Three grad students provide insights into traffic safety in China and Thailand at TSC Seminar

In an attempt to curb the twin evils, greenhouse gas emissions and obesity, Americans are encouraged to walk and bike instead of hopping into a car. Ironically, just the opposite is occurring in China. There, where residents make about 50 percent of daily trips on foot or bicycle, they are increasingly discouraged from using those two traditional transportation modes.

Pedestrians and bicyclists battle for space at broad intersections

In the case of one city, Jinan, transportation officials are actively seeking to move bicyclists onto buses. In another city, Fushun, metal barriers constructed along sidewalks to protect pedestrians have the unanticipated effect of creating inconvenience and a rash of jaywalking.

Three U.C. Berkeley graduate students who have closely examined two cities in China and a developing resort island in Thailand, described some of the hazards faced there by bicyclists and pedestrians at the Traffic Safety Center Research Seminar on November 27.

Metal barriers constructed to protect pedestrians also entrap

Although crash statistics are not very reliable, nearly 100,000 people reportedly died in road traffic accidents in more than 450,000 traffic accidents during 2005 in China, and 26 percent of those deaths involved pedestrians and automobiles.

Typical hazards in Jinan, with a population of 3.3 million people, and Fushun, with 1.4 million, include:

• Pedestrians jumping tall, metal barriers between sidewalk and street in order to jaywalk because city blocks are often more than half a mile long;
• Bicycles, motorbikes, and the latest newcomer—electric bikes—sharing sidewalks with pedestrians to provide more room on roadways for cars;
• Construction trucks roaring into cities at 7 or 8 p.m., just as students are finishing school and bicycling home;
• Haphazard law enforcement;
• Fading crosswalks because the cost of maintaining even this least expensive pedestrian crossing option is too high; and
• Dangerous behavior by pedestrians, whose lack of experience with motorized vehicles causes them to misjudge risk.

Big Blocks

In Jinan, the capital of Shandon Province and a second-tier city located between Shanghai and Beijing, Allie Thomas, a PhD student in City and Regional Planning, said a core problem is the large—half-mile by half-mile—blocks built years ago as self-contained cities that encompassed housing, workplace, clinics, shops, and the like. Entrances and exits to these enclosed neighborhoods are few and far between, and until recently most residents got around on foot or bicycle. Some 30 percent of all daily trips are made by bicycle.

With the advent of new arterial roads—six to eight lanes wide and filling with a growing number of automobiles—Thomas reported that pedestrians traveling from one block to another jaywalk across multiple lanes of traffic rather than walk to faraway intersections and entrances to the blocks. Although some jaywalk for convenience's sake, reported Thomas, others feel safer navigating two-way traffic at mid-block rather than multiple lanes of traffic at broad intersections.

Wide roads with 6-8 lanes and long distances between intersections are a hardship for pedestrians

Thomas pointed out that fatality statistics are probably unreliable, but there are reports of a growing number of deaths and injuries among children on China’s roads. Part of the problem, she believes, is unfamiliarity with motorized traffic and how long it takes a vehicle, such as a bus, to stop for a pedestrian in the road. Parents, too, who are used to jaywalking tend to override instructions given to children at school on when and where it is safe to cross a street.

Further complicating pedestrians' safety was a decision by transportation officials to move bicycles, motorbikes, and the newest fad—electric bikes—from roadways to a center lane on sidewalks. Now pedestrians must dodge swarms of bikers as they make their way to bus stops and intersections at the edge of the sidewalks.

"These kinds of conflicts cause a lot of tension between the bicyclists and the pedestrians, and this is why, I think, there are calls to reduce the number of bicycles because they're causing the trouble," explained Thomas, who has spent more than half a dozen years in China studying transportation and energy problems.

Transportation officials have little sympathy for the bicyclists in this struggle because they hope to shift them to a bus rapid transit system that is under construction. Bicyclists are considered competition to the new system, explained Thomas. But Thomas believes bicycling is the most efficient and quickest way to get from door to door, and residents say they are willing to take risks for the sake of convenience and getting where they need to go in a timely fashion. Yet officials seem unwilling to incorporate bicycle riders into their new transportation plans.

Barriers for—and to—Safety

Some 500 miles away, in Fushun, a smaller, third-tier city with only 1.4 million people, local transportation officials placed meter-high barriers between their newer, multi-lane roadways and sidewalks to protect pedestrians from cars that previously crashed into sidewalks or parked on them. But pedestrians find them inconvenient, hop over them and cross mid-block, reported Wendy Tao, who is pursuing a joint Master of Science/Master of City and Regional Planning in Transportation.

Pedestrians cross under a little-used skybridge

The World Bank funded the construction of a dozen skybridges aimed at providing a safer passage over the new arterials, but they are largely unused, she said.

Like Jinan and most cities in China, Fushun has very long blocks, and pedestrians don’t want to walk all the way to a skybridge to cross the road. 

Nor has an underground passage proved popular.

"So instead, the barriers get higher and higher to prevent people from climbing over them. It's a situation where they've built structures for a safe environment at the expense of walkability, comfort or convenience," said Tao.

Ironically, the city's older, traditional core represents nearly everything that proponents of transit-oriented development in the U.S. hope to create. "Fushun's core is a walkable city and pretty safe because all vehicle speeds are pretty slow. There are huge sidewalks and a bike lane," explained Tao. "You've got door fronts on the streets, and everybody can walk anywhere within 20 minutes. For Fushun, they had a good thing going, and now a lot of these arterials are breaking apart their traditional structure."

Island in Thailand

Just as economic development has created tremendous transportation problems in Chinese cities, it also affects a tiny tourist island off Thailand's coast. Brittany Montgomery, who is also working toward a joint Master of Science/Master of City and Regional Planning in Transportation, spent the summer analyzing the current transportation problems of Koh Lanta Yai, a long, narrow beach island destined to become Thailand's next tourist hot spot.

Although the island's economy is dependent on tourism, its transportation infrastructure is both minimal and dangerous for locals and tourists alike. Visitors to the island typically ride for a day in packed vans from Bangkok, then travel via two ferries to reach Koh Lanta. Rental cars are in short supply, so skylaps, motorbikes with a bench built on the side for passengers, are the only taxi option.

Skylaps are a popular but dangerous transportation option

"Because of the way weight is distributed on these homemade taxis, they're very prone to flipping over," said Montgomery. "You can rent a bike—there's one bike rental place—or you can try to walk, although there are no sidewalks, no shoulders, and a lot of mud," she said, adding that bicyclists must also contend with giant construction trucks roaring along the island's few, shoulderless roads.

The island, which is about nine miles long and less than half that wide, has numerous modest hotels along its west coast. Local villages with their shops and restaurants are scattered inland. For tourists to leave their hotels and visit the local towns, they can walk through muddy jungle-like terrain or rent a motorbike. Motorbikes are the largest mode share on the island, and as such tend to be involved in the most crashes, as are drunken tourists who, for lack of other options, rent them.

As for the island's residents, most cannot afford cars, so motorbikes are also their primary means of transportation. "It's not unusual to see four or five family members traveling on one motorbike," explained Montgomery.

Children walk to school on roadways that lack sidewalks or pedestrian crossings. A blind curve just beyond school increases students' risk.

Existing roads are filled with potholes, have no shoulders or lights at night. Monkeys, elephants, and snakes wander across them. A local elementary school sits on a road next to a blind, hairpin curve with no sidewalks and no pedestrian crossings.

As Montgomery and the group looked at the island's transportation environment, they needed to consider several issues: Residents desired more economic growth for their small villages, but wanted to attract tourists who would honor their unique cultural heritage and their relatively pristine environment. They were determined not to become another Phuket, with its crowded, boisterous beach scene. Traffic safety was less of an issue for residents, but the students knew that with more traffic in the future, it would only get worse.

After studying the entire island—every beach access point and every tourist destination—they suggested constructing pedestrian and bicycle paths from the resort areas to the inland villages, as well as a pedestrian/bicycle route along the west side of the island, where most of the resort hotels are currently located.

The plan also called for incorporating a van system that could carry people and their bikes. This van system would help get tourists up and down the west side, and also allow a safer form of transportation for local workers traveling from home to work in the resorts, or from home to school.

As for pedestrian or bicycle safety projects in general, Montgomery suggested they probably can't be billed as such in developing countries.

"Pedestrian and bicycle projects may not make it to the top of a country's priority list [for international loans] because of their relatively low cost.  However, if these projects can be creatively combined with efforts to stimulate local economic development or to improve environmental conditions, they may have a higher probability of actually being implemented," she explained. "The challenge is to package it differently, in a way that places like the World Bank will fund what we know needs to be done."

Brittany Montgomery, Allie Thomas, and Wendy Tao in the Transportation Library

 

 

 

 

—Christine Cosgrove

 

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