Carried away?

Hi guys,
I've spent the last few days looking through some new sites. The first is
The Transport Research Laboratory ,
or TRL. They are UK based so much of their information is for developed countries but they have a section on developing countries, and sections on saftey and environmental impacts are highly relevant. They clearly have a lot of information which would be invaluable to us but they are conservative with what they share, so I've contacted them explaining who we are and what we are doing and I hope to hear back from them soon.

I found a link to them through
http://www.itdp.org/mission.html
or The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, who have a huge selection of great links, and are involved in projects such as the mass donation of bicycles to developing countries, as well as developing a bicycle specifically for african conditions, ironically called the California bike.

A final word on an article called " Urban Transportation And The Millenium Development Goals" By Walter Hook in the Global Urban Development MagazineMarch. This is also at ITDP under publications. A little long but answers many of my questions on the unique transportation needs of developing countries and reminds me that what we are doing can make a real difference.

Some highlights:

" In Africa, virtually all vehicles are imported, and there are fewer vehicle options, with land rovers, cars, a few paratransit vehicle types, maybe a few bicycles, maybe animal traction, and nothing else. Where motorcycles have been introduced, like in northern Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, they have been rapidly popularized. This paucity of vehicle types and their high cost is partly because Africa has virtually no vehicle manufacturing, motorized or non-motorized"

"While directly subsidizing bicycle ownership for the poor is generally not necessary, just to keep matters in perspective, it costs US$10 million to construct a single highway flyover. The beneficiaries of this flyover will be mixed, but mostly concentrated among wealthy motorists. This same US$10 million could buy 150,000 good quality bicycles, or cut the price in half for 300,000 modernized cycle rickshaws, creating 100,000 jobs. Put another way, you could give every man, woman, and child in Senegal a bike for US$500,000,000, roughly the cost of 10 kilometers of subway, or of one major highway. Certainly, donor agencies focused on poverty alleviation would be well advised to focus on bikes and not on highways.

This is not, however, the best approach to resolving the vehicle supply problem in Africa. Most important is to introduce competition and attract private sector investment into the African vehicle sector, both motorized and non-motorized. Joint ventures can be developed that demonstrate the existence of a robust vehicle market and then gradually induce private suppliers to shift to Africa a greater share of the value added from the production process. Greater market involvement in the transport sector would help to break down local vehicle import monopolies and engender competition among suppliers.
The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) has been developing interventions in the non-motorized vehicle supply sector in Africa, where the vehicle costs are most affordable to the poor. The California Bicycle Project, initiated by ITDP in cooperation with the Trek Bicycle Corporation, developed a bicycle specifically designed for urban Africa, and branded it the “California Bike”. By consolidating orders from small independent bicycle dealers, donor agencies, governments, and large employers, ITDP was able to reach sufficient scale to ship container-loads, reducing freight costs and unit costs. The scale of the orders allowed ITDP to negotiate orders directly with factories, bypassing the usual middlemen. In the first order, 1,920 bikes were procured. All were sold, and a 16 percent rate of return was realized. There are now 35 independent bicycle dealers acting as distributors. A second order of six containers arrived in Africa in the summer of 2005. In this way, the California Bike Coalition has been able to introduce a good quality affordable bicycle into Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, and Senegal at prices between 25 percent and 50 percent below the cost of any bike of equivalent quality.
By working to overcome market failures in the vehicle sector, rather than simply donating vehicles, donor agencies in partnership with global vehicle industries can play a more constructive role in establishing sustainable commercially viable domestic vehicle production. "

I'll contact ITDP as well, I just need to work out my damn Microsoft Passport! Righto, thanks for your time,

Oren