and college students in the early evening.

Thegovernmentand industry must also now seriously consider work from home programmes for their employees where feasible. To encourage this, cities must upgrade the Internet infrastructure. How about pushing for work from home enterprises? This will also encourage online shopping and virtual meetings and reduce traffic.

Bike and hike lanes

It is time to dedicate biking and walking lanes in the metropolitan areas—within the city centres and between cities. Provide safe lanes for motor bikes and pedal bikes and for pedestrians who prefer to walk short distances from bus stops to their city destinations, like the offices, malls and movie houses.

In some countries, like China, they already have working bike systems which I observed in Beijing before the新冠病毒去年。我的学生导游向我展示他注册的地方ularly borrowed a bike at one stop and then deposited it at the next stop near his school. Similar programs have been set up in other cities around the world such as in Taipei, Amsterdam, London and Montreal.

The current bus and train social distancing plan is to reduce passenger traffic by half, cutting the income of operators by half, and therefore increasing the fares passengers will pay. But who will pay for the potential huge increase? This looks like a difficult problem to solve unless the government intervenes with tax incentives.

How about the old idea of designating no-traffic zones in central business districts for shopping and entertainment? Pedestrian malls appeared in many US cities in the 1970s, but in the 1980s they eventually disappeared. Maybe it was an idea whose time had not yet come. We can reconsider them for today, when the traffic mess has become unmanageable. (2)

Trains and double decker buses

也许,是时候介绍香港的风格double-decker buses and double-decker trams to the cities of Asia. For the same road space, you move double the number of passengers from one part of the city to the other. This will mean, of course, redesigning the big Hong Kong buses to make them fit the smaller roads and lower infrastructure ceilings such as bridges and overpasses for other Asian cities.

Or you cut in half the travel time. In Bangkok, they have just started a new 23-kilometre-long elevated railway that connects the northwestern suburbs of Bangkok with the Thonburi district in the centre of the city. They have named it the city's rapid transit system that transports about 250,000 people a day. They designed it to be fully automatic–using IVU software that registers passenger volume and coordinates the arrival and departure times of the trains, making the system attractive to the public.

Many of these Asian cities are near the sea and have large river systems, like Manila, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore and Jakarta. We don’t need too much imagination to plan water ferries and cable cars to move people from homes to work in certain areas between the mountains and the seas.

For long- range solutions, of course, we need urban planning. We need to plan and build communities for the future with areas designated for residences, commerce,education, recreation, religion and the weather.

In the Philippines, a current pet project of one politician is to move slum dwellers from Manila back to their provinces. This is a great idea, but it is an idea that needs planning. We cannot just dump these people back to the provinces where they came from, give them money, and say stay there and be happy. What happens when their money runs out? We need serious planning for projects like these.

We are inspired by the planning for cities like Putrajaya, built to be the capital city of Malaysia. We have seen amedicalcity like Texas Medical City in Houston, Texas, where major hospitals andhealthfacilities were planned and were located. Clark City, 100 miles south of Manila, has been planned and envisioned to be the next capital of the Philippines by 2030.

So clearly, there are no one-size fits all solution to social distancing in Asia’s crowded public运输. No easy and quick fixes. In fact, the social distancingpolicymight even lead to an undesirable outcome – that of more people buying cars resulting to more traffic and even morepollutedair.

What’s more, we need to tackle the root cause of crowding: overpopulation. We cannot solve the problem of overcrowding and traffic in Asia until we come to grips with the population issue. The world just has too many people now.

Crispin C. Maslog, former journalist with Agence France-Presse, is an environmental activist and former science journalism professor, Silliman University and University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines. He is a founding member and now Chair of the Board, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, Manila.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Asia & Pacific desk.