Happy New Year!
The hottest year on record has just ended and it is becoming more and more imperative that we start doing as much as possible to reduce our emissions. Reducing car use is one of the best ways of doing this. Cars, remember, are a huge environmental problem:
Cars are:
The second-largest (and growing) source of climate pollution in Europe;
The leading killer of children (in both Europe and the USA);
A principal cause of both noise and air pollution;
And a leading driver of the widening gap between rich and poor (in the UK, only 40% of the poorest households have a car; whilst 90% of the richest household have access to at least one vehicle)
And we all know which kinds of vehicles are most harmful to the environment. Globally, SUVs emit more carbon pollution than Canada or Germany. They are an especial scourge.
There is an excellent article here about the ways in which car use can be effectively restricted in our cities, which I will do my best to summarise below.
As the author of that article, Kimberly Nicholas, is keen to remind us, electric vehicles are not the answer to solving the problem of transport emissions (all vehicles contribute to individualism and a consumerist culture, obesity, status-anxiety, road deaths and urban sprawl):
Electric vehicles are necessary, but they’re not a panacea. Since cars tend to be on the road for a long time, the migration to electric vehicles is very slow. Some studies anticipate relatively small emissions reductions over the coming decade as a result of electric vehicle uptake. And even if there’s nothing damaging released from an electric car’s exhaust pipe, the wear of car brakes and tyres still creates toxic dust and microplastic pollution.
So what do local and national governments need to start doing to encourage people to take up walking and cycling in ever greater numbers?
Getting cars out of cities
The authors of the article cited have summarised over 800 peer-reviewed reports and case studies that have been published since 2010 from throughout Europe to produce the following table of methodologies for reducing car use:
This is the first time that an evidence-based analysis has been produced to try and help urban planners with addressing the problems of car use. All of these strategies involve an element of 'carrot'; but it is interesting that many of the most successful ones also involve an accompanying element of 'stick' in order to induce more desirable behaviours.
Broadly, they fall into two major groups: restricting parking or vehicular access to all or parts of a city; or providing major incentives for residents and visitors to use alternatives, e.g. through free or subsidised public transport or other rewards.
Car use is ultimately incredibly inefficient; cars takes up a significant amount of urban space - space that could, for example, be prioritised for housing, instead - even though an individual car is not used 96% of the time. Visually, the impact of cars on a city is something like this:
No one would want to live in a house like this, so why would we want to live in cities that prioritise space for cars over people?
No silver bullets
Unfortunately, there are no single solutions to the problem of urban spaces dominated by cars.
Many of the strategies above have been successfully implemented in different cities around the world, but planners are going to need to use a combination of different methods to drive up public transport use, cycling and walking.
London, for example, already has successful congestion charging and ULEZ schemes, but more work is required to bring cycling into line with more successful cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
The good news is that such work is ongoing around the world. France, for example, has already announced plans to cover car parks with solar panels, something of dual benefit since it will drive up clean energy production as well as encouraging people to leave their cars at home.
(As an aside, it is interesting to note that it does not take a huge amount of space for solar to provide significant contribution to meeting all our energy needs:
Definitely food for thought...)
And in the UK, additional investment in cycling infrastructure was announced yesterday:
Hopefully, we will see more of this in 2023:
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