New Cebu port construction to start in Q3

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) expects the construction of the P16-billion Cebu international port to start in the third quarter.

The operations and maintenance (O&M) of the port is being eyed as a public-private partnership (PPP) project.

During the Asia Infrastructure Forum organized by Infrastructure Asia, Transportation Undersecretary Timothy John Batan said the agency expects construction of the new Cebu international port to begin by next quarter, after the necessary government approvals are secured.

The project, to be built on a 25-hectare reclaimed area in Consolacion in Cebu, will have two berths that can accommodate 2,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) vessels upfront and eventually 4,000 TEU vessels.

Batan said the project has secured the endorsement of the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC)-Technical Board earlier this week.

The next step is to get the approvals of the ICC-Cabinet Committee and the National Economic and Development Authority Board, which is chaired by the President.

“So we’re pursuing our construction, hopefully, starting in the third quarter of this year,” he said.

According to Batan, the target for the project completion is in 2027.

While the construction of the port is going to be funded by a loan from the Export Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM), he said there is an opportunity for the private sector in the O&M of the port.

A $172.64 million loan agreement was signed by the Philippines and KEXIM for the construction of the new international container port in Cebu in 2018.

Currently, only one port is serving foreign container traffic in Cebu.

Batan said the existing port for international container traffic is also very congested.

He said the government is hopeful the project would generate interest from firms, citing it is the biggest opportunity in the Philippines’ port space.

Source: Philstar

ADB launches ‘toolkit’ for design of environment-friendly roads

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Tuesday that it launched a toolkit that would aid governments and transport industries in building low-carbon and inclusive road infrastructure.

The ADB, along with the International Road Federation and MetaMeta Research, launched the Green Roads Toolkit, to guide the planning, design, construction and maintenance of roads while ensuring environmentally sustainable practices.

“We need to do road investments and other transport infrastructure better to develop them sustainably and ensure accessibility for all,” James Leather, director of the bank’s transport sector office, said during the Asia and the Pacific Transport Forum.

The framework seeks to address the region’s need for eight million kilometers of roads by 2030, as estimated in the Asian Transport Outlook.

It also aims to ensure beneficial land and water use, reduce pollution, push for restorative and regenerative ecosystems, and ensure the public safe and affordable mobility in the region.

“This toolkit will provide engineers, planners, decision makers, and practitioners with the guidance to balance the economic, social and environmental objectives to make roads in Asia and the Pacific greener,” Mr. Leather said.

The guide details 150 best practices in road design and planning, tackling decarbonization, sustainable materials and construction, fostering inclusive growth, climate resilience, reducing pollution, preserving biodiversity, water and land management, disaster preparedness, and improving quality of life.

“It will guide project teams in recommending interventions that support the alignment of road investments with the Paris Agreement on climate change and other sustainability agendas,” said Rebecca Stapleton, ADB’s senior analyst for the transport sector group and co-lead on the ADB Green Roads Initiative.

Around 400 million people in the Asia-Pacific region live more than two kilometers away from an all-season road, Mr. Leather said.

Roads account for 18% of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

The toolkit will be regularly updated to include additional best practices to develop and manage “green roads.”

Over 1.7 billion across Asia do not have access to reliable transport, Managing Director General Woochong Um told the forum.

“Our focus now is not only on moving cars and other forms of vehicles. It is also not only on moving goods and people. We focus now also on shaping sustainable futures for our developing member countries,” Mr. Um said.

The ADB is also supporting the transition to electric vehicles, Mr. Um said.

“Transitioning to electric vehicles represents a significant step forward, yet this alone is insufficient to tackle broader issues, such as accessibility, congestion, or safety. Our approach must be holistic, incorporating a range of innovative solutions to ensure that our transport systems are not only environmentally sustainable, but also universally accessible and safe,” he said.

Source: Business World and ADB

Make US Cities More Walkable

Reducing car use in the U.S. will save lives and reclaim streets for people

In the 1970S a nation confronted a crisis of traffic deaths, many of them deaths of children. Protesters took to the streets to fight an entrenched culture of drivers who considered roads their domain alone. But this wasn’t the U.S.—it was the Netherlands. In 1975 the rate of traffic deaths there was 20 percent higher than in the U.S., but by the mid- 2000s it had fallen to 60 percent lower than in the U.S. How did this happen?

Thanks to Stop de Kindermoord (“Stop Child Murder”), a Dutch grassroots movement, traffic deaths fell and streets were restored for people, not cars. Today the country is a haven for cyclists and pedestrians, with people of all ages commuting via protected bike lanes and walking with little fear of being run over.

It’s time the U.S. and other countries followed that example. The U.S. has the highest number of traffic deaths among wealthy countries, with more than 38,000 deaths per year between 2015 and 2019. The death rate is more than double the average rate in other wealthy countries. Vehicle crashes are among the leading causes of death in the U.S.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can design or redesign streets to make people drive more slowly or to discourage driving altogether. We can invest in better public transit, including subways and buses with dependable, on-time service. And we can change zoning laws to allow denser housing and mixed-use developments, so people can live closer to where they work, attend school or socialize.

These are changes that even the largest, most sprawling cities can and should implement. Making these changes curbs air pollution, which causes millions of excess deaths worldwide every year, and reduces the amount of greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere with every drive to the grocery store.

Traffic deaths and air pollution are social justice issues, disproportionately harming people of color. In addition, cities that are more car-dependent are often less accessible for the considerable part of the population that can’t drive, including children, people with disabilities, people who can’t afford a car or insurance, and many older people.

Many U.S. cities have abundant space for parking and wide, multilane “stroads,” a mix between a street (where cars move slowly and people can walk safely) and a road (where cars move fast, such as a highway). Stroads are optimized for moving many vehicles through an area at high speed. Yet widening or expanding the number of streets only incentivizes more people to drive, which creates more traffic.

At the same time, cars have gotten bigger and deadlier—SUVs and trucks now represent more than 80 percent of car sales in the U.S. If we want to give more space to pedestrians, cyclists and people using wheelchairs, we need to separate them from high-speed vehicles by building more well-maintained sidewalks, curbs with inclined cuts and protected bike lanes and by implementing traffic- calming measures such as narrower streets, speed bumps and traffic medians.

We should invest in improving public transit to make it an inviting alternative to cars. Buses need reliable schedules and dedicated lanes so they don’t get stuck in the traffic we’re trying to reduce. And expanding subways and other rail-based transit will help to bring in jobs and development.

Cities such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia already have fairly good public transit and have increased the number of bike lanes and pedestrian-only areas. Early in the COVID pandemic, these and other cities implemented “open streets,” which block off most car traffic at certain times to make space for pedestrians, cyclists, playing children and outdoor diners. We need to ensure they can persist.

Minneapolis, a smaller city, added bike lanes and banned single-family zoning, a major contributor to urban sprawl. Ann Arbor, Mich., banned right turns on red— a dangerous practice that spread during the 1970s fuel crisis as a way to save gas— at 50 downtown intersections.

Even in car-centric Tempe, Ariz., developers created a car-free neighborhood. More spread-out cities could focus on denser nodes or neighborhoods that have some public transit and build those out.

Too often efforts to reduce car dependence are met with fierce opposition by people who dismiss them as “socialism” or a “war on cars.” But drivers also benefit from many of these changes, which would reduce traffic and make driving safer. Others argue that these changes will harm people with disabilities, yet the opposite may be true—reduced car dependence, if paired with improved, disability-centered infrastructure, could make cities more accessible. And emergency vehicles aren’t much help to anyone if they’re stuck in traffic.

Creating better road designs and public transit will require significant up-front investment, and the effects may not be seen for years. But we could subsidize the cost the way we already subsidize driving. We could eliminate free parking. We could set up congestion pricing in dense city centers, as New York City plans to do, and use the proceeds to fund public transit alternatives. And we can add more bike lanes and open streets, which are cheaper to put in place and provide immediate benefits.

In much of the U.S., it is still illegal to build anything denser than single-family homes, and housing often has minimum parking requirements that take up valuable real estate. If we encourage cities to build duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings, especially near transit hubs, fewer people will need cars.

The same solutions won’t work everywhere, and change won’t happen all at once. Each city has its own unique considerations and challenges. And such an ambitious project will require rethinking many of our assumptions about American car culture. But the benefits could make everyone healthier and safer.

Source: Scientific American