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the city guarantees the right of mobility for everyone

On May 1, 2012, in Environment, Infrastructure, Sustainable, Transport, by matt
0

From Wikipedia: Hasselt#Transport

Hasselt made Public transport by bus zero-fare from 1 July 1997 and bus use was said to be as much as “13 times higher” by 2006. The town lines (called H-lijn) have been free for everyone including tourists since Tuesday 1 July 1997. Other bus lines are free for the inhabitants of Hasselt while travelling in the territory of Hasselt.

The regional transport services, or so-called Red lines, are free for residents of Hasselt, who can travel without fare as long as they show their identity card to the driver of the bus. Red regional route bus stops are marked with signs indicating the beginning or end of the Hasselt bus network.

Non-residents of Hasselt pay the usual area tariff, except for children under 12 who have zero-fare travel. “Blue” regional lines incur a fare in the normal way.

The mobility policy in Hasselt developed into an example of cooperation between the bus line, the Flemish government and the city of Hasselt, under the motto “the city guarantees the right of mobility for everyone”.

Following the introduction of the new zero-fare policy, the usage of public transport immediately increased by 800-900% and has remained high, being currently more than 10-fold compared to the time of the old policy.

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The Proliferation of the Car

On May 1, 2012, in Sustainable, Transport, by matt
1

Just some numbers about cars. I’d like to follow up with passenger numbers from Translink.

From GovOpps, used without permission.

According to NISRA, there are 1,171,798 people in Northern Ireland aged between 16 and 74.

The euphemistically “economically active”: 732,434 persons

  • 558,846 are employees
  • 98,096 are self-employed
  • 48,927 are unemployed
  • 26,565 are full-time students

And another euphemism, the “economically inactive”: 439,364 persons

  • 129621 are retired
  • 64951 are students
  • 88134 are home carers
  • 106,796 are permanently sick/disabled
  • 49,862 are “other”.

There are 626,722 households in Northern Ireland. Of those, 164,949 do not have a car or van, leaving 461,773 with one or more cars or vans.

There are 395,348 households with at least one person in work. 44,922 of these working households do not have access to a car whereas 350,426 have access to one or more cars.

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Secure Bicycle Storage

On March 22, 2011, in Sustainable, Transport, by matt
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It is obvious that every area of Northern Ireland needs to adopt secure bicycle storage as a essential component of a sustainable city. For years, our towns and cities have painted bicycle lanes which were more often than not ignored by the car driving population – and in Northern Ireland, we have a lot of cars – but once you arrive in the urban area, there are few places to store the bicycle other than attaching it to railings or lamp-posts which have their own set of problems as they weren’t particularly secure and are even possibly a hazard to pedestrians.

One idea is in the repurposing of articulated lorry containers but many other cities include an extra bike storage area.

Despite the sometimes inclement weather, cycling should become a widespread and extremely sustainable method of transport.

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