How Vancouver, Melbourne, and Auckland are Reducing Car Use
Taking on cars isn’t just a European thing
When we think of cities where people can rather easily get around without cars and where local governments are taking steps to limit the road space given to cars while giving preference to transit, bikes, and pedestrians, our minds often go to Europe.
Denmark and the Netherlands, in particular, stand out as places known for pedestrianization and mass cycling, while other cities across the continent are taking action to move in that direction. Paris, Oslo, and a bunch of Spanish cities are moving forward with initiatives to take away on-street parking spaces, expand the transit system, and close sections of the city to cars.
To some, those initiatives can seem like radical actions happening over there that could never happen in car-dominated, English-speaking countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. We rely too much on cars, they might say, and that’s not going to change. Except those cities in Europe were once in the thrall of the automobile and corrected course, and English-speaking cities are starting to do the same.
Vancouver, Canada
Canada’s third-largest city has long topped the charts for liveability and its transport system helps make that possible. More than half of all trips made in Vancouver are on foot, bike, or transit, and the city recently announced a goal to get that number to two-thirds by 2030 — it seems very achievable, and there are good reasons for that.
In recent years, Vancouver has made notable investments to make its streets friendlier to pedestrians, cyclists, and transit. The city continually shines among its North American peers for transit-ridership growth. In 2018, the transit agency reported ridership growth of 7.1 percent, including increases of 8 percent for the bus network and 5.7 percent for the SkyTrain rapid-transit system.
In many U.S. cities, ridership is actually falling, especially on bus networks that have been slowed and made less reliable due to increased congestion. A report by Bruce Schaller placed some of the blame for this in New York City on the proliferation of Uber and Lyft, while a new study of San Francisco found congestion increased by 62% between 2010 and 2016 and the ride-hailing companies contributed two-thirds of the increase.
In comparison, Vancouver does not have Uber, Lyft, or any other ride-hailing firms, and it’s arguable that this may have helped the city achieve such impressive growth in transit and cycling growth. However, British Columbia is planning to legalize ride-hailing services in the fall of 2019, and it remains to be seen how restrictive the regulations will be. Vancouver may be in for a setback, but hopefully lawmakers will properly regulate them to avoid such an eventuality.
The city recently declared a climate emergency, and is considering a number of new initiatives to accelerate emissions reductions. If its new climate plan is adopted, it would add e-bikes to the public bike-share system, close more streets to cars, have half of all kilometers driven by 2030 in zero-emissions vehicles, consider congestion pricing, and ensure basic necessities are within walking or cycling distance of 90 percent of residents. The transit agency also recently started consultations on its 2050 plan, and has already committed to several SkyTrain extensions, including to the University of British Columbia.
Vancouver is arguably showing North American cities the path forward in transforming their transportation systems to make them less auto dependent and their urban forms for livability and walkability. That doesn’t mean Vancouver doesn’t face its share of problems — housing affordability and inequality are two major ones — but it still has lessons worth following — though it’s not the only one.
Melbourne, Australia
Among urbanists and travelers, Melbourne is known for its laneway culture of narrow side streets filled with cafés and restaurants, developed with the help of renowned Danish urbanist Jan Gehl. However, there’s much more to Melbourne’s success than its famed laneways.
The city has a dense central business district (CBD) where more than 90 percent of all trips are done by walking. It also has the largest tram system in the world, having not torn them up like other cities, and trams are free within the CBD. As a result, 56 percent of people in the central city take transit to get to work, compared to 32 percent by car, 6 percent who walk, 4 percent by bike.
The government is also in the process of building the Metro Tunnel — due in 2025 — to improve transit in the CBD, and there’s an extensive regional rail system, which will be expanded over the next few decades as the state government begins work on the Suburban Rail Loop. These investments are necessary because the larger metropolitan region is still quite auto-dependent, with 74 percent of residents driving to work, 13 percent taking transit, and 5.4 percent walking or cycling, and its population is growing rapidly.
Realizing that progress still needs to be made, the city has a new 10-year draft transport plan to further reduce car use, but it will need to backing of the state government to move forward with much of it, and it remains to be seen whether the center-left Victorian Labor Party will support the plan. But if it does move forward, there’s a lot to like.
The city would remove some on-street parking throughout to make more room for cyclists and wider sidewalks, while more of the “Little” side streets would limit or eliminate car traffic. Melbourne aspires to become the best city for cyclists in Australia by adding another 50 kilometers (31 miles) of protected bike lanes by 2030, and it would improve transit service by giving dedicated lanes and upgraded stops to some buses and trams. It would also push the state government to approve an expansion of the tram network and the second Metro tunnel.
The Lord Mayor noted that 42 percent of cars entering to CBD are just transiting through, thus adding unnecessary congestion. It wants the state’s help to have these vehicles avoid the CBD altogether, and paired with its other initiatives, it would build on its existing success.
Auckland, New Zealand
When Gehl visited Auckland in 2007, he praised its harbour, but called it a “mini Los Angeles” that had made too many concessions to cars. In the following decade, cars haven’t been pushed out, but a greater effort has been made to improve transit service and make life easier for cyclists and pedestrians, putting it at the top of some liveability rankings.
The city built a series of cycleways and has recently been experiencing a “bike boom” as ridership has notably increased. Last year, Auckland Transport finished the implementation of its new bus network, which has increased frequency and made a number of other improvements. That’s helped to boost transit ridership.
Auckland also has a regional rail system, and it’s in the process of building its City Rail Link, an underground tunnel through the CBD that will be more like a subway line and will double the city’s rail capacity. As a result of these investments, driving in the city has started to trend downward. 74 percent of commuters in the larger metro area still used cars to get to work in 2013, but public transit recently overtook cars for trips to the city center in the morning peak hours.
Last year, reporters at the NZ Herald tested four different modes from the same starting point to see which would get them to the city center fastest. They expected the car would take almost half the time as any other mode, but the person who took the bike actually arrived 25–30 minutes before his peers on the bus, in a car, and on the train. It’s just one indication of how commuting in Auckland is changing.
Reducing car use isn’t just for Europe
Vancouver, Melbourne, and Auckland show how English-speaking, traditionally car-oriented cities are already changing their urban forms. They’re making targeted investments to provide alternatives to the automobile and to actually make walking, cycling, and transit better choices for a growing number of urban residents.
Do they go as far as some leading European cities? Not yet, but they’re starting later and with a higher share of auto dependence. And it would be wrong to think that just these three cities are making changes.
Los Angeles, the poster child for the automobile, is making huge investments in its transit system that should start paying off in the coming years. Toronto recently gave streetcars priority on a key thoroughfare in its downtown core with great results and Ottawa’s built a great cycling network. Seattle, by densifying and investing in transit, has led the United States in transit growth for several years. And there are many more examples I could give.
The point is that while European cities often get much of the attention for their initiatives to reduce car use, that doesn’t mean that car-oriented cities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand aren’t also taking important steps to change the way their residents commute. Should we be pushing them to do more? Of course. But they are taking steps, and what they learn could help other cities with similar urban layouts accelerate their future actions.
The future is not auto dependent, whether driven by humans or computers. Europe may be leading the way, but other cities are making moves to catch up and their residents will reap the benefits.
