“Guide for mainstreaming transportation & mobility in Lebanon’s national urban policy 2021” – an insight in the report produced by the UN-Habitat in Lebanon

The National Urban Policy (NUP) programme, initiated in 2017 by the UN-Habitat in Lebanon, aims to support the management of the country’s urbanization by evaluating ongoing practices and promoting new sustainable ones that can help improve prosperity levels, environmental quality, and quality of life. Transport was identified by the programme as one of two sectors, along with housing, particularly important for the country’s sustainable urban development. 

In this blog, we would like to present to you a summary of the report published in 2021 by the UN-Habitat on the transport sector in Lebanon. After an overview on Lebanon’s transport sector, the guide brings up the main challenges and opportunities, alongside possible policies and future trends for the country. 

 

The report emphasizes that Lebanon is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with 88.5 percent of the population living in urban areas. This obviously puts great pressure on urban transport infrastructure resulting in a deterioration in the quality of services, the environment and people’s health and well-being. As the UN-Habitat points out, there is an urgent need to find new solutions for affordable, reliable and safe mobility in the country. 

The transport sector in Lebanon is considered one of the most unsustainable in the Middle East region, due to weak governance structures and regulatory frameworks, the absence of a modern and reliable public transport system, and a culture dominated by old-model polluting cars. This situation is connected to a number of negative impacts, such as a poorly planned urban transport infrastructure, high levels of roadway congestion at all times of the day, and the environmental, health and financial cost burdens. 

The transport system in Lebanon does not give space to alternative means of mobility, restricting freedom of walking/cycling and other leisure activities, contributing to the deterioration of the quality of life in Lebanese cities. In addition, the national and local government authorities responsible for managing the sector have unclear responsibilities and limited resources, which limit the potential for properly developing the sector towards better accessibility and higher efficiency and effectiveness. 

 

Lebanon’s road transport sector

The report further explains the conditions of Lebanon’s transport sector affirming that road transport activity in Lebanon has seen rapid and continuous growth over the past two decades in line with population and economic growth. However, the growth in travel activity was not met with an appropriate development of the needed infrastructure and services. In fact, there has been no progress made on public transport by government authorities or the private sector since the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, and no major initiatives to promote and enable alternatives to motorized transport across the country. 

Mobility in Lebanon is almost exclusively dependent on motorized transport. When combined with high population density in urban areas, the reliance on motor vehicles contributes to high rates of traffic congestion compounded by the underdeveloped and poorly maintained roadway infrastructure, which slows down traffic. 

One of the most negative impacts of the unsustainable motorization trend is the lack of consideration to non-motorized road users: walking and cycling have become extremely unattractive, even unsafe options. 

All this situation translates into rising energy consumption in road transport, which in Lebanon is overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuels. And the more fuel is consumed, the more emissions are discharged into the atmosphere which are a major contributor to global warming and climate change, affecting of course also human health. Furthermore, older vehicle models are responsible for higher energy consumption due to the inefficiency of their outdated engine technologies. 

In addition to that, road rehabilitation projects in Lebanon are generally poorly executed or not adequately targeted where in fact needed, resulting in wasting public resources.

 

 

Inadequate bus system and absence of rail 

The public transport system in Lebanon was largely destroyed during the country’s civil war. As a result, the railway system became completely inoperative and all attempts to revive it have not been concretized. 

The major share of mass transport in Lebanon is claimed by taxis and shared-ride taxis (known as “service”), in addition to other providers, such as Uber and Careem, private minivans and buses.

Are missing any measures, equipment or infrastructure to make public transport easily accessible to the elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. This situation is due in large part to lack of vision and strategy necessary for proper planning and development of Lebanese cities and the transport sector, compounded by administrative mismanagement of the public transport system. 

Public transport development remains very weak and mostly confined to projects in the GBA and Tripoli. In absence of a national public bus service that connects urban and rural areas, some smaller regional initiatives by municipalities and the private sector are emerging to fill the gap. 

 

Fragmented institutional and regulatory framework 

The UN-Habitat report denounces how inadequate institutional framework has contributed to a number of direct and indirect adverse consequences on the transport sector.

In Lebanon, there is no central authority responsible for the land transport system, which is the main factor behind the absence of a holistic national transport strategy. Having responsibilities dispersed among various stakeholders, sometimes with overlapping mandates, also leads to conflicting plans and decisions and delays in the implementation of actions. In addition, there is a lack of coordination between agencies even within the same ministry, weak integration of project activities between funding, implementing and operating agencies across different ministries, and a total absence of comprehensive urban transport and land-use planning. 

 

Mobility challenges and opportunities in Lebanese cities

The guide makes it clear: mobility is all about the ease of access to destinations, opportunities and amenities, which is achieved through a variety of efficient and affordable choices of transport modes. Therefore, mobility reflects the freedom people have to move and to have goods transported in a convenient and efficient way in order to accomplish their social and economic needs. 

 

Lack of walking, bicycling spaces and poor road safety 

Most cities in Lebanon have become unfriendly to cyclists and pedestrians. Some traffic-calming measures are commonly used in Lebanon, in particular speed bumps on internal roads to slow down traffic. However, these measures very rarely involve urban land-use planning and regulations, which are most effective for calming traffic as well as for reducing car dependence. At the same time, the chronic lack of enforcement of traffic laws encourages motorists to drive recklessly and at high speeds, which in turn poses a high risk to cyclists and pedestrians and discourages alternative forms of mobility. 

Some of the popular initiatives already launched by NGOs can serve as a starting point for spreading a walking culture. Several pilot designs for walking trails in the GBA have also been completed and await implementation. Also, bike-to-work and other campaigns and bicycling events have been organized by municipalities, the private sector and professional biking clubs across Lebanon to promote the adoption of bicycles for mobility. All of these have fostered a biking culture that can help propel the bicycle beyond a recreational and sports activity into a reliable form of mobility.

 

Lebanon’s NUP policies

Based on the diagnosis of the challenges and opportunities for the transport and mobility sector in Lebanon, the UN report affirms that policy recommendations should be proposed to transition the sector towards sustainable mobility trends and should cover different types of interventions over the short-, medium- and long-term. This may require the development of human resources in the public sector, in addition to engaging the community in the planning process and to integrate bus drivers currently operating the informal system into any new public transport system.

 

The Enable-Avoid-Shift-Improve (EASI) framework for policy formulation 

The strategies and policy initiatives for planning future mobility considered most useful are those that focus on upgrading the quality of public transport services, improving traffic flow through better roadway networks, and enhancing mobility through encouraging walking and cycling.

The EASI policy framework for sustainable mobility is considered most appropriate. This framework is “inspired by the principles of sustainability” and “focused on the mobility needs of people”. The framework covers a wide range of policies based on “avoiding” unnecessary trips, “shifting” to more efficient transport modes, and “improving” trip efficiency. The “enable” component is based on supporting state institutions.

 

“Enable” policies 

The “enable” approach is the application of policies and strategies to establish an effective governance system for the transport sector, with proper institutional frameworks that can support regulatory reform, capacity-building, financing and management. These enabling policies are especially important for the case of Lebanon, due to the weak and limited capabilities of state institutions.

The report affirms that a blueprint is first needed to identify all needs and demands, set clear objectives, and develop comprehensive solutions to meet these objectives. This blueprint is the government’s national sustainable transport strategy that is still lacking in Lebanon. Moreover, since state institutions currently lack the human and financial resources for developing modern transport, the state must engage the private sector with public–private partnerships not only to implement projects, but also to operate certain services. Awareness campaigns will be needed to enable a massive transformation in culture and to fight resistance to change, as well as to raise enough political support. 

 

“Avoid” policies 

The “avoid” approach is the application of policies and strategies to eliminate or reduce the need for individual motorized travel. This approach is based on the realization that allowing the continuous increase in travel demand is unsustainable, and that measures to reduce motorized demands are less costly than those for increasing roadway capacity. 

For example, a useful measure for Lebanon is carpooling, as it helps to avoid unnecessary motorized trips per person and offers an intermediate solution to the severe congestion conditions. This translates also to a significant reduction of CO2 emissions.

 

“Shift” policies 

The “shift” approach is the application of policies and strategies to transition travel from costly, high energy-consuming and polluting modes, such as motorized means, towards cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly ones, such as public transport. The “shift” policies do not eliminate or reduce trips, but they seek to make travel more sustainable.

The most efficient non-motorized means of transport are walking, cycling and micromobility, since these modes provide the highest energy savings, environmental and cost benefits. Shifting to these alternative mobility means can also help to reclaim urban spaces away from roadways and large parking areas. But the most beneficial shift is to public transport, because of its mass scale potential in removing cars from the roads. In particular, rail transport can be considered as the most efficient option, due to its high transport capacity per trip. 

“Improve” policies 

The “improve” approach is the application of policies and strategies to advance the energy efficiency of vehicle technologies, and to use cleaner alternative fuels and sources of energy in order to improve trip efficiency and reduce the emissions of the transport system. 

The first beneficial strategy under this approach is to replace older vehicle models, which are heavy polluters. The most beneficial “improve” strategy is to provide tax subsidies in order to encourage the transition to electric vehicles which present the highest savings in fuel consumption and emissions, but for higher purchase costs.  

 

Future trends for sustainable transport and mobility

Vehicle electrification 

The sharp rise in the price of oil at the turn of the century, along with the impacts of transport emissions on human health and the environment, motivated a major shift to cleaner alternative fuels and more efficient vehicle technologies. Primary among those innovative technologies are electric vehicles, due to their advanced technology, their relatively affordable costs, and their ability to reduce emissions. 

 

Micromobility 

Micromobility devices are emerging as a practical alternative to cars in urban areas and as a supplement to public transport. Noteworthy is the potential ability of these devices to help cities address the major challenge of air and noise pollution from road traffic, as they can also serve as a sustainable mitigation approach thanks to their zero emission footprint. 

These capabilities come however at an additional financial cost. These costs are expected to go down in line with decreasing battery costs, and even further as micromobility achieves economies of scale. 

Other challenges facing the user adoption of micromobility devices include their limited usability in bad weather conditions and by the elderly and disabled commuters, the lacking storage capacity for carrying items, and their vulnerability to theft.

 

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs)

These vehicles rely on advanced automation technologies that will change the way people interact with cars and other transport means, while also making cities smart. 

CAVs are expected to have more optimal energy consumption, contributing to a considerable decrease in air pollution. Most notably, they can provide increased mobility for people with disabilities and the elderly. 

For the long term, public authorities need to plan for the paradigm shift that CAVs are expected to bring to passenger transport through autonomous shared mobility. 

Shared mobility 

Shared mobility refers to the shared use of any transport mode through an easy, fast and affordable access model. Combining new digital technologies with innovative business models, shared mobility today includes the use of mobile applications.

Another key aspect of shared mobility is sharing micromobility devices for short trips: including bike sharing and scooter sharing. 

Conclusion

According to the global NUP Guiding Framework, policy formulation consists of evaluating policy options, formulating policy proposals, building consensus, assessing institutional capacity, in addition to researching implementation, monitoring and evaluation practices in preparation for the policy implementation phase.

The policies designed through the program seek to transition the transport sector to a sustainable future by (1) minimizing unnecessary travel, (2) reducing reliance on motorized models by enabling walking and bicycling and discouraging the use of cars, (3) shifting to public transport and the use of micromobility devices, (4) improving the efficiency of vehicle technologies to reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels, and (5) reducing mobility costs.

There is an urgent need to implement proper urban and transport planning policies and strategies aimed at reducing motorized vehicle trips. Such measures would directly lower travel time, congestion, fuel consumption and emissions, and indirectly lower the risk of accidents.

A national strategy for sustainable transport is a critical element for an effective transition to sustainable mobility. Such a strategy should necessarily include a project of the needed policies, involving infrastructure development, mitigation actions, incentives and disincentives, and awareness raising. Implementing these policies will require overcoming barriers such as: lack of political will, lack of data, lack of transparency, limited government resources, lack of inclusion of vulnerable groups and deeply rooted behaviors and practices. 

In light of the current political and economic crisis facing the country with widespread public demands for government reforms, and given the strong involvement of civil society in awareness-raising and capacity-building activities, there is an urgent need for creating a transparent process for citizen participation in urban transport planning. 

Written by: Cecilia Nardi 

عَ طريق البوسطة

كمّ من المغامرات الشيقة والمعارف الكثيرة أكسبني إياها التنقل العمومي على طرقاتٍ توقظُ نوم الركّاب وتُقلق أحلامهم العتيقة بسبب المطبات الغليظة والحفر العشوائية في بلادي.

رحلاتي في الباصات العمومية وخاصّة طريق بيروت- طرابلس لا تُعدُّ ولا تُحصى.كم ّمن وجوهٍ وجنسيات، ولهجات وأزياء مختلفة، صنعت من كلّ بوسطة هوية تشكيلية عابرة للقارات: ترى شاب يضع سلسلة يتدلى منها صليب، الى جواره فتاة تتحدث الاثيوبية، عامل سوري وآخر سوداني، وعجوز يتكلم اللغة المصرية الى جانبه طالب جامعي يلملم أفكاره مع وقع موسيقى على ذوق سائق الباص، بالطبع!

ما يميّز الباصات اللبنانية عن غيرها من الباصات الحكم والأقوال التي ترافق كل آلية عمومية تقريباً ما يعكس روح النكتة الموجودة في بلادنا “عيش ع مبدأ وجودهم حلو وغيابهم ما بضرّ” ، “رح ضلّ حبك لحتّى المحيط الهادئ يعصّب” ، “خلّيك بدربك، دربنا صعب عليك” هذه بعض من الأقوال التي لازلت أذكرها.  وتضخكني في كلّ مرّة.

لبنان وعجقة السير

لا يمكنك التحدث عن طرقات لبنان و مواصلاته دون التحدث عن حركة المرور الكثيفة أو بالأحرى عن “عجقة السير” ، وما مرّ من إقفال لطرقات لبنان منذ الثورة، حيث أضحى قطع الطرقات ” فشّة خلق. وراح الصالح بعزا الطّالح”. مع تفاقم الأوضاع الإجتماعية والإقتصادية التي وصلت اليها البلاد، واختلاف الظروف الراهنة، التي تأخذنا، الى صلب أزمة سعر صرف الدولار مقابل الليرة اللبنانية، أعادت التحركات الشعبية الاعتراضية في المناطق،  و اُعيد التسكير والاقفال لطرقات مع اقفال طرق رئيسية في العاصمة اللبنانية، وفي مناطق اخرى، شمالاً وبقاعاً وجنوباً. ومع هذه الحركة الاعتراضية الشعبية التي أشعلت الطرقات بالإطارات، وأوصلت صرخات الجوع، بقيت آثار الاطارات المحترقة على طرقات لبنان تُنّشط ذاكرتنا كلّ ما مررنا بها. مما زاد من أزمة التنقل العمومي و أجبر سائقوا الباصات البقاء في منازلهم معظم أيّام التسكير. واتت كورونا لتزيد الطين بلة وكأن النقل العمومي كان ينقصه مشاكل أخرى، رغم أنّ الدراسات الحديثة قد أثبت نُدرة انتقال عدوة كورونا في الباصات والقطارات عند ارتداء الكمامة واتّباع معايير السلامة العمومية.

في مدينتنا القهوة ليست مشروب بل واجب

أحاديث متنقلة، تحليلات سياسية أخبار متنوعة، وفنجان قهوة، ففي كل باص خبير في الشؤون الاقتصادية والسياسية. في بلدٍ خسر سككه الحديدية لم يتبقى له سوى باصات تنبض بهويته تنتقل من منطقة إلى أخرى على آخر نفس، بسبب المعانات اليومية من أزمات المحروقات والضيقة الاقتصادية، انهيار الّليرة وكورونا  ما يُصعّب مهام هذه الباصات ويهدّد استمراريتها.

 الجوع أقوى من الخوف!

الصّيت  السيئ يرافق باصات بيروت- طرابلس أو كما تُسمّى بالعامية ” ڤانات التلّ”  وذلك بسبب سرعتها الزائدة أحياناً وتسابق الڤانات بين بعضها للوصول الى الراكب المحتمل.

ومع تردّي الاحوال الاقتصادية ازداد الخوف من الجوع، ما يخلق عند سائقي الڤانات العمومية الحاجة للسرعة الزائدة لإنهاء النقلة والبدء بالاخرى لإعالة عائلته فالنمرة الحمراء السبيل الوحيد للمدخول.

يبقى الرهان، في المدى الطويل على نظام النقل العام الذي يفترض أن يسمح للمدينة بتأدية وظائفها بفعالية واستمرار. فَبالنظر إلى طوبولوجية المدينة وجغرافيتها، يصعب تصوّر أيّ نظام نقل متاح حالياً وقابل للتطبيق في المدينة باستثناء نظام النقل العام بالباصات ما يجعلها صلة الوصل الوحيدة العابرة للوصول الى بيروت لكل مواطن وشخص بلا سيارة. 

لين طعمة

الآراء الواردة في هذا المقال هي آراء شخصية

“Bus Line Heroes” campaign during Covid 19 lockdown measures

By Lara Sayegh

Do you know that bus operators in the Lebanese informal transportation system, as well as shared taxis (services) drivers have suffered from the lockdown, especially when the whole system has been forced to shut down? 

Check how Riders’ Rights has launched the “Bus Line Heroes” campaign to support this vital service along with the essential workers to our society, during the first lockdown.

1- Challenging context

  One major challenge witnessed during 2020, caused by the economic crisis and the Covid 19 safety and lockdown measures, was the difficulty to find a convenient way of commute.

We all know that since Covid 19 pandemic started spreading in Lebanon in March 2020, the government took the radical decision, during the first period of the lockdown, to stop all shared transportation activities on the whole territory. 

Was this decision adequate to the Lebanese context? No, because it increased the problem instead of resolving it? Simply because it affected the work of many Lebanese citizens including bus and “services” drivers and riders? 

This decision did not take into account that public transportation is considered as an essential service in any country. It is all the more vital in Lebanon, especially for essential workers who need to commute in times of crisis. Employees of the vital services such as healthcare, bakeries, grocery, cleaning and delivery workers needed to use these means of transportation simply to go and do their job considered as essential! As these workers were forced to find alternative ways to move to their workplace, nursing, cleaning, selling and delivering food became challenging.

This lockdown measure to stop all buses, vans, taxis and services without any preliminary study, added to the social and economic crisis. We saw transit drivers affected tremendously. Relying mainly on their daily income, they saw themselves deprived from their essential means of living, the ridership stopping suddenly.

2- Germinating initiatives:

   We as Riders’ rights, found ourselves concerned with these drivers’ critical situations, as they did not receive any subsidy from the State or any organization. Many organizations we knew and contacted were overloaded with huge humanitarian needs at this time, and were unable to help us compensate the drivers’ loss of their daily income. 

In coordination with the Karama initiative in Beirut, we were able to support only 5 drivers with food boxes, during the lockdown 

This seemed very little help compared to the high need and the lack of help from any other institution.

That’s how the Bus Line Heroes campaign was born!

3- “Bus line Heroes” campaign 

A- Launching details

 We asked ourselves: why don’t we launch our own initiative to support drivers? We could support them with money this time, so they will be able to buy what they need!

That’s how the idea of starting a fundraising campaign germinated and developed! Bus Line Heroes was born! 

We reached out to Train Train (a local NGO working on the revival of the trains and roads protection in Lebanon) to collaborate in this solidarity campaign as we faced banks restrictions to open bank accounts in Lebanon as an NGO.  That’s how we signed an agreement with Train Train to use their bank account for donations. 

We launched together with Seattle Transit Riders Union, a US organization that fights for everyone’s access to safe, affordable, and reliable public transit, a GoFUndMe campaign, thanks to our co-founder Jad Baaklini. That’s how we overcame the bank restrictions issue back then.

Bus Line Heroes - أبطال عالخط
Watch this video on YouTube.

We were grateful and thankful to receive 3 support videos from partners and friends.

One of our great supporters who offered us a video for the campaign was Mr. Mohamed Mezghani,  Secretary General of UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, known to be the only worldwide network to bring together all public transport stakeholders and all sustainable transport modes.

Bus Line Heroes - UITP
Watch this video on YouTube.

Thanks to The Chain Effect and to its cofounder Ms. Zeina Hawa, we were able to share their video dedicated to our campaign. This NGO promotes and facilitates cycling as a sustainable means of transport in Beirut through street art, community projects, public interventions and planning.

Bus Line Heroes - The Chain Effect
Watch this video on YouTube.

Another promotion video was offered by one of our loyal partners, Train Train, thanks to its Board member, Ms Joanna Malkun, to support our campaign. 

Bus Line Heroes - Train Train
Watch this video on YouTube.

The preparation phase for the campaign took about 20 days. As for its launching, we posted actively on social media, for more than 40 days: videos and posts were published weekly to promote the Bus Line Heroes campaign. All our team’s efforts were used to motivate as many people as possible. 

B- Our Bus Line Heroes teams

Our volunteer teams were very engaged in this initiative and took the time to do their best to make this happen. They are multi talented and driven by their motivation to support the shared transportation system and by their sense of collective interests and benefits.

  • The social media team (Amy, Rawan and Sara) organized the social media campaign on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp groups and through emails.
  • outreach team (Rashad, Sirine and Karen) contacted groups pages and influencers to share our videos
  • Adele handled the animation
  • Omar created the video and the music
  • script was brainstormed and developed in collaboration with all the team
  • translation and communication team(Tess, Manal and Sireine) 
  • output team (Manal, Hala and Sireine)  reached out drivers and facilitated the money transfer through OMT
  •  outreach team click to read more insights 

Our volunteers were satisfied to see their efforts rewarded by the driver’s smile, being grateful and thankful to this kind of support, minimal be it, but huge regarding their financial critical situation. In this crisis period, they saw riders support their partners, the bus drivers. 

C- Bus Line Heroes campaign outcome

We helped more drivers than initially targeted (20) by collecting 2169 USD and transferring it to 34 drivers in Lebanese Pounds through OMT transfer. 

This campaign showed a significant sense of solidarity from riders who supported drivers.

View the full list

We asked drivers to send to us a video or picture of them with the OMT receipt.

 

Drivers who benefit from this amount were very delighted to receive this kind of help, some of them not believing that someone was thinking of them in these difficult times.

Many drivers informed their colleagues about our work and encouraged them to contact us for support. you could support them by donating though this link

Alongside the Bus Line Heroes campaign, we could also support 20 persons by distributing 20 food boxes thanks to Foodblessed NGO: 10 for drivers and 10 to people with disabilities with the cooperation of LUPD (NGO that aims for an inclusive national, regional and international societies).

We are constantly aiming to empower the public transportation in Lebanon, to improve its services, with the cooperation of the drivers, those heroes who are the main actors and partners in this essential Sector. 

The financial crisis in Lebanon made it all the more hard for drivers to cope, so that sooner or later they won’t be able to repair their vehicles, because of the lira devaluation and the hyperinflation. This might affect the system safety and lead to the total interruption of the mobility services.

Our team is welcoming anyone, individuals or organizations, interested in helping our initiative grow, to be able to plan and launch more solidarity campaigns, as this sector is in continuous need of support to keep providing its essential services, especially that we are today having a new strict lockdown. 

Join our volunteer group on whatsapp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KCCyxkIypNVAAj0F4B2M26

Meanwhile, we are working on a new project called “Together Against Corona”, aiming to protect drivers and riders from contracting the virus. More details will be revealed in our coming blog posts. So stay tuned!


	

مشوار عالسكة | A Ride Along the Rails

by Chadi Faraj and Jad Baaklini

في 1 ايار عيد العمال وبعد اكثر من 120 سنة على انطلاق اولى رحلات القطار من جسر الحديد في مار مخايل نظمت جمعية تران تران لبنان و جمعية حقوق الركاب (Bus Map Project) رحلة جديدة على نفس مسار قطار بيروت رياق , فأنطلقت 4 باصات عاملة حاليا على احد خطوط النقل المشترك في التاسعة والنصف صباحا لاعادة استكشاف مسار هذا القطار واعادة ضخ بعض الحياة في مقطوراته ومقصوراته ومحطاته المنسية والمهملة المخفيه بين ثنايا طرقاته وتلاله وبعض التعديات على املاك السكة التي حاولت ان تطمس معالمه وتكتم صوته الصادح. فوق هذا الجسر الحديدي… بدأنا بالتجمع وانتظار الجميع للوصول وبدأ التعرف على بعض من التاريخ المنسي والمهمل.

٤ سائقين يعملون على خط النقل المشترك دورة بعبدا تكفلوا بمرافقتنا ابو زهرا- وليد- فادي – ابو حنا، نساء رجال واطفال حوالي ١٢٠ شخص انطلقنا نحو أول المحطات، محطة بعبدا حيث تعرفنا  وشاهدنا السكك التي يستعملها القطار لصعود المرتفعات والتي صممت خصيصا لهذا المسار واستلم كل من أيدي والياس وكارلوس التعريف عن المسارات وتاريخ كل المحطات والنقل السككي. وزعنا الخريطة على الحاضرين ولفتنا الى اهمية النقل المشترك في لبنان وبعض المشاكل التي يعاني منها واهمية كسر بعض الافكار المسبقة عن القطاع الشعبي الموجود وخصوصا اليوم اننا قد استقلينا عينة صغيرة من الباصات العاملة على احدى الخطوط.

محطة الجمهور هي بجانب الاوتستراد طريق الشام وهناك التقينا المعلم ايليا وهو احد سائقي القطار في عز مجده وقد حدثنا عن تجربته والكثير من الاحداث والشخصيات التي عاصرها هو والقطار.

الى محطة عاريا المخبأة داخل البلدة واشجارها المعمرة والتي تلفظ روائح الماضي ومن ثم مرورا بمحطة بحمدون الى محطة صوفر و اوتيل صوفر الكبير الذي كان له دور كبير في استقبال كبار الشخصيات والعائلات للاصطياف من اقصاع الارض عبر استقلال خط بيروت الشام.

واخيراً وليس اخرا محطة رياق البلدة او المدينة التي كانت نقطة مهمة في وصل لبنان بخط دمشق واهميتها الكبرى على ما كنت تحتويه من مشاغل ومصانع لقطع القطارات وعن خبرات العمال واكتشفاتهم واختراعاتهم في بعض تكنولوجيا القطار في ذلك العصر الجميل. فعند وصولك الى رياق ترى اعداد القطارات والفاكونات والقطع والاقسام والتاريخ الذي يرسم على وجه كل مشارك فيتساءل الجميع اين نحن من هذا الزمن اقله لماذا لا يوجد متحف على الاقل يحتوي على جميع هذه التحف؟ او تساءل اخر لماذا لا يعود القطار على السكة بعد كل هذا التاريخ.

ان مشوار عالسكة ليس اولى الرحلات التي قمنا بها كمشروع ولكن دون شك انه من انجحها… وخصوصا اننا تشاركنا بتنظيمها مع جمعية تران تران.
لماذا المشوار ب الباص؟!

بدأنا بها ما يقارب السنتين برحلات صغيرة لعدد من المناطق اللبنانية مستخدمين خطوط النقل المشترك من اجل تعريف على الخطوط وكذلك تجميع المعلومات عنها وكسر بعض الافكار المسبقة عن القطاع والمناطق واننا نستطيع اكتشاف لبنان بالنقل المشترك اظهار وجود ترابط جيد بين جميع المناطق .

لقد زرنا بعقلين وحرشها والضيعة والمكتبة العامة واكتشفنا سويا بيت الدين ودير القمر بأستعمال احد خطوط الباصات الى الجبل من الكولا في احد الاحاد في ال2017.

زرنا صيدا اكثر من مرة مع اكثر من مجموعات صغيرة حيث تعرفنا على احياء صيدا القديمة وقلعتها البحرية والبرية وخان الصابون واكلنا اطيب الفلافل والسيندويشات في اسواقها دون ان ننسى الكنافة. ومن صيدا استقلينا خط صيدا جزين واسكشفنا جزين سويا من شلالها الى بعض معالهما وتمشينا بين احراشها واحراش بكاسين .

توجهنا في نهاية الاسبوع من الصيف الماضي الى صور وبحرها وقلعتها البحرية التي صدت اسكندر المقدوني الكبير التي بنيت على شبه جزيرة ومشينا في اسواقها القديمة والجديدة ومررنا ب مرفئها وزرنا قلعتها البرية التي تحوي على اكبر ميدان لسباق الخيل وتسبحنا في بحرها وقضينا نهار طويل على شاطئها .

ام مدينة طرابلس فلها الحصة الاكبر من زياراتنا فقد رافقنا وترافقنا في العديد من الرحلات الى المدينة الجميلة بأهلها وتواضعها مدينة الفقراء والاحياء الحية والمفعة بالحياة فقد زرنا جميع اسواقها وجوامعها وكنائسها وقلعتها الشهيرة ومينائها الجميل ومجطة القطار القديمة التي تنتظر احياءها .

واريد ان اشكر كل من رافقنا في جميع الرحلات او تطوع معنا وعرفنا على منطقته واعطانا من خبرته ووقته.

فأن كنت مهتم بمشاركتنا المشاوير اللاحقة او ان كنت تريد ان تكون مرشدنا السياحي أيضا في منطقتك او منطقة تعرفها انضم الى مجموعة واتساب

https://chat.whatsapp.com/GOb9SAGERgj7zolXjeI1fY

 

On May 1st, or International Workers’ Day, and after 120 years after the very first train to roll out from Jisr Al-Jadeed to Mar Mikhael, Riders’ Rights Lebanon (Bus Map Project) and Train/Train teamed up to organize a trip along this very same route — the old Beirut to Riyak railway line — through Lebanon’s existing public transport. Four buses took off at 9:30 AM, making a seemingly commute into a time of discovery, as we traced the old locomotive Right of Way and breathed life back into its neglected signs, stocks and stations, now forgotten and obscured among the hills and interstices of modern infrastructure — including those encroachments on railway property that attempt to cover up and silence the railway’s memory. On that iron bridge… we gathered and recalled forgotten history.

Four bus drivers who work along the Dora – Baabda bus line agreed to accompany us on this journey: Abou Zahra, Walid, Fadi and Abou Hanna. We were around 120 people in total — men, women, and children. Our first stop was the old Baabda Train Station, where we learned about the special tracks created especially for this line and journey, which is an elevated path. Train/Train’s Eddy, Elias and Carlos took turns to introduce us to different moments of Lebanon’s rail history, discerning the different routes in the old network. We distributed our bus and van map to all attendees and underscored the importance of public transport in Lebanon, highlighting some of the challenges the sector faces; we especially focused on the need to break some of the stigmas and preconceptions that people hold about Lebanon’s existing transit system, as people experienced a small taste of it that day.

Next, we went to the Joumhour Train Station, which is alongside the Damascus Highway; there, we let ma’alem Elliah, a former train driver during the golden age of rail; he shared with us his experiences, telling us about some of the incidents and personalities he encountered during his tenure on the tracks.

Afterwards, we went to Arayya Train Station that’s tucked away among the trees in town, with scents of the past wafting all around; then, to Sawfar Station via Bhamdoun. Sawfar Hotel played a huge role in the rail system, as it hosted large numbers of summer travelers and celebrities from all over the world, who flocked to the area via the Damascus-Beirut railway line.

Finally, we arrived at Riyak Station. The city of Riyak was an important industrial hub that connected Lebanon to the Syrian hinterlands; it also contained factories for building and dismantling trains. Riyak was a place where great innovations in local railway technologies were developed in the heyday of train travel. As soon as we arrived, you were struck by the number of engines and wagons and bits of rail history littering the area; the emotional impact of this landscape could be seen on the faces of every one of us. We marveled at how far we’ve drifted from this era of connectivity — we wonder why there isn’t, at there very least, a museum for these national treasures? Some also wondered why there aren’t any trains back on the tracks after all these years.

This journey along the tracks isn’t the first trip we’ve organized as a project, but it definitely was one of the most successful, thanks to our partnership with Train/Train. But why did we choose to go by bus?!

Over the past few years, we’ve been organizing small excursions to different regions of the country, introducing people to the public transport system in Lebanon. We did this to gather data and stories about the bus routes, but also, to challenge preconceptions about the transit sector and the regions it stitches together. Despite everything, there is still good connectivity across Lebanon.

We’ve visited Baakline — its Horsh, main town and public library — and explored Beiteddine and Deir el Qamar riding one of the many bus lines to Mount Lebanon from Cola, on different Sundays in 2017. We also visited Saida many times, with many small groups, where we explored the old districts, the sea fortress and traditional soap markets, and had the best falafels and kanafeh. And from Saida, we took a bus to Jezzine, where we visited its famous waterfall and other landmarks, as well as strolling through its forests and the green spaces of Bkassine.

Last summer, we also went to Tyre, where we enjoyed its old and new markets, its ancient hippodrome, and island-like sea fortress, that stood up against Alexander the Great; we swam by its shores and spent a wonderful time on its beaches. Tripoli got the lion’s share of our visits, as we accompanied many groups on excursions to this beautiful city, full of life and vibrancy, through its kind and modest people. We visited all its markets, mosques and churches, as well as its famous castle and port (Mina) — as well as, of course, its old railway station.

I want to thank everyone who joined us on these trips, and all who volunteered their time and expertise to help us discover their regions. If you would like to participate in a trip, or if would like to play the role of our tour guide in your part of the country, join our WhatsApp group.

#SpotTheBusMap!

It’s been a busy six months since we first launched our second edition Greater Beirut Bus & Van Map during Beirut Design Week; our team has grown, and our reach has spread. Have you spotted the map in the wild yet? After distributing it quietly in different cultural centers in Beirut, the team went out last Sunday to reconnect the map with its territory: the transit system itself! Big thanks to Alaa for all her help and summary below:

by Alaa Salam

It may have been a Sunday, but that didn’t deter the Bus Map Project team from taking some bus maps and heading out for work. Joining forces with the production team of Beirut Mini Maker Faire, we sat down for some map prepping. The aim was to hang up as many maps as possible on buses, from lines 2 and 12.

We moved out early, energized and prepared to take the challenge head on. We were met with an amazing, cooperative spirit from the bus drivers. In fact, some drivers came in and helped out! The head (“mas’oul”) of the bus lot even took 16 more maps to distribute amongst the remaining buses.

Afterwards, we took Bus Number 12 to Cola, where we took a van heading out to our next destination: Saida! 45mins and a couple of selfies later, the team reached the beautiful city. Encouraged by the great weather and welcoming bus drivers, we hung up an additional set of maps in Saida’s main van lot.

The Saida van lot drivers loved the Greater Beirut Bus Map so much that they inquired about the one for the South. We assured the drivers that the map is a work in progress — we will be working hard on getting it done! With their help, of course!

Feeling triumphant, we treated ourselves to some falafel and a boat ride around the islands. After such a successful day, we started heading back to Beirut, dreaming of bigger campaigns. But while on the road, we were surprised my messages from some of the drivers we’d met on line 2 and 12.

They were sending us photos of themselves with the map! Each of the drivers had taken a copy and expertly set it up in his vehicle — then posed with it! The drivers also expressed their deep gratitude to the team and congratulated them on such a wonderful effort. This was the biggest pat on the back the team could have received.

All in all, Sunday was a day to remember by both teams. But the real treat here is: can you #SpotTheBusMap? Stay tuned for additional news and a couple of surprises! From all the members of Bus Map Project, we wish you always have a great bus ride!

From City to Studio and Back: Design as Civic Action

To what extent is it appropriate to formally map an informal system? Can collective mapping help spark new ways of thinking about public transit in Lebanon? These are some of the questions raised by Bus Map Project’s participation in Beirut Design Week this year, when we launched our second prototype bus map of Greater Beirut and the alpha version of our online transit platform BusMap.me, a participative tool that seeks to crowdsource, clarify and spread information about the people, places, voices and traces of Lebanon’s transit system. Will you join us on board?

By Mira Tfaily and Jad Baaklini

 

June 23, 2018. Photo by Moussa Shabandar

 

 

Slow-Hacking Beirut’s Bus Map

Beyond the brute fact of mapping, Bus Map Project has always been driven by a desire to disrupt the traditional talking-points around public transport in Lebanon. Our project is patient and incremental because it insists on a fresh perspective on urban change. By making visible the range and regularities of our ubiquitous yet little-understood transit system, our map is trying to prove a point; it is advocacy by other means. And what it demands is that we start taking this transit system more seriously.

Yet, in doing so, the bus map tends to hog the spotlight as an artifact — a solid, already-accomplished matter of fact — pushing these motivating questions into the background, like any utilitarian tool eventually does. How, then, can we (re)turn the map, from an object of design, back to a matter of concern and a locus for civic action? How do we keep its point — its advocacy by other means — at the forefront?

More importantly, how do we keep this traffic flowing both ways? From tool to platform and back again, how do we break the silos between expertise and experience (design and ridership) to widen the sense of shared ownership to encompass as many civic actors as possible?

As part of Beirut Design Week, and in partnership with Public Works Studio through their Forum on Cities and Designers, Bus Map Project had the incredible opportunity to organize a workshop on June 23th, 2018, entitled “Slow-Hacking Beirut’s Bus Map.” The idea of “Slow-Hacking” — coined at first in jest by Public Works’ Monica Basbous — came out of our concern for making sure that this map that we’ve been lovingly piecing together, route-by-route, for a while, remains an open question: open to change in itself, and open by catalyzing debate over the cities we live in and reproduce every day. The word is meant to appropriate the can-do attitude of hackathons — that helpful sense of agency and confidence that we want to see more of in urban advocacy in Lebanon — while rejecting the less helpful sense of misguided urgency and false efficacy behind the fantasy of quick fixes.

Over the course of three hours, we attempted to prefigure the slogan recently displayed on the state’s own buses (“shared transport is a shared responsibility”), while inviting participants into our process. Through an interactive presentation, we shared Bus Map Project’s view of mapping as a form of activism — the kind that not only pushes for recognition of the existing system of transport now marginalized within the dominant doxa, but that also stirs up conversations about the mobile inequalities that traverse it.

We tried to keep our presentation anchored in ourselves, as riders and advocates. We shared the context of our own meandering journeys into the project: Chadi’s early development work in 2008, Jad’s research and activism interests in 2010, Sergej’s work with Zawarib in 2012, and Mira’s journalistic introduction to our work in 2016 before joining as a researcher in 2017. From this personal and collective perspective, a lot has changed since the seed was first planted when someone once said that creating a bus map for Lebanon was one step too far (because a map would legitimize something ‘substandard’). Today, very few people will argue that public transport doesn’t exist in Lebanon — the lacuna where it all began.

From that point of view, much of our work is done; thank you for tagging along, and we hope that by foregrounding the ordinary ways that our personal stories became entangled in the politics of this often-mystified thing called the city, this small project can serve as a case study that inspires you and others to adopt similarly incremental approaches to seemingly intractable problems.

From a wider perspective, however, our work has only just begun. And we need your help to keep moving forward.

Photo by Chadi Faraj

 

Whose Streets? Our Streets

The workshop participants came from diverse backgrounds (architects, GIS specialists, urban planners, graphic designers, etc.) but shared overlapping interests. We opened the session by asking everyone to share their understandings of, and experiences with, Lebanon’s buses. Some came to the event with a lot of experience riding transit; others were curious and wanted to learn more. Some had initiatives of their own, like a WhatsApp group to share information with newcomers on how to get around Lebanon by public transport and a “mobility transformation” Meetup.

This personal approach helped us keep the discussion rooted in the city as a lived experience, far from the technical abstractions that create artificial and disempowering distance between our reality as ordinary practitioners and the infrastructures we help reproduce every day.

To emphasize this idea, our presentation of the basic features of Lebanon’s transit system turned the usual definition of public transport on its head: instead of starting at ‘the top,’ drawing conceptual contours and differentiating ‘para-‘ from ‘-transit’ proper, we privileged the concrete reality of riders first: their flesh-and-blood facticity, their cosmopolitan diversity, their eyes looking directly into yours, demanding recognition and ‘equal access’ to visibility.

When we put things in this way, we swerve very close to romanticism. That’s fine. This is because the simple profundity of the person is the foundation of everything we do. From this understanding, we define public transport as first and foremost a transport public. From that, we branch out and begin to notice the spaces of conviviality that connect user to operator, bus to system, street to map. On this foundation, we clarify our shared stakes in combatting misinformation and stigma (that perennial problem that we mustn’t underestimate) and keeping transit advocacy rooted in real lives and livelihoods. Only then do we dare to offer definitions.

Lebanon’s transit system is best understood as a network of networks, gelling together along several spectra of agglomeration and ownership:

  • state-owned (OCFTC) ↔ municipally-owned (Ghosta, Dekwene) or organized (Bourj Hammoud)
  • corporate (Connexion, LCC, LTC/Zantout…) ↔ family businesses (Ahdab, Sakr, Estephan…)
  • route associations or fleets of a few owners with shared management (Number 2, Number 5, Van 4…) ↔ loose networks of individual operators (Number 22, Bekaa Vans…)

When our discussion turned to these concepts, a lot of debate was sparked, including a conversation on the controversial BRT system that we’ve blogged extensibly about. Hence, one consequence of taking the existing system seriously — people first, places second, conceptual categories last — is making the question of working with what exists (joud bel mawjoud) much more realistic and pressing. Why can’t we invest in existing people?

Connecting the Map to the City

After the presentation, everybody was invited to pitch in and make our map their own: What would they add? How would they represent informal landmarks? What changes would they propose to make the map more accessible?

Many participants thought that the Number 5 and Number 2 bus were the same, when the two lines separate at Sassine heading north. Misapprehensions like this point to the importance of involving more and more people from ever-wider circles in this collective project; indeed, the majority of us agreed that collective and incremental design can be a powerful language and tool for encouraging a change of mentality needed to shift our society towards more sustainable and just mobilities. June 23 was Day 1 of hopefully many more in this new phase in our project, and we will continually look for more ways to involve as many people as possible in the making and hacking of our collective output.

One tool we hope will facilitate this is our online participative platform (BusMap.me), launched during the workshop. It’s still in alpha development, but we’re so happy to finally make it public — a big thank you goes out to Chadi and our grassroots mappers for their hard work! BusMap.me aims to become a hub for crowdsourcing GPS data and annotating Lebanon’s transit routes with photos, tips and stories — material that can’t fit into a single, static bus map, but which is pretty much the essence of mapping our word-of-mouth urban geography, Lebanese-style.

The platform is imperfect and incomplete by design — and we mean it when we say that this is by design; we refuse to wear the crown of authority over this endeavor and proudly wave the banner of engaged amateurism in the city, with stubborn determination — because beyond mapping, the platform is meant to be an invitation for people to engage with shaping the system, contributing what they can to a collectively-owned map that celebrates the cacophony of voices that constitute Lebanon’s transit system. Think you can do better? Get in touch!

Our involvement in the Beirut Design Week continued on June 26th, 2018, when Sergej presented our work and his design process during a roundtable organized by Public Works entitled “Between City and Studio: Connecting the Map to the City”. Building on the previous participative workshop, he emphasized the activist role of the mapper and map designer. Every map is a collection of choices — deciding how and what to display influences the collective imageries and tropes that either challenge the established urban mythology, or, on the contrary, contribute to furthering the gap between urbanist discourse and lived reality. Mapping is and should remain an open question and we hope that more and more people recognize and join this political process that we are catalyzing.

Later that week, some encouraging signs of this happening emerged! We had the pleasure of attending YallaBus’s first meet and greet, where they facilitated their own participative discussion to debate the mapping of Lebanese bus routes, and presented the first version of their transit app. Taking inspiration from our work and building on our second prototype, YallaBus has started working on their own static map; during the event, attendees also came up with new and exciting solutions to face the challenges of mapping and visualizing an informal system.

We also took the opportunity to raise some questions about YallaBus’s release of the live GPS feed of Number 2 in Beirut. While we are excited to see progress in this live-tracking work, this beta release poses privacy and security concerns, since the location of buses (and, presumably, the homes of bus drivers) in the initial release was on display, potentially endangering the drivers. We are happy that YallaBus has been open to such feedback and look forward to seeing how their app develops.

We are also enthusiastic to see more events and gatherings of this type happening in the future. Let us keep catalyzing the change we want to see! Proactively, pragmatically, sometime’s poetically — our cities are ours for the (re-)taking.

Informal Transport–a Pioneer of Mobility-as-a-Service?

by Mira Tfaily and Jad Baaklini

 

From April 23rd to 25th, Bus Map Project attended UITP’s MENA Transport Congress in Dubai as part of the regional Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung civil society delegation. Walking around the expo and listening to discussions of futuristic machines and ambitious infrastructural plans left us feeling a bit disconnected from the lived realities and conditions of most people around the MENA region. And yet, we were very happy that, within this dizzying spectacle, the Transport Congress opened up a window to a world that we are very attached to and familiar with.

The Future of Transport?

As we briefly mentioned in a previous post, this year, and to our great enthusiasm, the UITP launched its first Informal Transport Working Group meeting, ever. As the inauguration of what is sure to be a very long discussion, this meeting featured much heated debate, from which we draw some preliminary conclusions: for the most part, the debate around informality in our region is framed within a push for more formality, such that the desire to better understand the informal is almost indistinguishable from the desire to change or “formalize” it. While we welcome any acknowledgement of the realities of transit systems as they actually exist in our societies today, we believe that the stakes are too high to rush too quickly into a “blind” consensus on formalization.

This debate, which left no disagreement untouched, including what to name these unregulated transit systems — informal? hybrid? paratransit? individually-operated? — was a crucial milestone that we are very honored to have contributed to in our small way. It is the beginning of a much-needed conversation in our region, after the informal has demanded a place at the table throughout the world –- and in this spirit, we ask, without presuming to know all the answers: to what extent is the formalization of these networks socially desirable, and to whom? Who is bound to benefit from it, and who is bound to lose? How can we ensure that the most vulnerable populations are not priced out or excluded in the process? And when will it be second nature to have the targets of our policies take part in our discussions from day one?

In order to begin thinking through this batch of questions, it’s important to keep in mind the broader context, and to raise a few more. The theme of the three-day Congress was “Pioneering for Customer Happiness,” which encompassed the two main emerging trends within the MENA transit conversation:

  1. a shift in emphasis towards thinking about public transport within the paradigm of MaaS (Mobility as a Service), thanks in part to the rise of more flexible and connected (or app-enabled) mobility options, like Uber and Careem;

  2. a shift in emphasis towards putting the satisfaction of the customer at the center of transit provision, with the rubric for achieving this happiness understood through the lens of “innovation.”

In other words, the customer is presented as being generally dissatisfied unless public transport providers start coming up with something new. It’s safe to say that this idea also takes its inspiration from the ‘positive disruption’ that services like Uber and Careem are seen to be providing.

These themes raise a few questions: is innovative infrastructure the solution to what’s at stake for MENA transit? Which customers and whose satisfaction are we talking about, exactly? Can we assume that we all have the same expectations? Can we achieve a socially-just happiness that would benefit all customers, when we are very likely to have diverging interests? And what are the implications of considering people who are mobile in our cities primarily as customers, in the first place?

We believe that answering this second batch of questions goes hand in hand with answering the first batch we raised, on the politics of (in)formality. We will expand on this idea in three moves:

I. Pioneering for Customer Happiness: Innovative Infrastructure or Creative Ways of Thinking?

“Customers are the core business of urban mobility.” The opening speech by Pere Calvet Tordera, president of UITP, set the tone for the next three days: a market-oriented vision of mobility that places the notion of customer happiness at the core of planning. To achieve this happiness, innovative projects in the MENA region were showcased throughout the Congress, including Dubai’s futuristic third metro line being built in preparation for Expo2020. It is projects like these that make us wonder what is motivating the push for transit innovation; to what extent do these impressive infrastructural developments meet the actual accessibility and mobility needs of the everyday practitioners of our MENA cities, and how much are their investments driven by a desire to increase a (global) city’s attractiveness, as a travel destination or as part of an international mega-event? The latter may (or may not) be fine in cities like Dubai, but what are cities like Cairo or Beirut supposed to learn from such projects? MENA cities facing multiple challenges have to make wise decisions about where and how to invest.

In the end, building fancier and shinier infrastructure will not bring us closer to the sustainable future we want if this infrastructure does not leave some room for daily usage and affordability within its core calculations, making sure that the most vulnerable populations — who are the bread and butter of mass transit — are not driven out by the gold rush. If we’d rather not call this social justice, then at least let us consider it common sense: why build something that ends up limiting the ranks of your target consumer? Relying on the changing tastes of those with the most purchasing power is not wise policy for systems that are supposedly challenging the king of convenience, the personal car. True innovation requires new ways of thinking.

II. Informal Transportation: a Precursor of Mobility as a Service?

Another key concept deployed throughout the congress was Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). As a market-based vision of mobility, it has the advantage of focusing on the user-perspective, and in so doing, offering more flexible or “adequate” services to the general public. With the arrival of ride-hailing apps like Uber or Careem, some public authorities have scrambled to make love not war by opening up channels of communication and partnership that rethink their very role as transit regulators. This is because these services are increasingly being seen as complementary — or, at least, not inherently antagonistic — to the work of the authorities, particularly when it comes to meeting the “Last Mile Trip” often left out by traditional transit. The logic goes as follows: Fixed-route services like buses typically provide low cost services that move high volumes and are always shared, but they tend to be slower and not always in line with (car-accustomed) customer expectations. Hence, “demand-responsive services” like the new disruptors are increasingly understood as friends of formality.

And yet, listening to MaaS being presented as a revolutionary concept sounded slightly odd to our ears. Indeed, the characteristics of these demand-responsive services are not that dissimilar to what characterizes informal transportation in our countries. Isn’t a service-taxi in Beirut “demand-responsive”? And what about the “flexibility” of Van Number 4 or Bus Number 5, intelligently adapting to traffic conditions without a GPS or traffic management control center to guide them. Learning to recognize these parallels and seeing the value of these services as flexible, demand-driven and resilient not only opens our eyes to untapped assets in our cities; it also forces us to wonder why some forms of “entrepreneurship” and “creativity” are framed as such, while others are not.

“But these informal services are not adequate!” we hear you scream. Yes, they do not meet all expectations, but just like informal transportation, MaaS is not a perfectly tailored, one-size-fits-all solution either — no, it drags with it an array of negative “externalities.” For one, MaaS services are not adequate for the customer who does not have a smart phone, let alone a credit card to load on their smart app. And, being market-based and demand-driven, they are more likely to leave out geographic areas that are not profitable, widening the economic and social gaps already striated by available (formal and informal) infrastructure. These issues will plague any unregulated service provision, but only some of these unruly operators are treated as worthy of reaching out to and bringing together, for the good of all. As the proverb goes (ناس بسمنة وناس بزيت), this is a very obvious ghee (samna) versus oil situation.

It should also be noted that in many cities across the world, there is a huge debate around the dismal working conditions of ride-hailing app “employees” — and even this word is contested — coining a new expression to describe a huge aspect of this innovation: the “uberization of work.” This problem is somewhat similar to the poor living conditions of bus and van drivers who run informal routes, who often work off the clock and in too many cases, are exploited by route- or fleet-owners. These parallels are not perfectly isomorphic, but the similarities should open our eyes to the way our public authorities can overlook the negative externalities of some operators when they’re backed by venture capital, but will not extend support to operators who may more directly benefit from partnerships. In any case, formalization must contend with these inequalities if we are to take our first crucial steps towards more cohesive, integrated, sustainable and just mobilities in our cities.

III. The Trap of Blind Formalization

As we wrote above, the true milestone set by this year’s UITP MENA Transport Congress was how informality was ‘invited in’ as a matter of thoughtful concern. This happened through two sessions: one on “Mapping and Understanding Paratransit/Hybrid/Informal Transport in MENA cities” featuring our friends from Transport for Cairo (Egypt), Ma’an Nasel (Jordan) and WhereIsMyTransport (South Africa), whom we’ve known for a long time but first met in person last October. These initiatives are doing a lot to make informal transport more legible in their respective cities, with a big focus on “big data.” We then participated with them in the inaugural UITP Working Group on Informal Transportation meeting, which took place after the official end of the Congress.

During the second session, there was a strong push from some friends in favor of dropping the term “informal” and replacing it with “paratransit,” as a less pejorative expression. While we welcome any language that shifts us away from stigmatizing views of informality, we do wonder if the “para-” in the neologism ends up re-inscribing the moral centrality of the formal in a different, though less aggressive way. Indeed, in countries like Lebanon or Turkey, where informal transportation accounts for 93.8% of transit, the word “paratransit” just sounds disingenuous. Para- to what, exactly? How can the majority sector be the marginal population?

This is a healthy debate. That engineers are open to debating semantics is an ironic surprise for us, as we have heard some in similar positions dismiss civil society campaigns on the topic of the urban as “all talk.” So we can argue for and against each term, and have since submitted some feedback on the vision and aims of the Working Group upon the organizer’s request. Yet, we want to end this post by cutting to the chase. Do we want to cosmetically re-brand the informal sector, or do we dare strike at the root of this whole debate: that informality is only a problem needing a top-down fix if we insist that cities are purely managerial objects most perfectly understood by technocrats; that people who live and make a living in cities are merely prisoners among shadows, limited by their simple lives and only ever apprehending approximations of the urban systems that engulf them; that planners and regulators and engineers have the absolute and final say over what goes on in our cities; that their expertise shields them from the democratic requirements that all other social actors are expected to submit to in plural societies–persuading the public, working with others, accepting compromise and actually innovating (generating the new in the here and now), as opposed to copy-pasting boilerplate solutions proven to turn a profit elsewhere?

These are the unspoken fantasies that underlie the politics of urban (in)formality. The basic human right of free and unencumbered movement from Point A to Point B is championed by all, and then squashed by the assumption that such freedoms are ultimately in service of the much larger and more important processes of governance, accumulation, and circulation. These are ingrained as ends in themselves, the only ends, perhaps. We denizens of cities are permitted to be mobile because we are the grease in these socioeconomic wheels. Our very existence in cities, it turns out, is a benevolent concession…

We are putting things very provocatively on purpose and for a reason, because it’s time for civil society actors involved in urban innovation and advocacy to decide on the point of their initiatives: is it to simply lubricate the policy machine? Or is it to challenge it, influence it, and maybe even disrupt it?

We are perfectly capable of being reasonable. We recognize that informal systems have dramatic shortcomings and externalities that need to be addressed, as pointed out by Kaan Yildizgoz, training director at UITP: problems such as the deterioration of networks, with routes emerging to pick up the most passengers, creating highly inefficient trips and poor working conditions of transit drivers, who are often under immense pressures from their higher-ups, etc.

And yet, formalizing the system without challenging our assumptions about the role of the state and the planner and the engineer would be an even more destructive move. It is also very likely to fail, because informality stems from endogenous characteristics of the state itself, such as unfair legislation, lack of enforcement and high rates of unemployment. To solve these “externalities,” we must first put them at the center. They are rather the “internalities” at the root of the processes that generate our discomforts about service adequacy. Formalizing the informal must be inclusive and fair. This can only be done through a comprehensive framework of social and modal integration that is rights-based, not concessions-based, and led by a genuine desire to leverage the skills and expert knowledges of planners and engineers for the good of all. Let’s lead the transition.




Banner image taken from UITP Facebook Page. All rights reserved.

ل بيعرف بيعرف ول ما بعرف بيقول كف عدس

 بإختصار يمكن توصيف واقع السائقين و العاملين على خطوط النقل الخاصة في النقل المشترك
من بعيد و كمواطنين او مستخدمين او ناس لم تطئ ارجلهم ارض الباصات نرى الاشياء من منظار مختلف لواقع العاملين في القطاع
البعض منا يراهم من المافيا ولا يجب التعامل معهم
البعض الاخر لا يريد ان يعترف انهم موجودين فيتجاهلهم
البعض يقول هذا عمل الدولة وليس عملهم ويطلب بتدخل الدولة وتنظيم الواقع كما يراه في دول الغربية او في نظرته للامور
وهناك البعض من الركاب يرونهم كسبب لتأخيرهم عن عملهم او مواعيدهم وخصوصا عند انتظار الباص ليمتلأ او السير ببطئ شديد ويرون فيهم استغلالييون وانهم يربحون الكثير من المال
ولكن لا يعلم الكثير منا خصوصيات بعض العاملين في القطاع فليس كلهم استغلاليون ليس كلهم من تدر عليهم الاموال الطائلة
وان اغلبهم يعيشون من اجل كفاية عيشهم و معيشتهم هم و عائلاتهم
فعندما تتكلم مع السائقين لاحد الخطوط تعلم انه يجب ان يعمل الكثير من الوقت لاجل تمكنيه من الحصول على مبلغ لسد السندات ثمن الباص و النمرة الحمراء لذا تراه يقاتل كل يوم نفسه و السائقين الاخرين من اجل الحصول على افضل نقلة ليتمكن من سداد القرض.فأنه سيقوم بما يستطيع من اجل تأمين مبلغ السند بالاضافة الى مصروف عائلته
فالالف التي قد لا تعنيك انها تساوي الكثير بالنسبة له لهذا قد نرى باصات ممتلئة وباصات بطيئة تلملم كل مار على الطريق تعتقده زبونا لها.
هناك سائق اخر تراه منذ الصباح يصرخ و يكفر ويتوعد اصدقائه ويسير ببطئ شديد املا الحصول على مبلغ اجار الباص فأنه يجب يعمل بجهد شخصين ليتكمن من سداد الاجار والحصول على مبلغ لقوته اليومي دون ان ننسى انه قد يكون لديه عائلة
في بعض خطوط الباص ترى السباق الذي يحصل بين باص و اخر من اجل الحصول على اكثر من الزبائن الممكنة فلذلك الامر لا يعنيك وانت تريد الوصول الى وجهتك .
عندما تتكلم معهم تعرف ان الباص هو شركتهم الصغيرة التي يعملون فيه و من اجلها وانهم لا يمكنهم التخلي عنها لان لا عمل لديهم غيرها
بعض الخطوط قد تجد مالك للباص يعمل عليه بنفسه وخصوصا بعد تقاعده من احد الاسلاك العسكرية فترى الباص لديه طابع لا يشبه كثيرا اقرانه فهو مرتب اكثر من غيره يحترم قانون السير بشكل عام يحافظ على مركبته ويحب النظام .هو ليس لديه هم الربح الكثير وما يهمه ان لا يخسر ما يسثتمر به
بعض السائقين اكثر ما يهمهم الضمان فأنهم اشتروا و استثمروا في هذا القطاع بسبب الحصول على الضمان له و لعائلته وقوته اليومي و خصوصا ان لا مجال اخر او مهنة اخرى لديه و خصوصا بسبب عمره فأصبح صعبا له ايجاد عمل اخر له في اي شركة او قطاع اخر
هناك بعض الخطوط وهي قليلة حيث يكون السائق نوع من الاجير اليومي فيعمل ويقبض لقاء عمله يوميا ما يكفي قوته وهو يكون مراقبا من قبل صاحب العمل في كل تفاصيل العمل من سرعته الى الركاب في مركبته الى التوقيت وما عليه الا بيع بطاقات اكثر ليحصل نهاريته مع الاستماع الى تعليمات المسؤول عن الخط.
يجب عدم شيطنة القطاع ونشر فكرة عدم فائدته و انه يشكل نوع من المافيات و العصابات بل يجب ان نراه من منظار اخر انه يخدم الكثيرين وبأسعار لابأس به وانه الاكثر استدامة فبغياب الدولة هم من كانوا يملؤون فراغ الدولة
انه قطاع يشبهنا يشبه مجتمعنا يشبه ناسنا وعاداتنا و ثقافتنا
انه نظام ذكي ديناميكي يستطيع التأقلم مع جميع المتغيرات و هذا ما ادى الى مقاومته جميع التغيرات والسياسات التي مرت عليه
انه نظام شعبي غير رسمي ساهم في تحول النظام الرسمي الى نظام شبه شعبي في عمله وخصوصا بعد تجربة خطة النقل المشترك في ال ٩٨ فأصبح بعدها هذا النظام الرسمي لا يعتمد مواقف الباصات وفقد التوقيت الدقيق للنظام الرسمي فتحول الى نظام شعبي رسمي تديره الدولة.
هناك الان تحدي جديد لهذا النظام وخصوصا بعد تأمين الاموال لخطة النقل الجديدة التي يمولها البنك الدولي عبر قروض ميسرة وتشمل نظام باص سريع بين خط طبرجا و بيروت و خطوط داخلية و خارجية في بيروت الادارية وبيروت الكبرى
فالاسؤال الذي يبادر الى ذهني هل سنشهد تجربة مماثلة في ال ٩٨ او اننا تعلمنا وماذا تعلمنا؟
عند اعداد الدارسة للاثر البيئي والاقتصادي والاجتماعي لمشروع الباص السريع كان لدينا الحظ في المشاركة في مجموعات التركيز (focus group)  للمشروع كمجتمع او مبادرة تعمل على القطاع فبادرنا الى توجيه الكثير من الاسئلة والافكار التي تدعو للدمج بين النظامين او حتى دعم اولي للنظام الموجود الذي يمكن ان يكون جزء من الحل وبتكلفة قليلة ويمكنكم متابعة عبر هذا الرابط

http://www.cdr.gov.lb/study/BRT/FINALESIAREPORTver1P1.pdf

فالى اين نحن ذاهبون الى اي نظام او الى اي نظامين هذا السؤال يبقى للمستقبل ويبقى تحدي جديد للنظام الشعبي.

“Shared Transport is a Shared Responsibility”

2018 has been very busy for Bus Map Project, and it’s already almost May! It’s time for a catch-up post; we have a lot to tell you…

On January 6th, we held our very first #BusCommunity event in Hamra and had a lively discussion with friends and peers from YallaBus, H2 Eco Design and others from our network of collaborators and supporters. Later that month, we did a mini-collective map action in Tripoli, to familiarize ourselves with the city and plan for more mapping in North Lebanon. This was followed by our first foray into informal ‘guided tours,’ introducing people to Tripoli by public transport.

On February 5th, 12th and 13th, we presented our ongoing collaboration with H2 Eco Design at all three NDU campuses (Zouk, North, and Chouf) and received very good feedback from students and faculty. We were especially happy to hear a real commitment to public transport from the lecturer and FAAS coordinator at NDU Barsa, Dina Baroud! In between, we managed to find time to take part in Beirut Design Week’s Open House, — which we plan to follow up on in June! — and even do a few press interviews (Mayadeen and Al Araby).

How to summarize the purpose of all of this buzz and activity?

The photo at the top of your screen is a good start! Spotted by a veteran and friend in the sustainable transport scene in Lebanon, this slogan on an OCFTC bus very much captures the spirit of our message in 2018. It says: “Shared transport is a shared responsibility. Together towards an integrated transit plan.”

Cynics will argue that this campaign is an empty (and maybe even fiscally irresponsible) gesture that off-loads the state’s actual responsibilities towards the transport sector; while this may be true on some level, we welcome this shift in language, because it breaks the chains that people imagine to be essentially linking “public” to “state-owned,” and “private” to “corporate.” Shared transport is not just an odd Lebanese expression — it’s a potentially powerful concept that can undo a lot of false binaries and help us see the incremental changes already happening (that is, if we allow it to).

In this same spirit, April was the month when a significant milestone for informal transport in the Middle East and North Africa was set. We had the pleasure to be invited by FES to take part in their MENA region’s civil society delegation and attend UITP’s MENA Transport Congress (April 23-25), where two sessions on informality took place, and a working group on informal transport was inaugurated for the first time in the organization’s history.

Under the theme of Pioneering for Customer Happiness, the congress highlighted the concept of Mobility-as-a-Service (which is an idea that has strangely similar characteristics to our very own informal bostas and taxis, if seen in the proper light…), but above all, demonstrated the need for better acknowledging the way that informal transport can be a real partner in our shared responsibility to more fairly share our cities. We have a lot more to say about this, so for a detailed summary of the stakes and problematics emerging out of the push towards formalizing the informal, stay tuned for our next post!

CDR’s BRT Impact Report—One Step Closer to Inclusive Urbanism?

The CDR’s BRT impact report is finally out! Prepared by ELARD with input from EGIS, the document is quite a beast, clocking in at almost 400 pages. But it’s very readable, and it includes plenty of background for people who need to catch up on the basics of this proposed project. Many of you will be interested in the technical details, but in this post, we will focus on the socioeconomic dimension. If you have any thoughts about this or other aspects of the report, please do share them on our #BusCommunity discussion board.

We’ve been following ELARD’s track in this study over the past year, publishing several blog posts about the various focus groups and public consultation sessions they organized. And as much as we’ve enjoyed documenting this process, we’re also quite pleased to see our modest involvement documented in the report itself!

It’s a little bit surreal to see our work acknowledged in an official CDR study. On pages 244, 247 and 253, the report quotes some of our questions and feedback during the first public meetings. On page 249, ELARD focuses more directly on our coverage: “One of the special interest groups who attended the meeting are active in the public transport domain and have a website, an online blog, and two pages on social media (Facebook).” Showing screenshots of Facebook posts we’d made, the report links to our blog as well (“a good summary of the meeting proceedings”, “the second blog article focused on the BRT system and integration”). In their words, Bus Map Project “portrayed a general positive outlook on the merits of the BRT System and most importantly on the process of engagement of the public in the early stages of the study.” Sounds about right!

But what’s much more important than this tip of the hat is seeing our major concerns fleshed out in the impact assessment findings. In Section 7.11 on page 299 (“Impacts on Socio-Economic Aspects”), ELARD provides a table showing “the potential impacts and their respective consequence assessments” of the proposed BRT project. There’s a lot of different categories in this section, but given our focus on the existing transit system, we’ll highlight the measures we find most relevant to that topic.

Relevant consequence ratings range from “beneficial” (e.g. “SE.O.10. Local public transport development around bus stations to further serve commuters,” “SE.O.6. Creation of job opportunities including personnel with limited skills”), to “moderate” (e.g. “SE.D.1 Impact on other secondary public transport systems,” “SE.O.5 Difficulty in changing the behavior of people to stop using their cars and shift to the BRT system”). All of these challenges are obstacles to project success, but let’s focus on the only factor given a consequence rating of “critical”: “SE.O.1. Impact on livelihood of current bus drivers and public transport operators due to passenger shift to BRT.”

This critical matter is discussed in more details on page 301: “Currently, the public transport system in Lebanon is not regulated, where various buses, mini-vans and taxis serve the demand in a random manner in most cases. The existing public transport modes is a source of livelihood for many individuals and source of profit to private operators. The introduction of the BRT system will impact the existing services through the shift of passengers to a more regulated, faster and comfortable system. Hence, there will be a significant impact on the income and livelihood of the existing operators.”

ELARD BRT Report

While we’d take issue with characterizing the system as “random” (a characterization that is in itself based on a problematic distinction between SE.O.1. and SE.D.1; see below), we greatly appreciate the gravity with which the problem of operator livelihood is addressed and emphasized in several places in the report.

In Section 8 (p. 307), the consultants offer a Mitigation Plan, calling for further impact studies, or “site-specific ESIAs” that “should include” a “Livelihood Restoration Plan (LRP)”: “Inclusive of a detailed socio-economic baseline of affected bus operators and businesses subject to temporary disruption with detailed measures to mitigate risks and impacts arrived at through consultation with the PAPs [Potentially Affected Persons].”

Furthermore, the report describes mitigation measures already taken to address this problem (SE.O.1.): “The project has considered options and incentives to encourage local operators to join the new BRT and bus concessions. Such incentives include requiring the new concessionaires to buy or rent a number of existing red plates from the small operators, the recruitment and training of drivers, encouraging local operators to join as shareholders and partners into the new concessions, and allowing operators to continue operations along the new bus and BRT lines according to specifications (schedule, bus requirements…) agreed with the concessionaires and public authorities. Since it is expected that the project will contribute to increasing the overall demand for public transportation in Lebanon, new markets are anticipated to be created and new passengers attracted to the system. This will benefit local operators since not all trips and destinations will be covered by the new system and many new passengers will still need an additional public transportation mode to bring them closer to their final destination. The existing local operators are therefore expected to adjust their operations in accordance with the newly generated demand, resulting in complementary systems” (p. 49, our emphasis).

And this expectation isn’t completely left up to chance, as we feared would be the case, given how the problem of integration was initially discussed in the preliminary consultation sessions. To insure that these mitigation measures are successful, the report recommends that “the integration options…undergo further negotiations with political entities and syndicates and unions,” going as far as calling for monthly monitoring of impact based on “surveys of bus operators, taxis, mini-buses, etc. at areas impacted by the BRT service” (p. 347) conducted by Ministry of Public Works and Transport (Traffic, Trucks and Vehicles Management).

We wholeheartedly welcome this approach, and hope that both sides take seriously the need for cooperation. With recent shifts in discourse (see also), we are cautiously optimistic. At the same time, it’s worth pointing out how this “accommodationist” approach awkwardly negotiates an underlying tension between two different understandings of the city: the city as a project (designed, regulated, legislated), versus the city as a practice (emergent, patterned, lived).

On the one hand, the impact report deploys analytical and rhetorical strategies that still prioritize state-led initiatives, as seen in the way that impact source “SE.O.1” is separated from impact source “SE.D.1”. For the latter, ELARD writes that “the preliminary assessment of the project already considered the wider Land Transport Sector Strategy that has been recently developed by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MoPWT)…reducing the chances for any conflict with future public transport developments” (p. 312). This subtle splitting of “secondary public transport systems” into two categories re-inscribes a hierarchical distinction between the formal and the informal. Note how this is even reflected in the different languages used: the formal has “strategy” and “developments,” while the informal “serves demand,” has “operations,” and is “random.” We bring this up only to acknowledge the limits of the whole “paratransit”/”gap-filler” approach to informal transport, from our perspective — it’s greatly appreciated, but only in the sense that it tames state aggression.

Having said that, we concede that we would not really expect more than accommodation in a governmental study. Indeed, while there’s a lot more that can be said about the various mitigation measures recommended by the report with regards to BRT affordability, accessibility, etc. (see p. 350), within this single matter of concern, we would be remiss if we did not underscore how impressed we are by the inclusive spirit of this report. Taken as a whole, the BRT impact report very clearly recognizes that project success requires state willingness to work with and include existing transit actors as legitimate partners.

This central point is re-emphasized and placed in its wider social context in the conclusion (p. 388-389):

“The social impacts from the Project are the widest in breadth and depth, and they range from beneficial to the overall public to sensitive to the current operators of the informal public transport system. The beneficial impacts from implementing the Project will ultimately be realized and noticed through reduced travel time and lower overall mobility costs. There is a serious call from all social groups consulted as part of this ESIA study to implement a solution for public transport, where the system should respond to the needs of all groups – women, elderly, persons with mobility challenges, students, professionals, etc. The quality of the services of the BRT System is also of primary interest to all stakeholders. The need to have the public transport system organized and the level of services to be improved is a call to improve the quality of life of commuters on the overall. The integration of current operators in the new setup that will operate the BRT System is a vital strategy to reduce livelihood impacts from the competition that the new system will create. All the environmental and social impacts assessed in this ESIA Study can be mitigated if negative and enhanced if positive through inclusive and universal design, through responsible implementation, and through serious operation, maintenance and follow-up from the concerned institutions. Above all, there is a great need for more consultation and coordination among institutions and municipalities to realize the social and environmental benefits that this project is anticipated to bring”.

We sincerely hope that the CDR takes heed of these recommendations, as the participatory principles extolled in this report are the only real foundation for sustainable and socially-responsible investment in Lebanon’s transit system.