Rethinking the urban relationship to the car

Articles from three different sources in the last week:

1.  Boston Globe, "Seeing Red" is a three-part series.  Today the first installment was published.  Two more installments will be published in the coming days.

-- comments on the article

From the article:

Boston’s current traffic obsession is not hyperbole: The metropolitan region has 300,000 more cars and trucks than it did five years ago, according to an analysis of state data. Congestion has crippled every major commuting thoroughfare, from the south, west, or north. Some morning drives have doubled or worse, dooming drivers to thousands of hours a year lost to staring at the red river of taillights ahead and wondering why. ...

Morning traffic on the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff) 

The question is now front and center: Can Greater Boston continue to thrive — or even function — without fundamentally rethinking its relationship to the car?

And the answer is as inconvenient as it is true: Not for long. ...

All told, the findings [by the Globe Spotlight Team] were unmistakable: Greater Boston has vastly outgrown its roads but the car remains king. That is as true for drivers — 1.7 million of whom drive to work alone — as for the public officials who would have to act aggressively to change this picture and show little will to do so. ...

During a Boston rally about transit troubles in July, Massachusetts Democratic Party volunteers criticize Governor Baker for not riding the MBTA since becoming taking office. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff/File)

Despite rhetoric encouraging constituents to drive less, many of Greater Boston’s most influential elected officials cling to a fundamental car-first mentality that has formed the foundation of public policy since post-World War II America. Maybe it’s no wonder; the perks of government skew heavily toward the car, rewarding the region’s most powerful politicians and many of their most influential staffers with free and coveted government parking spots in central Boston.

The Globe also ran an op-ed today, "100 years on, gas taxes need reform," for changes in the gas tax.  It makes the point that being funded by car use, the tax revenues are mostly used to extend automobile use rather than to promote optimal mobility (my language, not theirs).

2.  Observer/Guardian review of an exhibit, "Cars: Accelerating the Modern World," soon to open at the  V&A in London, "">Highway to hell: the rise and fall of the car"

3. New York Times, ""Cities Worldwide Are Reimagining Their Relationship With Cars"

4.  Plus, I just came across this article on Liljbaan, the first purpose built pedestrian center in Europe, in postwar Rotterdam, "Walk the Lijnbaan: decline and rebirth on Europe’s first pedestrianised street," Guardian. One of the lessons is that these districts need to be managed.

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As long as gas is comparatively cheap in the US, it's not economic for US-based firms to produce cars because of the market's competitiveness. The companies that are successful seem to do it across multiple markets, specialize in higher priced performance models--companies like BMW, etc.

It will doom electric cars in the US too, until gas is something like $7/gallon or more, the way it is priced in Europe.

The most important "Green New Deal" step the US should take is to reprice gasoline. It would force substantive changes in land use and transportation planning and development paradigms which would lead to significant reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, getting to that point would be very painful.

The other thing I've been thinking about for the last year or two is planning paradigm homogenization. Granted, New York City is an outlier in how public transportation, in particular the subway, is so central to mobility and land use. And there are other small communities in Greater New York with similar conditions, like Hoboken or Jersey City.

But there really isn't a "Bike City," a "Bus City," a "Double Decker Bus City," a "Streetcar City" (Toronto and San Francisco come closest), or a commuter rail city (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are the closest) -- by this I mean a city where half of all trips are made by that mode. By contrast, in most cities and metropolitan areas in the US, the car dominates trip use. And land use planning practices preference, privilege, and require car use, making it difficult for bicycling and transit to compete.

If there were such counter examples in the US, it would be easier to develop alternatives.  The Globe article discusses Stockholm and London, which have introduced congestion charging.  From the article:

Plenty of Londoners grumble about the congestion charge, which has risen to the equivalent of nearly $15 a day while cumulatively netting more than $2.4 billion to fund transportation projects. Some argue that after an initial drop, congestion has returned, a contention refuted by the government agency Transport for London.

Cyclists and buses wait at traffic lights in London. (Carl Court/Getty Images) 

In 2017, London’s morning rush had 39 percent fewer people commuting by car or taxi than before the congestion charge, according to the agency’s most recent data. Public transit use remains 24 percent higher despite a recent dip in bus ridership, and the number of people biking has more than tripled to more than 40,000.

New York City is going to introduce a congestion charge.  Opposition was countered by financial exigency--there isn't another way to raise the funds necessary to fund the needs of the subway and rail system.

In Europe, best practice examples include:

• Paris, Vienna, Zurich, London, Stockholm, and most cities in Germany are "transit cities."  
• The streetcar is particularly visible in cities like Zurich, Porto, and Brussels, among others. 
• Copenhagen and Amsterdam are particularly premier bicycle cities but bicycling is promoted throughout Denmark and the Netherlands, in cities in Germany, etc.  
• The Netherlands changed its laws to make motor vehicle operators primarily responsible for accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists
• The Netherlands charges a registration fee on new car purchases of 100% and cities require car purchasers to demonstrate that they have access to preexisting parking.
• Continental Europe has many examples of high speed rail and wide ranging"suburban" railroad systems.  
• Many cities have pedestrian districts.  
• The bi-articulated (three-section) bus is legal in most countries (not in the US), and operates in cities like Hamburg.

• Double deck buses are widespread, especially in the UK--not just London.
• More cities are putting limits on cars in city centers, out of a concern for air quality.  
• Stockholm and London have congestion charges.  
• And there are so many fabulous examples of subway systems.
• France (partly as an industrial policy) is spreading light rail throughout the country
• France is also a best practice example of funding, as the versement transport, a withholding tax on employee earnings, is a primary source of transit funding.
• Of course, a key element in supporting sustainable mobility is the price of gasoline, which is about $7/gallon across Europe.
• In Talinn, transit is free for residents, and Luxembourg is moving to a free transit system including non-resident commuters and crossing borders, to reduce motor vehicle traffic.