London is one of the world’s most congested cities. And yet only 20% of Londoners use their car regularly to get from home to work and back, and 41% of households in the city do not own a car at all.
However, London’s structure seems designed to accommodate the more cars, the better: 8.8% of the city’s surface area is dedicated to residential space, while 12.4% is dedicated to streets and roads, and in some specific neighborhoods, the statistic is even more extreme. It is as if the city is literally for cars, and people are simply allowed to live as best they can.
In Paris, a similar phenomenon is taking place, but in a different phase: the city is managing to improve its traffic statistics and reduce congestion thanks to an ambitious plan by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor, to reduce the space allocated to cars, with the use of car lanes for public transport, bicycles, scooters, etc., along with so-called quiet zones and a reduction in parking space as well. The pattern is again similar: a large percentage of Parisians do not use their cars regularly or do not own one at all, in what is an increasingly interesting paradox: the higher the per capita income in a city, the lower the percentage of car owners in it.
The evidence is clear: expanding road infrastructure does not reduce congestion; it tends to increase it. While the intuitive thing to do when faced with a gridlocked road would be to increase its capacity, design better solutions for its intersections or increase the number of lanes, the reality is that this is an incentive for those who want to use their cars, and results in greater congestion.
The solution seems clear: instead of trying to make it easier for cars to move around cities, the solution is to make it more difficult. The best way to discourage car use in cities is to make it difficult to use one. In the case of London, the solution to traffic problems is to make them worse by dismantling the infrastructure that encourages car use.
In the short term, this will be very unpopular, but that in the medium and long term, people will get around by other means.
This is basically what is happening with the energy crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine: instead of becoming a major problem, and thanks among other things to a relatively mild winter, it has evolved into a huge opportunity for a massive acceleration of investment in renewable energies, which means that even if the Ukrainian problem were now magically solved and we were back on good terms with Russia, we would never go back to buying coal and hydrocarbons from there as we did before the invasion.
Taking advantage of a crisis to drive change is the smart thing to do. There is no better way to eliminate dependence on hydrocarbons than to have to prepare for a scenario in which the availability of those hydrocarbons is dramatically restricted. There is no better way to prepare for cleaner, more livable and congestion-free cities than to demonstrate to people that the current gridlock is unsustainable and unsolvable with traditional solutions. Instead of increasing the infrastructure and the space dedicated to the automobile, dismantle it: more street cafes, more parking space for micro-mobility vehicles and fewer traditional parking spaces: in this street there is no parking. Fewer lanes for cars, and more dedicated to public transport, bicycles and scooters. The umpteenth day you see buses or bicycles circulating smoothly and your neighbor arriving by subway long before you, while you sit fuming on a street clogged with cars surrounded by parking operatives looking to fine you if you do something wrong, you may change your outlook. And if you don’t… well, suit yourself. You’ll get tired of it eventually.
How to solve the problem of car traffic in cities by making it as difficult as possible for drivers. Yep, an interesting approach indeed.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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