UITP PTx2 Strategy: What Role for Busses and Recommendations from UITP Istanbul Bus Declaration

International Seminar on the renewal of Public Transport Bus Fleets 17 September 2012, Skopje, Macedonia UITP PTx2 Strategy: What Role for Busses and Recommendations from UITP Istanbul Bus Declaration Kaan Yıldızgöz Senior Manager @ UITP MENA Center for Transport Excellence Head @ UITP Turkey Office

Challenges & Trends Population & Urbanisation Car Ownership Energy Environment Economy

Why is public transport important? How are we going to make it? Cities and Governments now have an unmissable opportunity to lay new foundations for the next phase of economic development and wealth creation. For Urban mobility this implies to prioritise public transport rather than to keep on building new highways and supporting car industry, which would only aggravate the problems faced today by our cities. Only ambitious and visionary strategies will lead to a radical paradigm shift

Setting Ambitions Picking Solutions Public Transport Empowers the Economy Public Transport helps the planet breathe Public Transport Alleviates Congestion Public transport brings everyone everywhere Develop visionary integrated urban policies Create a new business culture Secure stable funding and investment schemes Do not hesitate to use stickand-carrot tactics Deliver life style services to become the mode of choice for citizens

Bus Transport Bus systems account for 80% of all public transport passengers worldwide in Europe, the Public Transport share for the Bus is 60% in average this varies from 50% for the Bus in Big Cities upto 100% share of the Bus of the Public Transport in small and Medium Sized cities. Busses are key to contribute to the PTx2 target.

Doubling the public transport share on roads does not simply mean doubling the bus fleet. This also implies that urban road space must be physically shared between the road based modes according to their road usage performance on passenger movement. This means that providing the right of way for the buses on urban roads.

Sharing road space gives many advantages to public transport besides other traffic: The commercial speed of buses will increase, passengers travel-time budget will be less, operating cost of buses will decrease and operational performance will increase. Both buses and cars will run smoothly. Thus traffic flow will not be interrupted by busses and bus stops. Since the number of lanes for the buses is limited, the bus routes and number of buses on each route will be rationalized, thus increasing the operational performance of the total transportation system. When the demand exceeds the capacity, bus lanes will be converted to BRT for higher passenger capacity with a reasonable cost. The corridor will be ready for such a change.

Involvement of private sector to the system should be ensured: Public authorities should define clear legal regulations and effective obligations on service quality, efficiency, performance, stable business environment and fair competition for different actors to operate in the market. Public transport sector actors should be prepared to get involved in Public-Private partnerships initiatives. Since increasing the attractiveness of public transport is the major policy objective, then authorities should consider and implement special arrangements to attract new passengers by lowering fuel tariffs, by reducing some taxes, like VAT, for the public transport services.

Involvement of private sector to the system should be ensured: For stable business environment transportation fares must be adjusted automatically due to the changing conditions. There is a need to relief the public transport operators from their social role. Today, public transport operators are providing reduced fares for certain passenger groups from their own funds. Such social policies should be carried out by the government or by the authorities taking such a social decision or by associations responsible from these special passenger groups.

Environment Friendliness To decrease the amount of emission and to consume less fueloil has become a definite obligation for urban bus operations. Environment friendly technologies exist and are emerging. They should be introduced in a serious way, but not as a green washing exercise, or as a public relations gimmick.

Effective Use of Technology Effective use of technology will help make the buses of tomorrow even more attractive for passengers. Only the use of the latest technologies will allow buses to compete with private cars. Technology will also provide authorities to have better performance management, monitoring and regulation; thus resulting with positive operation budgets.