Car-based mobility

Remember the series on commuting around the world in the Toronto Star? Christopher Hume writes, in "Looking beyond gridlock":

Whatever the appeal of the car may be, mobility has little to do with it. The truth of this lies not just in the extreme congestion and epic commutes documented this week by Star correspondents, but as they also made clear, in our mind-boggling capacity to put up with it.

That's why efforts to control car use are doomed to failure as long as they're based on attempts to replace it with alternate forms of transportation, especially public transit.

Of course, subways, streetcars and buses are important, even crucial, but the majority choose not to use them despite the fact they're cheaper, more efficient and sustainable. The better way is, don't forget, the better way. The fact remains, however, that there's nothing rational about why people in the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, hop into their vehicles every morning and evening for the daily commute.

I don't fully agree with him. Yes, there is no question that driving a car, for an individual is often more efficient and effective. It's also costly. And in a city, a car is difficult to park. But for getting lots done in a short period of time, especially if there is more than one person (for one person, a bike is a superb means for mobility), cars can be easier. If you rely on public transportation, likely there are some trips you decide not to make, just because of the logistics.

But when destinations/activities are close by and close to each other, you are less likely to make special trips to accomplish tasks, instead you accomplish tasks (going to the post office, dry cleaners, grocery store) as part of your normal activities going to and from work and elsewhere.

But for transit to work, it has to be part of a compact development land use scenario, and the "amenities" or quality destinations and services, have to be present. In such a scenario, home and work aren't too far apart, and the means of getting from place to place are pretty simple--subway, bus, streetcar, walking, or bicycling.

As long as automobile-based mobility is the foundation of land use planning--separated uses, low density, with great distances between types of use, free parking--it's almost impossible to make transit "be competitive" because transit isn't operating under the same set of conditions. It's like setting up a foot race between able bodied people and those with no legs (who aren't allowed to race using wheelchairs).

In the city, it's a different situation, where transit is favored. And if car use wasn't subsidized too, in terms of not charging higher prices for residential parking permits for parking on the street, and for more than one car in a household (the average rowhouse is about 15-18 feet wide, so parking in front of a rowhouse is equal to one car, when you put space in front and back, the typical car is probably about 14 feet long), then there would be even fewer cars clogging up the streets in the city.

AND, if transportation demand management plans "required" certain kinds of stores or shopping centers to provide delivery services, that would reduce the demand for cars even more, at least in the city.

Putting transit in places with low densities, when people travel very far to get to places misses the basic point, that home, work, school, retail and services, etc., need to be proximate. This is how such destinations were placed within communities as part of the Walking and Transit City eras of urban design (from 1800-1920).

Now I have no answer (as of yet) to the difficult question of equity. How do we keep such communities diverse and accessible and home for people of limited means, in a market-based economy where demand drives up the prices for places of quality in a manner that prices out all but the most economically able?

I have some ideas, but no definitive answers. I don't really think that Jane Jacobs ever expected how strong the velocity would be for global capital, and the impact on center cities in strong markets. I don't think she ever imagined that the "large stock of old buildings" would ever get depleted.
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Links to all the Star articles in the series are present within Christopher Hume's column.