CityReads│ Is the Car an Effcient Way for Urban Transportation ?
Car is not an efficient way for urban transportation whether spatially or economically. The real solutions for problems of space and mobility in cities are better plans for urban densities, use-mixes and patterns, and personal choices, making walking, biking and public transit truly inviting options in our cities and communities.
Brent Toderian, Mobility in Cities is About Space - Proven Powerfully in Pictures!
Source: http://www.planetizen.com/node/68574
Todd Litman, Economically Successful Cities Favor Space-Efficient Modes
Source: http://www.planetizen.com/node/67722
As gas prices rise, the hype ramps up again about electric cars as the "solution" to green mobility in cities. However, Even if all vehicles became electric tomorrow, and even if your local electric energy sources are on the renewable side (which they're likely not - it's just as likely they're on the especially dirty side, like coal), the truth is there's no totally "clean" energy source, no energy without impacts. The biggest challenge in cities when it comes to how we get around, isn't about what is the car you drive or what comes out of the tailpipe of your car.
In fact, when we talk about the questions of mobility and space in the cities, we take it for granted that we must figure out the question by improving our cars. But maybe we should ask ourselves an crucial question first: Is the car an efficient way for urban transportation?
Regardless of the energy source for cars in your community, the biggest mobility challenge in cities is the massive amount of space that cars demand. Space to drive in, and space to park in. Space for cars even when the cars aren't using it - dedicated space for "potential cars." It's staggering really, how much of a city is set aside for cars. Electric cars do nothing to address this space issue.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth at least a thousand words, the following pictures can be very effective to illustrate the spatial efficiency when it comes to connecting mobility and space.
Such as this rather beautiful decades-old poster from London:
Even back in the '60's, big cities like London understood the mobility-space connection, and tried to explain it simply to their citizens. This particular image didn't include cycling in the "urban space continuum" - but more recent ones do. Here are the author’s collection.
There also are some design creativity that's popping up in cities like Buenos Aires and London, where the design of bike parking also makes a point about how many bikes can be parked in the space normally needed for a car.
Some picture emphasized the impressive space saving in cities comes from pedestrians. With this image below, you don't have to imagine how much space it would take if every pedestrian needed as much space as a car.
Sydney Transport had taken a shot at the math on how to move 1000 people into the Central Business District - 1 train, 15 buses, or up to 1000 cars needing 1.37 hectares of CBD parking.
The truth is, as powerful as these images are in making the point, they're not really accurate. The space difference shown only reflects when vehicles aren't moving - when they're parked. When vehicles are moving, they take up much more space. The faster they move, the more separation distance and space between vehicles is needed. So these images are actually significantly understating the point.
A few studies have quantified the amount of space required by various modes. A study by professors Eric Bruun and Vukan Vuchic developed a way to measure the total space required by each mode, measured in square-meter-minutes (square meters of road and parking space times the number of minutes occupied), as illustrated by the following graph. Because of their size and speed (faster vehicles require more road space), automobiles require far more total space than other modes.
There are more detailed comparison of the space requirements of different ways of getting around, from Bill Gehling. Note that walking is so infrastructure (and cost)-efficient, it doesn't even show up on the graph. Note also the small per-person space needs of trains, even when only half full. And a Colombian transportation planner in Bogotá’s math suggested that mobility by car takes 20 times more space per person within cities than tram-ways, and 90 times more space per person than subways/metros.
Cities are places where many people and activities locate close together, which maximizes accessibility, that is, it reduces the cost to people and businesses of reaching goods, services and activities. Space is always constrained in cities. As a result, cities benefit economically and become more livable by favoring space-efficient modes (walking, cycling, ridesharing and public transit) over space intensive modes (low-occupant automobile travel).
This was illustrated by a new study, by a Canadian bicycle advocacy organization, the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition. It summarizes the results of a survey concerning how business customers travel downtown. Using sidewalk interviews they found that 31% walked, 26% took public transit, 23% arrived by automobile, and 17% cycled to downtown that day. Contrary to common perception, automobile customers are often a minority in urban commercial centers. When asked about their expenditures, 74% of walkers, 68% of cyclists, 67% of bus riders and only 65% of motorists reported spending more than $100 downtown during a typical month. A survey of business managers indicates that they tend to underestimate the portion of their customers who walk, bicycle and use public transit.
There are good reasons to conclude that policies which support walking, cycling and public transit support local economic development. Economic impact studies indicate that money spent on vehicles and fuel generates fewer regional jobs and local business activity than expenditures on other goods, particularly restaurant meals, entertainment and professional services provided by downtowns and local commercial districts. As a result, transportation policies that allow households to save on vehicle fuel and purchases, and so leave residents with more money to spend on local goods, tend to increase local business activity and employment.
Urban transportation planning often involves trade-offs between modes, such as reducing traffic speeds, and converting parking lanes to bus and bike lanes, or reducing parking supply. Such projects often face opposition based on the assumption that they are economically harmful. These studies can help justify walking, cycling and public transit improvements as part of a community's economic development strategy.
The car is not an efficient way for urban transportation spatially or economically. Compared with automobile, walking, biking and public transit are more space-saving. They are also money savers, reducers of a city's carbon footprint, facilitators of more healthy, economically successful cities, and so on. They make cities work better.
This is not to say that urban commercial centers should forbid cars, but it does suggest that when making trade-offs between different forms of access, cities will benefit overall by favoring walking, cycling and public transit.
Mobility and better city-making is about using our urban space more intelligently. The real solutions for problems of space and mobility in cities are better plans for urban densities, use-mixes and patterns, and personal choices, which means efforts like making walking, biking and public transit truly inviting options in our cities and communities.