What Works – Vancouver and the Insatiable Auto (9)
More quotes from my InRoads article:
What will work?
Metering and tolling. Road charging is likely necessary in any event as gas taxes diminish. Anticipated vehicle volumes on new toll bridges and tunnels have vastly overestimated demand, suggesting we might be reaching “peak car use.” Charging for priority use frees up existing space and generates money for alternatives such as transit, which will more effectively help the truly poor who will increasingly be unable to afford cars. ….
Charging for parking. Charging for parking is perhaps the only “TDM” (Transportation Demand Management) measure that has really worked. In the Central Area of Vancouver, we have traffic-calmed neighbourhoods and eliminated vast amounts of free parking. …
More options to buy car trips on a per-trip basis – taxis, car-sharing.
Moving things closer together.
The good news is that there is a huge latent potential to reduce automobile-based trips. If we get even some of those trips off the road, we will have solved a good portion (not all) of the congestion problem – at a very low price. People have considerably more discretion than they believe. Giving up the occasional car trip and finding a substitute can be surprisingly easy to do, and the payoff is big.
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An Animated Argument For Congestion Pricing - from DC Streetsblog:
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More animations and text here.
I would add under What works (or what I think would work): mileage-based automobile insurance, preferably billed monthly or more often.
I think there might be a sector of society that’s being overlooked in the car argument. What about the lower-middle class parents who works 4 jobs to keep their family going and have to have drive to get to their place of employment. Public transportation is so inefficient that they have to use their car. Should we penalize them?
Or what about the hardware store located in the city centre that’s been trying to hang in there for decades from being put out of business, but they lose their battle because the city starts charging for people to park near their store and people go to Walmart instead.
People use cars because its the easiest option, not because they’re lazy or don’t care. Sometimes its the only choice they have. Maybe instead of taking away the car as a choice, and leaving nothing, we instead put all our investment into making public transportation the easiest choice. Then people will feel empowered by choosing to use it themselves. In turn making it a more sustainable societal choice.
I am by no means a car lover and LOVE taking public transportation when its affordable and efficient. But for argument’s sake until that choice is here, I would feel like my freedom to use my built environment is being taken away with some of the measures listed above.
Erin Chantry
http://www.helmofthepublicrealm.com
Erin, I don’t know WHERE the car has been taken away as a choice. Made more expensive (due to gas prices, auto insurance, parking costs, etc.) and made marginally less convenient to use (e.g., two lanes north on the Burrard bridge instead of three), but removed as a choice? You can still go almost anywhere in an automobile, if you want to pay for the privilege — which I think is as it should be, for we have people with mobility issues and taxis and ambulances and fire engines need access.
I lived in Reading, UK where the cost of one parking space at my condo building was £20,000. The price to park you car to shop on the Main Street in the town was sometimes £20 for a few hours. The cost to take the train 30 minutes into London for your job was £4,600 annually. Now convert that into American or Canadian dollars.
The City Council took away our choice to have a car, by making it unaffordable. Train tickets were also unaffordable for my husband’s starter salary and my student loans in Oxford. So therefore, my husband and I essentially felt trapped in our small town. We couldn’t afford to access our built environment, and therefore the freedom to have the ability to choose to use a car was gone. The problem was that there was not an affordable choice put in its place. I battled anxiety and depression as a result of this.
If you check out my blog at http://www.helmofthepublicrealm.com you will see that I share many of the same values of urban design and planning. But I am a realist. People, especially in America, have no other option to freely explore their built environment. Until we can provide them with another affordable, efficient and convenient option, we can not punish them for living their lives. For everyone its not a luxury, its a necessity.
“The cost of one parking space at my condo building was £20,000.”
Please explain what you are suggesting the council did to cause this, given that this is an entirely reasonable cost to construct a parking space in a parkade. This is to purchase outright, yes?
“The price to park you car to shop on the Main Street in the town was sometimes £20 for a few hours.”
I’m seeing £1.50/hour. http://en.parkopedia.co.uk/parking/reading/
“The cost to take the train 30 minutes into London for your job was £4,600 annually.”
This is rather good service to cover 60km so quickly (and frequently! as little as 5 minutes between trains!). Coincidentally, that’s the distance to the end (Mission City) of Vancouver’s single commuter rail line, with only five daily trips taking an hour and a quarter. You’d pay $4000 annually for that privilege, but that’s only a third of what it would cost to drive. I dare say the math would be similar in the UK.
“The City Council took away our choice to have a car, by making it unaffordable.”
Those same kind of rat bastards also took away my choice to live in a waterfront condo with two free parking spaces. I’m being penalized by having to live in a comfy apartment that’s next to a frequent bus route and relatively close to bike lanes instead of having every single one of the massive costs of my desire to drive covered by a government that has no base needs left to take care of for others. Subsidize my luxuries!
Erin:
Maybe you should choose to get another job to pay for your car, like those low-income folks?
You made choices in your life. They come with consequences. Some of them are expensive. Such as choosing to live in a small town, taking out student loans, or whatever.
The problem is that we’ve run out of space, money and environmental ‘wiggle room’ to continue to prop up car drivers’ choices. Anybody who has been paying attention has seen these changes coming for at least 15 years. I have zero degrees and no formal training in urban planning, but by the mid-90s I was able to figure out that relying on a car was bad for my lifestyle, my bank account, and my city. So, I made changes and choices.
Well I did just exactly that. I moved back to America where I could afford to access my built environment freely, just as most people I know would have done. You are right that I was choosing to make a sacrifice by living that way (achieving my double masters do I can make more money to get a great job), but it taught me a lot about realism in this argument. I agree with what your saying, all I am arguing if people are going to be punished for using what they see as a “right” (because lets be honest, that’s what consumerism is and in my country that will never be taken away) then an affordable, efficient, and easy option must be provided. If a massive amount of policy and funds were directed towards transportation that is doable. Anyway thanks for sharing your thoughts. It’s been really interesting!
Many people have different expectations of their built environment, and that’s ok. But in trying to make change, in my opinion, its better to be open minded towards other people, especially when they disagree with you. Instead of telling people they are wrong for exercising their freedom to explore their built environment the way they choose, put yourself in their shoes and try to win them over by making your argument relevant to them. More progress is always made by working together.
I agree with you Erin in that it does appear that your choice was removed by the price of a parking space in Reading. (Although the price was realistic — 20,000 pounds does equate to the cost of the land for a parking space in Vancouver–if you priced the land of a 9 x 6 ft. parking space at the price of residential land in the city, it comes out to about $50,000. At 4%, that would be about $187 per month. As what some would call a subsidy to motorists, that’s provided free to residents in Vancouver in most residential areas. Still, I wouldn’t reverse this policy, nor would it be politically feasible to do so.)
When I wrote that the car has not been taken away as a choice, I was referring to Vancouver. I do think that motorists should be aware that automobile use really is not discriminated against in this city, and that when people call for opening up more choices (like bicycle lanes or pedestrian walks), motorists should recognize how much they are subsidized with current policy. Roads, streets, and lanes make up about 26.5% of Vancouver’s land use (not including parking garages–some city owned–and other off street parking stalls), and the primary use is the motor vehicle.
It’s actually worse than that on the space front, since a standard off-street space is 18 feet by 8 feet. The necessary drive aisles and other maneuvering spaces bring that into apartment size territory – nearly 500 sq ft is possible. On street parallel spaces don’t need maneuvering space (they just use the travel lane), but are still 8 feet by an average of 22 feet and almost without exception under priced. Some meters downtown are relatively pricey, but even where permit fees are levied for residents these are only to recover administrative costs. The land rent is never collected.