• Bogotá’s Mobility Master Plan is wide-ranging and ambitious. What prompted the decision to implement such bold measures?

• Bogotá’s Mobility Master Plan was designed to meet mobility needs and to improve connectivity for internal and external flows of passengers and cargo. Our Mobility Master Plan fits into a wider strategy; we are working towards creating an open and decentralised city within the greater Bogotá region, whilst consolidating the urban area, containing urban sprawl, improving productivity and generally increasing the competitiveness of the Bogotá–Cundinamarca region.

  What the Bogotá capital district needed was a Mobility Master Plan that would give the city an integrated, efficient, competitive and environmentally sustainable urban and regional transport system. The system operates on a hierarchical network and aims to regulate traffic flows based on the transport modes that use it. Another aim is to ensure that mobility projects meet the city’s needs.

• The BRT system TRANSMILENIO is the backbone of Bogotá’s transport offer. What results have been achieved so far and what are your future plans?

• TRANSMILENIO S.A. began operations on 18 December 2000, initially running 34 buses. Today, 1,205 articulated buses cover an 84 km trunk route, with 114 stops, of which seven are stations integrating the trunk services with the system’s 84 feeder routes, using 515 feeder buses. The system carries on average 1,664,000 passengers daily. Over the past ten years, it has transported around 3.1 billion users.

  Meanwhile, TRANSMILENIO S.A., as operator of the mass transit agency, is also responsible for integrating, evaluating and monitoring the operation of the Integrated Public Transport System (SITP). The aim of the system is to ensure safe mobility that is fair, intelligent, joined up, environmentally friendly, economically sustainable for all those involved and accessible for users in every sense of the word.

SÃO PAULO’S NETWORK IS MANAGED BY THREE OPERATORS, ALL MEMBERS OF UITP: COMPANHIA DO METROPOLITANO DE SÃO PAULO (METRÔ) FOR METRO; COMPANHIA PAULISTA DE TRENS METROPOLITANOS (CPTM) FOR REGIONAL RAIL; AND EMPRESA METROPOLITANA DE TRANSPORTES URBANOS DE SAO PAULO (EMTU) FOR BUSES AND TROLLEYBUSES.

• The government of Sao Paulo launched in January 2007 an impressive public transport Expansion Plan for the largest town in Brazil. What are the main lines of development?
• - ExpansionSP is a massive EUR 8 billion capital expansion programme aimed at extending and improving the metropolitan public transportation network in São Paulo, Brazil. From 2007 to 2010, the high performance rail network is being extended from an existing 60km to 240km (and to more than 370km by 2014), and service offer is being increased both by headway reduction and train fleet increase. New stations are under construction and existing ones are being refurbished, 107 new train sets will be put into service and existing train sets will be fully modernised when ExpansionSP is completed by 2014. All stations and equipment will be fully accessible for people with disabilities and a rail line serving the international airport will be constructed. By the end of 2010, the current 5.7 million passengers per weekday are expected to increase to 7 million. Overall travel time will be significantly reduced, with time gains of more than 120 minutes per day for some roundtrips.
• This ambitious plan will bring even more benefits for São Paulo and its inhabitants…
• - Yes, socio-environmental benefits from existing services of Metrô and the metropolitan train network run by Companhia Paulista De Trens Metropolitanos (CPTM) were the basis for defining ExpansionSP. The plan will lead to a reduction of pollutant emissions, fuel consumption, accidents, users’ travel times, as well as lower operational and maintenance costs for buses, cars and traffic system. The estimated saving in four years almost equals the Expansion Plan budget.
  

Public Transport International will dedicate an article to São Paulos Expansion Plan in its first issue of 2010.

• Perth metropolitan region has set ambitious modal shift targets. What measures will be put in place to encourage greater public transport use?
• As a region, we have launched an ambitious strategy to provide for our long-term transport requirements. We expect to double public transport patronage within the Perth metropolitan region by 2031. Several public transport projects are underway such as the 7.5km extension to Perth’s Joondalup railway line along the north-west corridor, an area that is seeing rapid population growth. Work has also begun to expand car-parking facilities at train stations on two railway lines, which will give a greater number of people access to the public transport network. Meanwhile, Mirrabooka Bus Station, one of Transperth’s busiest, will undergo an AUD5 million upgrade and extension.
• Across Australia, are other cities and regions developing similarly ambitious projects?

• Australia is set to see significant expansion of public transport in the years to come due to major investment by the Federal Government in 2009 of AUD4.26 billion (a first for decades!). This will require matching funds by the State and Territory Governments. A new light rail service is planned for the Gold Coast and design work will begin soon for the Sydney West Metro, a new 25km rail line. There is a real opportunity in 2010 to build a guarantee from all levels of Government around Australia that the commitment to public transport seen last year can be part of a programme of continual investment, thus providing all Australians with a genuine transport alternative to the car.

  Mr Waldock, thank you very much.
  

• By 2020, it is expected that Dubais population will exceed five million and mobility demand is expected to quadruple to 22 million daily passenger trips. On 9 September, the first metro line was opened in Dubai, where UITP will host its 59th World Congress and Mobility & City Transport Exhibition in April 2011.
  This major step is part of a transport master plan put in place by RTA which sets out to increase the modal share of public transport from 6% currently to about 30% by 2020. Could you tell us more about this ambitious plan?
• - The new driverless metro has been completed in a record-breaking period of less than four years and is part of a long-term plan developed by Dubai Government to facilitate and ease peoples mobility in Dubai. The governments strategy to achieve that goal depends on increasing the share of public transport at the expense of private cars by developing and diversifying the available modes of public transport.
• What are the other components of this transport master plan?
• - To meet mobility requirements of Dubai Emirate under the conditions of completing all the announced urban development projects, RTA transportation studies showed that a major public transit system needs to be developed. In order to ensure a sustainable development of the transport sector while providing safe and smooth mobility for all, the strategy relies on the development of an integrated multimodal public transit system which includes rail, marine and bus transit systems. Currently RTA is revisiting its strategic transportation plan in order to find the best balance between both the current crises and the mobility challenges of big cities. The development of the public transport system may include as long as 318 km of rail network, around 270 km of tram lines, 450 km of marine transport lines and around 2500 km of main bus feeders and routes.
  
  You can read more on RTAs public transport projects at www.rta.ae   and on the full UITPs strategy for the public transport sector including examples from your peers around the world at www.uitp.org/advocacy .
  

• National public transport actors in Sweden set the target of doubling the public transport market share and the volume of passengers by 2020. How did this ambitious project start and what are the main areas of action?
• - In order to develop a more customer-oriented business, my first priority was to unite all public transport partners and try to work closer together across the borders. Second, I wanted us to define a joint vision and goals which we could struggle for together. As a result, the ‘Doubling Project’ was launched at the beginning of 2008, conducted by the Swedish Public Transport Association together with the Swedish Bus and Coach Federation (BR), the Swedish Taxi Association, the Association of Swedish Train Operating Companies and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR).

  In Sweden, only 14 % of the population chooses public transport for their daily travel so we set the objective to double the market share and the volume of passengers by 2020.
  

  This doubling goal is the main step towards our vision: ‘Public transport is a natural part of travel in a sustainable society’. This means that our services need to be sufficiently attractive and competitive for people to choose public transport over their own car. It also encapsulates the sector’s contribution to a better environment. The third priority was to challenge and engage the Swedish government in reaching this objective. We told the Minister for Communications: “We can´t do this alone, you must participate in creating the right preconditions with respect to infrastructure, urban planning, tax issues, legislation, research and development”.

• There will be a new legislation in Sweden regarding public transport based on deregulation and free competition. Can you comment on that?
• - An official report handed over to the government in April outlines that customers should have the opportunity to choose among more transport companies in the market. I support this idea but, in my opinion, the report’s suggestions go too far. I want a development in more orderly conditions; therefore I asked a special expert group from the sector to outline a new common business model for the doubling of public transport in Sweden including the necessary legislation changes to promote more customer orientation and increased efficiency. The next step is to discuss this matter with the Swedish government in the months to come and I hope we will find an acceptable solution together
  
  Ms Wäreborn Schultz, thank you very much.

You can read more about the Swedish Doubling project at www.fordubbling.se and the full UITP’s strategy for the public transport sector including examples from your peers around the world at www.uitp.org/advocacy