What to do about the car

Why is it that in any company board meeting the issue of the car fleet – which staff get which model, and the allocation of those cars to spaces in the office car park – will be given more discussion time than the next five-year business plan?

The reason is simple: everyone has their own personal experience of company cars and sees a direct impact on the decision taken. Five-year business plans are rather abstract, in contrast. The same applies to the transport infrastructure in any regeneration project. Every member of the project team will have their own personal experience of travel and transport. They will bring this experience and their personal preferences to each project team meeting, and be keen to contribute because they can see the opportunity to make their particular mark on the shape of the development. As a consequence, transport issues are typically the most discussed – and the longest to resolve.

In addition, the site will almost always be located in a problematic place – it will have topographical constraints, environmental limitations or be so restricted in the available connection points with the surrounding area that the access points effectively design themselves.

However, once the constraints have been defined, the design process will turn towards the need to ensure maximum use of public transport as well as “soft modes” of transport – walking and cycling. Although the current planning policy framework makes consideration of these issues a necessity, experience suggests that developers are increasingly aware that the delivery of urban regeneration projects cannot rely on unfettered car usage. There is a commercial imperative to be able to demonstrate that the transport needs of a development – especially a regeneration project – can be delivered holistically across all available modes.

But beyond this there is a further factor that is always a core issue in discussions with stakeholders, the planning authority and the public: once a transport network is provided, how can you make people use it?

This is at the heart of every planning decision for a major regeneration project in the UK today. Will the case presented by the development team be the one that comes to exist on the ground? Will the proportion of people who choose to use the car, against those who choose every other mode, match the forecast?

Of course, these questions can only be answered when the development is complete and the results can be measured. Until then, we live in a world of persuasion, titbits of empirical evidence and the personal preferences and experiences of everyone involved in the process.

Parking control

To date, the measure considered to be the most effective has been some degree of restraint on car use – particularly by restricting parking. However, the success of the “sticks” (of forcing people away from the car mode) as opposed to the “carrots” (of persuading them to use a different mode) is a moot point at best.

Parking restraint, (the imposition of a reduced parking standard within the confines of a development) has been the most widely accepted and practised measure aimed at altering travel modes. Planning policy guidance has set out maximum standards that can be considered appropriate – one and a half spaces, on average, per dwelling for residential schemes, and no more than one space per 30 square metres of gross floor area for B1 office schemes, for example. In some places authorities have been pursuing more onerous standards than this.

However, experience suggests that parking restraint is somewhat dependent on the land use to which it is applied. For commercial developments, especially office, the view is that people will not drive if there is nowhere to park at their destination. This is a somewhat simplified view of what may happen, but it is certainly true that a degree of parking restraint will dissuade some people from driving – although the number of drivers may still be greater than the number of spaces, with on-street or other parking locations bearing the additional demand.

For residential schemes, meanwhile, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that parking restraint does not work – and, indeed, can lead to additional undesirable effects.

We live in a world of persuasion, titbits of empirical evidence and people’s personal preferences

Parking restraint in housing schemes has seen some imaginative solutions to reducing the actual number of spaces available to drivers. Highway layouts remove on-street parking opportunities, the location of garages closer to the highway boundary removes the possibility of parking cars on driveways. And where the use of the garage for general storage has led to parking pressure, planning authorities have been promoting the use of “car barns” – open car ports – as a means of forcing people to park their cars as intended.

However, there is strong evidence to suggest that this has had little actual effect on car ownership. Within Kent Thameside, for example, there are sites where parking restraint has been applied, albeit relatively gently, but parking problems persist as ownership levels remain above the level of provision. This has led to cars being parked on footways, for example, as the only available space. This in turn means that walking within the development site is more difficult, especially for the infirm or those with pushchairs. The physical restraint of spaces, with no “safety valve” of spaces elsewhere has been detrimental to soft modes. Since car ownership has been unaffected by the restraint measure, it is reasonable to assume that car usage is unaffected, too.

Some of the pressure for parking space seen in these locations is a function of the use of the garage as a E E general store by householders – further reducing the available space. This is exacerbated where the “through garage” has been provided, where an additional parking space is provided in the garden of the house, behind the garage and accessed through it via doors at each end. Where this garage is used as a store, further pressure is applied to parking spaces.

Even the car barn has failed to provide the answer, although it was assumed that it would constrain the homeowner to using it only for parking. Regrettably, this measure has only proven the householders’ ability to be as creative as the designer – sheds are now springing up in car barns to meet the insatiable need for storage that is not satisfied in modern house designs.

I undertook a small research project in Singleton Hill in Kent to investigate the way garages are used on a typical edge-of-town residential site (see box, right). This mini-research project shows that people consider the garage to be predominantly a store, rather than somewhere to keep the car. Even car-proud people on Singleton Hill leave the car outside as a matter of course. Of course, where there is a reduced parking provision, householders may be more likely to put the car in the garage – but the Singleton research demonstrates that, left to their own devices, people perceive the garage more as a store than as a car space.

Car usage

In truth, car ownership is not the problem – it is car usage that needs to be addressed. The National Transport Statistics show that car usage rates and car ownership rates have kept pace with each other over the past 10 years or so – both increasing by about 12% in this period.

The only way that car usage can be reduced is through changing travel behaviour, the choices people make in deciding which mode to use for any given journey. In this respect a complex series of interactions and issues come into play, each one personal to the individual involved in the decision. These include:

• Background and upbringing
• Wealth
• Personal security
• Convenience
• Perception of marginal costs of car use
• Availability of other modes
• Health and fitness

As far as upbringing is concerned, this applies as much to designers and transport professionals as it does to everyone else, and hence influences the decisions they make about transport networks. Many people have a relationship with the car that goes beyond a mere mode of transport – it is a status symbol, a symbol of success, a route to independence and a statement of image and fashion. This relationship is ignored by designers at their own peril.

The complexity of car choice is revealed by car sales statistics – less than 0.03% of sales went to the company making the car with the cheapest overall ownership costs in the UK. Although this doesn’t tell the whole story, it makes clear that car choice is based on many factors, not simply financial.

Sheds are springing up in car barns to meet the insatiable need for storage not satisfied in modern house designs

This relationship with the car is a function of post-Second World War economic policy – supported by planning policy that for many years relied on the car to service development sites. The out-of-town shopping centres of the 1980s were conceived to be primarily car-served.

Therefore, if designers understand and accept their own personal reliance on the car, they inevitably remain heavily influenced by their own relationship with it: some journeys are simply inconceivable by any other means.

As a result, although the concept of the carrot and stick approach to car-control measures is well understood, most of those involved in the planning process can more readily identify, at a personal level, with the impact of the stick – they can see their own reaction if faced with this particular type of measure. The “carrots” are generally subtler, and those in development planning and control find it harder to imagine themselves changing their own lifestyle – and so find it harder to bring in such measures for others. Furthermore, because it is easier to forecast the effect that the stick approach may have (even though these may not be achieved in practice) it has meant that there has been a bias towards restraint mechanisms, rather than towards initiatives that could change behaviour.

It is now time, therefore, that planners considering the transport needs of a regeneration project recognise the place of incentives to persuade people to use modes other than the private car. Such an approach will need to address directly the perceived challenges that are presented by a “carrot” rather than a “stick”-led approach:

It is more difficult to precisely quantify the effects of a carrot than a stick

There is a lack of empirical data to support the measures being contemplated (although the data does suggest that parking restraint is flawed as a control mechanism)

Carrots rely too heavily on people choosing to change – they may not do so, whereas sticks are perceived to be more certain.
However, these challenges can be overcome. In Australia, TravelSmart programmes have become established, and have been seen to deliver demonstrable decreases in car mode choice. Even in the UK, evidence of workplace Green Travel Plans is emerging that suggests that reliable predictions of a shift to non-car modes can be made – at least as reliable as forecasts for restraint measures. As a single example, the well-publicised Green Travel Plan implemented by Pfizer at its Sandwich site in Kent has achieved an 11.8% reduction in car use.

Schemes such as the Peabody Trust’s BedZed housing development in Sutton, south London, are creating an environment where reduced dependency on the car is part of the overall development. The pooling of resources between residents here has also led to environmental benefits – a target of 50% reduction in travel-related carbon emissions was exceeded, with a 65% monitored reduction in the first year of occupation.

The benefits of change

The transport issues related to regeneration projects remain hugely challenging. Even where there is a will on the part of the developer and the authorities to promote and implement the most sustainable forms of development, the need for some degree of certainty and a demonstration of commitment can be a determining factor.

The need to balance a range of different transport measures is essential if genuine opportunities for sustainability are to be taken. This will require a greater emphasis on encouraging people to switch modes, rather than a continued over-reliance on the flawed “sticks” tried to date.

There is a clear need to set aside prejudices and personal perspectives and seek to derive measures that will be attractive to a wide range of people. As softer, more encouraging measures are implemented and behaviour begins to change, the commercial and social benefits, as well as the transport benefits, will be worthwhile to public and private sectors alike.