Editorial | Planning cities

Having heard it directly from Enrique Peñalosa, maybe Jamaica’s policymakers and municipal leaders will now be inclined to rethink how they organise the island’s cities and towns and structure transport systems.

Hopefully, they are convinced of the efficacy of walkable cities, the social value of green spaces and of being less amenable to policies that encourage and prioritise and de-emphasise the ownership of private motor vehicles. Which was essentially the message of Mr Peñalosa, who twice served as mayor of Colombia’s capital city, Bogota.

When there are discussions about how cities should organise themselves, Mr Peñalosa’s name often pops up.

In Bogota he was, among other things, credited with:

• Establishing one of the world’s most efficient and best-run, and often-studied bus system that moves an estimated 2.4 people million daily;

• Pioneering the city’s metro line, which is now under construction;

• Promoting and accelerating urban renewal projects in formerly crime-infested communities;

•Accelerating social housing;

• Emphasising the establishment of parks and other the maintenance of green spaces; and

• A leadership style that was inclusive, strongly goal-oriented and emphasised meritocracy.

“Enrique Peñalosa Londoño drove innovations that both transformed his city and reshaped how people everywhere move,” Bloomberg Cities, the online publication of Bloomberg Cities Network, a project of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Government Innovation Programme leadership insights to mayors and municipal officials.

Last week in Kingston, Mr Peñalosa gave the CB Facey Foundation annual Maurice Facey lecture which has focused on the management of cities and urban development. Maurice Facey, the founder of Pan Jamaican Investment Trust, developed the New Kingston business district.

“...A good city, above anything else,” Mr Peñalosa said, “is one where it is safe for walking, especially for those most vulnerable citizens, for the handicapped, for the elderly and for children.”

EQUALITY OF PEDESTRIANS

Stripped down, Mr Peñalosa asserted the rights and equality of pedestrians against the tyranny of the owners and drivers of motor vehicles.

Or, as he observed: “If all citizens are equal, a pedestrian has a right to the same amount of road space as somebody in a Porsche…

“If all citizens are equal, somebody on a bicycle has the right to the same amount of space as somebody in a luxury car.

“If all people are equal, a bus with 100 passengers has a right to 100 times more road space than a car with one.”

Indeed, this is part of the context in which this newspaper has consistently challenged the government, especially transport ministers and their opposition shadows, to a holistic reimagination of Jamaica’s transportation system and supporting infrastructure. This also means addressing where, and how, people live and work and recreate, and how they commute.

Indeed, few issues, other than crime, commands as much attention in Jamaica than public transportation and roads.

With respect to roads, the issue is often about the disrepair of the island’s more than 5,000 kilometres of major roadway as well as the nearly 15,000 kilometres that are under the control of local government authorities, or expanding existing ones, or building new ones, to ease congestion.

Indeed, last week at Richmond, in the northern parish of St Ann, Prime Minister Andrew Holness talked about adding new lanes to the existing North Coast Highway, as well as lengthening the Chinese-owned and tolled North-South Highway.

Jamaica’s crisis of roads is largely a reflection of how and where communities have evolved and the ramshackle, disorganised state of public transportation.

By Government estimates, around a third of Jamaicans – over 900,000 people – live in informal or squatter communities, or in homes for which they have no legal status. Many of these are in old and gritty urban areas that have grown blighted from decades of inattention, but are ripe for redevelopment.

The Government and private developers, meanwhile, have attempted to deal with the country’s housing shortage with suburban expansions that demand expensive infrastructure, like roads, water and sewage systems. Their residents usually have to travel significant distances to work and for important services.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Yet, Jamaica has a public transport system that moves commuters neither efficiently, safely nor with decency.

The state-owned, heavily-subsidised and loss-making bus company, Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), operates primarily in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR) where around 20 per cent of the island’s population lives.

Despite more than J$11 billion a year in taxpayers’ support, the JUTC moves a relatively small proportion of the capital’s commuters. The majority travel by route taxis, of which over 18,000 were registered last year – a seven per cent reduction on 2022, but still over 55 per cent of all public passenger vehicles.

Route taxis, though, are likely to be undercounted. Many, historically, have operated outside the formal/legal system.

With their regulated fares kept artificially low, owner/drivers generally compensate by overcrowding their vehicles, racing with each other for passengers and generally breach road traffic laws. Their reputation is of being dangerous to other road users.

Jamaicans, where they can, have privatised their solutions to the problem of commuting, by buying their own cars.

While up-to-date figures on private vehicle ownership aren’t immediately available, they are likely to be the largest portion of the over 615,000 vehicles that were passed last year as fit to use the island’s roads. That was a seven per cent increase in 2022.

Although a decline in value by nine per cent compared to the previous year, the US$481.9 million worth of vehicle import licences issued by the Trade Board in 2023, were for 58,013 units, over 7,000 or 14 per cent more than the previous year.

Actual import data for 2023, however, indicate that Jamaica spent US$417 million ($65 billion) buying vehicles plus US$160 million ($25 billion) on spare parts. With a third of oil imports going to the transportation sector, a big chunk of another US$200 million ($31 billion) would be for fuelling those vehicles.

The privatised solution to a public policy problem clearly has significant economic costs, including implications for the country’s balance of payments accounts.

There are other impacts, too: elongated peak traffic periods; gridlock on the roads; the loss of millions of man hours annually; frustration of people caught in the snarls. Worse, the vast majority of vehicles caught in the traffic crawl carry a single passenger: the driver.

This is the backdrop against which the Government must think about transportation and its urban development policies and strategies.

These policies should, for implementation over, say two decades, consider where new homes are built, the revitalisation of old communities and inter-modal approaches for moving people, and what cost should be borne by people who insist on the unimpeded use of personal vehicles.

The economics and social returns are in favour of this approach to public policy.