Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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when powered by two stroke engines, they have significantly worse tailpipe emissions than private
cars or a four stroke engine. The rapid increase of the number of motorcycles in Asia is mainly
triggered by the unreliable public transport system. This opportunity is well taken by finance
companies as with a small amount of money as down payment, people can already have a motorcycle
on the same day. This leads to further low demand for public transport and NMT (Cervero, 2013).
Motorization is raising environmental justice concerns also because of the growing international trade
of old second hand vehicles from developed to developing countries. In many African countries,
import liberalization policies from the 1990s made it easier and cheaper for households to buy second
hand vehicles shipped across the Mediterranean Sea from Europe, ending up in big cities like Dakar
and Lagos. Restrictive regulations on the circulation of old vehicles and the import of old vehicles are
gradually being introduced in various countries in order to control their impacts on air quality and
safety. For example, Senegal banned the import of vehicles older than five years in 2001 in an effort
to improve the safety and air quality levels, especially in urban areas. However, such regulations are
not always successful, as import restrictions are not always enforced and very old continue to circulate
especially when they are based in rural areas (Diakhate, 2007; Cervero, 2013).
Policy interventions aiming to reduce congestion in megacities have often been focused only on cars
and have failed as they lack a global perspective of the problem. An example of such policies is the
even odd days driving scheme applied in Latin America cities, such as Mexico City, Lima and Bogota,
according to which, vehicles with license plates ending in odd numbers cannot be operated on certain
days, and vehicles with even numbers cannot operate on other days. In the medium term, this measure
spurred travellers to purchase second, alternate day cars in order to be able to drive every day of the
week. The failure of automobile focused policies can also be attributed to the fact that cars are
primarily owned by high income citizens who can afford to pay additional costs in order to continue
driving and are unlikely to shift to other modes. On the other hand, success stories like that of
transport oriented development in Curitiba, Brazil involve coordinated, proactive action and strong
political leadership and citizen engagement even before the explosion of middle class motorization
(Kutzbach, 2011).
Different regulatory measures have been applied in many Chinese cities that have started to limit the
total number of privately owned vehicles through restrictions on the number of license plates issued
per month, with Shanghai beginning to control the growth of private vehicle registrations as early as
1994 which is one of the reasons behind the city’s considerably lower vehicle stock compared to
Beijing (Rode et al, 2014).
For further information see Appendix A4-Transport Oriented Development and Public Transport
Planning in Hong Kong and Singapore: Lessons on integration, regulation and car ownership
restriction
Best practice case study: Transport Oriented Development and Public Transport Planning in
Hong Kong and Singapore: Lessons on integration, regulation and car ownership restriction
Singapore and Hong Kong are both very successful examples of TOD, which was mainly driven by the
lack of appropriate land for development. Although none of the OIC megacities is constrained in terms
of space in the same way Hong Kong and Singapore are, the cities still provide valuable lessons on
integrated planning, car ownership restrictions and regulation of different modes. The primary
difference between the two cities is the level of public participation on operations. The comparison
with Tokyo, the world’s biggest megacity and a pioneer in TOD, provides valuable lessons on the long
terms impacts of TOD and public transport oriented planning.