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Car Dependency: cultural or logical?

A couple of great posts are doing the rounds of transport blogs at the moment, and I think they’re essential for me to comment on. Ultimately, they focus on the question of whether our transport patterns result from some sort of ‘culture’, or whether they simply respond to what the logical decision to make is.

Firstly, there is this post on the Psystenance blog, talking about what is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error, which in social psychology means the over-emphasis “…on the behaviour of others to personality or disposition and to neglect substantial contributions of environmental or situational factors”. In terms of transport matters, this is very applicable – as the post goes on to state:

Thus, the fundamental attribution error in transportation choice: You choose driving over transit because transit serves your needs poorly, but Joe Straphanger takes transit because he’s the kind of person who takes transit. This is the sort of trap we find ourselves in when considering how to fund transportation, be it transit, cycling, walking, or driving.

Let’s say you live in a suburban subdivision. You can afford to drive, and it’s the only way you can quickly and easily get to your suburban office and to the store, and pick up your child from daycare. How do you interpret the decision of other people to take transit? Is it something about the quality of transit where they are? More likely you are going to attribute it to something about those people themselves — they’re poor, or they’re students, or they’re some kind of environmentalists. It’s difficult for people to realize the effect of the situation, e.g. one with frequent transit service to many destinations along a straight street that is easy to walk to. (I’d also point out that students, the poor, and even environmentalists do drive as well.)

Why do Europeans walk more, cycle more, and take transit more? Surely it is something about their culture? But this is an excessively dispositional attribution. I won’t deny that culture plays some role in transit use, especially in the decisions that lead to the creation of transportation infrastructure. But that infrastructure itself and the services provided on it are a strong influence on the transportation choices people make. The European infrastructure situation facilitates those other modes of travel much more so than does typical North American transportation infrastructure.

Where our infrastructure gets closer to the European model, so does the transportation mode choice, and conversely, where Europe is more like the North American model, Europeans turn out to drive more. If culture were really the driving force, you wouldn’t expect to see much fluctuation in transportation choice. But just as North America suburbanized and fell in love with the private automobile, so did Europe, albeit to a lesser extent. Only recently has Europe started again building new tram lines and clawing back space from the car. Copenhagen, now viewed as an urban cycling mecca, wasn’t always one. The rise of the car drastically lowered cycling there in the 1960s. Copenhagen owes its recent fame to restrictions on parking and to its dedicated cycling infrastructure, which have led to a cycling renaissance.

The excellent Humantransit blog picked up on this post, and added some further comments that I find particularly noteworthy. These sections of the post I find particularly relevant to the situation in Auckland:

We’ve all heard the term “car culture” about places like Los Angeles. I’ve always hated the term, but now I understand why: it’s an expression of the attribution error. When we say that Americans drive because they’re a car culture, we imply that that the choice of most Americans to drive isn’t a rational one, in light of each person’s situation, and therefore requires a cultural explanation. Situation includes origin, destination, available infrastructure, available vehicles, special needs (wheelchairs, traveling with children, etc) and the time/cost tradeoff (the urgency of the trip vs the desire to save money).

But in the places most Americans live, given the current economics of driving, and transit options being as they are, the decision to drive is rational for most of the people making it. If most Americans are in situations where driving is the rational choice, we don’t need the “car culture” to explain their behavior, and we can see a clearer path to changing it, by helping to change people’s situations.

Conversely, car advocates who cite current car use as evidence that people want to drive cars are also making the attribution error; they’re implying that everyone who rationally chooses to drive is culturally committed to driving. That’s wrong; some of the people driving cars would like to be in a situation where they didn’t have to.

If I think about my transport situation rationally, I take the bus because parking in the CBD is very expensive and it makes more financial sense to simply catch the bus to work. Being able to check the internet on my phone while being on the bus is also quite nice. For most people who don’t work in the CBD (and many who do whose parking is subsidised), the same economic process doesn’t work, and as a result they logically choose to drive – generally unless they’re too poor, young or old to afford to buy and run a car. This isn’t because Aucklanders are lovingly attached to their vehicles (although that might be the case for a small proportion of the population) but rather because it’s the most logical thing to do. Taking the bus or train when travelling on a suburb to suburb trip is probably going to take you three times as long, cost your more and not even work half the time.

And why is this the case? Well most probably because we’ve spent most of the past 60 years building masses of roads and completely ignoring public transport investment. We’ve also put in place planning regulations (particularly in the case of minimum parking requirements) that are huge subsidies for those that drive. It’s not that we want to have to drive everywhere, or want families to own four cars, it’s that the way we have built our city or even more importantly the way we have built our city’s transport network, that effectively forces us all to act as though we have a car culture.

Where public transport improvements have been made that make catching the bus or train the logical choice for people, the results have been outstanding. The huge patronage growth on the Northern Busway over the past couple of years is probably the best example of this – a service with excellent frequencies, one that is pretty damn fast (faster than driving critically) and one that is super comfortable to ride. Proving the point that where you offer a superior option to driving, people will act logically and make the change.

Suggestions welcome!

This blog really seems to have taken off in the last few weeks, especially in terms of people making comments – which is great as I really enjoy replying to them and fine-tuning aspects of what I’ve said in my original post.

I am quite bursting with ideas for blog posts at the moment, but I thought it would be worthwhile asking what the readers of this blog are interested in finding out more about. So a few questions from me to you:

  1. Is there anything in particular that you would like me to blog about?
  2. Do you think I get too political? Should I be more politically neutral in my blog, or continue to go for Steven Joyce by the jugular?
  3. Am I focusing too much on trains compared to buses, or buses compared to trains?
  4. Are the posts too long, too short or just about right?
  5. Do you think some static “pages” outlining information on important transport projects would be a good idea?
  6. Any other suggestions…

A few ideas for posts I have at the moment include a discussion on the Onehunga Line, as ARTA want me to provide them with some feedback next Tuesday evening at a community consultation meeting. I hope to have my thoughts together by then on the issue. Another idea is to do a really meaty analysis of time-savings benefits, and why I think they’re stupid. And another is to do a bit of a general “here are the transport projects I think Auckland needs in the next 5,10, 20 and 30 years” post.

I look forward to the feedback! Don’t be shy.

Transport Blogosphere Round-up

Apart from Steven Joyce continuing to pander to his Road Transport Forum buddies, it’s been a pretty quiet day in terms of transportation news, so I thought I would direct people to what others are saying around the variety of transport-related blogs that I read:

  1. Auckland Trains details some of the timetable changes that took effect today, and asks whether the Southern Line can cope. It seems like service provision has been boosted without any new trains actually arriving so it’s a good question to ask.
  2. Human Transit looks at how high-frequency bus route maps could be a good idea. I agree wholeheartedly on this issue – as current bus route maps are inevitably a confusing mess as they show each and every route that is run, regardless of whether the service is run once a day or 200 times a day.
  3. The Transport Politic announces the extension of the Orange Line – a bus rapid transit system – in Los Angeles. It seems like public transport is really taking off in LA in recent years, so it’s good to see any improvements. I can’t help but wonder whether BRT or LRT (light-rail) systems will be sufficient for Los Angeles though. It really needs an extensive subway system, and fast.
  4. Cap’n transit analyses why it’s so necessary for public transport to attract the middle-class, not just those too poor to own a car and drive it everywhere. Clearly, in cities where public transport works best (generally European cities) everyone catches the metro, and it is the interaction between a wide variety of people within the public space of the transport system that I think contributes to the vibrancy of these cities tremendously.
  5. And finally, Second Avenue Sagas discusses the rise in subway fares in New York City, with the most important point actually being how damn cheap they still are. $2.25 for a ride that’ll take you anywhere on the subway system – that is surely one of the best deals around.

Enjoy!