A few weeks ago, I visited an urbanized coastal town somewhere in the Visayas. Their popular mode of public transportation is a pedal-driven three-wheeled vehicle they call pot-pot. People ride on pot-pot for short distances like half a kilometer or one kilometer, but most of the people that I have seen in that town were merely walking to nearby destinations.
In their bus terminals, you can see tricycles, jeepneys, and buses like any other typical town and city in our country, but pot-pot is their major mode of public transportation within the town proper.
The town hall is just across the elementary school and the parish church separated only by a plaza. At the back of the town hall is a popular seaside park that stretches to the nearby public market, bus terminal, and busy seaport. Separating the park and the public market are tourism building, rural health building, trial courts, and the town’s stadium.
While processing the release of an important document for two to three days, I was amazed to realize that I did not ride any pot-pot or motorized vehicle like a tricycle or jeep for those three days.
Being accustomed to commuting daily and heavily dependent on motorized vehicles as a public mode of transport, an experience like these are notable and inspiring.
Designing and building walkable cities contributes to reducing car-based or motorized vehicle modes of transportation. Densely populated urban areas and walkable communities are linked to lower overall carbon emissions per capita compared to their rural and suburban surroundings.
The reduced carbon emissions in walkable towns and cities are attributed to the shorter transportation commutes and accessibility of goods and services.
In one research study, it indicated that close to 50 percent of short trips by car or tricycle which is less than 2 kilometers could be substituted by walking or biking. The estimated CO2 emission reduction in such a case was measured at 2.8 kg of CO2 emission per person per week.
Efforts promoting walking and biking in New Zealand have resulted in a reduction of 1.6 percent in emissions after three years and reduced the number of vehicles per household based on a study by Keall et.al. 2018.
Walkability makes cities more sociable and nurtures frequent and longer interactions between people within the community, allowing them better bonding. Therefore it is creating a social space.
Providing urban accessibility to a broader range allows the inclusion of more people into productive social and economic activity and reduces their dependence on kasambahay. If public markets are far away, we normally assign the task of buying food to household helpers. However, neighborhood walkability provides mobility to children or those who do not have cars. Mobility of children can free the time that parents normally dedicate to driving them to school in the morning and fetching them in the afternoon. This freedom of mobility contributes to healthier, more sociable children and gives them access to community activities even in the absence of their parents. This is a crucial issue for many parents who have to be committed to work schedules that conflict with their children’s essential activities such as going to school.
This dilemma leaves parents with options that either sacrifice their children’s schooling or are disrupted from their work to fetch their children to school. But the most important benefit of having walkable towns and cities is the cleaner air and the quality of the natural environment. With people less dependent on motorized vehicles, carbon emission is reduced. With lesser motorized vehicles, will also provide safety to vulnerable individuals like children, senior citizens, and persons with disabilities (PWD) while traversing our streets.