MOVE AND ENJOY.
Movilidad sostenible, transporte y seguridad vial. Sustainable mobility, transport and road safety. Nachhaltige Mobilität, Verkehrssicherheit
En un postanterior comentaba los avances tecnológicos vinculados a la información que afectarían a la movilidad. Autores como George Amar denominan softmovilidad a la que habrá que incluir la electromovilidad y la ecomovilidad, así como los cambios que se avecinen con los medios de transporte a los que dedicaré un artículo del futuro. El tema de este post es hablar de los cambios que se generan en las relaciones sociales con la introducción de las nuevas tecnologías de la información. Relaciones sociales que día a día observamos cómo se va consolidando la sociedad en red. Si no tienes WhatsApp no estás "in". Reconozco que todavía estoy "out" en estos temas y no sé cuánto tiempo lograré resistir, pues la presión social es muy fuerte. Soy de la opinión que el día solo tiene 24 horas y cada red social requiere su tiempo para gestionarla si no queremos convertirnos en zombis digitales.
Decir que hemos cambiado nuestra forma de conversar es algo pretencioso, sería más preciso reconocer que hemos ampliado nuestra forma de conversar. Conversamos compartiendo nuestra información de forma grupal en comunidad (foros, time-life, grupos de conversación...) a la que añadimos información digital multimedia para complementar nuestro mensaje. Bruno Marzloff lo define como el tercer espacio que es capaz de romper los clásicos binomios (trabajo-casa) o (local-global), pues en ese tercer espacio virtual se crean nuevas formas de organización mucho más flexibles, accesibles las 24 horas del día, los 365 días del año, en cualquier dispositivo móvil digital, que propicia el trabajo colaborativo en comunidad. Estas tendencias tambiénsé reflejan en nuestra forma de desplazarnos.
Cuando
en 1956 el norteamericano Malcom McLean propietario de una compañía de
camiones ideó el primer contenedor marítimo, me pregunto si ya imaginaba la revolución que su diseño
produciría en el transporte de mercancías. El primer desplazamiento que se
realizó con este tipo de unidad de carga fue de Newark (New Jersey) al puerto de Houston (Texas). La primera travesía
intercontinental de un contenedor se remonta al año 1966 (Nueva York, Rotterdam, Bremen, Grangemouth). Desde entonces el crecimiento de su tráfico ha sido exponencial, y actualmente se cuentan por centenares de millones los contenedores que viajan por el
mundo. El transporte de contenedores por mar supone el 13% del tráfico mundial fletado en el 2012, ya que la mayoría de los productos transportados en barco son derivados del petróleo y cargas a granel. (UNCTAD/RMT2012)
The Netherlands have been working since 1991 in a new sustainable security concept.
What is sustainable security?
As “Sustainable Security” we can define the totality of measures for the prevention of traffic accidents that cause important injuries or deaths. We refer ourselves to a secure traffic system with infrastructures adapted to the human limitations, vehicles equipped to simplify driving and the protection of persons and users with the necessary education to dissuade individualist and inadequate behaviour.
Simplifying we could say that the central axis of sustainable security rests on the famous quote of Protágoras: “man is the measure of all things” referring itself to mankind in general and not to a specific individual. It recurs to the perception of the antique Greek philosophers about the “Homo mensura”, but is adapted to a new form of traffic planning.
What are the principle accomplishments of the new concept of sustainable security?
If we take as a fundamental assumption of this security policy that the user is the centre of the road network; the infrastructures, the cars and up to the manner of driving should adapt themselves to the limitations of each user: the human beings. This central idea is based on three elements:
Protection of the vulnerable users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists)
The design auto-explanatory roads, which induce the users to a more secure driving style
Establishment of a hierarchy of the urban and interurban roads of the complete road network according to its function and usage
For this reason specific actions were defined in order to obtain a secure traffic system:
First of all a reclassification of the road network according to its functions was carried out. With a first level for traffic flow at high velocities, large distances and big traffic volumes; a second level for the distribution of traffic with disperse destinations and a third level for those roads which give access to any place of the territory.
Secondly, a stricter speed control was exercised in the system in line with the defined function in the hierarchy of the road network. As an example, in the Dutch transport system two thirds of the lanes have a residential function and are candidates to convert themselves in traffic calmed zones with speed limits of 30 h/km. In 2001 half of their road network was already subject to those speed limits.
The Dutch transport system is centred in the coincidence of the function and the use of its roads, for which reason the infrastructures have to be designed with consideration of the human limitations and according to its usage, the vehicles have to assure protection (with active and passive elements of security). Also special attention is put on instruction in order to mitigate the dangerous attitudes of the drivers circulating on the public motorways.
How was the sustainable security system implemented in the Netherlands?
The Netherlands have been working since 1991 in a new sustainable security concept, which the public authorities finally signed in 1998. In this same year a programme of sustainable security designed by the Institute for Road Safety Research (Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Verkeersveiligheid - SWOV) with the support of the Dutch Transport Ministry was presented. This security plan converted itself into one of the state policies which the different governments will be obliged to obey during the next decades, with the specification of some concrete objectives until the year 2010, as are: the decrease of deaths on the road in 50 % and of traumatic injuries caused by traffic accidents in 40 % versus the values obtained in 1986.
For the acceptation of this security policy 2 phases were established for its implantation. In the first phase between 1997 and 2001.
The road network, roads and motorways were catalogued and a hierarchy was established
All give-way regulations were revised
Speed limitations were established. 30 km/h for residential zones and 60 km/h for rural zones
New give-way preferences were established in the roundabouts to give a higher priority to the cyclists
Audits for road security were established
With these measures they accomplished to set the basis for later interventions, which would be developed in a second implementation phase the so-called “National Plan for Traffic and Transport” during the period 2001-2020 which is currently still being implemented.
The Dutch projected road safety as something to be provoked, with the objective to avoid that traffic converts itself into a problem of public health, as happens in other less advanced societies. They realized that the road safety needed the political and institutional support for its successful execution. And so they did by converting it into a state policy. Today we study the Dutch and the Swedish case as best practices for road safety.
In conclusion of this post I mention an example I have found in the blog of Samuel Santos García autovias.wordpress.com dedicated to the transport infrastructures, in which the characteristics of a Dutch road are detailed where the speed limits originally have been at 80 km/h with an average traffic density of 3.000 cars, and which has been adapted to the contents defined in the policy of the sustainable security of the National Plan for Traffic and Transport.
The principal characteristics of this road are:
Zone 30 and zone 60
Elevations at the crossroads
Sections with prohibition to drive for circulation of bicycles
Width of the lane of 5 m with narrowings and installations of side bollards
Sinuous pegging
Punctual narrowing of the lanes including road cushions
Fixed right-of-way regulation for one lane. No drawing of medial strip
Bend of the axis of the road in intersections
Central traffic islands in straight parts without intersections
In an article published in the daily newspaper La Vanguardia by Joana Bonet titled “Burbujas con pin” (bubbles with pin), the important changes which smartphones, eBooks, ipod and other electronic devices have on our manner to communicate and to relate ourselves with other human beings are mentioned. In this article three of these changes were pointed out:
The protection these devices provide us, with regard to strangers who share the same space with us (like metro or bus stations, corridors in public installations, etc.) where “people don’t look themselves openly in the eyes any more, but take refuge in their screens”. This vision clashes frontally with the one defined by George Amar and his concept of “religance” in transportation, which has been explained in a number of articles of this blog. This term maybe responds to the multifaceted vision of a human phenomenon sufficiently complex as to explain it with a single paradigm.
Significant is the autosufficiency which we gain with the use of these devices, as we no longer have to ask a stranger how to reach a certain place or our current location. The GPS and all its applications have given us access to the immediate knowledge of our position in a system of worldwide reference. But it also has been a great progress for conjugal live, of which I can bear witness, as I’ve made a lot of kilometres on the European roads accompanied by my wife. First with a voluminous atlas and later on with the GPS receptor Tom-Tom: its many hours of stupid discussions over interpretation and execution that this little electronic commodity has spared us. It’s obvious that – although put aside – we have not abandoned the old Shell Atlas, as the technology sometimes still succumbs to various incidents which this traditional road book can endure.
And in the third place, the article highlights a new “private bubble”, expression created by the Israeli city planner Tali Hatuka to name the isolation from the phisical world, these technologies provide for us. They seduce ourselves with new forms of communication and entertainment which occupy our time, especially the time we need to move ourselves. Now we find ourselves in the strange circumstance that while travelling we can be at 20 cm of another person and easily ignore him or her. The small device creates an invisible bubble around us, which isolates us from the other passengers, more or less anonymous companions of our commute flows to and through the big metropolis.
Barcelona's underground
A few months ago I had the luck to assist to a conference organized by AMTU in Martorell, in which Sanderijn Baanders was explaining in her speech "Impact of social media in public transport. Use of Twitter in The Netherlands" some of the conclusions from the studies about the impact of the use of the social networks in the public means of transport.
Communication via internet has diversified notably: from the more conventional means as websites, newletters, electronic mails or SMS, over social networks (Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and Youtube) until the most recent applications apps disigned for use in smartphones, as for example the QR codes. It is interesting to observe, what influence for example Twitter has on the transportation (in the conference the case of the Netherlands was explained) with the flow of information that circulates between operators with passengers and vice versa or between the passengers of public transport themselves. The speaker pointed out that depending on the kind of fluctuations, the type of information interchanged also varied. Sanderijn Baanders classified three groups of information interchange:
Of the operator to the users:
The information given in this flow of information is basically about the stops, time-schedules, news about the operating company, incidents, delays, interruptions of the service or answers to the most frequent questions of the clients.
Of the users to the operator:
The information basically refers to complaints about the service rendered by the operator, concrete or general questions, information about vandalism and to a lesser extent about suggestions for the improvement of the service.
Between the users:
The information usually are messages of sympathy, compliments and encouragements, also information interchanges about ticket controls, discussions of passengers and information about events, incidents, flash mob, even accidents that might produce themselves in the infrastructure of the transport network.
Baanders gave data of two Twitter users: @NS_online (National Railways) Dutch train operator, now while I'am writting this post has 46.000 followers with an average of 500 – 1.000 tweets per week and @TotalOVNL a user who informs about the ticket controls via Twitter with 11.900 followers and an average of 250 – 1.200 tweeds per week. At the end of the speech different operators present confirmed that also in Spain information systems about ticket controls to users had been detected. Nowadays, information no longer is an exclusive good for only a few, the new technologies are at the disposition of everyone (and reasonably priced); there will always be new tools for the old objectives.
Twitter is a very easy tool to use, with a rapid growth in wide sectors of the population and in which the messages send by the operators to inform their users about incidents or news related to public transport have a very good reception. Twitter is converting itself into an important information tool in comparison with the low quality of other communication means about the interruptions or incidents in the public transport. Let us keep the evolution of this tool and its utility in the mobility of the human being in mind.
Twitter user
Do you think that Twitter is a threat for the ticket controls in itinere?
Mapa topológico con la red de ferrocarriles en la ciudad de Frankfurt Main
y su área de influencia.
Las ideas que George Amar explica en su ensayo Homo mobilis incitan a reflexionar sobre los cambios que plantea la movilidad en nuestra sociedad. En este artículo me centraré en algunos de los conceptos que nos propone este especialista en movilidad urbana.
Actualmente la movilidad ha adquirido el rango de un derecho, como lo es la salud o la educación. Tanto en la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos (art.13), como en el acuerdo de Schengen de 1985 de la Unión Europea, o la Constitución española de 1978 se reconoce el derecho de circulación que tienen sus ciudadanos. En Cataluña o en Valencia se ha dado un paso más, se han elaborado leyes que regulan la movilidad y refuerzan el derecho que tenemos las personas y los bienes para desplazarnos y acceder a los lugares. Tampoco hay ninguna duda de que la movilidad adquiere el valor de un bien público como lo puede tener el agua o la electricidad. No son bienes o servicios gratuitos, pero el Estado garantiza su acceso y debe vigilar que no se especule con ellos.
La movilidad, cada vez más, se entiende como una actividad que ayuda a crear relaciones, oportunidades y sinergias entre los seres humanos y sus actividades y éste es el nuevo valor que introduce la movilidad. Comienza a perfilarse un novedoso paradigma que amplía la concepción que tenemos del transporte. La movilidad pasa a ser un modo de vida en la sociedad contemporánea provocada por la propia transformación de sus actores, una forma más de habitar el territorio. En el artículo de este blog "La hipermovilidad, un nuevo estilo de vida" describo ejemplos de lo que aquí estoy afirmando.
Ante una visión tradicional del transporte que analiza y estudia mucho más el movimiento que el lugar, donde persiste la convicción de que la vida pasa en los sitios, pero nada significativo puede suceder durante el trayecto, donde el espacio y el tiempo de los desplazamientos son costes que hay que reducir o superar; frente a todo ello comienza a desarrollarse una visión diferente, recogida y explicada en el ensayo de George Amar. En esta obra se nos describe el movimiento como uno de los actores que generan el lugar (por ejemplo las formas de las ciudades), pero a su vez el lugar también puede crear el movimiento (los puertos, los aeropuertos y sus flujos de transporte). Se explica un nuevo concepto de movilidad transescalar que reformula las delimitaciones del territorio. Desaparecen unos umbrales pero aparecen otros según sea el tipo de movilidad; si cogemos un avión que haga escalas vemos que ha cambiado el concepto de la frontera territorial (los aeropuertos tienen zonas francas por donde circulan los pasajeros y las mercancías de múltiples países), otro ejemplo lo encontramos con las fronteras estatales de Europa occidental pues en muchas ocasiones quedan desdibujadas cuando vamos en coche y no nos damos cuenta que ya hemos pasado de un Estado a otro, sin embargo aparecen otras delimitaciones, como por ejemplo las divisiones tarifarias del transporte público en base al territorio, donde los usuarios visualizan esos nuevos límites por encima de los tradicionales términos municipales. La trascendencia que tiene viajar en ferrocarril, en metro o en autobús, indistintamente, por las diferentes coronas de las regiones metropolitanas en función de unas determinadas tarjetas de transporte es más importante, a efectos prácticos, para los usuarios que conocer cualquier otra delimitación territorial. La forma de desplazarnos modifica los límites que utilizamos para clasificar el territorio.
En el nuevo modelo de movilidad el lugar ya no es sólo origen y destino de nuestro viaje, sino que adquiere el atributo de escala o etapa en nuestra constante circulación, donde el tiempo de tránsito adquiere un nuevo valor. La nueva movilidad amplía los usos que nos aporta el transporte con el valor intrínseco que tiene el desplazamiento de un sitio a otro y descubre valores como lareligancia que no es otra cosa que las nuevas relaciones que podemos tener mientras viajamos, sean casuales o propiciadas, así como las oportunidades que podemos descrubrir no sólo al relacionarnos con otras personas sino también con los entornos por los que nos desplazamos o laadherencia al territorio que aportan los modos de transporte activos: caminar, ir en bicicleta, patinar, deslizarse por la nieve... que nos permiten establecer más fácilmente una relación sensitiva y emocional -positiva o negativa- con todo aquello que nos rodea.
George Amar nos indica que el movimiento ya no es sólo un instrumento para conseguir algo, el movimiento es un fin en si mismo, un atributo con el que nos estamos refiriendo a las personas, a los bienes, a la energía e incluso a la información. La movilidad física tradicionalmente nos ha servido para conquistar nuevos territorios, ahora tenemos además la movilidad digital, que nos abre nuevos ámbitos virtuales por explorar, donde la forma de desplazarnos también va a ser totalmente novedosa.
