An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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PEAK CAR
“This is an important article,” says Eric Britton at World Streets. I have to agree.
‘Peak Car Use’: Understanding the Demise of Automobile Dependence
– By Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy
Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute
Perth, Western Australia
Abstract
The first signs of declining car use in cities are being observed. The data on this are summarized before six interdependent factors are examined that could help to explain this unexpected phenomenon.
Introduction
In 2009 the Brookings Institution were the first to recognize a new phenomenon in the world’s developed cities – declines in car use (Puentes and Tomer, 2009). This paper summarizes the recent data covering this new phenomenon of ‘peak car use’ and seeks to understand why it is happening. It first presents the data which are confirming this trend in cities in the US, Australia and eight other nations together with some of the data from our Global Cities Database that were suggesting the possibility of this trend.
Peak car use suggests that we are witnessing the end of building cities around cars – at least in the developed world. In the 1980’s we called this kind of city building automobile dependence (Newman and Kenworthy, 1989). The peak car use phenomenon suggests we may now be witnessing the demise of automobile dependence in cities. The paper therefore sets out to examine six possible causes of peak car use before making a general conclusion and setting out some of the implications for the professions who manage our cities.
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“CONGESTION (AND CHARGES) ARE OUR FRIENDS”
That’s a line I’ve been using for years. Apparently, they feel the same in Europe:
Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy
It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.
It’s working in Vancouver too, where offstreet parking is down 20 percent in some cases, and, according to the Sun, the City reports a drop in on-street parking revenue:
The number of people driving downtown has been on a steady decline
for the past decade, and the popularity of the Canada Line, the high price of gas and increased parking costs are contributing factors, said Jerry Dobrovolny, director of transportation for the city.
“It’s good news that over the past 10 years we’ve had a continual reduction in the number of cars coming into the city, and at the same time we’ve had dramatic increases in walking, cycling and transit,” Dobrovolny said. “The difficulty here is that our estimate of revenues was three per cent higher than what the actual [revenue] is trending today.”
And same thing in New York, where the Metropolitan Transporation Authority reports a decline in traffic on its toll bridges:
Motorists are steering clear of MTA bridges and tunnels following a series of massive toll hikes. Traffic on the agency’s nine crossings plummeted by about 1 million vehicles in April 2011 when compared to April 2010. Passenger-car crossings were down by 3.9 percent, while other vehicles, such as trucks and buses, declined by 6.6 percent.
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