Having got used to projections of ever-increasing road use, readers may have been surprised to have seen recent reports of the number of car journeys in the industrialised world having fallen. For example, the Economist recently carried an article headlined Seeing the back of the car. Total kilometres driven have fallen in Britain, Germany, France and Japan over the last two decades, and even remained fairly flat in the USA during this period. Prospect magazine published a piece in similar vein last year (End of the road).
Part of the explanation, at least for lower car use in the last few years, is economic, but this certainly would not apply for the whole of the period since 1990. There have been other times when sudden oil price rises or shortages have caused a temporary reduction in car travel, but people returned to their normal habits once the particular crisis was over. This time, there does seem a genuine trend towards less reliance on the private car.
Other factors are put forward. Cars are no longer the aspirational purchase which frees people from day-to-day monotony. Sure, there are still boy racers who define themselves by their customised car and its sound system. But there are many other ways for people to move beyond their humdrum lives now, particularly in virtual ways via the Internet. Telecommuting may not have made a massive impact on patterns of work (although it undeniably has made remote working much more practicable) but modern computer technology has certainly changed the way we live our lives and interact with others.
For a few decades after the war, cars gave a freedom which was not generally available, in an analogous way to how the Victorian railways broadened the horizons of working people who had simply been unable to travel more than short distances before the steam locomotive was commercialised. But since the ‘70s cheap international travel has boomed and more people are intent on travelling to continental Europe and beyond than simply making day trips to in their home country. Planes and high-speed trains replace the car in such cases.
Increasing urbanisation also has a major part to play. Major cities have grown significantly in the last half century and there has been particularly rapid growth in many developing countries. Such crowded areas of high density living and working are not ideal car territory, as appalling traffic congestion in many major cities testifies. In rich countries, where local transport infrastructure is quite well developed, trams, buses and metro systems take much of the strain, to the extent that car ownership has fallen in London and other cities and even the possession of a driving licence is no longer felt necessary by everyone.
The role of local and national government policy in all this is often harder to fathom. Clearly, providing affordable, reliable public transport facilities in towns and cities can make a very big difference. On the other hand, good transport links in rural areas are, at best, difficult. Local bus services to smaller villages are little used unless they are regular and relatively direct, but providing such services for small populations can be ruinously expensive; the model simply doesn’t work if people have access to cars.
Similarly, targets to encourage more cycling and walking, though doubtless well intentioned, can do little to persuade people to get out of their cars. Modern life presents plenty of opportunities for unhealthy lifestyles, at the same time as enabling a good overall quality of life and greater longevity than ever. Humans – themselves responsible for the technological advances we enjoy – are complex and rarely behave in completely rational ways.
Nevertheless, in terms of making a journey from A to B, decisions are mostly perfectly sensible if a choice has to be made. That’s why many people – particularly living in rural areas – choose to continue going to work or the shops by car. Even if buses are available, the time saving, comfort, flexibility and sheer convenience of the car trump bus use almost every time. On the other hand, few people would regularly choose to commute by car into the City of London; in this case the expense of the train is worthwhile to avoid the nightmare of variable periods in slow-moving traffic, very limited parking and (to top it all) congestion charging.
Despite the figures, few of us have much experience of road congestion having eased. To an extent, this is because traffic is inevitably unevenly distributed; the M25 is always going to be busier than a country road in Argyll, so bald statistics do not show the full picture. The other factor, of course, is the continued increase in transport of goods by road. Notwithstanding the arguments of some rail enthusiasts, lorries are nearly always a more efficient, flexible and economic choice than trains, and this is not something likely to change in the foreseeable future.
Cars, then, are likely to remain an important part of the lives of most of us for some time to come. But we should not assume that their use must automatically be constrained by policy just because of concerns about congestion, lack of exercise etc. Just as railways (barely 200 years old in commercial terms) saw tremendous growth, a period of dominance and then a large decline before a partial renaissance in recent years, we can expect alternatives to reduce the dominance of the conventional car in time, perhaps before it emerges once more in a different guise.
This may be in the form of automatic vehicles – whether public, private or shared – whose journey is programmed in and controlled remotely by GPS satellite or similar. Or virtual reality may make many journeys, whether for work or pleasure, simply unnecessary. What the future may bring, we don’t yet know, but innovative technology which delivers what people want will surely provide the answer.
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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