A very interesting New Scientist article asks the question of whether we’ve reached “peak car”, whether we’re shifting towards less car use per person in the future – at least in developed world countries.
IS THE west falling out of love with the car? For environmentalists it seems an impossible dream, but it is happening. While baby boomers and those with young families may stick with four wheels, a combination of our ageing societies and a new zeitgeist among the young seems to be breaking our 20th-century car addiction. Somewhere along the road, we reached “peak car” and are now cruising down the other side.
Peak car takes several forms. Sales of new cars have almost halved in the US, down from nearly 11 million in 1985 to about 5.5 million in 2009. We shouldn’t take much notice of that, though. Cars last longer these days, and sales go up and down with the economy. But we have hit peak car ownership, too. And, more to the point, peak per-capita travel.
Some interesting numbers from Japan and western Europe show that this isn’t just an issue of car sales, but of actual travel amounts per person:
Japan peaked in the 1990s. They talk there of “demotorisation”. The west had its tipping point in 2004. That year the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Sweden all saw the start of a decline in the number of kilometres the average person travelled in a car that continues today. In Australia, car travel peaked in every city in 2004 and has been falling since (World Transport Policy and Practice, vol 17, p 31). It is a similar picture in the UK, where per-capita car travel is down 5 per cent since 2004.
You can kind of see similar trends in New Zealand over the past five years – with traffic volumes remaining pretty steady on our state highway system: 
The straight lines show the expected traffic volumes if the trends of the early 2000s had continued over the past five years – but as you can see for both heavy vehicle and general traffic volumes, they are well below this level.
The article explores reasons behind the flattening of travel demand internationally over the past five years:
What could be driving us off the road? Fuel costs and rising insurance premiums may be a factor. And urban gridlock, combined with an absence of parking places and congestion charging, makes the car a dumb way to move around in cities where there are public transport alternatives.
In the US, however, the decline of the car is most dramatic not in the gridlocked city centres but in the car-dependent suburbs. In sprawling cities like Atlanta and Houston where the automobile is king, driving is down by more than 10 per cent…
…Besides work habits, leisure lifestyles are also changing. The biggest fall in car use in the US is among people under 35. The fraction of American 17-year-olds with a driver’s licence has fallen from about three-quarters to about half since 1998. Twenty-somethings have recently gone from driving more than the average to driving less.
Social scientists detect a new “culture of urbanism”. The stylish way to live these days is in inner-city apartments. The suburbs suck. Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist at the University of Toronto in Canada, points out that the young shop online, telecommute, live in walkable city neighbourhoods near public transport and rely more on social media and less on face-to-face visiting. Given those changes, they can think of better ways to spend their money than buying a car.
Phil Goodwin at the University of the West of England in Bristol says the same applies to the UK, where young people are the most prominent in dropping out of the great car society. Maurie Cohen, an environmental scientist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, says “Gen Y-ers are quite cool to the automobile.” The modern James Dean is a rebel without a car.
It would be particularly interesting if the broader land-use changes and cultural shift was particularly responsible for ‘peak car’. At least in New Zealand, my personal feeling is that higher fuel prices are a bit more likely to be responsible – and in Auckland you can probably add in a much improved public transport system which is offering a realistic alternative to driving for the first time in decades.
The article finishes off with some good advice:
Planners need to take note. And, if they have any sense, they will start to reinforce these trends with improved public transport, an end to urban sprawl and more investment in inner cities.
Some think car use will revive if and when economies recover. But it looks like something more profound is going on. Florida calls it a “great reset” in society that will have profound consequences – not least for the environment. Even our most treasured consumer aspirations can have a peak. Enough can be enough.
Meanwhile, our transport policies continue to do the exact opposite.
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I do think that phones and the net are making a large difference. Among my sister’s cohort (and to an extent, in mine), they’re talking online, where they would have had to see each other in person ten years ago. At least, that’s how it seems. I got my learners when I was 15, and at 16 was driving everywhere. A few high-schoolers seem to have licenses, but less than I would have expected.
Reductions in average per km distance travelled is unsurprising, as the widening of car ownership and increased prosperity means that the threshold for car ownership related to usage will have lowered. Many have cars for occasional trips, and people in Europe and the US are driving less for long leisure trips because of the rise of low cost airlines and the resulting dramatic cut in air fares. The economics of flying for weekend breaks compared to driving have improved in Europe, and in the US long car trips are less popular, especially for small families.
Demographics are the other point, the baby boomers are now in the 50s and 60s, and their kids have left home, so the economics of packing 4 people in a car for a holiday have gone, and a couple might rather go by air than by car. The children of the baby boomers are pushing their way through the secondary/tertiary sector and cars remain more optional in an economic climate of greater uncertainty.
Japan can be explained by the 15 years of stagnation, despite embracing Keynesianism fiscal pump priming year after year. Japan’s demographics are more dramatic than the west with simply low number of young people compared to the retired and elderly who are less interested in driving and less able.
New Scientist ignores demographics, which is rather poor. Fuel prices will have had an impact, but the reduction in distance travelled by the young suggests price and economic conditions are particularly significant, but also a rise in willingness to cycle, walk and use public transport. However, technology is pretty significant in all of it.
20 years ago the only way you could communicate besides face to face instantly for most people was by landline phone. Mobile phones were very expensive and large, the internet wasn’t a public utility. Landline calls were relatively expensive (NZ excluded) for local communication, and not very convenient. Mobile phones have been revolutionary as has the internet, so people are socialising and communicating remotely.
I doubt very much if public transport networks have had more than an incremental effect, and congestion pricing likewise (given it is in a handful of cities).
The article does talk about demographics – I just didn’t quote that bit.
It may also help to distinguish car ownership from car use. In Europe there are high rates of car ownership but people use their cars less because there is excellent public transport. In Britain the rate of car ownership is a lot less but cars are used more. In New Zealand the rates of both ownership and use are high. What we may be seeing is less use of the car for the journey to work, but the same level of car use for journeys for which using public transport would not be that feasible. Thots?
Also interested to see the way that HCV traffic grew by a lot more than car traffic relative to 1989.
As I get older, it is nice to know I can still be ahead of the curve 😉
“Also interested to see the way that HCV traffic grew by a lot more than car traffic relative to 1989.”
One factor in that would be the collapse of Tranz Rail following the removal of cabotage on coastal shipping in 1996, which killed off what had been by far the most profitable part of rail’s business. Certainly that’s when the HCV trend line starts to part significantly from that for general traffic volumes, before finding a new equilibrium or being impacted by recession in the mid-2000s.
A thought occurs. We’re being sold PuFord because it’s unacceptable to have a 4 lane motorway come to an end in a field. We’re also being sold Waterview becuase it is unacceptable to have a motorway come to an end in the middle of our biggest city. Where does the minister think a good place to end a motorway is?
When there’s a motorway to every door in the country.