Car-free households : who lives without an automobile today?

Abstract

Many people have come to recognize private motor vehicle traffic as being one of the major driving forces behind declining environmental and residential qualities in the cities. Rising numbers of motor vehicles and increases in the mileage covered by privately owned vehicles bring with them growing accident risk, land consumption, soil contamination, overall resource depletion and energy use with the concomitant CO2 problems, wastes in the manufacture and disposal of automobiles, and noise and air pollution. The countenance of the city and the quality of life in cities both suffer. Conventional strategies for solving such problems, including widespread traffic calming or optimizing motor vehicle technology, are approaching the limits of their efficacy. They do indeed reduce the stress on the environment but the gains are more than offset by increasing loads emanating from an unbroken rise in the numbers of vehicles and volume of travel. This makes it necessary to abandon a taboo in our thinking and instead develop planning concepts aimed at reducing the number of automobiles. In this effort regional urban and traffic planning should provide incentives to those households which even today do without an automobile and encourage those who are considering eliminating a car now on hand in the household so that they will actually relinquish that vehicle. (A)