5 Reasons to Ride a Car

Millions of people use their own cars to move every day. By this we make a lot of pollution, thousands of accidents and suffering pernicious traffic in a costly way. Today, rate of motorization and level of vehicle ownership is growing rapidly. On the other hand when it comes to transit, during recent decades most of cities have planned for development of public transit. Today, transit use in cities is much, much higher than it was in 3 decades ago. “Many developed countries, including the United States and Canada, have experienced significant growth in mass transit throughout the past few decades – in the U.S., public transport ridershipincreased by 34% from 1995 to 2012”.

“The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reported that public transportation use in the United States in 2013 rose to 10.7 billion trips – the highest number in 57 years. The highest U.S. public transit ridership number in history was 23.5 billion trips in 1946, a decade when many Americans did not own a car”.

Also “Nearly 57 billion local public transport journeys were made in the European Union in 2012. There are approximately 182 million journeys being made on an average working day in the bloc”.

“In emerging economies, rapid urbanization is leading to unprecedented private motorization, but there’s a growing recognition that investing in urban public transport can help mitigate the negative impacts of motorization”.

In spite of this good knew we have already those problems according to use private cars. Although public transit has known as only solution to decrease congestion, air pollution and save money but there are 5 great reasons that prevent more achievements by public transit.

1) Roads expansion

By many reasons still roads are expanding in most cities. Population growth, demand increase and car manufactures lobby leading authorities to invest more on new roads. In

addition there are many evidences that improving roads leading our cities to more traffic congestion. A research at 1995 by Hansen and Huang shows that there are links between freeway investment and traffic increases. It means spend more money on road expanding will increase Vehicle Miles Traveled. So the best solution is to refuse to increase highway capacity because it seems to be as an invitation for private cars. They spent many years of planning and building new lanes and freeways and all it did was cause real congestion during the construction and the traffic is exactly the same now if not worse. Motor car commuting is an irrational and unsustainable choice, scarce resources should not be allocated to it and the true cost of such commuting should be charged to the commuters.

2) Car market growing fast

In spite of global economy recession, rising fuel prices and growing environmental concerns, the automobile industry analysis shows an annual growth of 4.9% by 2009-14. In 2012, a total of 84.1 million cars and commercial vehicles were built worldwide, led by China, with about 19.3 million motor vehicles manufactured, followed by the United States with 10.3 million, and Japan with 9.9 million. Likewise, industry competition is considered high, as leading manufacturers battle for market share and customer loyalty. High

competition leads market to be attractive and beneficial for costumers.

Furthermore the statistics shows that rate of car ownership have continuously increased. Global vehicle ownership per capita in 2010 was 148 vehicles in operation per 1000 people. In 2009 Vehicle ownership per capita in the U.S. is also the highest in the world with 828 vehicles in operation per 1000 people. China has by 2007 the highest growth rate of vehicle ownership, 10.6% annually. For the non-OECD countries, previous researches show much faster rates of growth: vehicle ownership growth of about 3.5% annually, and total vehicles growth of 6.5% annually. In countries like India the average level of ownership of cars is expected to grow exponentially (35 per 1,000 in 2025 in compare with 13 in 2013).

Comparison of motorization rates by region1999 and 2009

(vehicles per 1000 people)

Country/Region 1999 2009Africa 20.9 24.9Asia, Far East 39.1 157.7Asia, Middle East 66.2 101.2Canada 560 620.9

Central and South America 133.6 169.7Europe, East 370 363.9Europe, West 528.8 583.3Pacific 513.9 560.9United States 790 828

3) Low cost, No restrictions for private cars

Another grant for car is cost. The capital cost of a car is large, but the running costs relatively low when compared with public transport. Although in most of cities car owners pay for fuel, parking, annual fees and etc, but according to some additional variables such as subsidized policies they still aren’t paying the true costs of motoring. This would make you think more about each journey, and use PT only when no viable options exist. Although in recent years most of cities have applied for implementing a new road diet to restrict cars by increasing cost of private cars like taxes, higher parking rates, tolls, HOV lanes and many other limitations, but still car is more attractive than using public transit because car is more comfortable, lower time to access destination and a price with low Elasticity of demand even with suffering congestion.

4) Low accessibility of public transit

Inaccessibility is isolating, it restricts commuters and lead them to use private cars. Low accessibility neighborhoods

tend to be ones where people also can commute by car. The cheap neighborhoods in any city are often the ones that make it hard to hop onto a train or bus, while an expensive apartment is centrally located and a short walk from a subway station. In some cases it's the challenge getting people to public transit. In spite of huge amount of money we need to develop public transit infrastructures, making more accessibility is crucial for public transit to cover more and more places in each city.

5) Car negative externalities are hidden

The existence of car externalities creates a divergence between private and social costs. When negative externalities exist, social costs exceed private cost. Congestion, carbon emission and traffic accidents are some of negative impacts and externalities of using cars instead of public transit. They affect people not directly involved. In fact the people who drive less or not at all are subsidizing some of the costs for those that drives more. Because driver doesn’t pay the true costs of his driving, he drives too much and get more subsidy from those doesn’t use a car. It’s not fare and is a big governmental grant against public transit users.

Majid Babaie, February 7, 2015

http://www.uitp.org/

http://www.apta.com/

http://thecityfix.com/

http://wikipedia.org

http://www.ibisworld.com/

http://tutor2u.net/

http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/