‘Peak Car’ — Themes and Issues

Goodwin, Phil; Dender, Kurt Van

doi:10.1080/01441647.2013.804133

Cited by 196 publications

(109 citation statements)

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“…Chief amongst these is the danger of "strategic drift" (see Johnson, 1988), which occurs when organisations that are highly focused on project delivery and whose wider strategy is built incrementally fail to adapt to changes in the context for their operations. One obvious example of this is the potential for the different organisations involved in delivering 'on the ground' transport projects -Highways England, Network Rail and so on -to react in a manner that is contradictory or inefficient to emerging transport trends such as vehicle automation or 'peak car' (see Goodwin and van Dender, 2013;Docherty et al, 2017). Also, just because successive governments have failed to deliver transport policy on a multimodal, integrative basis doesn't mean that this is not in fact required (Docherty and Shaw, 2011).…”

Section: Implications For British Transport Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The curious death – and life? – of British transport policy

Docherty

Shaw

Marsden

et al. 2018

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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This article analyses the transport policy record of the 2010-2015 ConservativeLiberal Democrat Coalition and 2015-16 Conservative majority UK governments. We argue that the style of policy making under these administrations departed significantly from that of previous decades, which had been characterised by the ascendancy of specific technical disciplines and decision making norms about how transport planning should be carried out. Our key contention is that despite abandoning the idea of a single, overall narrative for transport policy, these governments (perhaps unwittingly) gave new life to broader debates about what transport investment is actually for and how investment decisions should be made. We interpret this as a shift away from the longstanding idea of a 'deliberate' strategy of intervention to a more 'emergent' approach, which raises important new questions about the future of transport policy both in terms of the objectives it seeks to realise and the relative influence of professional/technical and political actors in the policy process. 2 IntroductionFor more than 50 years, UK governments of all political persuasions have published a succession of documents heralding a brave new age of transport policy. Highlights include Buchanan's Traffic in Towns in the 1960s (Ministry of Transport, 1963), which correctly predicted how the insatiable demands for more road space arising from mass car ownership would impact upon historic towns and cities; Roads for Prosperity's 'biggest road building programme since the Romans' in the heady days of the 1980s economic boom (Department of Transport, 1989); and the immodestly titled A New Deal for Transport, which promised a transformation that would "give transport the highest possible priority" (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), 1998) such that its accompanying £180bn Ten Year Plan would "deliver radical improvements for passengers, motorists, business -and all of us as citizens concerned about congestion, safety and a better environment" (DETR, 2000).The contradiction in all of this is that despite a plethora of highly ambitious policy statements, Britain's transport system remains underdeveloped compared with those of other major European economies because Ministers of whichever party have all-too-often been unable to turn policy rhetoric into action (Table 1). The collapse of the Blair government's New Deal for Transport demonstrates this especially well. Despite deliberately referencing Roosevelt's massive public works programmes of the 1930s, the New Deal and its ambitious delivery programme actually failed to deliver very much at all on the ground. Instead of light rail in 25 cities across the country, only one new system 3 and the extension of one other were actually achieved; congestion charging failed to move beyond London despite ambitions to have systems operating in eight cities by the end of the Ten Year Plan period; the domestic rail network had to be rescued from a maintenance crisis rather than expanded and ...

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Section: Implications For British Transport Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The curious death – and life? – of British transport policy

Docherty

Shaw

Marsden

et al. 2018

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…How the latter trend is managed in the future could alter car traffic forecasts currently based on the 'predict and provide' model and have a substantial impact on car use. In trying to explain 'peak car', attention seems to focus on lifestyle and attitudinal factors [3], and this is likely to be critical in aligning the likely and the desirable outcomes of the development of the AV.…”

Section: The Wider Context Surrounding Autonomous Carsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LCM framework corresponds well with the automobile dependence and 'peak car' arguments [3,13], which promote a paradigm change in transport planning. The 'peak car' theory suggests that Btrends in car ownership and use in developed economies […] have passed a turning point and are now in long term decline^ [14].…”

Section: The Wider Context Surrounding Autonomous Carsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other countries where such a phenomenon has been observed include France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and Norway. Researchers are beginning to recognise a drop in licensing in Australia, North America, Japan, and most of Europe and are pondering the implications of this for future mobility trends and for current transport policy [3] (see also Special Issue of Transport Reviews, Vol. 33 Is.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, it is important to understand that for a vehicle to qualify as fully autonomous, it should be able to navigate itself in real traffic within roads which have not been specifically adapted for its use, but this does not mean that there will not be broader modifications to road infrastructure to accommodate the AVs. Through the use of V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) 2 and V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) 3 communication which will require adaptation of both road infrastructure and vehicles, AVs will be able to navigate in complex urban environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The autonomous car—a blessing or a curse for the future of low carbon mobility? An exploration of likely vs. desirable outcomes

2015

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Certain developed countries have experienced the 'peak car' phenomenon. While this remains to be confirmed longitudinally, it looks certain that future mobility in Europe and elsewhere will be shaped by a particular technological development: driverless or autonomous transport. The 'autonomous car' ignites the imagination, yet the research and debate on this topic largely focus on the 'autonomous' and not adequately on the 'car' element. Like any new technological development, autonomous transport presents ample opportunities to better our mobility system, but similarly it carries risks and can lead into a future mobility that exacerbates, rather than relieves, current deficiencies of our mobility systems, including its high carbon and high cost characteristics. Now it is high time to explore these, before we lock ourselves into the autonomous car future. Using Low Carbon Mobility (LCM) as a guiding framework to assess mobility patterns and based on an extensive literature review, this paper aims to explore where there is a gap between the likely and desirable outcomes when developing the autonomous car and suggest how we might reduce it. Moreover, enhancing on global empirical evidence and forecasts about the opportunities and threats emerging from ICT deployment in transport and initial evidence on the development of the autonomous car, the paper concludes that a desirable outcome will only come if technological development will be accompanied by a social change. A change where public and sharing will be seen as superior to private and individual transport, could make the autonomous car a blessing.

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The Consequences of Increasing Fuel Prices on Car Travel and Household Budgets

Grimal¹

2016

Energy and Environment

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After decades of growth, average car use per adult suddenly levelled off during the 2000's. This break in trend resulted both from stabilized needs, with the ending transition of the way of life towards a mobility achieved by car, and from increasing financial constraints following the explosion of fuel prices. From a basic model based on motorization rates and an indicator of energetic purchasing power, we show that the stagnation of car travel can be viewed as a lagged reaction to rising fuel prices, the speed of adjustment reflecting the long-run adaptability of household behaviors. As a result of increasing fuel prices, a greater proportion of households has become financially vulnerable, with a higher risk of falling into energetic precarity. The risk has increased most where situations of vulnerability were already concentrated, namely in areas of diffuse urbanization and among low-income households.

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‘Peak Car’ — Themes and Issues

Cited by 196 publications

References 6 publications

The curious death – and life? – of British transport policy

The curious death – and life? – of British transport policy

The autonomous car—a blessing or a curse for the future of low carbon mobility? An exploration of likely vs. desirable outcomes

The Consequences of Increasing Fuel Prices on Car Travel and Household Budgets

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