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World Transport, Policy & Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 Special edition A Future Beyond the Car? Eco‐Logica Ltd. ISSN 1352‐7614 2 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 Eric Britton © 2012 Eco-Logica Ltd. Managing Director, EcoPlan International, Editor The Centre for Technology & Systems Professor John Whitelegg Studies, Stockholm Environment Institute at York, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara, F-75006 Paris, FRANCE University of York, Paul Tranter York, YO10 SYW, U.K School of Physical Environmental & Mathematical Sciences, University of New Editorial Board South Wales, Professor Helmut Holzapfel Australian Defence Force Academy, Universität Kassel, Fachbereich 06 - Architektur, Stadt- und Canberra ACT 2600, AUSTRALIA Landschaftsplanung Publisher AG Integrierte Verkehrsplanung Eco-Logica Ltd., 53 Derwent Road, Lancaster, Gottschalkstraße 28, LA1 3ES, U.K Telephone: +44 (0)1524 63175 D-34127 Kassel GERMANY E-mail: john.whitelegg@sei-international.org http://www.eco-logica.co.uk Contents Editorial Introduction 3 A Future Beyond the Car? Steve Melia Abstracts & Keywords 7 Three Views on Peak Car 8 Phil Goodwin The Implications of Climate Change for the Future of the Car 18 Mayer Hillman Jan Gehl and New Visions for Walkable Australian Cities 30 Anne Matan and Peter Newman The Future of Carfree Development in York, UK 42 Randall Ghent The Delivery of Freight in Carfree Cities 54 Joel Crawford 2 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 Editorial A Future Beyond the Car? Editorial Introduction Steve Melia How to mitigate, counteract or eliminate the current attempts to address it and the fallacious problems created by cars and traffic is the assumptions underpinning public policy across challenge the at the heart of most transport developed world. The only effective research and many past articles published in this solution, journal. convergence’ a concept first proposed by the This special edition turns this focus he argues, is ‘contraction and towards the future. The suggestion of a future Global Commons Institute in 1995. beyond the car may seem extreme or utopian in other fundamental changes to western lifestyles, a discipline and a world preoccupied with the this would imply a dramatic fall in car ownership present. and use. But as Goodwin suggests in the next Amongst article, the assumption that trends observable today will continue indefinitely will often seem Attempting a rational discussion of policy options short-sighted from some point in the future. in such circumstances may seem faintly absurd, How many of those involved in the rail and bus like a debate in a burning building whose industries rapid occupants persist in spraying the air with petrol. transition from growth to decline in rail and bus With no political solution in prospect it may be use after World War 1 and World War 2 useful nonetheless to draw a distinction between would have predicted the respectively? areas of certainty and uncertainty in climate science Whether such a turning point has already and their implications for transport policy. occurred in the use of the car is the issue of uncertainty at the heart of that article. implication of this uncertainty, One The areas of certainty include the physical Goodwin properties of greenhouse gases and their rising suggests, is that policies which are “robust concentrations in the atmosphere. under any of the uncertain futures are to be this process continues, the greater the ultimate preferred.” impact on the global climate. In the context of ‘peak car’ this The longer The existence of statement applies in the short-term: with the positive (and negative) feedback mechanisms, benefit of greater hindsight the causes of the where rising temperatures release further recent fall in car use and the direction of future greenhouse gases are likewise well-established. trends will become clearer. The nature, timing and regional variations in In the meantime, according to Goodwin, commitments to “frozen climate infrastructure” should be avoided. uncertainty. The IPCC reports express outcomes in Over the longer-term, uncertainties change terms of are all subject probabilities, mainly to greater based on about quantitative modelling. These probabilities are behaviour change are overshadowed by the themselves subject to further uncertainties, to issue of climate change. Following the failure of factors as yet undiscovered by the modellers. the Copenhagen conference to agree binding The consequences may be more or less serious, global targets, the scientific consensus would the timing sooner or later, the changes more or suggest that disruptive – probably catastrophic – less rapid than current scientific knowledge climate change is becoming progressively more suggests. likely. emissions adds a further element of uncertainty. The future trajectory of global In the third article in this edition, Hillman To devise a comprehensive set of policies robust provides the under all the scenarios this suggests would be seriousness of the situation, the inadequacy of impossible but as with peak car, uncertainty has 3 a sobering assessment of World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 policy implications. The position of some American opponents of action on climate change policy, even if, as seems likely, the collective global response is too little, too late. has been characterised as follows: The largest proportion of transport emissions in “If we [the US] clean up our environmental most developed countries is caused by private act and the Chinese don’t we all die anyway cars, which brings us back to the point where and their economy will outperform ours while this article began, but with greater urgency and we live. If we don’t clean up our act, we still a need to look beyond the policies and practices all die, but at least we have a stronger of the present. economy until then.” committed, legally or rhetorically, to climate change Those governments which are mitigation tend to emphasise (Clemons and Schimmelbusch 2007 cited in: technological Crompton, 2010) systemic and behavioural changes. The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed In 2008 the UK became the first country in the this argument in a European context in a recent world speech to the Conservative Party conference Government to emissions targets based on (Osborne, 2011). A similar underlying logic can scientific advice. be detected in some discussion on transport and Change climate change, particularly in pronouncements Government on progress towards those targets from and appropriate policy responses. the aviation industry (although the to solutions enact and legislation to downplay committing the This Act created a Climate Committee (CCC) to advise the The current consequences are rarely articulated in this way - target based on that advice aims for an 80% see for example: Cheapflights Media, 2011). reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions by 2050. Threats from climate change cannot be solved The transport-related reports and chapters from by changes in the transport system alone, so the CCC illustrate this tendency, with graphs why disadvantage one country, or group of showing smooth and rapid reductions flowing countries, and why incur voter hostility or from additional costs when ‘we all die’ anyway? As Government is invited to assume the outcomes accumulating of these policies will occur in a timely way evidence weakens the climate their policy recommendations. sceptic case, variations of this argument are regardless of likely to become more common. factors unintended or vested interests, The unforeseen consequences. Thus politically difficult choices concerning car use Apart from the obvious moral issues this raises, and particularly aviation can be minimised or it implies a certainty and a finality which the avoided altogether (see: Committee on Climate evidence does not support. Some humans (and Change, 2009). other species) have survived catastrophic climate change in previous eras – although Their medium abatement scenario assumes a people, have 44% reduction in emissions from road transport perished along the way. Even if ‘tipping points’ by 2030, mainly through a rapid switchover to are electric settlements breached, and accelerating civilisations changes in the cars accompanied by a 90% climate, our past and future actions will continue ‘decarbonisation’ of electricity generation over to influence the concentration of greenhouse the same period (Committee on Climate Change, gases in the atmosphere with consequences 2010). The carbon budgets recommended in this which cannot be quantifiably predicted with any report were accepted by the Government, and certainty. This, and the moral imperative (if we their current approach is broadly in line with are ‘all going to die’, how would I want to these policy recommendations. behave?) specific, are two reasons why combating climate change should remain the principal focus Transport of those of us seeking to influence transport across the recent recommends the European Commission, 2011). 4 E.U. a Though less White similar Union Paper on approach (European Bent Flyvberg, the leading World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 authority on optimism bias in transport planning more apparent in the longer-term, in providing has written guidance for the UK’s Department models for how cities can begin to move beyond for Transport on how to deal with such bias in the age of the car. respect of infrastructure projects (Flyvbjerg, 2004). A similar analysis is clearly needed for The article by Ghent in this edition explores the the advice of the CCC and the climate change potential demand for carfree developments in policies the of governments in the UK and elsewhere. English city of York, chosen for its compactness and culture of walking and cycling. He finds considerable evidence of potential One of the few transport issues of which we can demand, particularly amongst ‘Carfree Choosers’ be relatively certain over the longer-term is that – people who currently live without a car by walking will remain an important and sustainable choice. mode. Under several possible scenarios it may become the principal, or only, mode available to Carfree developments built so far all involve most people. In the decades following World some degree of compromise with vehicular War 2, cities in many developed countries, access, partly because a small minority of their particularly in North America and Australia, residents began to sprawl, with design features reducing importantly their ‘walkability’ at the same time as rising car Small-scale urban carfree areas will be served ownership was contributing to a modal shift by the logistics system of the city as a whole. from walking to driving. Newman and Kenworthy To go further towards an urban environment (1989) was an important milestone in the free reaction has completely different system, only feasible over against those trends, which continue from for to own deliveries motor traffic cars, of but various would more kinds. require a influenced planners and governments to varying much larger areas. In Carfree Cities Crawford extents across the world. One of the first cities (2000) outlined a vision of how new cities could to be designed entirely without cars. embrace pedestrian-focussed transport In the final planning was Copenhagen, influenced by the article of this edition, he addresses this key work of Danish architect and urban designer, issue for the design of carfree cities: how to Jan Gehl. In the fourth article of this issue Matan organise deliveries of freight and removal of and Newman describe how Gehl’s work has waste. helped to improve the pedestrian environment in carfree areas, and proposes a system based on several major Australian cities. light rail deliveries of containers for the carfree He assesses the experience of existing cities of the future. A growing body of literature has sought to measure the multiple benefits of increasing The UK Climate Change Act requires annual walkability and to make the case for investment reporting to parliament of national performance in it (e.g. Sinnett et al, 2011). The evidence is against the carbon budgets. Whilst the recession compelling based on the short-term benefits of has kept emissions below the first budget cap, in principal its latest report the CCC notes: interest to governments but the strongest arguments for such changes relate to the probability that walking will remain essential “the underlying trend is one of broadly to the functioning of cities which survive the flat emissions. ..an acceleration in the ravages of climate change and the threats to pace movement by other modes. needed if future carbon budgets are to of emissions reduction will be be achieved.” An article in a previous edition of WTPP (Melia et al, 2010) described the range of carfree (Committee on Climate Change, 2011) residential and mixed-use developments around Europe. The significance of these relatively few Thus the UK will become a test-bed for the view examples of good practice may likewise become that technological change could occur rapidly 5 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 enough to avert catastrophic climate change. If Osborne, G. (2011) Speech to Conservative that view proves over-optimistic, more radical Party options such as carfree cities may begin to seem Manchester, October 3rd. New Statesman. less fanciful than they currently appear to Sinnett, D., Williams, K., Chatterjee, K. and governments Cavill, and the mainstream transport community today. Conference. N., Investment (2011) in the In: Anon. Making Walking the (2011) Case Environment: . for A Review of the Evidence [online]. Living Streets, London. Contact email: Steve.Melia@uwe.ac.uk References: Cheapflights Media (2011) Emissions Trading Scheme ‘could not be more misguided’. Cheapflights.Co.Uk [online]. Committee on Climate Change, (2011) Meeting Carbon Budgets - Third Report to Parliament. London: . Committee on Climate Change, (2010) The Fourth Carbon Budget - Reducing Emissions through the 2020s. London: . Committee on Climate Change, (2009) Meeting the UK Aviation Target – Options for Reducing Emissions to 2050 [online]. www.theccc.org.uk/reports/aviation-report: . Crawford, J.H. (2000) Carfree Cities. Utrecht; Charlbury: International Books; Jon Carpenter distributor. Crompton, T., (2010) Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values [online]. http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/common_c ause_report.pdf: WWF, Joint Agency. European Commission (2011) White Paper on Transport : Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area : Towards a Competitive and Resource-Efficient Transport System [online]. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Flyvbjerg, B., (2004) Procedures for Dealing with Optimism [online]. Bias in Transport Planning http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/0406DfT- UK%20OptBiasASPUBL.pdf: UK Department for Transport. Melia, S., Barton, H. and Parkhurst, G. (2010) Carfree, Low Car - What's the Difference? World Transport Policy & Practice. 16 (2), pp. 24-32. Newman, P. and Kenworthy, J.R. (1989) Cities and Automobile Dependence : A Sourcebook. Aldershot: Gower. 6 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 Abstracts and Keywords Three Views on Peak Car provide momentum and support for a larger Phil Goodwin movement Three current views are that trends in car modes and have been conducted in over 40 ownership and use in developed economies global (a) are still in long-term growth with only pedestrian-based temporary interruptions due to economic urban design that is explicitly pro-urban, circumstances; (b) have reached their peak showing how car-based planning destroys and will show little or no further growth; or city centres. He has had a profound and (c) have passed a turning point and are now growing impact on Australian cities. towards cities. sustainable Central to transport Gehl’s transport PSPL planning is and in long-term decline. The evidence is not yet conclusive, but is amenable to properly Keywords: non-motorised transport, urban designed research. The author judges the design, third view to be a viable possibility with planning, sustainability, Australia pedestrian, cycling, transport useful policy implications. The Future of Carfree Development in York, Keywords: Peak car, decoupling, traffic UK saturation, plateau, reduction Randall H. Ghent, MSc The Implications of Climate Change for the This paper investigates the market potential Future of the Car for carfree development in York, UK, as a Mayer Hillman means of increasing the city’s social and The spreading and intensifying addiction to environmental sustainability and improving fossil fuel-dependent lifestyles around the quality of life. A survey was conducted using world, not least in the car-based transport purposive sector, will inevitably add to the likelihood of ‘progressive’ ecological catastrophe from climate change. population. Positive attitudes towards the The longer we procrastinate in responding concept of carfree development were found, sufficiently to this prospect, the greater the among ‘Carfree Choosers’ as well as other chaos. This paper sets out key fallacious ‘household car behaviour’ categories. assumptions on which current policy sampling, groups focusing mainly within the on York is founded and outlines the only strategy that Keywords: can achieve a relatively smooth and speedy development, York Carfree, car-free, car free, transition to sufficiently sustainable practices and patterns of development that will assuredly deliver the essential very lowcarbon footprints to prevent it. The Delivery of Freight in Carfree Cities J. H. Crawford 1 A proposal to use a dedicated, automated Keywords: generations, ecological fallacious catastrophe, assumptions, future system to deliver standard ISO shipping low- containers inside carfree areas is presented. carbon strategy, carbon rationing Included are methods to deliver smaller, lighter shipments to areas not directly Jan Gehl and New Visions for Walkable served by the dedicated system. Alternative Australian Cities measures for smaller carfree projects are Anne Matan and Peter Newman considered. The work of Jan Gehl aims to revitalise cities Keywords: carfree city, sustainable cities, through more walkable urban design. His freight Public Spaces Public Life (PSPL) surveys automated 7 delivery, ISO shipping freight container, handling World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 THREE VIEWS ON ‘PEAK CAR’ Phil Goodwin Introduction Concerning The 2011 annual overview report of the themselves, Figure 1 shows its analysis of International Transport Forum (the OECD six agency formerly known as the European Australia, France, UK, USA and Japan. Conference of Ministers of Transport) (ITF figures 2011) problematic (roughly equivalent to the UK ‘cars and discussion, drawing attention to the huge vans’). It is immediately apparent that there scope there is for increases in private car is little sign of any growth in the 2000s, and travel in developing countries. The summary some signs of falls. The report comments states ‘The world’s population will reach 9 that this appears both before and after billion by 2050...global passenger mobility recessionary crises. is a thoughtful and the advanced include developed economies, mileage by countries Germany, ‘light The trucks’ and global freight transport volumes may triple’. None of these three views claims to start from axioms of either desirability or The core of their argument is that this undesirability: this is overtly a different growth will largely be dominated by growth argument from the disagreements about outside the developed countries in the OECD whether increased car use provides dynamic group – the developing countries seeing up economies and improved standards of living, to a 5-fold increase in passenger kilometres or by car. The report concludes that this “would environmental damage. The three views are be reached only if mobility aspirations in about what has actually been happening – emerging of for whatever good or bad reason – to the and choices people make about the cars they buy advanced economies economies mimic and if those prices policies accommodate these aspirations”. economic inefficiency and social and and use. They rely on their interpretation of statistical evidence about time series trends Figure 1 Private Automobile Use 1990-2009 and the relative strength of different factors driving those trends. 8 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 The reason why such apparently different Table 1. DfT Analysis of Declining Rates of views can be defended simultaneously is Growth of Traffic partly due to the fact that all three outcomes can be consistent with the same historic pattern of roughly S-shaped traffic growth, Decade Traffic Average Annual Growth 1950s 8.4% 1960s 6.3% 1970s 2.9% and social phenomena. 1980s 4.7% 1990s 1.4% Figure 2. Simplified form of the three views 2000-2007 1.2% as may be seen diagrammatically in Figure 2. All such outcomes, following a long period of growth, may be seen in real world natural The forecasts envisage that even under a combination of low economic growth, high fuel prices, and little improvement in fuel economy (all of which would be expected to depress demand), traffic would grow by 31% from 2003 to 2035, and by up to 50% under more favourable economic assumptions. Under the central scenario, traffic would grow by 43%: this is sufficient to lead to a forecast of congestion (measured as time lost per kilometre) increasing by 54%, and journey time per kilometre increasing by 9%. The purpose of this paper is to summarise these current There have been a few voices suggesting trends and where they are heading. There is different views about that even a reduction in the rate of growth is a brief discussion about the consequential unlikely in the long run – for example policy issues and the research necessary to Glaister (2011), has argued that “total traffic resolve broader question has grown in a quite remarkable way since about the nature of the social and transport the 1950s, I would suggest, more or less a consequences of each is discussed by other straight line, with deviations from a straight papers in this issue, and elsewhere. line depending on the current economic them, but the the circumstances... In the last two or three Future Continued Growth Forecasts of continued years, total traffic has indeed fallen a bit. It's growth in car what you would expect to happen in view of ownership and use (and consequently of the history and the fact we have quite a total traffic volumes, of which cars are by far severe economic recession.... What that says the greatest proportion) has been the official to me is that you must expect that, when the position of the UK Government (and many economy recovers, the demand for the road other Government agencies), and continues network will recover as well”. to be so albeit at rates less than at some periods in the past. Table 1, from the UK Department of Transport (DfT) (2010) shows their observation that growth rates have been declining, and Figure 3 their forecast that traffic growth will nevertheless continue. 9 World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012 Figure 3: DfT Central, High and Low 2035 Nearly 25 years is rather a long time to be Traffic Forecasts, England described as temporary, unfavourable circumstances. Figure 4. Tendency for Official Overestimates Source: adapted from DfT (2010) of Traffic since 1989 This view does not seem to be a carefully considered one, and indeed it is obvious from Table 1 that traffic has not grown ‘more or less in a straight line’. Nevertheless the phrase ‘when the economy recovers’ is a crucial element also of the DfT approach, suggesting essentially that any reduced growth or reduced traffic is due mainly to temporary unfavourable circumstances. The problem about this approach has been that it has performed rather consistently badly for at least 20 years. This may be seen by looking at two earlier sets of DfT forecasts, ‘Plateau’ or ‘Saturation’ those made in 1989 and revised ones in An 2007. These are shown in Figure 4. ‘continual increasing alternative dissatisfaction growth’ reading analysis of the with led to trends, the an with Thus even by 2007 the successively revised notable advocates being Schipper and his forecasts colleagues in the USA, and Metz in the UK. have overpredicted since growth, consistently have The first in his prolific series of published needed to be ‘re-based’. That has continued technical analyses of multi-national data was to be true subsequently, as discussed below. by Schipper et al (1993), and his last, before 10 traffic 1989 and World Transport Policy and Practice Volume 17.4 January 2012