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.’

Don’t Expect Driving Rates to Rise Again

So said The Economist in September 2012, as quoted in this article from Streetsblog in Washington DC. Shown above: graphic from The Economist which sets out the decline in driving. Peak car and all that....

Peak Car and Carfree Youth

Some interesting coverage in the Financial Times a couple of weeks back about the decline in the number of young people taking driving tests – down 20% in the past five years due to the economic downturn, high insurance costs and demographic changes which are “beginning to transform a generation’s relationship with cars.” As the FT continues, “data show the number with access to cars has been waning, while those who do have cars appear to be driving fewer miles each week. The decline has been sharper among young men than young women. Young people are also driving less in other developed­ countries, including the US, Germany and Japan.” 


Dr Tobias Kuhnimhof, an academic at the Institute for Mobility Research, the research facility for German carmaker BMW, concluded in a November 2012 paper that there was a “strong indication of profound changes in the travel behaviour among young adults in industrialised countries”.

As the FT says, “Some transport academics note that the trend for young people to drive less has been under way for at least 10 years, suggesting other factors are also at work. An increasing number of young people are living in cities, living with their parents, marrying later and having children later – all of which makes them less likely to drive. Some also speculate that the internet and smartphones have offered young people alternative ways to stay in touch with their friends and family.” 

Research for the RAC carried out by academics at Imperial College London and University College London found that average “car driver mileage” for Londoners aged 16 to 29 fell about 50% between 1996 and 2010 – and about 33% in the rest of the country for those from the same age group. The really interesting thing is what happens as this cohort gets older – will they view owning a car as a financial black hole and a load of hassle, and, as a result, stay carfree?

(There was also a piece on Peak Car in The Economist in 2012 and there’s a quick read on the main issues from consultancy JMP here).

Peak Car in The Economist

Owning a car is so last decade (if not century), increasingly so for young people.…see these interesting articles in the current edition of The Economist. Thanks to Ian and Joanne for the tip-off. Seeing The Back of the The Car and The Road Less Travelled