Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
New York City is set to become the first in the US to implement a congestion charge (a form of road pricing). I first wrote about this back in 2018, and then again in 2019, but now it is looking more and more like it may actually happen sometime next year.
I think all urbanists agree that this is an important step in the right direction. But some are now worried that New York isn't going about it in the right way. Here is an excerpt from a recent Vice article by Aaron Gordon:
With all these plans, you could be excused for thinking New York is doing congestion pricing—a potentially transformative policy that would be a first in the nation—right by not only charging drivers to access some of the densest, most valuable land in the world, but also giving them alternatives. Unfortunately, New York isn’t doing that, and in fact looks set to completely screw up congestion pricing so badly it may discredit the policy in a way that makes it harder for other cities to adopt it. Rather than approaching it as a lynchpin to a wide-ranging effort to reshape Manhattan’s relationship to the private car, congestion pricing has become solely about money—specifically, paying off enough of the credit-card bill New York has run up with a variety of ill-conceived and poorly-executed projects that it can get more credit cards.
You can rightly say that this is decades in the making. Mayor Bloomberg first proposed the idea back in 2007, and I'm sure there were others before him with a similar idea.
So Gordon raises a valid point: It's important that NYC gets this right. Otherwise, it's going to be that much more difficult for other North American cities to even think about implementing road pricing.
For the full Vice article, click here.
Last week the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced a number of initiatives designed to support drivers. The slogan is "slamming the brakes on anti-motorist measures" and you can find more information about it, over here.
Naturally this is sparking the usual debate about driving vs. all the other forms of mobility. But it also seems to be part of some sort of broader political strategy intended to distance his party from things like environmental sustainability, net zero targets, and 15-minute city design.
If you're looking for a way to process the above announcement, this recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch is an excellent place to start. Firstly, the UK (outside of London) is generally poorly served by public transport. This is an important thing to know. By the below measure -- percentage of large cities that have trams, a metro, or urban light rail -- it is even worse than the US:
In fact, one way to think about and measure mobility in the UK is to think in terms of the following geographic categories: there's US cities, European cities (including London), and then there's the rest of the UK. In the case of US cities, they have very clearly optimized around road infrastructure. Meaning, the vast majority of people don't take transit to work, but the area (km2) you can cover by car (in 30 mins) is high.
Look at Houston and Dallas on the left side of this graph:
On the other hand, European cities (again, including London) have optimized in the opposite direction. A lot more people walk, cycle, and take transit to work. In the case of cities like London, Paris, Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, and others, the number is greater than 60%! However, they're sucky places to drive, as I learned this past summer. The area you can cover by car within 30 mins, is relatively low (bottom right of the above graph).
The challenge for British cities (excluding London), is that they seem to be right in the middle (burgundy dots above). Poor public transport (low percentage of trips to work). And poor road infrastructure (limited area accessible by car within 30 mins). So it is perhaps no surprise that Sunak is honing in on this issue. London is not representative of Britain. And based on the above data, the majority of people living in British cities are almost certainly mobility frustrated.
Of course, to correct this issue you have two options. You can move toward the left (in the above chart) and optimize for road infrastructure. Or you can move to the right and optimize for public transport and other forms of mobility. Based on last week's announcement, Sunak has chosen the left.
Charts: FT
New York City is set to become the first in the US to implement a congestion charge (a form of road pricing). I first wrote about this back in 2018, and then again in 2019, but now it is looking more and more like it may actually happen sometime next year.
I think all urbanists agree that this is an important step in the right direction. But some are now worried that New York isn't going about it in the right way. Here is an excerpt from a recent Vice article by Aaron Gordon:
With all these plans, you could be excused for thinking New York is doing congestion pricing—a potentially transformative policy that would be a first in the nation—right by not only charging drivers to access some of the densest, most valuable land in the world, but also giving them alternatives. Unfortunately, New York isn’t doing that, and in fact looks set to completely screw up congestion pricing so badly it may discredit the policy in a way that makes it harder for other cities to adopt it. Rather than approaching it as a lynchpin to a wide-ranging effort to reshape Manhattan’s relationship to the private car, congestion pricing has become solely about money—specifically, paying off enough of the credit-card bill New York has run up with a variety of ill-conceived and poorly-executed projects that it can get more credit cards.
You can rightly say that this is decades in the making. Mayor Bloomberg first proposed the idea back in 2007, and I'm sure there were others before him with a similar idea.
So Gordon raises a valid point: It's important that NYC gets this right. Otherwise, it's going to be that much more difficult for other North American cities to even think about implementing road pricing.
For the full Vice article, click here.
Here is an argument that Philadelphia-based Diana Lind recently made on her blog, The New Urban Order:
I believe we’re at the beginning of the end of private car ownership in American cities. This idea came from thinking about the next steps when our RAV4 dies in the coming year or so: not only shouldn’t we replace it, but we won’t want to replace it. Right now only about a quarter of Americans do not drive to work, and only 9 percent of Americans do not have access to a car at all. But I think that in the coming decade there’s going to be a ton of potential to convert people living in dense cities and neighborhoods away from private cars.
There are a number of reasons for why she believes this is going to be the case and, to quickly summarize, they are: remote work, declining birth rates, more old people, Uber and other services, and autonomous vehicles. And generally, I would agree that there is a strong case to be made here.
But one thing that she does not explicitly talk about is the relevance of built form in this move away from private car ownership. She does mention "people living in dense cities" (see above), but does this mean that we are to assume density will remain a prerequisite, as it mostly is today?
Urban density dictates so much of how we move around. When I was driving around Paris during the summer, I couldn't wait to return our car and get back on foot. You should have also seen the gymnastics we pulled off to refill the tank. Driving in the city was annoying. Paris is designed for walking, taking the metro and, now, cycling.
On the other hand, when I land in Salt Lake City (Park City), the first thing I do is head to the car rental area. The city is getting better at trying to reorient itself, and there is a tram (Green Line) that runs from the airport through downtown, but it very much remains a driving city. And ideally you want something like a Toyota 4Runner that will take you through snow and up steep pitches.
So while I agree that, directionally, Diana is right, I think the question remains: What does this mean for individual cities and their built environments? In a city like Paris, it is obvious. Private car ownership is highly likely to continue declining. But in a place like Salt Lake City, I think it's going to be much more challenging and take a lot longer.
Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash
Here is an argument that Philadelphia-based Diana Lind recently made on her blog, The New Urban Order:
I believe we’re at the beginning of the end of private car ownership in American cities. This idea came from thinking about the next steps when our RAV4 dies in the coming year or so: not only shouldn’t we replace it, but we won’t want to replace it. Right now only about a quarter of Americans do not drive to work, and only 9 percent of Americans do not have access to a car at all. But I think that in the coming decade there’s going to be a ton of potential to convert people living in dense cities and neighborhoods away from private cars.
There are a number of reasons for why she believes this is going to be the case and, to quickly summarize, they are: remote work, declining birth rates, more old people, Uber and other services, and autonomous vehicles. And generally, I would agree that there is a strong case to be made here.
But one thing that she does not explicitly talk about is the relevance of built form in this move away from private car ownership. She does mention "people living in dense cities" (see above), but does this mean that we are to assume density will remain a prerequisite, as it mostly is today?
Urban density dictates so much of how we move around. When I was driving around Paris during the summer, I couldn't wait to return our car and get back on foot. You should have also seen the gymnastics we pulled off to refill the tank. Driving in the city was annoying. Paris is designed for walking, taking the metro and, now, cycling.
On the other hand, when I land in Salt Lake City (Park City), the first thing I do is head to the car rental area. The city is getting better at trying to reorient itself, and there is a tram (Green Line) that runs from the airport through downtown, but it very much remains a driving city. And ideally you want something like a Toyota 4Runner that will take you through snow and up steep pitches.
So while I agree that, directionally, Diana is right, I think the question remains: What does this mean for individual cities and their built environments? In a city like Paris, it is obvious. Private car ownership is highly likely to continue declining. But in a place like Salt Lake City, I think it's going to be much more challenging and take a lot longer.
Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash
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