Skip to main content

Should we (can we?) make our cars dispensible?

It's interesting to see the ideal of universal car ownership gradually eroding.

Don't believe me? There have been several books in recent years along the lines of "Divorce your car!" and "How to live well without a car". The rise of car-sharing has prompted some to see it as a potential alternative to car ownership. The car-free housing movement seems to be gathering pace and entering the mainstream of real estate development in certain places. Meanwhile, Shoupista parking policy reformists are increasingly questioning parking entitlements, including (gasp!) residential parking entitlements. Even William Ford Jr. of Ford Motor Company seems willing to contemplate a future in which cars provide a service rather than being primarily a product.

So more and more people seem to be asking the question, 'are our cars dispensable' or 'could we make our cars more dispensable?' But maybe a more positive way to ask the same question is, 'can we make our relationships with cars more "provisional"?'


I've been thinking hard about these (and related) issues for a couple of years now, and one of the results is a draft paper which I presented at the TDM2008 symposium in July. The draft paper is here. And the poster presentation is here.

Here is the abstract, which should give you the flavor of my arguments:
CAR POSSESSION AS PROBLEMATIC FOR URBAN TRAVEL MARKETS

The way cars are possessed has not had the close attention it deserves. The primary way of gaining access to cars has been assumed to be via owning one. Possession has thus been taken for granted, preventing us from seeing it as possibly problematic.

However, the link between car use and car possession is eroding, in both practice and in theory. High mobility had been widely assumed to require a car but it has recently become possible to envisage excellent mobility through an integrated package of services and modes, including convenient access to cars, without needing to possess one. This reveals possession (and its sharp contrast with being car-free) as a source of ‘rigidities’ that inhibit active choice making in travel.

Previous work is drawn upon in order to explain the main sources of these possession-related rigidities, which are grouped into two categories: reversible effects (‘stickiness’) and difficult-to-reverse effects (‘invasiveness’).

The paper thus builds a case for seeing car possession, the way it works, and its contrast with non-possession, as problematic for travel markets and for TDM policy. Possession-related effects are shown to be more wide-ranging and interesting than is generally appreciated.

Cars themselves are not seen as the problem so much as the ways in which we possess them. This focus on possession-related rigidities opens a possible policy agenda, focused on reducing such rigidities (or, equivalently, making our relationships with cars more ‘provisional’).

There has been a widespread taboo against devoting policy attention to car ownership but the policy possibilities here address both sides of the car possession divide and go well beyond merely constraining possession.

This diagram (from the TDM2008 poster) illustrates possible policy implications of the arguments in the paper (these need work).


If this has whet your appetite on this topic, a number of my previous blog posts relate to these issues and also link to other people who are thinking along these lines:
Furthermore, a number of elements of what Eric Britton calls the 'New Mobility Agenda' resonate with these arguments.

Comments

  1. Thanks a lot for the article Paul, it is really informative. I still have a doubt how to convince people in the developing cities where they consider car as a symbol of prestige.

    From my view I think the need for alternative modes for the same destination should be provided and as you state, the quality of these alternative has to be better than those for the car users.

    you comments are valuable as usual
    cheers
    sunny

    ReplyDelete
  2. Prestige in owning a vehicle (or a certain kind of vehicle) is a big issue everywhere, I agree.

    But notice that in the right context, at least some rich people (eg in inner Zurich or central Paris or Hong Kong or Manhattan) sometimes decide that the pretigious (or at least the smart) thing is not to have a car with all its inner-urban hassles. Instead many rent one when they want one.

    So I think there is hope of creating conditions in which large numbers of people treat cars as a service rather than as a product. But I am not saying it will be easy!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Singapore Urban Transport: The Warts-and-All Story

Singapore's National Day is this week (9 August). So I decided to share Singapore's urban transport story - or my slightly  unusual take on it .  It is   a unique city in various ways but its urban transport policies are well worth your attention even if you don't live in Singapore. This is a warts-and-all version of the story, and it is my own view, not any kind of official one. It's also a little wonkish in parts. [Hi all you policy wonks!] But I hope to keep your interest with some surprising twists, such as: Why was the bus-only public transport system in an awful state by the early 1970s? If the buses were awful in early 1974, how was Singapore able to impose drastic increases to the cost of motoring in 1975? You will have guessed that the buses must have been drastically improved in 1974/75. But how was that achieved? Singapore urban transport enjoyed success through the 1980s and 1990s but its core social bargain (cars for the rich; decent but bas

Shaping public transport

If you care about promoting public transport, you need to understand the key choices about organising and regulating it. These choices shape the industry and they really matter. This is NOT just about privatisation versus government operation. It is more interesting than that. This edition of Reinventing Transport shares the key alternatives and gives a sense of what's at stake. The focus is buses but most of the ideas also apply more widely. Click here to learn how to subscribe to the podcast. You can either read the article below or listen to the podcast episode  (use a podcast app or the player at the beginning of this article or click HERE ) . This is just the basics, not a deep dive. If you want more gory details, then follow the links right at the end of the article. It may seem dull but bus regulation is important! [1:29] The regulatory framework sets how decisions get made and who makes those choices. It makes a huge difference for things you care about

Jakarta's transport is daunting not hopeless

Jakarta's urban transport problems are epic and this metropolis of 24 million people seems an unlikely place to look for lessons, except maybe cautionary ones. But Yoga Adiwinarto, ITDP’s Country Director for Indonesia, wants you to know there is progress. In fact, there are lessons for other large cities in middle-income countries to learn from. Yoga and I discussed urban transport in Jakarta for Reinventing Transport episode #14.  Click here to learn how to subscribe to this podcast. Here are highlights of our conversation  I asked Yoga to 'paint a picture' of Jakarta, urban transport challenges and what it feels like to move around the city. [1:45] The challenges are huge but there have been improvements, to public transport for example. [6:58] The TransJakarta BRT started well in 2004, faced a very rough patch about five years later (a series of buses even caught fire!). [8:30] Among many other things, ITDP Indonesia has been helping Jakarta improve pe