Paragem do 760 na Praça da Figueira, dia 17 de Dezembro de 2016: 79 minutos?!?!

ZURIQUE: Tram operators can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt

Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy

Pedestrians and trams are given priority treatment in Zurich. Tram operators can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter. Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation. “In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time. As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has “pedestrianized” parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.

Europe’s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.

What is more, European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.

Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe’s traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.

Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.

After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.

Today 91 percent of the delegates to the Swiss Parliament take the tram to work.

Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”

Urban planners generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere. Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters (roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said.

European cities also realized they could not meet increasingly strict World Health Organization guidelines for fine-particulate air pollution if cars continued to reign. Many American cities are likewise in “nonattainment” of their Clean Air Act requirements, but that fact “is just accepted here,” said Mr. Kodransky of the New York-based transportation institute.

It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.

Sihl City, a new Zurich mall, is three times the size of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Mall but has only half the number of parking spaces, and as a result, 70 percent of visitors get there by public transport, Mr. Kodransky said.

In Copenhagen, Mr. Jensen, at the European Environment Agency, said that his office building had more than 150 spaces for bicycles and only one for a car, to accommodate a disabled person. While many building codes in Europe cap the number of parking spaces in new buildings to discourage car ownership, American codes conversely tend to stipulate a minimum number. New apartment complexes built along the light rail line in Denver devote their bottom eight floors to parking, making it “too easy” to get in the car rather than take advantage of rail transit, Mr. Kodransky said.

While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has generated controversy in New York by “pedestrianizing” a few areas like Times Square, many European cities have already closed vast areas to car traffic. Store owners in Zurich had worried that the closings would mean a drop in business, but that fear has proved unfounded, Mr. Fellmann said, because pedestrian traffic increased 30 to 40 percent where cars were banned.

With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds to cross. “We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”

in THE NEW YORK TIMES 26 June 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=europe

FOTO: Eléctricos "presos" na Rua dos Fanqueiros devido ao excesso de estacionamento à superfície que ainda existe na Baixa, Lisboa. É todo um paradigma de mobilidade, de estilos d evida, que tem de ser profundamente altertado em Portugal.

Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy

Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy

Pedestrians and trams are given priority treatment in Zurich. Tram operators can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter. Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation. “In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”
To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.
Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time. As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”
While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has “pedestrianized” parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.
Europe’s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.
What is more, European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.
Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe’s traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.
Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.
After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.

Today 91 percent of the delegates to the Swiss Parliament take the tram to work.
Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”
Urban planners generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere. Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters (roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said.
European cities also realized they could not meet increasingly strict World Health Organization guidelines for fine-particulate air pollution if cars continued to reign. Many American cities are likewise in “nonattainment” of their Clean Air Act requirements, but that fact “is just accepted here,” said Mr. Kodransky of the New York-based transportation institute.
It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.
Sihl City, a new Zurich mall, is three times the size of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Mall but has only half the number of parking spaces, and as a result, 70 percent of visitors get there by public transport, Mr. Kodransky said.
In Copenhagen, Mr. Jensen, at the European Environment Agency, said that his office building had more than 150 spaces for bicycles and only one for a car, to accommodate a disabled person. While many building codes in Europe cap the number of parking spaces in new buildings to discourage car ownership, American codes conversely tend to stipulate a minimum number. New apartment complexes built along the light rail line in Denver devote their bottom eight floors to parking, making it “too easy” to get in the car rather than take advantage of rail transit, Mr. Kodransky said.
While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has generated controversy in New York by “pedestrianizing” a few areas like Times Square, many European cities have already closed vast areas to car traffic. Store owners in Zurich had worried that the closings would mean a drop in business, but that fear has proved unfounded, Mr. Fellmann said, because pedestrian traffic increased 30 to 40 percent where cars were banned.
With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds to cross.
“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”
in THE NEW YORK TIMES 26 June 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=europe

FOTO: Eléctrico no centro de Munique

TTT vai retirar 40 a 50% de passageiros à Soflusa

A construção da Terceira Travessia do Tejo (TTT) vai retirar à Soflusa, empresa do Grupo Transtejo, entre 40 a 50 por cento do total dos passageiros que actualmente fazem a travessia fluvial entre Lisboa e o Barreiro. Estes dados foram revelados por João Pintassilgo, presidente do grupo Transtejo, depois do secretário de Estado dos Transportes, Carlos Correia da Fonseca, ter afirmado durante a cerimónia que assinalou o baptismo dos novos ferrys da Transtejo, que a empresa «conheceu uma grande perda de passageiros nos últimos anos. Com a TTT esperamos perder ainda mais».
João Pintassilgo afirmou que já foram realizados estudos para prever o impacto que a construção da TTT terá nos níveis de procura no eixo Lisboa/Barreiro. «Os estudos dizem que poderemos vir a perder entre 40 a 50 por cento de passageiros. Actualmente, esta linha representa cerca de 10 milhões de passageiros/ano, de um total de 50 milhões/ano transportados pela Transtejo».
Correia da Fonseca classificou ainda a Transtejo como «uma empresa complexa» devido aos baixos índices de procura e aos níveis de endividamento que apresenta. «Podemos questionar porque é que uma empresa que apresenta estes problemas continua a investir. Mas não é só a procura que conta, é também o papel que desenvolve na ligação entre as duas margens, podendo servir de “backup” caso os outros modos de transporte se tornem inviáveis» revelou Correia da Fonseca. O SET referiu ainda que «Lisboa não pode ficar sem os seus cacilheiros. São património histórico com efeitos na cidade».

In Transportes em Revista

TRAMWAY REVIVAL in EUROPE

Accessibility and liveability are the key drivers in addressing sustainable mobility issues. The city environment and its infrastructure are threatened by aerial and water-based pollution caused by current transport modes. Furthermore, the erosion of access to public spaces, gentrification and loss of urban diversity challenge socio-cultural functions.

Private transport, i.e. the car, shows a growing incompatibility with accessibility and liveability. Low-emission vehicles will not deliver a sustainable solution.

Public transport systems have to embrance strategic and spatial functionality, and so address a wider range of sustainability issues, offering a de facto collective space to compensate for public space eroded by privatization and building for commercial gain. Transport systems have a long history of driving urban development.

Lately, many cities in Europe, recalling the efficiencies of nineteenth-century systems, have reintroduced trams. The modern tram is, however, a long way from its noisy, clattering ancestors. It must be different in order to lure modern commuters out of their cars.

in THE ECO-DESIGN HANDBOOK, Thames & Hudson, London, 2005

«MY BEAUTIFUL, LATE-NIGHT LISBON»

...alguns excertos de uma opinião sobre a nossa cidade:

My beautiful, late-night Lisbon
Financial Times, 30 August 2008

By York Membery

Name: Ana Marques; Age: 25; Occupation: English teacher at an international school in Lisbon; Born in: Portugal but moved to Toronto, Canada, with her parents as a child; Now living in: Lisbon

«I’d always wanted to live in Portugal because both my parents are Portuguese. We emigrated to Canada when I was four years old. I moved to Lisbon three years ago after finishing a degree in European studies and English linguistics at university in Toronto.

Somewhat to my surprise, I experienced something of a culture shock on arriving, despite speaking Portuguese (my parents enrolled me in Portuguese classes as a child). Everything was just so different. However, speaking Portuguese isn’t “a must” if you live in Lisbon nowadays. Most of my foreign friends at the language school, who only speak English, can usually find someone in the city who speaks English at the bank or the telephone company.

I found it difficult adjusting to the bureaucracy and the lack of politeness in shops and service areas. In the beginning, going to the bank without a rehearsed agenda was quite an ordeal. Coming from a place like Toronto where courtesy and kindness are the order of the day it was something of a shock.

Even finding a suitable room or apartment posed a challenge on arriving. Most Portuguese people seem to think a few square metres are liveable. And privacy doesn’t seem to be a priority when living in close quarters. A lot of the locals seem quite happy living in small apartments with lots of people. My first room was so small I couldn’t even completely walk around the bed. Thankfully, I soon found a nice place of my own.

I arrived in Lisbon in late August although in Portugal that is midsummer. Moving when it was warm made it easier to make friends because people are out socialising until late, be it on weekdays or weekends. In contrast, the winters are quite rainy. It’s also cold indoors in the winter because most houses don’t have central heating – so you have to carry a small portable heater around the house with you. However, winters are a good time to catch up on the latest films. Movies tend to premiere later here than in North America but they are never dubbed so you can enjoy them in English. People love American movies; most Portuguese films are flops.

With my Portuguese ancestry, perhaps I’m biased but I think Lisbon is the most beautiful city I know. My friends and I often spend our weekends wandering around, just taking in the sights, sounds and smells. I love the way the cafés, shops, and restaurants are housed in exquisite, well-preserved old buildings. It makes walking around the city a real pleasure. It’s a very lively city but it feels safe. (...)

The traffic in Lisbon is pretty bad. A lot of Portuguese families have two cars, which makes things worse – and Lisbon’s drivers are mad. They don’t really respect stop signs or pedestrian crossings. You have to throw yourself on to the street and hope for the best. The government has recently started clamping down on such drivers.

Public transport is the best way to get around the city in my opinion. The trains on the Cascais-Lisbon line are pretty good. Lisbon also has a great metro system. Since it’s fairly new, the metro stations are clean and most have mosaic art designed by Portuguese artists. There are only four metro lines, which makes it easy to get around and the stations are well-located. Buses are a bit different. Thanks to the Portuguese laid-back mindset, they are usually late. And the bus drivers are not the friendliest people around.

Salaries here not as high as in Canada and groceries, clothing, petrol are all quite expensive as a result. In common with many countries, Portugal is experiencing a credit crisis and a lot of Portuguese people are living above their means and getting into debt. Personally I find that although I am living on less, I do much more here than I did in Toronto. Stretching your money becomes an artform when you’re a teacher. (...)

What I love most about Lisbon are the culture, architecture and climate. Living in Portugal is way more laid back in every aspect than Toronto and I’m very happy here. It’s become a real home from home.»

Para ler a entrevista completa, click no título.

RUA DO COMÉRCIO: alguém vê a paragem de autocarros?

Um munícipe pede para divulgar este problema na Rua do Comércio.

Esta paragem de autocarros na Rua do Comércio, a uma dúzia de metros dos Paços do Concelho, está sistemáticamente neste estado: obstruída por viaturas automóveis que não têm qualquer respeito pelos transportes públicos.

Segundo o munícipe, a EMEL e a Polícia Municipal têm recebido várias queixas dos utentes da CARRIS mas até hoje não conseguiram resolver este caso de estacionamento selvagem.

Como é que os autocarros da CARRIS podem largar e tomar passageiros correctamente?

NOTA: agradecemos as fotografias enviadas.