Ulaanbaatar has been facing some problems due to lack infrastructure as a result of rapid urbanisation and delayed planning. One of the major issues include sanitation and liquid waste management in the ger/traditional housing district area. According to the World Bank Report (attached), 59% pit latrines are not sanitary and causing land pollution.However, the trend of improvised pit is advancing and people are moving away from traditional method of getting rid of liquid waste by burying it underground. Mongolian government in cooperation with international organisations promoting standardised pit that is more user-friendly, with ventilation pipe and designed to have regular septic pump truck services running. You can find the visual description via the link here although it is in Mongolian, but the images are pretty understandable.

Hello everyone!

I also would like to share my view on sustainable transportation infrastructure, especially bus rapid transit (BRT). It is under scope of both technology innovation and infrastructure. I personally get really excited by BRT as it is perceived as the most flexible and low cost mass transit system available. The system has been adopted to many Asian countries and successfully implemented with the help of ADB expertise and financial aid. Such as in Mongolia, BRT, the first mass transit project has started recently. Here I share some of my views from the article I wrote last year:

The population of Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia) has been increasing rapidly from 0.78 million in 2000 to 1.3 million in 2014 (Ulaanbaatar Statistics Office, 2014).  This growth is expected to continue due to a large number of migration from rural area to urban area. This growth anticipated to continue that every year approximately 20,000 residents have moved to Ulaanbaatar in the last 10 years (Asian Development Bank, 2009).  The economic growth in the last 10 years has seen rapid increase in private cars reaching 238,183 in 2014 [4.5 times higher than 2004 level] (Ulaanbaatar Statistics Office, 2014). Such increase in car ownership resulted in serious traffic congestion, air pollution and demanded more road infrastructure to be built (Asian Development Bank, 2015). A high congestion during peak hours led to license plate restriction regulation to be adopted in 2012 (Capital Council, 2012).

Travel demand by public transport has been increasing, but the supply of the service is constrained due to inadequate infrastructure and vehicles. For example, in 2015, there are total 331,564 vehicles registered in Mongolia and only 5.2% accounts for bus. Public transport is functioned by two government-owned and 11 private operators that served almost 60% of the total urban travel demand in 2014 (Asian Development Bank, 2015). However, the modal share of public transport is decreasing as motorization accelerated during the last 5 years. If the poor quality of public transport is not enhanced, number of private cars expected to grow continuously to reach 830,000 by 2030 (Asian Development Bank, 2015). ADB has completed a Technical Assistance (TA) for implementing BRT project in Mongolia in 2009.  Based on this TA, the Municipal Government of Ulaanbaatar plans to BRT implement project financed by ADB loan. The construction of the first corridor 12.2 kms is scheduled to be completed by end of 2017.

The table below shows the planned BRT features of the project. Limitations mentioned here are based on the theory outlined in the section one.

Features

Barriers

In this section, we will look into the potential barriers that the BRT project in Mongolia may encounter as mentioned in the article of Lindau, et al., (2014). Mongolia’s economic growth reached its peak at 17.5% in 2011 and rapidly dropped to 2.4% in 2015 that led to major economic crises due to the political instable decisions in Mongolia and mineral commodity price decrease in the world (Focus Economics, 2016). In result, government has been cutting budgets for public projects and financing most essential projects [even more tightly after the election in June 2016] (Kohn, 2016). Even though the financing for the BRT project is secured with the loan from ADB, (i) there may be budget cuts during implementation that may risk the successful implementation [e.g. cuts in lane length or completion of phase 3 or 4]. Another question unanswered by both ADB and Mongolian government is that ‘why the project is finally set to be implemented after 7 years of its TA completion’. One of the reasons could be (ii) discontinuities due to political cycles. The time of political mandate is 4 years and last parliament election was held in June 2016 with a victory of new opposition party, the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP). In accordance with Lindau, et al., (2014), there is an urge to complete the project before the next election in order to prevent risky modification to the project or even discontinuation. Setting up a Board for the BRT project is planned, but there is no specially designated team/unit during project construction period. The next concern is often the agencies have lack of personnel and now with the economic crises, the government planned to lay off 20,000 civil servants by 2017 (Enkhelee, 2016), the government agencies believed to be even more shorthanded then. This may lead to (iii) leaving the construction in the hands of road builders. According to the TA, exisiting roads will be expanded to enable exlusive BRT lanes because currently, the highest capacity of current roads is 26 meters (Pacific Consultants CO., LTD, 2013). Roads are located quite close to the local amenities such shops, banks and other commercial activities. (iv) Road expansion may eliminate the parking spaces, demolish retail shops, and move informal retailers along the road. Therefore, the opposition from retail shop owners or anyone affected is expected (Lindau, et al., 2014). Another issue identified by the authors is that (v) lack of adequate legislation can also make it difficult to implement BRT. Overlapping or difficulties among government agencies may be overcome by creating unified metropolitan transit authorities. However, the TA has not suggested or addressed it to the Mongolian government.