Annals of Motordom – 39
An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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WHY DOES MEXICO CITY WANT MORE CARS?
From thisbigcity:
Last year, IBM announced its Commuter Pain Index. Only Beijing tied Mexico City as the city where commuters suffer the most. Both cities got 99 out of 100 pain points. …
The city government is downright encouraging car use with its most prominent policies, … Car ownership in the city has increased in the last ten years, from 38 per cent of homes owning cars in 2000 to 46 per cent in 2010. Still, the city is repealing the car ownership tax, which, apart from discouraging the sale of cars, funds public transportation.
The city government is also undertaking construction of urban highways. …. There is also an effort to build more parking spaces in the city, which will make car use easier by providing accessible places to park.
So what are the decision-makers thinking? Same question in China – and most developing countries. Surely they’re way past the point where they have any reasonable expectation of building their way out of congestion; perhaps they only want to lessen the worst of the impacts. That’s a politically defensible position. But then why reverse policies, cut taxes and spend yet more money to consciously worsen the problem – guaranteeing that the capital projects meant to address congestion are doomed to fail?
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CO-OPERATING OR CO-OPTING?
From the New York Times:
Via Zipcar, Ford Seeks Young Fans
It wasn’t long ago that car-sharing services like Zipcar were perceived as a threat to the sales volumes of traditional automakers. But the Ford Motor Company is taking the view that drivers who rent from Zipcar by the hour just might be potential customers down the road.
Ford and Zipcar are expected on Wednesday to announce an unusual partnership in which the Detroit automaker will supply its vehicles to Zipcar locations on 250 college and university campuses in the United States. …
The impetus for the new partnership began two years ago at a transportation forum when William Clay Ford Jr., Ford’s executive chairman, met Scott Griffith, Zipcar’s chairman and chief executive.
In an interview, Mr. Ford said he had become interested in car-sharing networks as part of the long-term answer of how congested cities could solve transportation issues without simply adding more vehicles. …
Mr. Ford said that Zipcar offered an opportunity for the automaker to reach a new demographic of younger, college-age drivers who otherwise might not try a Ford product.
“We are looking at the future of transportation more holistically,” he said. “We shouldn’t be threatened by these different business models. We should embrace them.”
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MOTORIST SOCIALISM
The Urban Country is trying to be provocative. Let’s help:
Whether they like it or not, most motorists are socialists. …
From subsidies given to oil companies to produce cheap oil, to government bailouts/ownership of auto manufacturers, to road construction and maintenance on streets that cost nothing to use, to highly subsidized parking spaces, to government health care costs associated with pollution from automobiles, to the detrimental health that results from sedentary lifestyle that cars promote, to the vast government policing forces required to enforce our streets: it is undeniable that driving places enormous costs on our society, and this cost is highly subsidized by our government.
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I think developing countries have a strong cultural drive to increase auto dependency. They typically associate it with economic prosperity in the developed world. The car is also associated with personal freedom, hence auto dependency in urban planning results.
BTW, these comments are not indicative of a personal belief in the car being associated with economic prosperity or personal freedom – it’s a perception that still permeates our culture, so it isn’t surprising that it would be replicated in developing countries.