Using the latest technologies, cities need to accelerate the transition to public transport, curtail private car use to reduce pollution and GHG emissions, and reclaim public space for people.
Most of the 750,000 passengers who pass through the New York Grand Central terminus every day rarely notice the glass walkway from which you can gaze down at them. Every weekday morning, during peak hours, every 47 seconds, a train arrives at the station, and commuters rush out of the building on their way to work in Manhattan.
The city of New York couldn’t function without Grand Central and the ferry terminal of Penn Station (which serves as the destination for commuters from New Jersey and Long Island). Additionally, for the millions of people rushing around in the morning, the city’s extensive subway system is critical to reaching their destinations.
The effort of coordination required to allow those connections and move all those passengers every day is enormous. Grand Central, Penn Station, and the New York Metro have huge control rooms monitoring everything on the stations and transport network.
Nowadays, in many cities worldwide, most of the subway stations, trains, and light rail are automated. Because of safety concerns, many operators keep a “driver” in the trains to watch for passengers entering and exiting the wagons and closing the doors. In some cities, especially in Asia and Europe, some lines and metro networks are now serviced by driverless trains.
Interestingly, the word “commuting” comes from the American railways, which offered a commutation, a reduction in price to regular travelers.
The car as the disruptor of mobility in the 20th century
At the beginning of the last century, many North American and European cities had efficient streetcar (or trams, in Europe) networks. The original streetcars were horse-driven, but early in the first decade of the 20th century, cities started to build electric tramway systems to reduce the number of horses (and manure) on their streets and create a more efficient system. At the time, most of the mobility in cities happened by walking or bicycling.
The Great Depression of the 1930s led to the closure of many streetcar lines in North America.
After World War II, many people in the U.S. could purchase their own car, and the new freedom of private transport led to lower ridership. Additionally, at the time, many cities scrapped their plans to build new streetcar lines or maintain the existing ones.
Some people argue that General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, and some other companies joined together to purchase the biggest streetcars in the country to shut them down. They did set up companies to buy the streetcar operators, but their intentions are not entirely clear.
In Western Europe, it took another 10 to 20 years to follow the same trend, as most countries were still recovering from the war and people could not afford to buy cars. The situation was different in Eastern Europe, where communist rule imposed by the Soviet Union kept car ownership to a few members of the communist party. Most of the streetcar’s lines survive today. In fact, cities such as Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and many other former east bloc countries enjoy a more sustainable public transport system.
The automobile not only made a dent in public transport use, but it also created an entirely new mobility paradigm that influenced city design, shopping areas, building regulations, and many other changes in city life.
Most cities in the developed world keep minimum parking requirements for new buildings, space for curbside parking, the maximum distance between gas stations, and many other rules to accommodate private vehicles.
Cities are now reversing the trend and reducing space for car use
Cities are already reducing road and parking space for cars. Barcelona installed in 2016 the first “superblock,” a square of nine city blocks that eliminates over 60% of parking spaces within the area and changes traffic direction to prevent any through traffic. And Barcelona is a compact city where only 24% of mobility is by passenger car. San Francisco, by contrast, has almost triple the number of single, polluting cars — 64% — while being home to Uber, the biggest ride-sharing firm.
Pollution and traffic congestion are not the only issues. Most cities dedicate the bulk of public space to motorized traffic, especially private cars and motorcycles, while pedestrians are relegated to narrow sidewalks and to deal with congested intersections.
Improving public transport, especially with sustainable systems such as trams, subways, and electric buses, helps reduce the need to use private vehicles. Improving sidewalks and cycling infrastructure and encouraging people to walk or cycle to work are also good sustainable transportation practices, improving residents’ health and satisfaction.
As cities become less car-friendly by necessity and their populations increase, more people will consider living without a car. Many millennials are already following that trend, and the percentage of young people delaying getting a driver’s license, once considered a rite of passage, is rapidly increasing.
Some people, especially in the car industry, claim that the solution is autonomous cars. They argue that most personal vehicles are parked over 94% of the time, using space and creating traffic jams.
However, the advent of autonomous cars could signal a 180˚ change in direction away from those sustainable goals. The companies developing autonomous vehicles are not interested in getting people to walk more or use public transport but to offer on-demand private transportation for the masses, in many cases moving people back to cars.
Four years ago, during a conference about streetcars and public transport, former NYC Traffic Commissioner Samuel Schwartz, aka Gridlock Sam, author of “Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars,” said that the arrival of autonomous cars will increase the vehicle miles traveled, reverse the millennial trend eschewing driving, decimate public transport, and increase the occurrence of inactivity-related illnesses.
‘The good days of the automobile are over’
Cities should think hard about the potential impact of having more cars clog the streets, even electric ones. It will mean abandoning sustainability and other benefits that walking, cycling, and public transport bring to residents.
Renowned Danish architect Jan Gehl — a global leader in people-centered urban design — argues that the current trend of trying to reduce dependency on private vehicles needs to continue with aggressive measures such as low-emission zones, reducing the amount of curbside parking, implementing on-demand pricing, adding more bicycle lanes, and investing heavily in sustainable public transport.
“It’s no secret that the good days of the automobile are over,” said Gehl. “In 2009, we saw the peak of driving in the world, and it’s on the way down. The automobile was a good thing in the ‘Wild West’ of Detroit in 1905. …The days of the automobile as something for everyone in the world are definitely over. In a denser city, with walking and bicycling, you can get anywhere quickly.
“What we have to address now is making livable, healthy, safe, and sustainable cities,” he concluded.
