1. Dreaming a new Detroit
Walter Hook, Executive Director, ITDP
Detroit, November 2010

2. Is this the future?
Robert Crumb (1988)

3. Times Square, 1985
Or this?

4. Or this?
Hundertwasser’s
Vienna

5. Or this?
Rem Koolhaas’
Netherlands

6. MOD POD-TIME SQUARE IN HARBIN
Ceate a mobility, aceesibility and people-oriented square
Project principles
Create An interaction, civic
and cultural central square
3. people-oriented designs
-activities for summer, night
time, winter
-Abundant sitting and
amenities
-implement an attractive
night lighting scheme
Melbourne revitalizes
downtown (Gehl)

7. Critical trends:
• Bus rapid transit
• New pedestrian-oriented spaces
• Bike sharing and bike networks
• Parking reform

8. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiated
in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974

9. Basic Bus Rapid Transit: Quito

10. Lanes of mixed
traffic
Bus express lane
Central median location removes conflict with
turning vehicles, double parked taxis and
delivery vehicles, etc. Left turns normally
prohibited where possible!

11. Stations feel like metro systems: station
floor level with the bus floor
Bogota TransMilenio

12. Passengers pay at the turnstile, not
the bus driver: passengers board
all doors at once.
Quito, Ecuador
Porto Alegre, Brazil

13. Size and number of doors is more important than bus size.
TransMilenio buses have 4 x 1.1 meter doors

14. Guangzhou BRT day I: no guidance system.

15. One station in the middle or
two on the curb side
Difficult to transfer
Stations are Narrow Impossible
to reconstruct for higher volume
Requires special buses.
Buses only operate on BRT
corridor or have doors on
both sides.
Quito Line 1 Quito Line 2

16. BRT in the United States

17. Las Vegas, Nevada:

18. Eugene, Oregon

19. Los Angeles, California

20. Los Angeles Orange Line

21. Cleveland, Ohio

22. Mid block station location increases the level
of service for both buses and mixed traffic at
minimal pedestrian inconvenience

23. Bus stop – Intersection
interference
Bus stop before intersection, buses waiting at light
can disrupt functioning of the bus stop
Intersection
Intersection
Bus stop after intersection, buses queuing at stop
disrupt intersection

24. Direct service full featured Bus Rapid Transit

25. Special concerns about BRT in
the USA
• Low demand
• Strip mall development form
• High labor costs
• Administrative rigidity

26. TransJakarta

27. Mexico City Metrobus opens
2004

28. Ahmedabad opens first full
featured BRT in India, 2009

29. Majority is surface median stations
with at-grade crossing

30. Segregated median bus lanes

31. Level boarding 900 mm

32. Guangzhou decides to build BRT on high demand corridor, 2006

33. Guangzhou BRT opens 2010, 800,000 passengers per day

34. Real time passenger information

35. Full integrated with Metro, at 4 stations

36. China: this is the competition

37. What’s happening at the next station down…

38. Flexible Operation
优点： 专用走廊，走廊内Guangzhou and Cali, Colombia, are the first
BRT systems to combine full BRT features with ‘direct’ routes
210
560
Route using corridor /route length more than 30％
BRT Vehicle，can leave corridor
Don’t need feeder
296
561
242

39. 0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
WorldwidecombinedlengthofBRTsystems(km)
BRT expansion after “Gold Standard” BRT Projects
after Curitiba
after Quito,
Brisbane, &
European cities
after
Bogotá

40. Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya BRT becomes first
full BRT in Africa, Opens 2009

41. 41
Combining Trunk, Feeder and Complimentary Service:
Johannesburg: A good option

42. Downtown Johannesburg has
crime problems. Rea Vaya
station areas become secure
havens

43. • Pre-paid, level boarding
• Secure
•weather-protected
• Aesthetically pleasing
The Stations are World Class

44. Central verge configuration on narrow
downtown one way streets is daring
and innovative

45. The Taxi Transition:
Bus operators are former minibus taxi
operators from 10 competing ‘mafias’.
This was KEY to political success

46. Transport minister of the city had her house
attacked, and 2 security guards were killed.

47. Guangzhou, China’s new pedestrian promenade along
rediscovered ancient canal, Opened Nov 2010

48. Gehl Architects · Urban Quality Consultants · Gl. Kongevej 1, 4.tv · 1610 Copenhagen V · Denmark · www.gehlarchitects.dk

49. think

50. New pedestrian street,
Guangzhou, China.
Every Chinese city has new
pedestrian zones

51. Mexico City
Centro Historico Newly
Pedestrianized Streets

52. Cities rediscover pedestrians
The magic of waterfronts is being rediscovered from
London to Guayaquil (below)

53. Victoria, British Colombia, Canada
Source: Curbless Streets/Shared Space in Urban Contexts, Background, Issues & Examples, July 2007
de Brinkgood, Netherlands Odense, Denmark
Shared Streets
Hans Mondermann develops shared street concept

54. Shared Streets Appear in Guangzhou, China

55. NewKensingtonHighStreet. Children bike safelyin the
MIDDLE of theroad....

56. Poor people can lower cost of
living by bicycling. Slums of
Bogota

57. After a decade of tearing out bike lanes, China is
rebuilding them

58. Guangzhou, first new bike lane on a major arterial since the early 1990s

59. Delhi builds first modern
Indian bike lanes, 2008

60. Paris’ new bike lanes

61. New York followed with major
initiative starting 2008

62. Car Free Days: Mexico City
emulates Bogota

63. New York copies
Bogota and Mexico
New York’s
Summer Streets
Programs: Over
1,000,000 people
participated in 3
Sundays in
August

64. Bike sharing takes off globally after Paris
Velib opens

65. Lyon’s new waterfront
w/ bikeshare

66. Milan, Montreal, Washington DC, Stockholm, and dozens
of other cities in Europe

67. Then Hangzhou becomes largest bike
sharing system in the world, 2009

68. Model
Rio launches bike sharing,
2009

69. Mexico city launches
bike share, 2010

70. Guangzhou bike sharing opened in
August, now 5000 bikes

71. Road Removal:
Highway tear-downs have become
fashionable
Seoul, Milwaukee, San Francisco,

72. New Bikestation Long Beach, CA,
Adjacent to Blue Line Light Rail

73. Sao Paulo
• 11km bike lanes
along the river
• Bike trips
increased from
0.3% to 0.6% of
total trips over a
decade

74. BEFORE
AFTER
Breda, The Netherlands

75. Multi-modal Station with P&R
Hamburg, Germany (Altona District)

76. Parking Podiums
Chicago Bangkok

77. Detroit?

78. Chicago privatizes downtown parking

79. Supply Caps
• Hamburg: Sealed inventory in
Central Business District at
roughly 30,000 spaces in 1976
• Zurich: “Historic Compromise”
instituted in 1996
• Amsterdam: Every spot created
off-street should remove a spot
from on-street.

80. Imagining the city we want…

81. Ahmedabad (current site)

82. Ahmedabad (rendering)
Bimal Patel, HCP Design and Project Management

83. Johannesburg (current site)

84. Johannesburg(rendering)
Osmond Lange Architects, Ikemeleng
Architects

85. New York (current site)

86. New York (rendering)
Architect: Michael Sorkin Studio

87. Guangzhou (current site)

88. Guangzhou (rendering)
Urbanus
Architecture
and Design

89. “Until we know what kind of city we
want, we cant decide what sort of
transportation system we should
have.”
Enrique Penalosa, ITDP President,
Former Mayor, Bogota, Colombia
www.itdp.org