Codatu VII in 1996 - New Delhi (India)

Topic of the conference : "Urban Transport & Integrated Development"

Speech of Richard DARBERA, Co-Chairman of the scientific committee of the conference

Cities, and especially large cities are the principal locus of economic development. As a result the development of a given country largely depends upon the efficiency of its cities. A city's efficiency is primarily the efficiency oof its markets : its labour market and its markets for goods and services .
The larger the labour market, the better the fit between the supply and the demand for the various qualifications, the easier the mobilisation of large quantities of labour, the faster the adaptation to big changes in the productive system. Now, the size of the labour market, or rather the various labour markets in a given city not only depend on the city's size but they also depend upon the fluidity, the variety and the efficiency of the passenger transport system. A large town without transport merely is a juxtaposition of small markets dominated by cottage industries and home based labour.
By the same token, the sizes of the markets for goods and services in a given city depend upon the city's integration in the national and the international transport networks and also upon the ease of goods transport in the city itself. Enterprises access to the markets for intermediate goods and sercies, access to retail markets generate traffic and parking problems for goods delivery that are not only costs for the enterprises but that also cause delays and higher costs to the passenger transports.
What is the role of urban transport in the economic development of the cities and of the countries ? How is it possible to facilitate this role, to organise the complementary among the various transport modes, and to insure coherence between transport policies and urban development policies ? The objective of this CODATU is to exchange ideas and experience that may bring answers to these questions. The papers assembled in this publication are the testimony of this exchange..

This publication is organised in six parts :

In part 1 : "Integration of City and Transport Planning", most contributions show the intricate relationship that spontaneously develops between transport supply and land use, and many papers, based on case studies, recommand strategic approaches integrating city and transport planning.

In part 2 : "Transport Economic & Finance", several contributions show the efficiency and redistributive impacts of transport policies. The problem is : how to finance these policies ? Especially in the case of large urban transport projects, various experiences drawn from all over the world propose possible solutions..

In the papers regrouped in part 3 : "Travel Demand", two major orientations can be distinguished : about half the papers address specifically the issue of forecasting transport demand, when the other half is more directed towards proposing transport policies or land use policies to influence and redistribute mobility.

Most of the paper in part 4 : "Improving the Role of Public Transport and Other Modes" are concerned with public transport services, either with regulating competition in the public transport sector or with enhancing public transport performance trough monitoring and technical improvements Other papers focus on the important effective or potential role of non-motorised transport modes. The rest of the papers address the issues of transport systems hierarchies and coverage, and of urban transportation technologies and strategies from the point of view of their suitability to developing nations.

In part 5 : "Institutional Approach to Urban Transport ",most papers address the issues of education & co-operation in institutional building for urban transport planning and management at the metropolitan level. Other papers focus on the institutions in charge of co-ordinating public transportation operations.

The papers regrouped in part 6 : "Traffic Management & Environmental Issues", although they are complementary, follow two different paths. The first ones analyse the impacts of various transport modes or of various transport policies on air polution, on congestion, and on accidents. The second ones assess or propose various tools for traffic management.

By their wide variety, the papers regrouped in these proceedings cover an extensive range of topics. However, they only partially reflect the richness of the conference. One reason is that some papers could not be included in these proceedings either because they arrived to late or because they were presented in a format too far away from guidelines to authors to be included at a reasonable cost. The main reason, however, is that a great deal of the conference richness also sits in the quality of the discussions that follow the presentations and in the intensity of the dialogues produced by the round tables organised during the conference.