Essential reading .. Peak cars: Is our addiction ending?

[ozbob]

Peak cars: Is our addiction ending?

--> http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/peak-cars-our-addiction-ending

Peak cars: Is our addiction ending?

    Published 6:50 AM, 20 May 2011

In the 1980's it was dubbed "automobile dependency" – a term coined by Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy to describe the largely Western phenomenon of building cities around cars and thus cultivating a kind of addiction to them. But according to a new paper by Professors Newman and Kenworthy – part of the team at WA's Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute – the West's car addiction could be meeting its demise; a relatively recent and unexpected phenomenon the professors are dubbing "peak car use."

"It's a bit like peak oil," Professor Newman told Robyn Williams on ABC Radio's The Science Show recently. "We are not noticing the big impacts yet but we have gone over the top. And that peak in car use per capita began in 2004 across the world. ...And US cities are now showing absolute declines in many cases, but the per capita peak happened in 2004 in Australian cities as well." In Sydney, Newman says, car use has not increased for five years.

But it's not that the car is disappearing, says Newman, it's more that it is "reaching its limits" in the major cities of the world. "That's the key message," Newman told Williams: "In many ways that is what is happening in these big megacities, they are grinding to a halt in their traffic. ...And most ...are now saying we've got to do something different."

More click here!

[ozbob]

Sent to all outlets:

23 May 2011

Peak cars

Greetings,

I am of the view that in Brisbane CBD and the inner suburbs we don't need any more roads.  The Clem7 tunnel is a spectacular failure, and in the context of falling car use (Peak car see below) the money slotted for more expensive road projects should be redirected to urgent rail projects including CRR and upgrading the existing rail network.  In the state budget more funds should be given to TransLink for direct funding for high frequency rail services on our underutilised network.  Funds also to be allocated for feasibility studies in re-establishing interurban rail services to Gatton and Helidon, with integrated rail bus to and from Toowoomba.  Likewise rail services to Maryborough.  More funding for continued bicycle/pedestrian path expansion, and supporting infrastructure at key stations and destinations.

Outside the SE corner obviously roads and significant upgrades are needed.  But more balance is required to ensure that long haul rail is properly supported as it will be needed as peak oil takes it toll.

More funding to support the continued expansion of public and active transport in the major regional centres.

These are the sensible transport priorities for a sustainable future.  More of the car centric congestion chaos is terminal. There is a transport crisis coming and many are just in denial.

Best wishes
Robert

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org

==========================

Peak cars: Is our addiction ending?

--> http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/peak-cars-our-addiction-ending

Peak cars: Is our addiction ending?

   Published 6:50 AM, 20 May 2011

In the 1980's it was dubbed "automobile dependency" – a term coined by Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy to describe the largely Western phenomenon of building cities around cars and thus cultivating a kind of addiction to them. But according to a new paper by Professors Newman and Kenworthy – part of the team at WA's Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute – the West's car addiction could be meeting its demise; a relatively recent and unexpected phenomenon the professors are dubbing "peak car use."

"It's a bit like peak oil," Professor Newman told Robyn Williams on ABC Radio's The Science Show recently. "We are not noticing the big impacts yet but we have gone over the top. And that peak in car use per capita began in 2004 across the world. ...And US cities are now showing absolute declines in many cases, but the per capita peak happened in 2004 in Australian cities as well." In Sydney, Newman says, car use has not increased for five years.

But it's not that the car is disappearing, says Newman, it's more that it is "reaching its limits" in the major cities of the world. "That's the key message," Newman told Williams: "In many ways that is what is happening in these big megacities, they are grinding to a halt in their traffic. ...And most ...are now saying we've got to do something different."

More click here!

[ozbob]

The Science Show

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3206293.htm

Peak oil? Now it's peak cars

Australian and world peak car use per capita was in 2004 and since has shown a slow decline. It marks an end to car dependence. Teenage car use has dropped markedly. Figures suggest a big cultural shift as well as structural change within cities. Some very large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have made it almost impossible to buy a new car. Car transport has reached a limit. Shanghai built a metro system in 10 years, which covers 80% of the city and carries 8 million passengers each day. Metros are being built in 82 Chinese cities and 14 Indian cities. Peter Newman compares the cost of constructing roads and railways and says both cost about $50million per kilometre. But rail carries 8-20 times the passengers carried by road. With the price of gasoline heading north, people are moving back into cities and not wanting to be as dependant on cars as they were.

[#Metro]

I don't know about 50 million per kilometre, might be closer to $150 to $200 per km, but roads also might cost more over here as well so the relative difference might not be too different.
SPEED though is an issue, and this comes back to stop spacing.

[Jonno]

But when you add the indirect costs and ongoing cost of maintaing an ever growing demand for road space the road business case collapses whist the rail business case goes into benefit over-drive!!!

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Believe it or not, we're driving less than ever

Believe it or not, we're driving less than ever
Stephen Cauchi
July 10, 2011

CITY driving in Australia and other developed countries peaked in 2004 and has been declining since.

A paper by Curtin University academics Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, Peak Car Use: Understanding the Demise of Automobile Dependence, cites soaring oil prices, traffic congestion, a preference for inner-city living, public transport growth, an ageing population, and more crowded cities for pushing people away from cars. ''Peak car use is a major historical discontinuity that was largely unpredicted by most urban professionals and academics,'' write the authors.

''The peak car use phenomenon suggests we may now be witnessing the demise of automobile dependence in cities ... the phenomenon of peak car use appears to have set in to the cities of the developed world.''

Peak car use - which is measured as vehicle kilometres travelled per capita - had occurred in all major Australian cities in 2004 in line with the world trend, the authors noted. In 2004, Melbourne's car use peaked at 12,410 passenger kilometres per capita. In 2009, that had dropped to 11,050.

Professor Newman told The Sunday Age that rising oil prices, traffic congestion and a growing taste for inner-city living were the main factors.

''$US80 a barrel [for oil] was very fundamental and we crossed that point in 2004 and it's been going up ever since,'' he said.

''The fuel price in the next 10 years is going to be a very strong driver. The International Energy Agency has just concluded that you need to find another four Saudi Arabias otherwise the price will continue to rise. They're not going to do that.''

He said that cars powered by electricity or hydrogen could reverse the trend of peak car use, but ''they've been very slow coming in''.

Building more freeways to reduce traffic congestion would not work, said Professor Newman.

''They don't make sense economically and they fill so quickly ... you can't even build them in America any more. The last new freeway in Los Angeles was 25 years ago, the last big freeway to be built in any US city was the Katy in Houston and it cost a billion US dollars a mile.

''They're financially and politically exhausted. They're not possible to build any more.''

Funding freeways privately will not work either, according to the paper: ''Many recent toll roads in Australia have gone bankrupt because numbers of cars have just not materialised in the way the models predicted.''

The third biggest factor mitigating against car use, said Professor Newman, was the ''growing culture of urbanism among the young''.

''It's particularly evident among young Americans and young Australians. They actively prefer using public transport because you can wire up your devices - your iPod, computer, phone - in a way that you can't do when you're driving. You're free and flexible if you're using public transport but you're not free and flexible if you're in a car.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/believe-it-or-not-were-driving-less-than-ever-20110709-1h7zq.html#ixzz1Rftndm8f

[ozbob]

From ABC Environment click here!

The cars that didn't eat Paris

The cars that didn't eat Paris
By Sara Phillips
ABC Environment | 27 Jul 2011
Trams and pedestrians in summer

It seems everything is peaking these days. You've heard of peak oil - the point at which our global oil extraction starts falling. There's also discussion of peak food, peak wood, peak phosphorous, peak water and peak rare earths.

Now here's a new one for you: peak cars.

Australians Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy write in the latest issue of World Transport Policy and Practice that we have hit the point of maximum car use. (pdf)

Since the 1960s, they say, the increase in the amount of kilometres travelled in a car per person each year (vehicle kilometres per capita or Vkt) has slowed each decade. In the decade to 2005, in some European cities the use of cars actually went backwards.

The trend is not isolated to the urbanised and urbane European cities. Showing data from US and Australian cities, they demonstrate that this is a widespread phenomenon.

In Australia, car use per capita peaked in 2004. Melburnians were the most motorised with just under 12,500 km travelled in a car per person. Brisbanites used their car the least at about 10,500 km per person. But since 2004, all cities have eased up on their car use.

Perth people (Perthlings?) have dropped their car use the most; down more than 500 Vkt per person in 2008 compared with 2004.

Newman and Kenworthy suggest that there are several factors that have led to this point. The most obvious is the price of petrol, which has skyrocketed in recent years. They also discuss improved public transport plus an ageing population of empty-nesters and younger urban hipsters for whom the inner, rather than outer 'burbs are more attractive.

But an interesting point is something they call the Marchetti Wall.

They write: "Thomas Marchetti was the first to recognise that all cities have a similar average travel time budget of around one hour. This seems to be biologically based in humans - they don't like to take more out of their day than an hour just getting to their work and back home. Thus we have applied this to the technology of city building to show that cities always hit the wall when they are 'one hour wide'."

Back in the day when we all got around town by walking, villages maxed out at about five or eight kilometres wide. Then when we invented trains, towns grew to about 30 km wide. And with the rise of the automobile, our cities expanded to more than 50 km wide.

Right now, Australian cities sprawl for about 70 km in any direction from the CBD. Accordingly we have fast freeways to funnel us quickly to our destinations. Most people travel for no more than an hour in any direction. But with increasing population, the absolute number of cars on our roads is similarly increasing. Cars are holding up the traffic.

They argue that as we hit this Marchetti Wall, public transport and higher density suburbs become more attractive than urban sprawl and driving to work. It becomes a reinforcing cycle, with inner city suburbs growing in appeal as they become increasingly vibrant and well-serviced by public transport.

The implications for our future cities are clear, they say: we need to prepare for higher density living, with increased spending on public transport. Our highways need not be engineered for future growth as car use levels off.

High-density living has interesting implications our our ability to connect with nature, and may see a rise in 'nature deficit disorder'. But from an environmental perspective, fewer cars is a good thing. Cars contribute to climate change, air pollution, oil extraction, and resource use. The land needed for roads and parking is considerable, and, as noted by Newman and Kenworthy, cars facilitate urban sprawl.

Cities shaped by cars are a new thing, relatively speaking. Herr Benz only invented his 'motorwagen' in 1885, 126 years ago; a period which coincided with massive population growth and the movement away from the land because of the industrial revolution. Our cities, therefore, became car-shaped.

But while many American and Australian cities were founded in this period, most European cities were not. Those cities were shaped by walking and horses. Consequently they are best placed to embrace the decline in car use.

It is certainly too early to sign the death certificate of the car. No one can deny the convenience of a car when you want to get from A to B quickly, in comfort, with large objects, or a blancmange. Even with peak oil, air pollution and climate change, electric vehicles hold promise. Developing countries are following close on the heels of the West and snapping up new cars as fast as they can be made. Cars will be with us for the conceivable future.

But just because we've had car-shaped cities for as long as any of us can remember, does not mean this is the only way.

New Yorkers, Londoners and Tokyo residents (Tokyovans?) have very low levels of car ownership relative to the rest of their compatriots, but these cities are some of the most exciting in the world.

Australian cities have only known the car, but as they have started bumping up against limitations to growth, we may have to look to Europe for inspiration.

While the car will certainly be part of our lives in the foreseeable future, if Newman and Kenworthy are right, its glory days may be numbered. Our way of life will need to adapt to keep up with the changing times. Like Europe, the cities of the future will be dominated by trains, trams, bicycles and walking paths.

It's either that, or a new technology will arrive to stretch our Marchetti boundaries once again.

[ozbob]

612 ABC Brisbane Weekends with Warren Boland

The beginning of the end of the car

click --> here!

The beginning of the end of the car

Over the past week, the Federal Government published a long-awaited feasibility study into a high-speed rail link down the east coast. A train trip from Brisbane to Sydney could take about three hours and cost a little over $75. Cheaper than the plane and certainly a lot less time than driving in the car - if it happens.

In fact, a recent report suggests that we have hit the point of maximum car use. Just like the concept of peak oil -the point at which our global oil extraction starts falling - the new report talks about "peak cars".

If it is the case that we've reached the peak of our car use, then what does it mean for a whole range of things from public transport to the design of the towns and cities where we live?

This weekend, Warren will be talking to Sara Phillips, the Editor of ABC Environment online. You will be able to listen to Warren's interview right here.