Follow up to The Big Debate on banning cars in Brighton city centre

A few further thoughts on the Big Debate about whether cars should be banned from Brighton city centre.


A car “ban” is rarely total
“Banning cars” normally means that the city centre is accessible by automobile only to residents, taxis, police, service vehicles, and delivery vehicles.


Many great cities have implemented a ban

Cities that have banned access, as described above, include: Turin, Vienna, Salzburg, Ghent, Dubrovnik, Copenhagen, Munich, Stuttgart, Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, Basel, Quebec City, New York Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square, Adelaide.


 

Photo shows one entrance to the Limited Traffic Area (ZTL) in Turin – home of the Italian car industry (bikes are allowed).

Active Travellers spend more
The data increasingly shows that pedestrians and cyclists out-spend car borne shoppers. The most recent collected source is independent research commissioned by Living Streets, published here.

Key findings from that research:

• Making places better for walking can boost footfall and trading by up to 40%

• Good urban design can raise retail rents by up to 20%

• International and UK studies have shown that pedestrians spend more than people arriving by car. Comparisons of spending by transport mode in Canada and New Zealand revealed that pedestrians spent up to six-times more than people arriving by car. In London town centres in 2011, walkers spent £147 more per month than those travelling by car

• Retailers often overate the importance of the car – a study in Graz, Austria, subsequently repeated in Bristol found that retailers overestimated the number of customers arriving by car by almost 100%

• Landowners and retailers are willing to pay to improve the streetscape in order to attract tenants and customers.

Active travel reduces harms and economic costs
Other economic consequences of increasing walking and cycling include:

• reducing the impact of poor health from inactivity

• cutting the number of casualties through measures such as 20mph defaults and similar measures

• distributional effects from helping people to save money by choosing the cheapest ways to get about: foot and bike.

An interesting item from The Economist last year cites figures from TfL indicating that pedestrians spend an average of £373 ($571) a month, compared with £226 for drivers.
The Economist article concludes, "Ailing high streets and town centres need to win back walkers. Learning from London's incentives would be a start" and goes on to cite the 2004 plan to make London a “walkable” city.

For ‘London’, read ‘Brighton.’

To ban or not ban cars in the city centre – The Big Debate from Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce

Last week, the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce hosted a Big Debate on the subject, 'Business would be better in Brighton if we took cars out of the city centre.' The debate attracted a large audience to the Main Hall at City College Brighton and Hove, where speakers from the panel and from the floor covered a wide range of issues surrounding transport in the city and the effect on businesses.

Chaired by journalist and media coach Steve Bustin, the debate kicked off with four ‘points of view,’ contributed by Anthony Probert of BioRegional; Anne Martin, general manager of Brighton Pier; Martin Williams of Mayo Wynne Baxter; and Chris Todd of Brighton and Hove Friends of the Earth. I was invited along to give a Living Streets perspective.

What was interesting was that, after the debate, the vote was finely balanced between the ‘ban cars’ vs the ‘don’t ban cars’ factions. The evidence that more cars don’t equal more prosperity seems to be having an effect.  Equally fascinating was the result of the final vote on the question “Do you think it’s essential to own a car in Brighton and Hove?” Not a single person said yes.

Comprehensive coverage of the debate in the Argus, here.