[sustran] Car growth stemmed in German cities

[Paul Barter]

This item from the latest electronic edition of Mobilizing the Region
(published by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign in the New York City
area) may be of interest to 'sustran-discussers'. By the way, Mobilizing
the Region (which has mostly very local news) along with other useful green
transport information can be found on the TSTC's website at:
http://www.tstc.org/
Best wishes, Paul.


    COORDINATED POLICIES STEM CAR GROWTH IN GERMAN CITIES

    While Paris chokes on auto-induced smog, John Pucher, a
    Rutgers urban-planning professor specializing in comparative
    international transport policies, is back from a year's study
    in Germany with news that cities there have stabilized car
    use through an integrated strategy of improved public
    transport, auto discouragement, bike-walk enhancements and
    anti-sprawl zoning.

        In a talk last month to the Auto-Free New York group,
    Pucher reported travel trends in Muenster, in northwestern
    Germany (pop. 270,000), Freiburg, in the southwest (pop.
    180,000), and Munich, the capital of Bavaria and Germany's
    third largest city (pop. 1,245,000). Between the mid-1970s
    and the mid-1990s, a period in which car use boomed
    worldwide, the share of trips by cars in each city stayed in
    the 35-40% range. The "green modes" of public transport,
    bicycling and walking account for almost two-thirds of all
    trips.

    --------------------------------------------------
    Modal Splits in Munich(% of trips by mode; figures for
    Muenster and Freiburg are similar)

    Year                  1976   1982   1989   1992   1995
    Car Driver           29        30        31       29        30
    Car Passenger      13          8          9          7          8
    Motorcycle             2          1          0          0          0
    Public Transport  19      22        24        25        25
    Bicycle                   6       10         12       15        14
    Walking                31       29        24       24        23
    ---------------------------------------------------

    Over the same period, the share of U.S. urban trips accounted
    for by cars, high at 80%, increased to 84%, while shares for
    cycling, walking and transport all fell.

        The one sour note for urbanists, the decline in walking,
    is partly due to longer trip distances. But in German cities
    the lost walk trips are largely replaced by bicycle travel,
    with no net increase in ecological or social harm. Pucher
    puts cycling's modal share in German cities at 12%, an order
    of magnitude higher than in the U.S.

       Pucher does not attribute these trends to any diminution
    in the cultural status of cars, which he says continue to
    have "huge symbolic value" in Germany. Rather, he credits
    them to interlocking strategies reinforcing a pluralistic
    system, which he puts in four categories:

    1. Improved Public Transport, including:
        * Physical expansion of bus and rail systems
        * Modernized vehicles and stations
        * System integration with linked schedules and fares
            and direct connections
        * Fare subsidization, particularly for monthly and
           annual passes
        * Effective marketing

    2. Pedestrian and Bicyclist Facilities
        * Extensive car-free pedestrian zones
          * Traffic calming in residential neighborhoods
          * Fully networked on-road bike lanes, converted
            from car use, along with off-road bike paths and
            bike parking

    3. Disincentives to Car Use
          * Restricted and expensive parking
          * High taxes on car ownership and use
          * Little or no urban road expansion
          * Auto-free zones and traffic calming (noted above)

    4. Anti-Sprawl Land Use
          * Zoning protection of farms and forests
          * Pro-density policies leading to population densities
           3-4 times those in U.S.

    "In their efforts to balance the private benefits of car use
    with its social and environmental costs," says Pucher,
    "German cities have shown that it is possible to maintain
    overall mobility levels while limiting car use in central
    areas and residential neighborhoods. His findings belie the
    notion that rising affluence dictates increased car
    dependence.  Pucher's paper, "Urban Transport in Germany:
    Providing Feasible Alternatives to the Car," is scheduled to
    appear in the Winter 1998 issue of  Transport Reviews. A
    companion paper, "Bicycling Boom In Germany: A Revival
    Engineered By Public Policy," will be published in the Fall
    1997 Transportation Quarterly.