Intelligent Urbanism sees movement and transport in the Gelephu, and in the Sarpang-Gelephu region, as a balanced group of systems that are integrated with one another. These overlapping systems, or modes of transit, include pedestrians, cycles, automobiles and buses. In the far distant future trams, or a light rail system, could be envisioned. Part of the strategy is to leave enough space along corridors to accommodate higher levels of technology when the need arises.

Intelligent Urbanism sees the interchanges between transit systems (at what are known as places of modal split), as the public domains in which intense activities must occur. These are high-density areas with compact urban fabrics of built form.

Intelligent Urbanism sees the automobile as a permanent feature of the urban pattern in Gelephu, but as only one of the modes of movement! Hidden subsidies on energy, roads and parking, or on the interests charged to purchase automobiles, should not give an undue advantage to the use of vehicles.

Intelligent Urbanism sees a grid of roads serving automobiles, instead of a hierarchy of lanes, arteries and expressways, which funnel traffic into congested collection roads. Dead ends, large gated communities, cul-de-sacs and “feeder roads,” are seen as bad practices, as they are socially divisive and slow down vehicular circulation, which is concentrated at the junctions where the larger roads in the hierarchy of roads meet.

Intelligent Urbanism promotes service roads off of the main artery grid and into pedestrian dominated vehicular lanes. Here, parking along streets, with planting between walkways act as buffers between pedestrians and vehicular movement.

Intelligent Urbanism sees rapid buses, traveling in dedicated express lanes, as the most promising and cost effective future solution for smaller towns and regions. In larger regions, a light rail system can ultimately link rapid bus routes and onwards integrating walkable enclaves. Intelligent Urbanism recognizes that even in contexts where there are comparatively high automobile ownership levels, access to these vehicles, even within the same households, may be low. Wives and children must seek other modes of travel. Students, skilled workers, domestic servants and young professionals---just to name a few---need access to alternative means of travel.

For all of these integrated modes of transit to operate in a balanced manner in Gelephu’s future urban and regional setting it means the pattern must be planned as high-density, compact centers, linked together along a transit corridor. Now is the time to plan for the future!

Societies that have depended on the mono-system of the automobile never seem to move ahead of congestion and the insatiable demand for new roads, widened roads and improved roads. Intelligent Urbanism says a town or a city cannot build its way out of congestion within a one-mode system of transport. A balanced and integrated system of walkable pedestrian communities, public transit along a network of compact centers, connected to walkable pedestrian communities is proposed in Gelephu. Vehicles should ply on open-ended grids of streets and parked automobiles should be used as buffers between the dangerous road and the safe footpath. The urban region is an integral part of this concept and is integrated via a corridor, or intersecting lineal channels, of rapid, public transit.