10 The Climate Emergency and car dependency

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My car epiphany occurred during this period.  It is now abundantly clear to me that we have to properly account for the negative externalities of car use and reduce our dependency on them.  This is clearly as much a land use planning and fiscal challenge as it a transport planning and political one.  And to be clear, I am not “anti-car” …I am anti “so much car” and “so little choice”.

In this chapter I cover:

10.1 My relationship with cars and the road

Everyone loves a car.  Like most people of my age back in the early 1980s, I took my driving test at 17 and was driving my mother’s Nissan Cherry within a few weeks.

My car leaning was I think locked in  when I was a child.  I was fascinated by construction and roads,  almost certainly shaped by my time as 5-year-old living on Mynachdy road in Gabalfa, Cardiff, just as the diggers arrived to  start building Eastern Avenue.  This  huge urban  motorway  project, had, for some reason captured my imagination and the series of photos and excerpts published by the South Wales Echo during its construction ended up on the wall of St Patricks Junior School (we moved from Mynachdy to Grangetown in 1969);  I was some would say a little odd. I also  recall a visit to the “Centreplan 70” exhibition on St Mary St in Cardiff, with its futuristic  images of a grossly zoned concrete city centre surrounded by roads and motorways  Figure 118 Figure 119 Figure 120 .  A dystopian car centric vison of the future of Cardiff that was thankfully averted  by the oil price crisis of the early 1970s. I loved it (but eventually grew out of it.). 

This is vision of the future conceived by far sighted planners like Buchanan[1] in the  1960s and endorsed by the growing car lobby.  The cover of AA’s Drive Magazine in 1972 Figure 121 exemplifies the power of that lobby and its conviction, held by most people at the time, that a car-based future was inevitable. Also interesting to look at one of the letters in that edition Figure 122, focussed on road safety and the need for seat belts; the challenges of securing public acceptance of change and resistance thereof, was clearly as much a problem then as it is now with regard to, for example 20mph and road pricing.

Figure 118 Cardiff Centreplan 70 Cover

Figure 119 Cardiff Centreplan 70 City Centre plans

Figure 120 Centreplan 70 Roads planned in central Cardiff (Credit ?)

Figure 121 Cover of AA “Drive” Magazine New Year 1972

Figure 122 Letter re “Seat Belts” from AA Drive Magazine New Year 1972

At about the same time, in 1971, my first visit to see my relatives in Rome introduced me to Architecture and my uncle Robbie Scheda who was at that time involved in a wide range of architecture and design work – from furniture to some of Italy’s new autostrada junctions. He would many years later be part of a team bidding to build a new Opera House in Cardiff (a competition that was won by Zaha Hadid).  I was fascinated by his drawings and sketches and no doubt plagued him with lots of annoying questions that only seven-year-old children can ask.  As a leaving gift he gave me several rolls of drawing paper and an architect’s drawing ruler.

I spent the next few weeks back in Cardiff “designing cities” which is something I obsessed over until my early teens. This drawing of a very zoned imaginary city space Figure 123 exposes my obsession.  So much so that I was pretty sure I was going to be a town planner Figure 124.  I didn’t, and studied Physics, moved into IT, Management Consultancy, Biotechnology, then Transport and ended up a Professor of Practice in Connectivity at the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University. Quite a journey.

Figure 123 My 11-year-old self, and very zoned “city vision”

Figure 124 My career expectations in the mid-1970s

As a teenager, I also corresponded with officials and politicians. I have letters and correspondence with the Director of Planning at South Glamorgan Ewart Parkinson re the Cardiff Southern Distributor Road and with John Morris the then Secretary of State for Wales re: the new M4, etc.  I was probably the only pupil at Mostyn RC High School in Ely, Cardiff who had a copy of the South Glamorgan County Council Structure Plan and its nascent plans for the Ely Link Road (which I still have) which would plough through our school playing fields.

I really did like cars and building stuff and was pretty much a “driver” (apart perhaps during my time living in London) until my early 50s and my Active Travel epiphany.  That Damascene change was perhaps precipitated by “We buy any car.com” offering me £34 for my old Saab in 2015.

So, in this chapter, I’d like to set out some ideas (based on a blog from 2017) that will, I think, be relevant in how the role of the car in society may and should change over the next 10~20 years. This future will result from the interplay of developments in both technology and culture. It’s at these boundaries that real, often unpredicted and “non-trend” changes happen. It’s something we are already seeing begin to happen.  More importantly though, given everything I have read, heard and seen, it is based on the stark challenge of the Climate Emergency and the fact that cars are a major source of emissions.  This is by no means an academic analysis; it is more a collection of thoughts and reflections, and I do include some relevant references including formal papers which I think help support my assertions.

10.2 A brief history of cars

Whilst we are perhaps now beginning to come to terms with earlier unseen consequences of excessive car dependency, there is little doubt the “invention” of the internal combustion engine powered car by Carl Benz in the late 19th Century has had a profound liberating impact on the lives of millions of people.  The choices and freedoms it enabled allowed us to live, work and enjoy our lives in ways unimaginable to most Victorians; the impact on our economies and social cohesion has I assert been even more profound.

Its early form as a plaything of the rich was transformed by the mass production innovation and insight of the likes of Henry Ford who built on the work of earlier pioneers to provide to Americans an affordable personal motor vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine in the early years of the 20th Century.  The car industry also spawned early efforts at innovation in manufacturing and organisational efficiency via Fordism, Taylorism and other scientific management techniques.

Throughout the 20th Century all the most developed economies embraced the car, from the Italian Ferrari to the East German Trabant and everything in between.  The name of cars became economic and/or cultural symbols – the Beetle, the Mini, Chevrolet, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and who could forget the Morris Marina and Trotters Reliant Robin.

More disturbingly the growth in car use had a profound impact on public transport networks and patronage often enabled by car manufacturers and “far sighted planners”.  Maybe some of this history has become myth, maybe not.  However, there is little doubt that at least in part, some of the biggest car companies in the US, especially General Motors, via its subsidiary National City Lines had a hand in the decline of some of the biggest transit systems in the US[2].  The Great American Streetcar scandal as it became known has left a scar on many US cities. Ryan Allen’s article for the FT in 2021[3] provides a good summary.

However, a more nuanced view would conclude that the service provided by expensive and often poorly maintained streetcar systems in many cities would be more affordably served with buses[4].  If you then add, limited segregation (See 12.4 Public transport grids, networks and segregation) between street car operations and the increasing number of automobiles, a lack of political support for more costly transit systems (if you ignore the externalities vs cars) in sprawling and increasingly low-density US cities, where the car was freedom personified, perhaps the decline in some cases was inevitable.

It is instructive to reflect that before the 1950s most major US cities (like Los Angeles, Kansas City, Cincinnati, etc), as did most major UK cities (and Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Merthyr and Pontypridd in Wales Figure 125 ) had extensive tram or streetcar networks.

Figure 125 1929 Cardiff Tram Network (credit Tundria-Gábor Sándi)[5]

As an example, Minneapolis and St Paul had a very extensive grid form streetcar network in 1913 Figure 126.  However, by the mid-1950s, the street cars had all gone and replaced with buses.  In the early 2000s Light Rail made a return to the twin cities and is now part of a wider and growing Light Rail(LR)/Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network[6] Figure 127 that in 2022 carried over 38 million passengers[7] across the 3.5M population Metropolitan area.

Figure 126  1913 Minneapolis/St Paul Rapid Transit network[8] (credit ?)

Figure 127  “Metro Transit” Plans for BRT and LR in Minneapolis & St Paul

Despite the recent renaissance in Light Rail, very few of those original early 20th Century US systems survived the onslaught of the car, although many were replaced by extensive bus systems that would also succumb to the car.  Those that did survive include San Franciso, Boston and Cleveland.  Europe suffered the same fate; nearly all French and UK tramways were obliterated. Even far-sighted public transit cities like Copenhagen dismantled its extensive tramway system by the early 1970s and is only today looking to re-instate a Light Rail network[9].  The car was the future.

Sadly, across the UK during the 1950s-1970s, a lot of our rail infrastructure was pulled up and built over given the huge growth in car ownership and usage[10] Figure 128.   The folly of those interventions (and the influence of Marples and Beeching) is only now being recognised given the growth in rail usage over the last twenty years (recovering post Covid – albeit the demand is in a different “shape” with less demand for commuter peaks and more for leisure and weekend travel) and now the urgent need to address the climate emergency.

Figure 128 Passenger Transport % in UK 1952 – 2015[11]

However, by the 1970s perhaps, that the impact of planners like Moses[12] on many US cities and the negative impacts of excess car dependency were beginning to become apparent.  Planners like Moses had actively encouraged the development of enormous freeways that cut through may urban communities, dislocating thousands of downtown residents.

Half a century later the decision by the Welsh Government to drop plans for the M4 Relief Road in south Wales in 2019/20 was I think a watershed moment that will shape the next 50 years of transport and planning  – certainly in Wales.

Nonetheless we have a very big car issue.  Today the numbers of licensed cars on UK roads have increased from 27.1 million in 2000 to 32.7 million in 2022[13]. This in part contributes to the reality of congestion and of average speeds on A roads in England of only 17mph[14];  and lower in urban areas. 

Surface transport also remains the UK’s highest-emitting carbon sector, contributing 23% (105 MtCO2e) of total UK emissions in 2022[15].  Cars also make up the largest proportion of those surface transport emissions at approximately 60%, which is about 15% of total emission (or about 60 MtCO2).  The Climate Change Committee (CCCm)  advise that the UK has to reduce Surface Transport emission by 58% by 2035 relative to 2022. The figures and targets for Welsh Government are broadly similar (once you factor in the impact of Port Talbot steel works).

Figure 129 From CCC Progress Report to Parliament June 2023 Surface Transport Emissions

Globally the number of cars has increased from approximately 340M in 1976, to 670M in 1996 and over 1.4Bn today; if that rate of increase is retained, we could see over 2.8BN cars by 2036[16].   The idea that just converting this epidemic of cars into Electric Vehicles (EVs) is going to address our Climate Change obligations is clearly preposterous.  We need to deal with this runaway addiction.

In addressing the car question, we first have to acknowledge an obvious but often overlooked reality, that because of the current status of the car in society, no one really challenges. If you look out of most windows, what do you see? Tens, if not hundreds, of cars sitting there, motionless, not being used, or if they are, stuck in traffic. On the former and this is the stark reality, most of the world’s cars spend over 95% of “their lives” doing absolutely nothing[17]. 

Aside from being a grossly inefficient use of scarce natural resources, having to design our cities around cars when they are not moving, is as bad as having to do so when they are. This clogs up streets, ties up natural resources and has a high impact on everything else we do. The fact we are still producing millions of cars whose level of utilisation will be as low is even more “crazy” and I suggest, globally irresponsible.

This illustration Figure 130 from a report by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation[18] really exposes the profligate waste of energy and resources.

Figure 130 Structural Waste in Car Mobility (credit Ellen Macarthur Foundation)

10.3 The policy challenges

In developing a coherent vision for integrated public transport across in Wales, the Cardiff Capital Region or anywhere in fact, the existential threat of the climate emergency demands that our priority is to bring forward proposals that radically change our mobility ecosystem through the reduction in car dependency.   In Wales, this is in line with our broader environmental and well-being obligations and goes beyond purely transport interventions.

From the 2021 Wales Transport Strategy[19] and the 2021 Net Zero Wales[20], government policy is, at last, setting out the very significant changes required to out mobility choices and systems. The 2023 WG response to the Roads Review[21] was consistent with this earlier policy.  In response the National Infrastructure Commission also set out its similarly aligned position in a brief paper[22].

These to a large extent have all been shaped by the Climate Change Committee’s (CCCm) advice[23] to Welsh Government (as well as to Westminster) in 2020 and earlier; the more recent 2023 update[24] is even more stark.

While the First Carbon Budget (2016-2020) has been achieved, Wales is not yet on track to meet its targets for the second half of this decade and beyond.

It’s 2023 advice to UK Government was also blunt:

A lack of urgency. While the policy framework has continued to develop over the past year, this is not happening at the required pace for future targets.

Immediate priority actions and policies. Action is needed in a range of areas to deliver on the Government’s emissions pathway.

Nonetheless, in Wales the policy ambition has progressed and in relation to transport and mode share, the following targets have  flowed through into more detailed programme and project planning and development – as well as the politics of capital funding, road pricing and devolved powers Welsh Government has over matters such as rail.

  • Net Zero Wales commitments: Car mode share from over 70% to just 60% by 2030 and down to just over 50% by 2040
  • Policy 32 – Increase trip mode share of public transport from a current estimated proportion of 5% to 7% by 2030 and 13% by 2040
  • Policy 31 ‒ Increase trip mode share of active travel from a current estimated proportion of 27% to 33% by 2030 and at least 35% by 2040

Figure 131 Senedd Research, Commuting mode share in Wales 2017

In short, the implicit need to decarbonise infers a need to significantly reduce our car dependency. This is important, as car use is responsible for over 60% of transport CO2 emission; even a completely electrified car eco system with power generated entirely through renewables (which is not realistic in the short term), would only reduce the total car emissions by perhaps ~50% Figure 132.   Whilst this would be welcome, the wider societal costs of car use require us to go further.  A more recent study published by Nature Communications in April 2023[25] re-enforced the absolute need to reduce car use.  The authors concluded:

“that, as well as implementation of emission-reducing changes in vehicle design, a rapid and large-scale reduction in car use is necessary to meet stringent carbon budgets and avoid high energy demand”

Figure 132 CO2 emission by mode, EU Environment Agency 2016[26]

A more nuanced and balanced approach to road development has also been adopted and embedded in Welsh Government policy in 2023 following the public of its Roads Review[27].   The hurdle to be cleared for new roads development in Wales just got higher; in contrast, across the border in England, the Transport Minister Mark Harper in 2023 gave the go ahead to the £1.7Bn A303 upgrade[28] including a tunnel under Stonehenge but late scrapped by the new UK Labour Government in July 2024[29]. More surprisingly the new Labour UK Government seems keen to progress schemes like the £9bn Lower Thames crossing and is exploring PFI type funding arrangements[30].

10.4 Induced Demand

Much of the growth in car use from the relatively low levels in the 1950s, has been enabled by the phenomenon of induced demand resulting from road building. This has enabled new car-based developments, which have generated a need for more car trips, requiring more road space to accommodate them. This is an unvirtuous cycle we have to break.

It is an often misunderstood and counterintuitive concept, and certainly one that I probably arrived at late with specific regard to the proposal for the M4 Relief Road in southeast Wales. This is a project that I “changed my mind” over as I set out in two blogs in 2018, “New M4 Yes or No”[31].  This was a tough call by Welsh Government but one which acknowledged both our climate change and decarbonisation obligations but also the folly of trying to build more road to address congestion. The decision was also made in respect of affordability and other capital commitment – especially when one considers the £1Bn being spent to complete the last two sections of the Heads of the Valley Road.  Despite some populist public discussion to the contrary, Welsh Government is still building and spending significant sums of money on road building.

A key feature of congested roads that most people don’t appreciate, is that that, at any particular moment during busy periods, there are more possible users of a piece of road than those actually stuck in traffic[32]. However, for many reasons they are not; they have decided not to travel or take a different route.  Addressing the congestion by building more road space, which whilst likely to help in the short term, will actually encourage those other potential drivers to use the extra capacity made available leading, ultimately, to a return of congestion.   Put simply, in general, you can’t build more roads to address congestion.

The academic evidence is clear that building more road space typically generates more traffic and that many of the costs of car use are external and not adequately appraised. Todd Litman[33] and Jarrett Walker[34]have also written at length on this phenomenon. 

The UK Government Department of Transport (DfT) commissioned a review [35] of case studies and academic evidence related to the phenomenon of induced demand in 2018, mainly related to the English Strategic Road Network (with caveats re scale and predictability of the phenomenon).  I have selected some content from that report below:

The evidence from econometric studies is varied but there are some consistent findings

Elasticities of demand with respect to capacity expansion provide a measure of the induced demand effect that can easily be derived from econometric analysis. Elasticities represent the percentage change in traffic relative to a percentage change in road capacity. A wide range of elasticity values are, however, reported in the literature. Specifically, we find that:

  • Long Run (LR[36]) estimates of induced demand are larger than Short Run (SR) estimates. This is consistent with the expectation that there are more sources of induced demand in the long run when changes in employment, residential location and land-use may play a role than in the short run. Of course, it is not clear whether these changes in employment and residential location are transfers from other areas, which may see reductions in travel. Short run estimates range from 0.03 to 0.6, long run estimates from 0.16 to 1.39.
  • Studies that differentiate between urban and non-urban areas find a larger induced demand effect in urban areas. Urban areas are expected to have high initial levels of congestion and potentially higher levels of suppressed demand. However, only one study analyses the effect of a Metro system on road traffic and finds a much smaller induced demand effect in cities with Metro systems. The implication is that cities with good public transport provision may have less suppressed demand for road travel.

The study  also acknowledges the uncertainty associated with modelling of induced demand and more limited data with respect to the UK.  They found:

  • Induced demand continues to occur and may be significant in some situations. The evidence reviewed in this study supports the findings of the 1994 Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Appraisal (SACTRA)[37] report that induced traffic does exist, though its size and significance is likely to vary in different circumstances. It was not possible to obtain any qualitative understanding about the composition of induced traffic in terms of new trips, redistributed trips, transfers between modes and trips associated with new developments.
  • Induced demand is likely to be higher for capacity improvements in urban areas or on highly congested routes.
  • The evidence on the existence of induced demand means that it needs to be properly accounted for in the appraisal of capacity improvements to the Strategic Road Network. The demand impacts on other travel markets need to be quantified as part of this appraisal but there is a lack of evidence on the source and size of these impacts.

In 2021, the DfT followed up with further work[38] to better define and understand the phenomenon of induced demand, and especially how it can be better modelled and so make it easier to include in formal transport appraisal.  From WSP and Rand’s 2021 work:   

  • The basic underlying principle is that making road improvements is likely to make journeys faster and easier, which can lead to people switching from making journeys by public transport to cars, making more frequent and/or longer car trips (either as a result of changing route and/or destinations or as a result of changes to where they work or live). All of these changes will lead to more traffic on the road network.
  • There is a growing body of international evidence – although limited UK-specific evidence – on the size of induced travel effects. However, there is less evidence on what responses lead to these effects, how these effects vary across different types of road investment and the degree to which effects vary in the short and long term.
  • These analyses lend credence to the view, that traffic generated by new road building means that any benefits to business and, indeed, other road users are transient, if not actually negative. It is argued by proponents of this view that any time savings generated by a scheme are soon lost as the new road fills with traffic and congestion returns, while at the same time the additional traffic generates greater external costs such as pollution.

The SACTRA reports indicate that, in conditions of congestion, the consumer benefits of a scheme would be generally reduced by the effects of induced traffic, and, in some circumstances, this could then make the net present value of the scheme negative, though this would not necessarily be the case. The Committee’s analysis suggested that the more typical case would probably be to make the net consumer benefits smaller, but still positive. The environmental effects of induced traffic would, however, generally be unambiguously negative.

A more recent paper[39] by ex-Chief Scientist at the DfT, David Metz, focussed on the M25 and recent capacity enhancement measures, found no reduction in congestion as a result of the investment – counter to initial predictions used in the business case. In fact, the study concluded that the additional capacity had induced more car trips.

My interpretation of the findings of this work and relevant to us in Wales are:

  • Induced demand is a real phenomenon that particularly impacts increase in road capacity in urban areas
  • More induced traffic is associated with road capacity increases where there is a high level of congestion and suppressed demand
  • Traffic level increases on new routes are not offset by corresponding reductions in traffic on equivalent unimproved routes (as DfT found this is consistent with the findings of the SACTRA reports)
  • The size of the induced demand relative to background traffic growth in the long run is not clear but note some of the studies found elasticities of over 1.0 in some circumstances, and typically higher for Long Run induced demand
  • In many cases the economic benefits of additional road capacity (often set out in the original business cases) are diminished, if not completely negated, through the impact of induced demand-based congestion.

To conclude, whilst there is clearly more research required to better quantify and predict induced, especially “Long Run” impacts, it is clear induced demand is a phenomenon we need to take seriously, as has been presented in numerous articles and papers[40].

For me, it is becoming abundantly clear that in the vast majority of cases, increasing road capacity just generates more car trips; and it is, I assert, “20% of traffic that cause 100% of congestion”. It is then also abundantly clear that it is better to encourage that 20% to use an alternative to the road. On that basis it is more useful to spend scarce capital funds on increasing public transport capacity to provide an alternative to car use.

It is also clear that the “economic benefits” of the existing road network are often compromised through congestion. Perhaps we have gone past the point of diminishing returns re: the economic benefits of increasing road capacity?  Let’s provide an alternative means of travelling so that our existing roads work more efficiently.

10.5 The development impact of cars and induced demand

Perhaps the most damaging type of “Long Run” induced demand is that longer term impact based on development choices and the feature of new homes, offices and especially car based shed retail wrapping around roads with often no provision for public transport access. In 2023 Todd Litman published another paper in his long series of valuable transport planning insights which further exposed the wider often undervalued and unallocated costs of car dependency and this kind of developmental sprawl[41].

We have experienced this phenomenon in south Wales; our expanding road network, including the M4, has over the last 50 years stimulated the development of 000s SqFt  of unsustainable carbon hungry development. The resulting damage and wider external costs have been recognised by The Welsh Government who commissioned a report by the Foundational Economy Research in 2021, “Small Towns Big Issues[42]” which illuminates the negative impact of out-of-town car-based development – especially on existing town centres. A further report ay Audit Wales[43] came to broadly the same conclusions

So, for me, after the collapse of local and employment intensive heavy industry, the biggest negative influence on many of our city and town high streets, has been the huge relocation of office, retail, public services, etc to car based “out of town” locations in the last 50 years. Southeast Wales is covered in them; Cardiff Gate Figure 133, Trago Mills Figure 134, Imperial Park, Spytty Park, Navigation Park, Royal Glamorgan Hospital, Celtic Springs, McArthur Glen, Culverhouse Cross, etc. (See 11.1 We are building all the wrong stuff in all the wrong places).

Figure 133 Cardiff Gate Business Park on M4 (image credit Cardiff Gate Business Park)

Figure 134 Trago Mills Retail Park (credit Lee Williams, Keir & Adam Davies Photography)

When you combine this reality with mass volume car-based “shed” corporate supermarket retail, the consequential demise of local independent shops and food retail, and now the perversity of drive through coffee shops, the primary cause of the sickness afflicting our high streets becomes clear. In the Cardiff Capital Region, it is not as some argue, the impact of a few tens of thousands of people commuting to Cardiff City Centre out of a regional working population of over 700,000, it is car based out of town development. We have a collective blind spot with cars and a failure to recognise the wider societal and economic costs of the apparent freedoms they provide.

I assert that across the UK over the last 50/60 years we have replaced millions of small high street based, independently owned retail businesses, who retained and recycled value locally and performed a vital social cohesion function,  with a few thousand corporate car based shed retail outlets,  employing fewer people on  lower wages, often part time,  with the value of those retail transaction extracted from communities via profits to corporate balance sheets and shareholder dividends.

As I have discussed with students, it is instructive to compare, even qualitatively, the vibrancy and status of Tonypandy High Street (Dunraven St) in the mid Rhondda Valley with Treorci High Street at the top of the Rhondda.   Tonypandy high street has been plagued by problems, empty properties, low footfall and many failed or temporarily beneficial initiatives over decades[44]  Figure 135. Although, as I have experienced there is potential vis a vis its Friday Street market Figure 136 and local cafes like Cwtch Figure 137.  In contrast, Treorci High St won “high street of the year” as recently as 2019[45].  How can two places so close have high streets that perform so very differently. 

Figure 135 Wales Online Headline re Tonypandy High Street

Figure 136 Street market in Tonypandy High Street

Figure 137 The excellent Cwtch Cafe in Tonypandy

My assertion is that Tonypandy has suffered far more from the growth of car based out of town shed retail. Less than a mile from Dunraven St is a large Asda at Llwynypia and a car-based Home Bargains is even closer; the retail at Talbot Green or Pontypridd with its Sainsburys on the A470 are not too far away either if one is so inclined.

However, there is limited space or land availability in/around Treorci and/or probably insufficient commercial potential for there to be similar large car-based retail in Treorci (albeit there is smaller Coop on the high street with car parking).  The impact is clear to see, Tonypandy high street has been hollowed out through the abstraction of activity to places like Asda whereas in Treorci most activity has remained local, in locally owned shops, etc.  The impact of edge of town development like Tesco in Aberdare, Asda in Blackwood and Morrisons in Bargoed have also impacted the viability of those town’s high streets.

This is not, or should not be, “rocket science”, as stated in Regenerating Town Centres in Wales[46]…

 “The growth of car based, out-of-town retail has contributed greatly to the decline of town centres”.   

For me, if there is a problem of agglomeration economics in the Valleys, it is due to out-of-town car-based office/retail agglomeration abstracting activity away from local high streets – and not that due to relatively small numbers of people commuting to Cardiff (which often gets the political headlines).  The data at last is now beginning to support that view. 

I haven’t addressed the phenomenon of internet shopping which also negatively impacts the function and vibrancy of our high streets.  I recall writing an article on this subject way back in 2000 with Chris Steel whilst we were at PA Consulting. We highlighted the potential new role for high streets and the potential of collection points and enhanced customer services for last mile delivery related to internet shopping.

Building our lives around the car has left us an enormous problem.  Yes, cars have provided millions of people enormous freedoms and convenience, but at what cost?  As I often put to developers, you can’t claim the new houses you have built are sustainable and low carbon if you have to get in your car every time you want to buy a bag of sugar.  Our problem is more to do with where we build and less so what and how we build.

10.6 Externalities – costs (especially health)  & benefits

We have also become de-sensitised to the enormous societal costs borne by all of us resulting from excessive car use.

We are all generally familiar with the direct costs of car ownership – purchase costs, then vehicle excise duty[47] and fuel duties[48]. From an HM Treasury fiscal perspective vehicle excise duty is claimed from drivers annually (not road tax) and will in 2025 include electric vehicles (EVs) and total an estimated £7BN; when £25Bn fuel duties are added, this totals about £32Bn. 

There are also VAT receipts[49] on the estimated £36Bn in car sales (at 20% so about £7Bn) and a similar amount in fuel sales which totals approximately  £14Bn in further tax receipts.  These figures do change year on year.

However, VAT is a general tax hypothecated to support overall government expenditure (so health, defence, education, etc) and which applies to the sale of most goods and services,  so I will exclude from the analysis.   

Drivers also pay insurance, and in 2023 this averaged £480[50] a year per driver. In  terms of losses, in 2020 motor insurance companies paid out £13.5Bn[51] in claims to cover accidental loss or damages to an individual’s vehicle, or for the damages and losses of a third party by the insured vehicle.

In some circumstances drivers also pay to use road space for parking; however, most road space is free to park; a presumption I think needs to be challenged given most older urban roads in the UK were designed for pedestrians, cycling and PT Figure 138.  We also spend over £12Bn a year[52] just maintaining our current road network again paid for out of general taxation (local and national). Despite that, the backlog of potholes[53] is estimated to be at least £20Bn and likely a lot higher.

There are, of course,  economic benefits of road use,  and convenience, freedoms and choices one can’t always get from public transport, so we need to factor that into our thinking.  However, studies have found the induced demand,  congestion and the consequential health impacts of car use often diminish the economic benefits originally anticipated[54].

More importantly and also relevant, too often discussion of cars and their benefits and the freedoms they provide overlook many of the wider costs and disbenefits to society as  whole resulting from excessive car use.

Figure 138 Ninian Road, Roath Cardiff (credit ?)

For example, broadly there are on average over 170,000 road traffic casualties in the UK per year[55], 23,000 serious injuries and 1700 deaths.  That is 5 a day on average – and about 2 cyclists per week.  If the public transport network enabled so much carnage it would be closed down immediately.  Why the double standards?. On top of these “Road Traffic Accidents” (RTAs), there are an estimated 30,000 premature deaths resulting from poor air quality[56].   More alarming still is a study from Harvard that suggests that 1 in 5 deaths world-wide can be associated with fossil fuel air pollution.[57] 

In April 2023, Imperial College’s Environmental Research Group published an evidence review[58] of over 35,000 studies over ten years and found air pollution causes harm at all stages of life. The review found air pollution harmed foetal development during pregnancy and could cause low birth weight and miscarriages, as well as a low sperm count in men. It also found air pollution could stunt lung growth in children, cause asthma, and affect blood pressure, cognitive abilities and mental health. Another study in 2023[59] based on a cohort in Rome, also found a link between exposure to air pollution and mental health issues, especially depression.  This is not a new insight – it is now 30 years since the publication of the Six Cities study[60], which suggested that fine-particulate air pollution, or a more complex pollution mixture associated with fine particulate matter, contributes to excess mortality in certain U.S. cities.

Nor is it just tailpipe emissions associated with car use; particularly particulates from brake and tyres are also a major issue[61]. A study led by Oxford University and commissioned by Global Action Plan estimated[62] the wider social and healthcare costs to the UK of pollution was of the order of £6Bn per year.   In August 2024 the BMJ published a Danish paper[63] which found the negative impacts including increased risks of infertility associated with  long term exposure to air pollution and road traffic noise.

There are so many studies which find negative health and social impacts of car use. This all has an enormous cost. For just RTAs alone the DfT estimate[64] (using 2012 figures) that the causality related costs per accident of a fatality are ~£2M, for serious injuries ~£200k   and for minor incidents ~£20k.  In aggregate this costs a ~£18Bn a year mainly borne by taxpayers via the NHS and Emergency and Police services; if one includes unreported incidents the total exceeds £43Bn per year in 2022[65]. 

This is an enormous cost, and this is before we include the cost of poor air quality, induced demand and more congestion (which often negates any of the economic benefits of new road space[66]) and low-density urban sprawl.

In fact, it is the latter that has been, as I explain above, the primary cause of the destruction of local town high streets everywhere as a result of the growth of car based shed retail (especially food) and offices all over the country.  The economic costs of this urban carnage are enormous.  No, I dont have an exact number – but there must be 000s of communities that have suffered irreparable damage from our addiction to cars.

All these costs are often described as external costs.  These are costs not borne by the driver but allocated more widely to society a whole – and often not recovered. 

Whilst a little dated (2012), a report by Technishe Universitat Dresden[67] also quantified the very significant external costs of car use in the EU; they found that even with drivers’ insurance contributions discounted, the costs of road accidents, pollution and noise amounted to an annual total of €373bn (£303bn) across the 27 EU member states, or around 3% of the bloc’s entire yearly GDP. This breaks down as €750 per man, woman and child. For the UK the report concluded that UK drivers accounted for £48bn of costs, or about £815 per person per year.

A more recent paper from Todd Litman[68] of the Victoria Transport Planning Institute[69] is also pretty clear in its conclusions re: car use externalities which can be 30~40% of the total costs. He found the average external annual costs per user for petrol cars in 2020 were estimated at $AU4,300 (£2000); they are a little higher for EVs.

Georgina Santos at Cardiff University’s School of Geography and Planning has also published numerous papers[70] demonstrating the reality of the negative externalities of car use and of road pricing applications and impacts thereof.  The reality of this phenomenon has been established.

Much credit must also go to the likes of  experts like Martin Mogridge[71] who led the way in the 1970s and 1980s whilst at TfL and UCL, in recognising the impacts of large-scale road building and the need for pricing measures for road use that reflected all the costs of car use, especially the externalities.

Now some challenge this analysis of externalities and assert that there are positive external benefits of car use and road building. Yes, there are some – for example land use changes leading to car based economic development for example (but as above that also comes with negative externalities as well). Many claim the economic benefits and personal convenience are positive externalities.  However, these are not really external.  Most transport business cases asses the economic transport user benefits to actually make the case for road capital investment in the first place, which as David Metz showed in his paper such benefits are often negated by induced demand congestion.  In fact, too often such cases have been distorted by the clumsy use of “value of time”, by aggregating lots of small changes in journey times to get a big number (See 12.3 Value of time (and Quantum Physics)). The freedoms and personal benefits individual drivers get are also internal and costed via the price we pay to own and operate cars. I am not underplaying the benefits of cars, or their benefits; it’s just that they are insignificant when compared to the wider societal costs of car use.

It seems to me that most of the externalities of car use are negative but those associated with public transport and Active Travel are mostly positive – and we fail to properly quantify and reflect this reality in formal transport appraisal.  In summary people walking and cycling and on public transport effectively subsidise those choosing to travel in cars.[115].

In fact, one of the biggest challenges we face as a society is that so many of the external costs associated with our current economic models  and especially unconstrained consumerism –  and the idea of perpetual GDP growth – are wreaking carnage on our environments via damage to ecosystems and carbon emissions. If we could allocate these costs to consumers via the price of goods and services then we would all, I am sure, make very different choices.  The market is rigged against this more honest and sustainable allocation of external costs.  One has to ask oneself, what if we lose all the trees or all the bees, either of which would make our current lives impossible? What is the value of a single bee or a single tree[72]? Currently we behave and account, as if they had no intrinsic value at all.

So, in my view, we need to seriously consider what sort of future we want Figure 139 Figure 140 . If we can secure a significant shift to public transport and active travel, we will find that we have more than enough road space for those that still need or choose to use cars for particular journeys. After all, it is only 20~30% of traffic that causes 100% of congestion on the M4 as was found by the Southeast Wales Transport Commission[73].

Figure 139 What sort of future do we want?(Los Angeles Traffic on I 405 Credit KABC-TV)

Figure 140 What sort of future do we want? (Katy freeway, Houston Tx) (Credit ?)

I’ll conclude this section with a reference to and graphic Figure 141 from a paper by Patrick Miner and others in February 2024[74] which explored the wider global harm to people and the environment caused by cars.  They found,

“…Accounting only for crashes and some forms of pollution, approximately 1.67 million people per year die as a result of automobility..”  

That is 4,500 people per day, or the equivalent of  six, 800-seat, Airbus 380s crashing every day. Furthermore, they found…

“..that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it….”

Figure 141 Credit to, and from Patrick Miner 2024 paper.

10.7 Road User Charging (or reduction in the “road use discount”)

Despite the evidence, it seems to me that we have a collective blind spot with cars and a failure to recognise the wider societal and economic costs of the apparent “freedoms” they provide.  No one is proposing no roads and no cars, rather a just a little more honesty and equity in how we fund transport, manage externalities and allocate the use of road space.

Given the above, especially the negative health impacts and carbon emissions of excessive car use, it is clear that the direct and indirect costs to society of car use exceed the fuel and excise duties collected and that the economic benefits of the existing road network are often compromised as a result of congestion.

Furthermore, we are now observing that economic benefits associated with increased road capacity are often transient. On that basis some form of Road User Pricing (or as I prefer to call it “a reduction in the car use discount”) is economically and socially justified and is also effective at reducing congestion, and so has to be considered. There is also a strategic need to address the long-term weakness of transport appraisal which as a result has typically “favoured” road building over public transport (See 12.3 Value of time (and Quantum Physics)).

So, despite the approx. £32Bn collected annually in fuel and excise duties, the far larger costs and externalities of car use and dependency, let alone the at least £12Bn required annually to maintain our roads and the £20Bn backlog of road repairs, cannot be ignored. 

Car users have effectively been given a discount to drive, given that many of these external costs have not been properly apportioned. The executive summary of Transport Costs and Benefits by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute is a good guide[75]. 

In this context, interventions, including fiscal, to discourage car use, need to be considered: to change behaviours; raise capital; and to fairly apportion more of the external societal costs of car use to car users. Welsh Government’s Independent Review of Road User Charging[76] and more relevant from a UK perspective, the Westminster Transport Committee review of Road Pricing[77] both made a compelling case for Road Pricing

  • … there is a pressing need for a “National Policy Framework for Road User Charging in Wales” to be developed and introduced as soon as possible.”
  • …The Government must start an honest conversation with the public on the funding implications for road development and maintenance and for other essential public services of decreased revenue from vehicle excise duty and fuel duty.
  • …In signalling a shift to any alternative road charging mechanism, the Government must make it clear to motorists who purchase electric vehicles that they will be required to pay for road usage, as is currently the case for petrol and diesel vehicles. It must ensure that any alternative road charging mechanism incentivises motorists to purchase vehicles with cleaner emissions while contributing tax revenues to support the maintenance of the road network,
  • …In designing an alternative road pricing mechanism to vehicle excise duty and fuel duty, the Government must ensure that any road pricing scheme does not undermine progress towards its targets on active travel and public transport modal shift.

None of this is new as the work of Moggridge at TfL cited earlier demonstrates. Another robust and historical source of insight is the oft cited paper prepared in 1990 by Cambridge economist, David Newbery[78]. His paper set out the rationale and principles in support of road pricing. In particular, he explored the four main costs on the rest of society associated with road vehicle – accident externalities, environmental pollution, road damage, and congestion. He concluded by saying,

“Road pricing is the best method of dealing with congestion, and would have far-reaching implications for the viability and quality of public transport, for the finance of urban infrastructure, and ultimately for the quality of life.

I think morally, a “charge” provides a means to more fairly apportion the long-term external costs of car use to the user instead of the taxpayers.   In 2022, the Westminster Transport Committee also noted the need to address the rapid fall off in fuel duty from petrol/diesel cars in the 2030s, they also noted that such a  mechanism is also useful to reduce demand for car use which is necessary to help reduce transport  carbon emissions.

It is also a reality that those with the least income are less likely to own and/or use a car Figure 142, yet they carry the burden of the wider societal costs of car dependency. So, a road user charge will also benefit those at the lowest end of the income scale.

Figure 142 Car Ownership by Income Group and Tenure

More pragmatically, the UK Government in their 2022 Autumn statement[79], said “Vehicle Excise Duty will now be applied to electric cars, vans and motorcycles from April 2025. This will ensure that all motorists begin to pay a fairer tax contribution”.

And levying a charge does help. A 2015 paper[80] explored the effects of road pricing on driver behaviour and air pollution in Milan. The researchers were able to exploit a natural experiment as in July 2012, an Italian court unexpectedly suspended Milan’s Road pricing policy, in one part of the city which was reinstated eight weeks later. They found reduced car use and improved air quality:

Abstract: Exploiting the natural experiment created by an unanticipated court injunction, we evaluate driver responses to road pricing. We find evidence of intertemporal substitution toward unpriced times and spatial substitution toward unpriced roads. The effect on traffic volume varies with public transit availability. Net of these responses, Milan’s pricing policy reduces air pollution substantially, generating large welfare gains. In addition, we use long-run policy changes to estimate price elasticities.

There is clearly more discussion to be undertaken before any form of equitable road user charging and/or other demand management measures can be implemented across Wales.  

However, these discussions are necessary if we are going to develop and deliver the transport infrastructure required to support the mode shift required and to help deliver our collective climate emergency obligations.  This needs to be an informed debate and one which acknowledges the real issues and data to help make informed choices.

Road pricing is a social justice and economic inevitability, and any revenues secured can be used to contribute to a major public transport capital programmes and revenue support.

In my view we need to be more progressive.  For example, lets reduce basic rate income tax or increase the personal allowance to a degree to accommodate the introduction of road user charging. We need to shift our tax burden from income to damaging externalities to help encourage more sustainable mobility choices.

PS See 16.3 Road Pricing for some ideas of how we might implement “road pricing”.

10.8 Technology, financial services, EVs and SUVs

There are lots of proposals, ideas and assertions in respect of how technological innovation applied to cars will solve our problems – including carbon emission.  These mainly fall to Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) as well as the emergence of Hydrogen powered vehicles.  I am also aware that technology is moving more quickly than I can keep up with.

So here I want to perhaps challenge and offer some counter intuitive thinking.

First though, I want to set out some real physical limits that we can’t ignore, especially in densely populated urban areas with high volumes of trips and scarce road space. It is always more efficient to move large numbers of people in fewer bigger vehicles (See 12.6 Transport modes).

So, for high demand corridors public transport is better than relying on individual vehicles/cars, which is always the least efficient and most environmentally damaging. Autonomous and/or electric vehicles can’t change the basic physics and geometry of the question, primarily road space required per passenger and energy costs per passenger. 

We hear a great deal about how electric vehicles are going to solve our addiction to carbon emitting mobility solutions.  I am less convinced and assert that the car industry greenwash is getting in the way of clear thinking.  In our current economy, remember that the car industry really wants to sell cars.  More alarming the biggest growth in car sales in recent years has been in Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV)[81].  Bigger heavier cars[82] require more energy to move, even if battery powered (which only a minority of which are), exacerbating the carbon problem, as well as taking up precious road space[83]. 

I appreciate that in the new electric vehicle market, companies in this space need to maximise revenues (so bigger luxury cars) and build volume before they can optimise for mass production of smaller vehicles, with smaller margins.  Nonetheless, it does not change the current reality; replacing a small petrol car with an EV is not much help if your EVs is bigger and heavier than that which it replaced. 

Many such cars are now made available wrapped in a financial service product that is linked to a monthly fee and the promise of replacing with a new car every two or three years.  We have seen cars tuned into mobile phones with wheels[84] that have locked many people into expensive financial service products.  Today, most cars are typically sold using Personal contract Purchase (PCP) agreements[85]. These agreements, which have replaced more traditional HP type loans, have lowered upfront costs but load more debt and liability onto consumers and enable car manufactures to sustain higher volume production of now typically bigger and heavier vehicles.

Furthermore, EVs do little for air quality (which is degraded more by tyre particulates  than tailpipe emission), congestion or the urban realm.  Traffic is still traffic, no matter how the car is powered or whether or not it has a driver. This is on top of the carbon emissions resulting from car use . Even with EVs, the current usage of cars will still result in a significant carbon footprint. 

The stark truth is that more, bigger cars (even if EV) are not going solve our carbon reduction problem, but that is generally what the car industry is currently offering us, which exacerbates the current decarbonisation challenge.

Another alarming feature of the growth of SUV sales is that it is reversing decades of improvement in road safety, especially in the United States as found by Edwards and Leonard in a 2022 paper[86]. Their most stark finding is that children are eight times more likely to die when struck by a SUV compared to children struck by a passenger car.

We also have to avoid the risk of being side-tracked by technology solutions as found for example, by Keyvan Hosseini, Agnieszka Stefanie[87] in their  stark 2022 paper:

The world is running out of time to avoid cataclysmic climate impacts. Therefore, determining which decarbonisation strategies are more effective and inclusive in reducing anthropogenic dependency on fossil fuels is vital for governments’ decisions on investment. This research argues that the electrification of private automobility is neither effective nor equitable. Considering the current electricity mix of the grid, this electrification merely shifts the CO2 emissions and other pollutants from urban to rural areas. The strategy of private automobility electrification does not look beyond the problem of tailpipe emissions and hence cannot eliminate the deficiencies of the car-dependent system that require system-wide solutions, such as traffic congestion and road accidents. Prioritising this strategy not only maintains existing inequities but also increases social injustice and delays the implementation of more effective interventions…

…Focusing on inclusive strategies, such as supporting public transportation, shared mobility, and active travel modes, instead of offering incentives for EVs,

Despite these realities, many are calling for electric charging points at homes, places of work, in fact anywhere with an electric supply, to support the “electrification” of the current car paradigm. Some are calling for public sector investment. I would ask why should the public sector have to?  Surely the car and energy industry should do so; after all, the public sector don’t fund and operate petrol stations.

In terms of physics, it is not very efficient to charge millions of mainly inactive vehicles from millions of domestic 240V or other low voltage charge points using cables trailed out of front windows and across pavements.  We also need to ask can the grid cope and what might the transmission losses be?  Can enough batteries be produced able to convert 1.5 billion petrol cars into EVs; how sustainable and or ethical is such voluminous battery production.   Then ask, how long will such batteries last, and what is the environmental costs of that transition and use of so much precious metals to retain our current levels of car addiction. The fact that Cobalt production is often associated with exploitation[88], low wages and poor working conditions should concern us all.

One of the biggest operational constraints of a more efficient charging methodology is the time it takes to charge, the energy losses in doing so as well as the cost and size/composition of batteries. Whilst battery technology is moving very quickly with innovation reducing costs and improving energy density, we are still some way off a total system solution. I suspect that once battery/fuel cell technology becomes more developed, systemised, affordable and quick to charge, then perhaps we won’t need to charge in the same way, especially if battery energy density improves and we reduce the amount of energy required per car trip (so smaller lighter cars). 

There are already some new micro electric cars emerging in the market place[89], for example those introduce by Wink Motors[90] Figure 143 and the new Citroen Ami Pop[91]Figure 144.  I think this is a more responsible and sustainable car innovation for decarbonised urban applications.

Figure 143 Credit Wink Motors – Micro mobility

Figure 144 A Citroen Ami Pop somewhere in Marseille

In those circumstances, rather than petrol stations we could have battery stations where smaller “modular batteries” can be swapped in/out in a couple of minutes. It is also more efficient to charge 000s of batteries at a single location using a high voltage three phase supply rather than single batteries being charged using 000s of single phase 240v supply points. 

In fact, the emergence of modular “quick swap” batteries is already happening. Take a look at Sun Mobility[92] in India; this perhaps is a signpost to a possible electric future. There are others like Ample[93] in California.

Conversely battery capacity and charging times may improve so much, that when combined with smaller cars (that need less power/energy) we may only need charge at charging station every couple of weeks in perhaps only a few minutes, in which case you wouldn’t need to swap the battery. Whether future battery storage and recharge innovation changes the current trajectory of battery technology remains to be seen.

Innovation also moving at pace for more traditional car batteries; we know of Tesla but now GM is developing its Ultium[94] battery range.  More recently there are now companies producing vehicles fitted with integrated solar panels[95] reducing again the need to rely solely on a battery power.  The future is hard to predict and whilst EV will play a role it does come with costs and issues and is certainly no silver bullet.

However, for me a more obvious application for batteries for the EV market in urban areas for shorter trips, and one which require less overall energy and supply chain capacity, is for electric bikes and electric scooters[96].   Their impact and take up across the world, especially China[97], is doing more in reducing carbon emissions than car based EVs.

Similarly, I not convinced that Autonomous Vehicles (AV) will solve our mobility problems.   They still have to face the same challenges of the space and energy required/person to move people in constrained urban environments. Yes I am sure they will have a role but not perhaps as a ubiquitous personal option in cities. 

However, they do present opportunities.  For example, with autonomous vehicles run as part of a fleet, the biggest part of a taxi fare, the driver, can be removed thus dramatically reducing the operating costs of the service. With such vehicles operating at much higher levels of utilisation as part of a managed fleet then further operating efficiencies could be secured. The cost to the end user will then be much lower than either a taxi or maintaining one’s own personal car. The higher level of utilisation means a much more efficient use of our increasingly scarce natural resources – and managed more efficiently as part of a large fleet.

I am also aware that we need to be careful that in cities, we dont replace 000s of stationary cars at the side of the road with 000s of AVs looking for their next passenger.  Worth looking at some of the blogs and articles on Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit website[98] – for example that by Antonio Loro on the potential of driverless cars and driverless buses[99]. 

Data also suggests that the growth of services like Uber and Lyft is actually adding to urban congestion. The New Automobility: “Lyft, Uber and the Future of American Cities” [100] from Schaller Consulting, sets out the real risks. So, in urban areas, most short trips could shift to Active Travel integrated with Public Transport – augmented with e-bikes and e-scooters. 

Perhaps we will see  AV having an impact where the costs per passenger for PT and associated subsidies are high.  For example, areas of lower population density (maybe some of the big sprawling low density US cities like Houston) and rural areas?  We are already seeing the growth of Demand Responsive Transit DRT (like Fflecsi[101] being trialled by TfW) which is filling the space of low demand variable route services using fleets of smaller buses.  Technology that can enable these types of services become autonomous can reduce costs even further.  Even if we can address the not insignificant technical and safety challenges, maybe that will be a step too far and discourage passengers in rural areas where interaction with a real person/driver is perhaps more valued than in urban areas?

10.9 Insurance, 15-minute cities, 20mph & Motonormativity

History teaches us that the unexpected and non-trend impacts often shape our future more than linear extrapolation. I am also aware that change can be difficult, often made more so by resistance to such through disinformation and misunderstanding.

So, in cogitating on the future of cars, I think we firstly need to acknowledge that we may not use cars in the way we do today, and that change is both inevitable and essential. This is not just about how technology may present unexpected options, I just don’t think young people see the car as us older people did[102]; nor is it, as I set out, very responsible as a society to support the ownership of millions of mainly inactive vehicles. When I was 17, I did my lessons and passed my test ASAP. Young people don’t all share that same level of interest in the car, many are more comfortable with even poor public transport, cycling or walking. Things are changing. Rising costs (especially insurance and now fuel) and competing demands for the diminishing incomes of young people, will I suspect result in the personal car becoming less common.

The growth of the “15-minute city concept” will only accelerate this trend in urban areas.  Despite the conspiracy theory narrative there is no dystopian intent behind the 15-minute city concept.   In fact, it’s how most of us used to live until the 1950s and 1960s when car ownership become the norm. (See 11.4 The fifteen-minute city).

Counter to the common narrative, studies[103] have also demonstrated that business owners on local high streets often overestimate the number of people who use a car to access their services and underestimate active travel. Furthermore, potential customers more often live closer to their shopping destinations than retailers perceive.  These kinds of misunderstandings can generate misplaced opposition to schemes like road space reallocation, parking reductions, cycle lanes and pedestrianisation.

We have also seen the introduction of 20mph (30kph) limits in many urban areas (including the new default in Wales) which despite the mendacious politicised opposition, deliver multiple benefits.  The initial findings in Wales[104] (and we will need to assess the impacts over the longer term) are consistent with the wider body of data[105] – especially the reduction in number and severity of road traffic accidents.   What hasn’t helped public understanding are those individuals and organisations misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting data and studies.  For example, many opposed to 20mph limits point at the Belfast study[106], but clearly have not read it and have just repeated simplistic misrepresentations of it.

To be clear the Belfast 20mph limit only applied to a small number of city centre streets where average speeds were already at or below that level[107]. No real surprise then that there was not really any change in the overall number of road traffic accidents observed.  In fact, the study’s primary conclusion was:

A 20-mph speed limit intervention implemented at city centre scale had little impact on long-term outcomes including road traffic collisions, casualties and speed, except for a reduction in traffic volume. Policymakers considering implementing 20 mph speed limit interventions should consider the fidelity, context and scale of implementation.

We are now seeing more examples of often plausible looking data sets or interpretations thereof, being used to mispresent and/or confuse – sometimes deliberately. I have seen some try to defend their objections to 20mph limits based on impact on journey time, engine and gearing efficiency, pedestrian behaviours or lack of compliance; none of which stand up to scrutiny. 

The journey time argument is most easily debunked given urban trip times in a car where average speeds are already less than 20mph are impacted far more by having to stop at road junctions, traffic lights and for congestion, than by not being able to go a few miles an hour faster for one or two hundred meters. The same type of a little knowledge is dangerous[108] narrative is also polluting the public discourse related to climate change and its impacts.

Given this backdrop, Lee Waters MS, the Welsh politician who stood by the data and clear benefits of 20mph limits, despite the misinformed and often rabid opposition, is to be commended. Furthermore, even with a sub-optimal communications campaign, I applaud the rapid and rough at the edges implementation to enable the early realisation of benefits. A more cautious and time-consuming approach would have resulted in more unnecessary road traffic accidents and severity thereof – including more deaths and serious injuries and more costs to the health and emergency services.

This type of behavioural resistance and/or reluctance to acknowledge the real issues associated with excessive car use and dependency, exemplifies the challenge we face in changing out mobility ecosystem. Clearly the case for change can’t just be about facts.

More people are now recognising the phenomenon of motonormativity[109], an expression coined by Professor Ian Walker of Swansea University.  This is essentially the reality that many decisions about motor transport, by individuals and policymakers, can show unconscious biases due to cultural assumptions about the role of private cars.

Motonormativity is still being manifest, for example, in the highway engineering of new urban roads and junctions, with many clearly designed around the presumption of the priority of the car over cyclists and pedestrians.  This example Figure 145 of two recently built road junctions in Barry, despite being at the heart of a new urban and residential development and near a school, allocates huge amounts of space to the car with wide flared junctions and multiple lanes, restricting pedestrian space and with no cycle lane in sight – despite there being an Active Travel Act in Wales.

Figure 145 Recent flared road junction in Barry

Figure 146 Continuous pavement and cycleway in Cardiff

Thankfully, there are now examples of a more pedestrian focussed and Active Travel friendly approach as the emergence of continuous pavements and cycle lanes Figure 146 in Cardiff exemplifies.

10.10 So, what does all this mean for car use?

Given all the above,  I think, like the explosion of car use in the middle of the 20th Century,  we need a similar shift in transport, but this time away from cars: 

  • Fewer Cars – I estimate at least 30% fewer.  Yes, there will still be personal cars, but fewer than today and focussed on people who need cars (so people with reduced mobility amongst others) and for those who live in more rural areas with lower population density where comprehensive PT coverage will be a challenge to deliver “affordably”
  • Those cars that remain have to be smaller and lighter[110] so that smaller batteries (even swappable) can be most efficiently utilised as a power source or even hydrogen-based fuel cells
  • Such cars have to be better utilised  – so some car sharing is also needed, probably as part of “mobility as a service” (MaaS) offer.

By implication we therefore need more public transport (Heavy Rail, Light Rail and Bus Rapid Transit) for our major inter and intra urban travel corridors. These public transport services will be augmented and integrated with both local bus services and DRT;  and in urban areas many short journeys should/could be made by Active Travel – so walking and cycling.  

As I hope I have set out, this is not about being anti-car, but more about choices; today too many of us are locked into car dependency because of the lack of alternatives. We have to fix that.

We also need to see Road Pricing and proxies therefore (eg removal of free parking, etc) , not least to  recover some of the huge negative external costs of car dependency as well as helping fund the capex/opex needed to support an expansion of public transport.

To complement we also need better planning and Transit Oriented Development (TOD), to build in a way that enables more of the everyday trips we make to be done so with  Public Transport and/or Active Travel.

This can and will deliver major benefits:

  • Fewer Road Traffic Accidents
  • Reduced carbon emissions
  • Improved air quality
  • Reduced burden on Health Services, through increased levels of Active Travel[111] and so a healthier population
  • Reduced congestion so that those that have to drive can do so with less disruption/delay
  • Regeneration and resurgence of local high streets when aligned with town centre first planning and economic development.

This is a win – win all round.

To conclude, and in support  of the above,  worth a look at some recent insights and examples of the interventions necessary to acknowledge the wider impact of car dependency,  how we might reduce it, the need for more public transport and transit-oriented development.

First, a paper from Todd Litman in 2024[112] set out a range of planning principes aimed at reducing car dependency. Key to his paper was his very good summary Figure 147 of the costs of car dependant sprawl.

Figure 147 From Todd Litman’s 2024 paper – automobile dependency and sprawl costs

This neatly leads into the insight from Prof Kimberly Nicholas  and her, “12 best ways to get cars out of cities”[113]  Figure 148 and the recent Climate Change Committee commissioned study[114] into mode shift, and what we need to do reduce car use Figure 149.

Happy driving!

Figure 148 From K Nicholas, 12 Ways to get cars out of cities

Figure 149 Recommendations from WSP CCC commissioned study into mode shift

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References

[1]          Colin Buchan was a Scottish planner who the Minister of Transport, Ernest Maples, appointed in 1960 to head a working group in the Ministry of Transport that in 1963 group produced the influential Buchanan Report (“Traffic in Towns”); that report proposed how British towns could be redesigned to accommodate growing motor car use.

[2]          Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, The Great Transportation Conspiracy (brooklynrail.net)

[3]          Ryan Allen, FT, 2021, The road to ruin — how the car drove US cities to the brink (ft.com)

[4]          Elijah Chiland Curbed Los Angeles, 2019,  Did a conspiracy really destroy Los Angeles’s huge streetcar system?

[5]          Credit  : Cardiff 1929 (tundria.com)

[6]          Minneapolis and St Paul, “Metro Transit” Transit Improvements – Metro Transit

[7]          Minneapolis and St Paul, “Metro Transit” Metro Transit Facts – Metro Transit

[8]          Minnesota Streetcar Museum, Historic Resources & Photos | Minnesota Streetcar Museum (trolleyride.org)

[9]          Greater Copenhagen Light Rail, 2023, Why a light rail? – The Copenhagen Light Rail (dinletbane.dk)

[10]         DfT Passenger transport by mode  1952-2021 DfT Passenger Transport by Mode Table 1952-2021

[11]        DfT Passenger transport by mode from 1952, tsgb0101.ods (live.com)

[12]        Robert Moses was a New York based urban planner who in the 1940s to the 1960s controversially championed the development of freeways that often required, controversially,  the destruction of inner-city neighbourhoods containing  000s of tenement homes and replaced with public housing projects. He also championed the construction of roads know as Parkways across the state as well as many recreational facilities and swimming pools.

[13]        Statista, 2020 Number of cars on the road in the UK 2000-2020 | Statista

[14]        UK Gov 2022 (England only) Travel time measures for local ‘A’ roads: January to December 2021 report

[15]        Climate Change Committee, 2023, Progress Report to Westminster Parliament 2023 Progress Report to Parliament – Climate Change Committee (theccc.org.uk)

[16]        Andrew Chesterton, Cars Guide, 2018  How Many Cars are There in the World? | CarsGuide

           How many cars in the world? (whichcar.com.au)

[17]        Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS)
Decarbonising transport: Climate smart parking policies – CREDS

[18]        Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2015,  Benefits of adopting a circular economy for Europe

[19]        Welsh Government, 2021 Llwybr Newydd: the Wales transport strategy 2021 | GOV.WALES

[20]        Welsh Government, 2021, “Net Zero Wales” Net Zero Wales | GOV.WALES;

[21]        Welsh Government, 2023, Response to the Roads Review Welsh Government response to the Roads Review

[22]        The National infrastructure Commission for Wales, 2023, Cars and roads in Wales – NIC for Wales

[23]        Climate Change Committee, 2020 Advice Report to WG Advice-Report-The-path-to-a-Net-Zero-Wales                   

[24]        Climate Change Committee, 2023 Advise Report to WG, Progress Report: Reducing emissions in Wales

[25]        Winkler, Nelson & Babacan, Nature Communications, April 2023, “The effect of sustainable mobility transition policies on cumulative urban transport emissions and energy demand” The effect of sustainable mobility transition policies on cumulative urban transport emissions and energy demand | Nature Communications

[26]         European Parliament, 2019, CO2 emissions from cars: facts and figures (infographics) | News | European Parliament (europa.eu)

[27]        Welsh Government, Feb 2023, Road Review Roads review | GOV.WALES

[28]        The Guardian,  2023, Stonehenge road tunnel plans approved by transport secretary | Stonehenge | The Guardian
A303 Stonehenge – National Highways

[29]        BBC News, July 2024, Stonehenge tunnel scheme cancelled by government – BBC News

[30]        FT, August 2024, Rachel Reeves weighs PFI-style deal for £9bn new Thames crossing (ft.com)

[31]        Mark Barry, blogs re: the M4 Relief Road 2018-22
New M4 – Yes or No? – Mark Barry (swalesMetroprof.blog)
No new M4…so what instead? – Mark Barry (swalesMetroprof.blog)
A Public Transport Grid for the M4 Corridor… – Mark Barry (swalesMetroprof.blog)

[32]        Mark Barry, 2022, Roads cars induced demand and costs DRAFT Nov 2022 – YouTube

[33]        Todd Litman, Planet Citizen, 2019 Better Planning with More Comprehensive Transportation Cost Analysis

Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Planning Institute:- 2016(update), “Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis”, Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis

[34]        Jarrett Walker, Human Transit – The professional blog of public transit consultant Jarrett Walker.

[35]        WSP & RAND, DfT, 2018  Latest evidence on induced travel demand: an evidence review

[36]        In this context Long Run (LR) demand impacts of new road building are typically measured in years and result from development (eg house, offices, retail) around new highways that stimulate the need for more car trips.  Short run (SR) demand changes are typically measured in days, weeks, months and relate to the additional trips that are diverted to a new road from other routes/modes or by those drivers  who decide to make a trip vs not.

[37]        Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Appraisal, HMSO 1994, “Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic”, HMSO, London, and 1996  “Transport and the Economy, Full Report”

[38]        WSP, RAND; DfT, 2020,   “Deepening The Understanding of How to Address Induced Travel on The  Strategic Road Network: Options for Improving the Measurement of Induced Travel” Deepening the understanding of how to address induced travel on the strategic road network

[39]        David Metz, Centre for Transport Studies, University College London, 2021, “Economic benefits of road widening: Discrepancy between outturn and forecast”  Economic benefits of road widening: Discrepancy between outturn and forecast – ScienceDirect

[40]        Planetizen What Is Induced Demand? | Planetizen Planopedia

           Adam Mann, Wired, 2107,  What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse | WIRED

           Jake Blumgart, Governing,  2022, Why the Concept of Induced Demand Is a Hard Sell (governing.com)

           Benjamin Schneider, Bloomberg,  2018, Traffic Jam? Blame ‘Induced Demand.’ – Bloomberg

           Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Planning Institute,  2023, “Generated Traffic and Induced Travel”,  Generated Traffic and Induced Travel (vtpi.org)

[41]        Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Planning Institute, 2023,” Transportation Market Distortions”

[42]        Welsh Government 2021, Foundational Economy Research Unit, Small Towns, Big Issues: independent research report (gov.wales)

[43]        Audit Wales, 2021, Regenerating Town Centres in Wales (audit.wales)

[44]        Wales Online Article 2019,  The anger, the frustration and the pain of trying to trade on Wales’s worst high street

[45]        BBC News, 2020, UK’s best High Street is Welsh valleys town Treorchy – BBC News

[46]        Audit Wales, 2021, Regenerating Town Centres in Wales (senedd.wales)

[47]        OBR, Vehicle Excise Duty, Vehicle excise duty – Office for Budget Responsibility (obr.uk)

[48]        OBR, Fuel Duties, Fuel duties – Office for Budget Responsibility (obr.uk)
House of Commons Library, 2022,  Taxation of road fuels – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)

[49]          House of Commons, 2009,  House of Commons – Taxes and charges on road users – Transport Committee (parliament.uk)

[50]        Association of British Insurers, 2023, Rising cost pressures push up the price of motor insurance | ABI

[51]        Statista, 2023, Motor insurance in the United Kingdom – statistics & facts | Statista

[52]        Statista, 2022 UK road spending 2022 | Statista

[53]        Transport Action Network, 2023,  £20bn backlog as potholes grow – Transport Action Network

[54]        David Metz, The Conversation, 2021 Road building is supposed to cut congestion and boost the economy – my research suggests otherwise (theconversation.com)
David Metz, UCL, 2021 Opinion: road building won’t cut congestion or boost the economy | UCL News – UCL – University College London

[55]         UK RTA data, 2019 & 2015 
Reported road casualties in Great Britain: provisional results 2019 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Reported road casualties in Great Britain: main results 2015 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Reported road accidents (RAS10) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[56]        Kings Collage London, 2018, UK air pollution could cause 36,000 deaths a year (kcl.ac.uk)

[57]        Harvard School of Public Health, 2021, Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide – C-CHANGE | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

[58]        G Fuller, S Friedman and I Mudway, Imperial Collage, Environmental Research Group, 2023 “Impacts of air pollution across the life course – evidence highlight note (london.gov.uk)”

[59]         Federica Nobile, Anna Forastiere, Paola Michelozzi, Francesco Forastiere, Massimo Stafoggia; Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service/ASL Rome & others; Environment International, Volume 181, November 2023, 108302, “Long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of mental disorders. A large longitudinal cohort study of adults within an urban area – ScienceDirect”

[60]        Douglas W. Dockery,  C. Arden Pope, Xiping Xu,  John D. Spengler, James H. Ware, Martha E. Fay, Benjamin G. Ferris, Jr., and Frank E. Speizer; New England Journal of Medicine, December 1993  “An Association between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities | NEJM”

[61]        Emission Analytics, 2020, Press Release: Pollution From Tyre Wear 1,000 Times Worse Than Exhaust Emissions

[62]        Brand, Hunt; University of Oxford, 2018 “ The health costs of air pollution from cars and vans” Pollution from cars and vans costs £6billion per year in health damages | University of Oxford

[63]         Mette Sørensen, Aslak Harbo Poulsen, Bugge Nøhr, Jibran Khan, Matthias Ketzel, Jørgen Brandt, Ole  Raaschou-Nielsen, Allan Jensen,  BMJ 2024, “  Long term exposure to road traffic noise and air pollution and risk of infertility in men and women: nationwide Danish cohort study  

[64]        DfT, 2013,  A valuation of road accidents and casualties in Great Britain: Methodology note

[65]        DfT, Cost of prevention of road collisions and accidents,  ras4001.ods (live.com)

[66]        David Metz, Centre for Transport Studies, University College London, 2021, “Economic benefits of road widening: Discrepancy between outturn and forecast”  Economic benefits of road widening: Discrepancy between outturn and forecast – ScienceDirect

[67]         Becker, Becker, Gerlach, 2012, Technishe Universität Dresden, “ The True Costs of Automobility: External Costs of Cars Overview on existing estimates in EU-27”  TheTruecost_uk.indd (greens-efa.eu)

[68]        Todd Litman, Vicotria Transport Planning Institute, “The Business Case for Post Covid Public Transport” bcpct.pdf (vtpi.org)

[69]        Victoria Transport Planning Institute, Victoria Transport Institute – Main Page (vtpi.org)

[70]        Georgina Santos, Cardiff University:
Georgina Santos, Hannah Behrendt, Laura Maconi, Tara Shirvani, Alexander Teytelboym; Research in Transport Economics; 2010; “ Part I: Externalities and economic policies in road transport – ScienceDirect”

Georgina Santos,  Hannah Behrendt, Alexander Teytelboym; Research in Transport Economics, 2010 ;  “Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport – ScienceDirect”

Santos, Rojeu; Transportation; 2004; “Distributional impacts of road pricing: The truth behind the myth”

[71]         The Guardian, 2000, Martin Mogridge | | The Guardian

[72]        M Barry, 2024, What use is GDP on a planet with no trees or bees? – Mark Barry (swalesMetroprof.blog)

[73]        SEWTC Final Report, November 2020,
South East Wales Transport Commission: final recommendations | GOV.WALES

[74]         Patrick Miner (University of Edinburgh), Barbara M. Smith, Anant Jani, Geraldine McNeill, Alfred Gathorne-Hardy;
Journal of Transport Geography, 2024, “Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment – ScienceDirect

[75]             Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Transport Costs and Benefits Analysis; Microsoft Word – EX-SUM -1 (vtpi.org) 

[76]        Welsh Government Written Statement, 2020, Written Statement: An independent review of road user charging in Wales (9 March 2020) | GOV.WALES
Independent review of road user charging in Wales | GOV.WALES

[77]        House of Commons, Transport Committee, 2022 Road pricing (parliament.uk)

[78]        David Newbery, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 1990, “Pricing and Congestion: Economic Principles Relevant to Road Pricing”  Oxrep.pdf (cam.ac.uk)

[79]        UK Gov 2022, Autumn Statement 2022 HTML – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[80]         Gibson and Carnovale, Journal  of Urban Economics Volume 89, September 2015, Pages 62-73  The effects of road pricing on driver behaviour and air pollution – ScienceDirect

[81]        Laura Cozzi, Apostolos Petropoulos, International Energy Agency, 2021 Global SUV sales set another record in 2021, setting back efforts to reduce emissions – Analysis – IEA

[82]        Pierpaolo Cazzola, Leonardo Paoli, and Jacob Teter, Institute of Transportation Studies, Global Fuel Economy Initiative, 2023, Trends-in-the-global-vehicle-fleet-2023

[83]        Sian Norris, The Guardian, 2023 More than 150 car models too big for regular UK parking spaces

[84]        Financial Times 2018, Warning signs emerge in the UK car loan market (ft.com)

           Tom Haines-Doran, The Guardian 2023 Britain’s addiction to cars is built on a financial house of cards

[85]        Tom Haines-Doran, Taylor and Francis, 2023, “ The financialisaton of car consumption”

[86]         Mickey Edwards, Daniel Leonard, Journal of Safety Research, 2022, “ Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal cyclist injury severity” – ScienceDirect

[87]         Hosseini and Stefanie, Energy Research and Social Science, 2023, “A wolf in sheep’s clothing: Exposing the structural violence of private electric automobility” – ScienceDirect

[88]        Maddie Stone, The Verge, 2022, The EV boom is being fuelled by exploited cobalt miners – The Verge

Thea Riofrancos, Alissa Kendall, Kristi K. Dayemo, Matthew Haugen, Kira McDonald, Batul Hassan, Margaret Slattery, Climate and Community Project, 2022 More Mobility Less Mining (climateandcommunity.org)

[89]        Michah Toll, Electrek, January 2023, Low-cost tiny electric cars like these could be the next big thing | Electrek

[90]        Wink Motors, Wink Motors Inc.

[91]         Citroen, Citroën Ami | Citroën Electric Car | Citroën UK (citroen.co.uk)

[92]        Sun Mobility, Sun Mobility

[93]        Ample, Ample

[94]        General Motors, New Electric Vehicle Battery Technology | General Motors (gm.com)

[95]        Sono Motors, Solar on Every Vehicle | Sono Motors

[96]        Deniz Huseyin, TransportXtra, December 2022,  “E-scooters are ‘valuable mode of transport’

[97]        Muhammad Rizwan Azhar and Waqas Uzair, The Conversation, Nov 2023, “ The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars (theconversation.com)

[98]        Jarrett Walker, Human Transit — The professional blog of public transit consultant Jarrett Walker.

[99]        Antonio Loro, Human Transit, 2015, Driverless taxis, driverless buses, and the future urban mobility mix

[100]       Schaller Consulting, 2018 The New Automobility: Lyft, Uber and the Future of American Cities

[101]       Transport for Wales, Fflecsi, Home – Transport For Wales (fflecsi.wales)

[102]       The Economist, 2023, Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars | The Economist

[103]       von Schneidemesser, D. et al, Local Business Perception vs. Mobility Behaviour of Shoppers: A Survey from Berlin, Transport Findings (2021)  Local Business Perception vs. Mobility Behaviour of Shoppers: A Survey from Berlin | Published in Findings (findingspress.org)

[104]       Welsh Government, June 2024,  Police recorded road collisions: 2023 | GOV.WALES
Welsh Government, July 2024, Police recorded road collisions: January to March 2024 (provisional)  GOV.WALES

           BBC Wales News, Aug 2024, Wales 20mph: Serious Road casualties drop 23%, figures show – BBC News
In September 2024m TfW published its latest Monitoring Report on the 20mph limits Phase 1 20mph interim monitoring report (tfw.wales). They conservatively noted that ” Some KPIs are not covered in this monitoring report as they require data over a longer time period to make a meaningful assessment. These include casualty rates for pedestrians and cyclists, changes in public attitudes to the 20mph limit and estimated changes in carbon dioxide emissions.”
Other data sources (above) do suggest very strongly that there has been a positive impact even with a year on RTAs

[105]       Wider data/research examples re benefits of 20mph speed limits:


George Yannis and Eva Michelaraki, Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 2024, Review of City-Wide 30 km/h Speed Limit Benefits in Europe (researchgate.net)

George Yannis and Eva Michelaraki, National Technical University of Athens, Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering, 2024, Effectiveness of 30 km/h speed limit – A literature review



Kyriaki (Kelly) Kokka, Glenna Nightingale, Andrew James Williams, Ali Abbas, Valentin Popov, Stephen Sharp, Ruth F Hunter, Ruth Jepson, James Woodcock; MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast;  Effect of 20 mph speed limits on traffic injuries in Edinburgh, UK: a natural experiment and modelling study  Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health (bmj.com)

Anna Bornioli, Isabelle Bray, Paul Pilkington, John Parkin;  Health and Social Sciences, University of the West of England Bristol, Bristol , Effects of city-wide 20 mph (30km/hour) speed limits on road injuries in Bristol, UK | Injury Prevention (bmj.com)

[106]        Hunter, Cleland, Busby, Nightingale, Kee, Williams, Kelly, Kelly, Milton, Kokka, Jepson; Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health (bmj.com) Jan 2023  – Volume 77 Investigating the impact of a 20 miles per hour speed limit intervention on road traffic collisions, casualties, speed and volume in Belfast, UK: 3 year follow-up outcomes of a natural experiment

[107]       20sPlenty, Belfast 20mph should be city-wide rather than city-centre (20splenty.org)

[108]       M Barry , 2023 A little knowledge is dangerous – Mark Barry (swalesmetroprof.blog)

[109]       Ian Walker, Alan Tapp, Adrian Davis, 2023, International Journal of Environment and Health, Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 21 – 33   Motonormativity: how social norms hide a major public health hazard (swan.ac.uk)

Global Cycling Network, https://youtu.be/-_4GZnGl55c?si=S1fnY1g04PVaJ9Bd

[110]       Michah Toll, Electrek, January 2023, Low-cost tiny electric cars like these could be the next big thing | Electrek

[111]       The Health Foundation, 2021,   Health benefits of active travel: preventable early deaths – The Health Foundation

BMJ, 2017; Association between active commuting and incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: prospective cohort study

[112]       Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Planning Institute, 2024, Transportation Planning Principles, Distortions and Reforms: Guidance for Reducing Automobile Dependency and Sprawl

[113]       The Conversation, 2022, 12 best ways to get cars out of cities – ranked by new research (theconversation.com)

Kuss, P., & Nicholas, K. A. (2022). A dozen effective interventions to reduce car use in European cities: Lessons learned from a meta-analysis and transition management. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 10(3), 1494-1513.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2022.02.001

[114]       WSP, Climate Change Committee, 2023, “ Understanding the Requirements and Barriers for Modal Shift “  Understanding the requirements and barriers for modal shift (WSP) – Climate Change Committee (theccc.org.uk)

[115]         Gossling,  Choi, Dekker & Metzler; Ecological Economics Vol 158, April 2019, P65-74, “ “The Social Cost of Automobility, Cycling and Walking in the European Union” – ScienceDirect

Litman and Doherty, VTPI, 2011 (updated 2016), Transportation Costs and Benefits Analysis; Victoria Transport Institute – Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis (vtpi.org)