Transport Planning vs Land Use Planning
Ever wonder why you travel around? That's because the things you want are not located in the same place you are at! Put it simply, since it's impossible to house everything you need under one roof, so the things you want (be it shopping centres/cinemas/schools etc) are spread across different areas, and naturally you need to travel to places to satisfy whatever needs that might be.
In transport planning term, this is known as "travel is a derived demand": you move from point A to point B because you need to, not you choose to. We don't travel for the sake of travelling. Of course I know of a handful of bus enthusiasts who took bus rides for the sake of sitting on their favourite B9TL (SBS Transit's newest bus model) or their favourite bus services; or, train enthusiasts who camped at MRT stations to catch the latest refurbished trains or monitor the train run number. There's nothing wrong with that. It still fulfills the statement of "travel is a derived demand" because taking a bus or riding a train satisfy their needs.
This may seems to be a simple fact, but it has huge implications on land use planning. As travel is a derived demand, the further apart the two needs are, the longer the journey is to get from here to there. And the longer the journey is, the more it tolls on the transport system. So, ideally the journey to from point A to point B should be as short as possible so that the reduced total time spent on the system could translate into lesser congestion. Of course the most ideal is to eliminate the need to travel at all. For example, some cities advocate teleconferencing to allow workers to work from home. This will reduce the morning jam into work places. In other cities, cities are built as compact as possible so that distance travelled is reduced. Singapore is one such example.
The intertwined relation between land use planning and transport planning is an old concept. I will not repeat what has already been explored here due to my limited knowledge. But rather the text above serves as a introduction to the concept of how land use planning and transport planning needs to go hand-in-hand. I'll beef up this post with more examples if I can crystallise some of my thoughts on this.
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2 comments:
Dear Daniel,
Very interesting article though I note the use of difficult words like 'crystallize' may have made it look more like an MBA script.
It is from my personal experience that I do know people who travel from point A to point B just for the sake of knowing where the bus goes, how many people take the bus and where are the heavy loading points.
Unless its work related, no one should waste their weekends travelling around on buses just for the sake of doing so.
But again, I could be wrong. Such people may simply be cherry-picking from their list of things-to-do-when-I-am-bored items.
Regards,
Mong Wee
Dear Mong Wee,
Thanks for your constant support to the blog.
Those difficult words are added after deliberation. It was an attempt to convince myself how useful those MBA-like terms can be.
I agree with you on your point that one should not be making bus trips on weekends for the sake of doing so. Those people should be spending time on more productive work, better still if it yields lucrative gains.
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