Harebrained Schemes
Remember awhile back when Phnom Penh’s governor decreed that 3-wheeled taxis were banned from the center city? He mentioned something about them being ‘disorderly’. I never quite got the connection between tuk-tuks and order and the ban never quite got connected to reality except for the police extorting petty pocket change from a few hapless drivers for a short period until the whole idea lost traction and quietly disappeared.
They’ve become very popular amongst tourists as an alternative to motorbikes as well as Khmers who’re able to pile spectacular numbers of people into them. They make total sense. I take them when my destination is farther than I want to walk. I like the stability of 3 wheels, the fact that they’re generally slow as molasses and that I have a cage around me.
Quite a bit more striking in its inanity was the transit station idea. This included a ban on minibuses entering the city and that private vehicles could only enter with the driver, no passengers allowed. The idea being to ease the city’s traffic problems. Traffic wise it makes no sense whatever to force people out of minivans crammed with people – I counted 31 passengers the one time I tried it – into 20 or so motorbikes, which take up far more street space than that one van. There were supposed to be urban buses available from the transfer stations to the inner city, but way before the bus option was in place ? it’s still not happening a year later – the responsible public official assured the populace in no uncertain terms that the harebrained scheme was going ahead.
This was cooked up and financed by the Japanese, who seem particularly adept at divorced-from-reality concoctions, which I can’t imagine them ever trying in their home country. As for the restrictions on private vehicles entering the city, picture this; after a day in the provinces a family drives up to the transit station in their cushy Lexus where all but the driver disembarks and transfers to motorbikes or tuk-tuks or a slow crowded bus shared with the peasantry to get to their urban destination. Yeah, sure.
The idea of a transfer station would not be bad in itself if it gave people good options for getting to their urban destination, but the prohibitions of minibuses and private vehicles carrying multiple passengers was positively wacko. Fortunately it too died a quiet death though I believe the minibuses are still being shaken down by unofficial police checkpoints when they want to go into the city.
It’s almost as if Phnom Penh had a raise-the-flag-and-see-if-anyone-salutes style of governing. Which has to be better than the city actually enforcing these nutty and arbitrary plans. Though nowhere near as good as actually thinking things out and presenting plans in forums which allow the citizenry to voice their approval or objections.
More recently than the first two dinged-out ideas the city announced that all auto repair garages were going to be relocated out of the heritage district because of the terrorist threat. I personally have a hard time conjuring up a reasonable rationale for how garages are hooked up to terrorism, but it must have seemed reasonable to the public official who announced the change. Garage owners protested, rightly so, pointing out that garages need to be where vehicles brake down, not far away at the edge of the city. This one also seems to have died an unheralded death.
That said, having repair shops work on vehicles on the sidewalk where they leave thick toxic petrochemical residues certainly begs for remediation. Besides being ugly as sin, oily sidewalk deposits are a serious pollution problem since their toxins get washed into the rivers and lakes with every rainfall. Working on them inside and under cover ought to resolve any esthetic problems – if that were, in fact, the underlying motive.
Metal fabricating shops are also out of place on the sidewalk. In addition to the obvious problem of the nerve-racking noise that’s emitted; arc welding, with its blindingly bright electric arcs, acetylene cutting and welding, metal grinding and cutting all include flying sparks and other hazards to passersby, especially unsuspecting children, and belong in safer more closed environments.
Concurrently there is an economic benefit to allowing work on the sidewalk and that is that it keeps costs low. If you can rent a small corner storefront and double or triple your workspace by using the public sidewalk you can offer more competitive pricing. At some point however, public good is going to have to trump private gain and they will all have to go inside.
The news article about relocating garages also mentioned the idea of instituting a zoning plan for the city. Except for the city of Houston, which is in the state of Texas, which we all know is barely civilized, all American cities are zoned. It really makes no sense to have, or allow, noisy, polluting industrial uses in the middle of quiet residential neighborhoods. They need to be grouped together where they can cause the least harm to their surroundings.
Same for entertainment; it’s important to set aside places in the city where businesses can stay noisy late into the night. Otherwise where noise can be made becomes arbitrary – a friend had to close up, that is, keep the windows and doors closed in his late night bar, because of a single complaint from a neighbor across the street. And that was in an area that should be set aside for entertainment. Established rules are better than ad hoc adjustments or changes. Of course, this means bureaucracy, which in Cambodia means baksheesh, which in any case doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to happen at some point in the future.
Along with zoning comes building codes. I’ve now lived in three apartments in Phnom Penh. The first had a grand stairway, that is, it was wide and spacious and came with ornate metal railings. The problem was that it was in the middle of the apartment – the kitchen and bath facilities were on one side while the living space was on the other; both had locked doors. When I rented it I thought that wouldn’t matter much because I was one floor from the top so there weren’t going to be a lot of people going through my apartment. What I failed to realize was that I was going to be passing through other people’s apartments – occasionally with embarrassing partners in tow – with everybody watching.
The second one had a narrow and tiny stairway which required me to bend over, and I’m not even 5ft 6 (less than 1.7 meters). Any furnishings larger than small had to be hoisted up with ropes. My current abode has an outdoor metal staircase. It?s very nice, with one exception. The top floor landing is so narrow I have to be very conscious after locking up or I’d be cascading down, head over, very easily.
In other words, it wouldn’t seem that out of line for the municipality to institute building standards at some point. It would be a lot less interesting in the anomalies department, but make a lot more sense.
As a planner and walker (and compulsive thinker) – thus always having sidewalks and their peculiarities at the tip of my frontal lobe – I’m compelled to bring up the subject again. As mentioned previously, prior to the Vietnamese occupation no form of encroachment – no vehicles, no restaurant tables, no merchandise – was allowed on the sidewalks. They were antiseptically clear and open. The Khmer quickly adapted to the occupier’s bad ways (I want to say uncivilized but that would undoubtedly come across condescendingly) and even lost the up-to-date design standards of the previous era.
Take a look at the old sidewalks one still finds in a few places in the inner city and you see they are flat and consistent – that is, all at the same level – and the curbs are square. Today walking on the sidewalk forces us to go up and down like a yo-yo, tilt nearly sideways because of the steep angle they are often built on and dodge drivers who see them simply as an extension of the street.
Whereas square curbs are designed to discourage vehicles on the sidewalk, the curbs in current use here in Phnom Penh are designed to facilitate vehicle usurpation. We have the shallow ramp which encourages a greater angle to the sidewalk as well as its use as a parking lot. And we have the more standard curb except it’s got a beveled leading edge. In other words, it’s been rounded off to make it easier for cars to drive up.
We also have a curious fixation on curb cuts. Every driveway and alley is treated as if it were a street and was thus entitled to have regulation curbs. The result is exemplified by the government building located at Norodom and Street 178. In a space of about 30 meters there are four curb cuts. I walk it at least twice a day – down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. This is counterproductive two ways; it facilitates vehicle movement across the sidewalk as well as add discomfort to the pedestrian experience. It also practically precludes the use of strollers or hand trucks.
The pattern in America is a short relatively sharp ramp up to the sidewalk, which of course, stays level. Vehicles are forced to slow down, walkers experience no discomfort. I confess to my ignorance of the existence of building codes in Phnom Penh, but if there are any they don?t include sidewalks and if they do, they have no idea what they’re doing.
Stan
