An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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LEE SCHIFFER ON ASIA’S HYPERMOTORIZATION
Most national and local governments in Asia have embraced development that favors the small minority in cars, to the detriment of the sizeable minority on motorcycles and the majority still walking, peddling or riding buses. This American-style development, in which individuals outrun collective transport, rarely gives alternatives a chance.
Through what amounts to a vicious cycle, each family has an increasingly strong incentive to acquire individual means of transport, which clogs the streets and pollutes the air even more. Those left behind move ever more slowly. Increasingly, the real costs of transportation are imposed on the majority by the minority. The urban landscape evolves towards even more car-oriented development and urban transport becomes unsustainable….
The crux of the policy dilemma for urban and non-urban transport, both for travel and freight, is that transport is woefully underpriced. Covering distances by motorized means for those who can afford it is too cheap, while ironically, for the lower middle class, transport to and from work is expensive because it is so poorly organized. Fuel is underpriced and poor in quality, vehicles and their emissions systems are not well maintained and in many countries not well built in the first place.
The impression among the public is that vehicles and fuels must be had now, on the cheap, and that somehow the resulting problems will rectify themselves later. Experience, however, shows that this leads to a decades-long vicious cycle that can only be reversed at great cost. One reason is the investment in vehicles and technologies, but the other is the evolution of land use as if cheap transport would always be available. Unfortunately, Asia knows now that the real cost of transport is much higher than what individuals pay….
For the most part, Asia can still choose to avoid an unsustainable transport future if local and national authorities act now. Or they can continue on the present path, but before doing so, leaders should visit Latin America to see the chaos on unprepared streets when car ownership reaches 100 per 1,000 inhabitants, and motorcycle ownership is even higher.
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SECOND THOUGHTS
China Aims to Rein In Car Sales
After a decade of nurturing China’s car industry to become the largest in the world, the country’s leaders are having second thoughts. Government officials at a weekend conference called for China’s car makers to shift their focus from making ever more cars and towards producing more fuel-efficient and advanced models, including petrol-electric hybrids and all-electric cars. … Years of double-digit expansion have increased Chinese production to almost 17 million cars, minivans, pick-up trucks and sport utility vehicles last year, from fewer than 2 million in 2000, making it almost twice the size of the US or Japanese industries and far larger than any European country’s car-making sector.
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SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Any deviation from car-dependent engineering and design is often criticized as ‘social engineering.’ In that respect, so was the creation of car dependence.
On the Atlantic’s new cities website, a nice critique of the origins and consequences of the suburban cul-de-sac:
The Federal Housing Authority embraced the cul-de-sac and published technical bulletins in the 1930s that painted the urban street grid as monotonous, unsafe, and characterless. Government pamphlets literally showed illustrations of the two neighborhood designs with the words “bad” and “good” printed alongside them.
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FIVE SOLUTIONS TO THE ‘WAR ON CARS’ MADNESS
Considerable common sense per paragraph – by Sally Bagshaw, a member of Seattle City Council.
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