Reinventing Transport

Could we end the era of mass car ownership without a huge fight ("they're coming to take our cars!") and without draconian policies?  That's the focus of this article and podcast episode (Reinventing Transport #11). It is based on an essay I wrote in 2011 (but unfortunately never published). I speculated about a future dominated by "shared" modes of transport and with much less personal possession of motor vehicles. I was overly optimistic in places and likely wrong on various points. But I hope I was wrong in thought-provoking ways. I think this is still relevant 8 years later to ideas like Mobility as a Service and initiatives such as the " Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities " and the New Urban Mobility (NUMO) alliance . But you be the judge. This edition is also a tribute to Chris Bradshaw.  Chris Bradshaw was the person who asked me to write the essay on ending mass car ownership. It was for a journal special edition he w...

Can you help me make this analogy more useful? A household owning a car is like a tiny business hiring a jack-of-all-trades (but master of none ...). Your mobility needs during the course of a whole year can be likened to the skills and labour needs of a new business contemplating its first employee. Having a car gives you a tool that handles most of your mobility needs. It is like hiring a full-time staffer who is a 'jack-of-all trades'. He or she is versatile but not especially skilled or quick at any particular task. There are significant fixed costs too. You have to pay him or her about the same in both busy times and slow periods. In both cases there is an alternative.  A family can refrain from getting a car and rely instead on the various alternatives. That's like the small business putting off that first full-time employee and deciding instead to engage a series of contractors to do tasks that the owner-founder can no longer handle, as and when they ar...

What competition do cars have in your city? I don't mean competition between Toyota, Ford or Hyundai. I don't even mean competition between cars and public transport for this morning's work trips. I am talking about competition between a car-owning lifestyle and a set of alternatives that add up to a whole lifestyle, creating a complete 'mobility package' attractive enough to make car ownership feel optional. In places like Manhattan or Hong Kong or the inner cities of Zurich, Paris, Tokyo or London a lifestyle without your own car is already an attractive option even for wealthy people.   But could we extend the range of places where not having a car is an excellent lifestyle choice? Can we make car use more provisional and less locked-in to our liefstyles and our urban systems? How? Here is a presentation I gave last year which tackles some of these issues in a non-technical way. Under-appreciated and neglected urban transport policy opportunities (and ref...

Recent posts by Robin Chase at Network Musings and Dave at Carsharing.US caught my attention for their expansive vision of car-sharing and its reach. Robin has a broad vision on sharing. It is a theme explored throughout her blog. In a recent post on innovation in transport policy, one of her key suggestions is to: Allow owners of private vehicles to accept money in exchange for renting out their own vehicle, driving other people in it, or accepting money from people ride-sharing. We need to recognize that sharing cars and maximizing the number of people using each vehicle and getting mobility satisfaction out of each car is vastly preferred over the current single owner status quo. Dave at Carsharing.US shows that part of Robin's agenda is already happening - under the name 'Peer-to-peer carsharing and car rental'. His whole post is worth reading but here are a few excerpts: What is peer to peer carsharing? It's traditional carsharing using privately owned ve...

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...

Carsharing is quietly growing and expanding to ever more cities. But will carsharing ever become mainstream? Dave Brook at the US Carsharing blog recently outlined an optimistic vision for the future of car-sharing . A Flexcar promotion in Seattle in 2007 (Flexcar is now part of Zipcar). Image by Joe Mabel on Wikimedia Commons. His scenario may not be quite as 'visionary' as Chris Bradshaw's ideas, which I have mentioned before , but is well worth a look. The comments discussion is also enlightening. As you would expect, his focus is on American conditions. Here are some highlights: Carsharing will be in the suburbs , as well, and not just around transit hubs and regional centers where higher density mixed used development can support carsharing. ... Car owners will be able to make their cars available to the carsharing members for a few days at a time and share the revenues with the service. ... Carsharing will team up with public transit agencies, including a new...

Who needs a car? I take statistics like this with a grain of salt, but apparently Japan's population of cars and motorcycles has just followed the human population by declining for the first time since records have been kept. Reports said that the February total was 0.2% lower than a year earlier. With more than 600 per 1000 people, there are still a lot of motor vehicles in Japan. But it is interesting that this news came on the same day that Japan's economy was reported to be growing at a faster-than-expected rate . This reminds me of reports in January that Nissan is worried about the declining Japanese interest in cars. This was put down in part to economic uncertainty and a rapidly ageing population. (here is another comment on that report) Even more interestingly, Japan's young people in particular are apparently less interested in owning cars than recent generations. A survey last year of 1,700 Japanese in their 20s and 30s by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan...

Imagine a future where most of us have easy access to cars whenever we want but few people have a car of their own. Does that sound horrifying or wonderful to you? Chris Bradshaw is an imaginative thinker about urban transport. A retired planner form Ottawa in Canada, he has long been an advocate for pedestrian rights. More recently, he has made car-sharing a passion. Bradshaw's vision for the role of carsharing is ambitious and striking. He envisages a future in which having a car of your own becomes the exception. The normal way to get access to a car would be through what he calls MASC, or 'metered access to shared cars' . This would make car-sharing, taxis and car-rental much more central to urban transport policy making than they are now. [Note: Carsharing enterprises are sometimes called car-clubs or car co-ops but don't confuse carsharing with ride-sharing or car-pooling.] He explains his ideas in a paper entitled, 'How Carsharing Can Reduce the ''D...