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Avoiding car ownership: a key element in progress towards carfree cities

 

Richard Gilbert

Consultant in Transport and Energy, TorontoResearch Director, Centre for Sustainable Transportation

University of Winnipeg, Canada

Presentation to TOWARDS CARFREE CITIES IVBogotá, Colombia

September 22, 2006

Enquiries to richardgilbert@sympatico.caWeb site: www.richardgilbert.ca

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Automobile use is getting out of hand

This scale is kilometres

moved annually per

person, for all the world’s population.

MOVING PEOPLE

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Beyond a certain point, auto costs exceed benefits

• Environmental costs: global and local pollution from production, use, and disposal of vehicles, fuels, and infrastructure

BENEFITS > COSTS

COSTS > BENEFITS

• Resource use: for worldwide production of some 50 million vehicles a year now, and their fuels and infrastructure, and 200 million a year with worldwide motorization?

• Economic costs: a huge investment for what is mostly a means to other ends rather than an end in itself

• Social costs: with hypermobility societies may become more polarized, more dispersed, more anonymous, less child-friendly, less culturally distinctive, less physically healthy, more crime-ridden, and less democratic

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This presentation’s argument

• Car ownership is the major cause of car use

• Carfree cities require reduced car ownership

• Low car ownership requires a special milieu

• Not owning a car must be advantageous

• Planning urban regions: the EANO principle

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The basic causal relationships are these:

1. Affluence leads to car ownership

2. Car ownership leads to car use

Can we focus on breaking Link 1 rather than Link 2?

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Rates of ownership of personal automobiles and per capita GDP, various countries

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Distance driven per vehicle, several countries, 1970-1995

The annual distance moved by each car on average is remarkably constant

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The case of Hong Kong 1

• Among the wealthiest cities in the world

• Has the lowest car ownership and use

• Ownership is costly and inconvenient

• “Carrying things” is the main reason for purchase

• The few car owners use their cars for everything

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The case of Hong Kong 2

• Hong Kong is among the densest of cities

• It has astonishingly good public transport

• It is a major transport hub (airport and seaport)

• Good local transport is a business issue

• Accessibility makes business efficient

• Dense, steamy Hong Kong is a healthy place

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Wee

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Weekday motorized trips per resident according to car ownership, 38 European and U.S. cities

As car ownership grows, people make more motorized trips

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Rat

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Relative use of public transport in relation to car ownership

As car ownership grows, people make more of their trips by car

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Discouraging car ownership may be better than discouraging use directly

• High use costs cause cars to be driven less; but high ownership costs achieve more because they result in fewer cars on the road, and less overall pollution.

• Restraints on ownership can have a negative economic impact, but so can any move toward sustainable transport.

• Restraining ownership by price is as (un)democratic as restraining use by price. Rationing access to cars by tradable entitlements is the democratic solution.

• High ownership costs reduce early replacement of vehicles, and thus the environmental impacts of production and disposal of vehicles; the advantages of new technology can be captured with appropriate regulations for vehicles on the road.

• Lower ownership levels result in more political support for collective transport, and a smaller constituency for unsustainable transport.

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EANO = Equal Advantage for Non-Ownership

Every part of every urban region should be developed and organised so that the advantages of not owning a car are at least equal to the advantages of owning a car.

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Amenities and services for living without a car 1

• proximity: schools, stores, and recreational and cultural facilities within a walk, a bicycle ride or a short public transport journey

• safe and enticing routes along which to walk or ride a bicycle

• good public transport, which in lower-density areas will include demand-driven service to the door or to nearby pick-up and set-down points

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Amenities and services for living without a car 2

• ready access to places of employment and to the services that support home-based employment

• delivery services for the carriage of purchased goods and for other purposes

• car-sharing services for longer or special trips

• excellent information about all of the above.

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The economics of no car ownership

• No imports of fuel and cars

• No working one or two days a week for a car

• No massive infrastructure for roads and parking

• No infrastructure costs for sprawl

• No health costs from car pollution