[sustran] The war on cars is winnable: lessons from Singapore, Chennai and beyond

[Vinay Baindur]

http://scroll.in/article/703874/The-war-on-cars-is-winnable:-lessons-from-Singapore,-Chennai-and-beyond



The war on cars is winnable: lessons from Singapore, Chennai and beyond
Why the world might narrowly escape a future of gridlock.
Carlin Carr <http://scroll.in/#!/?publisher=1291&title=Carlin Carr>
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Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/AFP

On the 14th day of the eighth month in the Year of the Tiger, Beijing
traffic came to a standstill. It was a drizzling evening the day before the
2010 Harvest Moon Festival
<http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/09/03/when-is-mid-autumn-festivval_n_5756360.html>,
the second-biggest holiday on the Chinese calendar, and the city was in a
celebratory mood. Colorful lanterns, snarling dragons and paper-mache
warriors lined roadside stalls. The 3,000-year-old festival traditionally
gives thanks to the moon in hopes of a plentiful harvest. On this evening,
however, commuters cared less about the natural bounties. Their concerns
were focused on the metal-on-metal gridlock that clogged 140 roads for more
than 1,000 kilometers
<http://abcnews.go.com/International/chinas-traffic-jam-lasts-11-days-reaches-74/story?id=11550037>,
the equivalent of a traffic jam running from Boston to Philadelphia, then
back to Boston again.

Even well-worn Chinese commuters had had enough. The month before, the 110
expressway from Inner Mongolia into Beijing had also jammed
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam>.
Hours turned into days and, by the end, the route was impassable for nearly
two weeks. Drivers, many of them truckers avoiding checkpoints on an
alternate route, were seen wandering the highway in search of water and
cigarettes. Makeshift stands with instant noodles and snacks sprouted up
along the stretch of deadlock. Drivers bucket-bathed alongside their
vehicles.

The traffic jams of 2010 were so mind-bogglingly huge that they seemed to
represent some sort of tipping point, the beginning of an era in which
congestion now threatened China’s very ability to function. As it happens,
2010 *was* a milestone — the year of the traffic jam was also the year that
the world’s one billionth car hit the road
<http://wardsauto.com/ar/world_vehicle_population_110815>, most likely
somewhere in mainland China. It was the year that China’s car sales leapt
from the previous year’s by a whopping 27%, and the year that Chinese
consumers bought half of all the vehicles sold in the entire world.

While China’s explosion in car ownership was the most conspicuous, other
developing countries were on their own car-buying binges, most notably
India, which saw an 8.9% rise in car ownership that year. Globally, car
sales rose by 3.6%, the largest increase in a decade. In 2010, 73.2 million
new cars rolled out of dealerships.

The dangers of all this motor vehicle growth are obvious. In addition to
causing crippling traffic jams, cars are now the world’s fastest-growing
source of CO2. A recent study
<https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/A-Global-High-Shift-Scenario_WEB.pdf>
found
that transportation in cities accounted for about 2.3 gigatons of CO2 in
2010, almost one-quarter of all urban carbon emissions. If those trend
lines hold, cars will soon outpace all other causes of climate change, and
like climate change, the world has a certain window of time to stop car
growth before it’s too late.

Because despite the apocalyptic traffic jams, car ownership in developing
countries is still very low. While the U.S. has nearly one car for every
person, in China, only one in every 17 people owns a car. In India, it’s
one in every 56. That leaves a sobering amount of room for growth. As those
countries’ middle classes mushroom, the share of car owners will skyrocket.
And once all those people decide to adopt a car-based lifestyle,
car-oriented development will be far more difficult to stop.

Which is to say, if Asia wants to dodge a future of total gridlock, it
needs to find a way to change its trajectory of rapid car growth, and fast.
To do this, the continent can look to cities within its own borders. To be
sure, certain Asian cities are drowning in private vehicles. But others are
battling the onslaught with remarkable success. Japan put the brakes on its
initial post-war car boom, realising early on that with limited space and
no domestic oil, mitigating cars was a matter of national importance.
Singapore found itself in a similar situation when its residents began
growing wealthy in the 1970s and ’80s. Crunched for space, the city-state
pioneered the world’s first congestion charge and has managed to keep car
use impressively low.

With smart regulation, savvy economics and cultural mindset shifts, these
cities have proven that economic growth and a burgeoning middle-class
needn’t translate into a traffic nightmare. The key is a thoughtful mix of
“carrots and sticks”: provide reliable, efficient mass transit, and jack up
the cost and hassle of using a car until it’s not worth it. Countries don’t
need huge amounts of wealth to create viable alternatives to cars, nor is a
low-income population the only thing that can minimise car use. Whether
India and China follow the traffic-mitigating leads of Singapore and Japan
will have vast implications for how those countries fare in the coming
century.

*Defeated in War, Triumphant in Transit*

Ultramodern Tokyo wasn’t always thus. In the early 20th century, as the
U.S. was laying the track for its first subway systems, the Japanese were
still relying on horses. In a rush to catch up to the West, the Meiji Era
set out to transform the country from an isolated feudal outpost to a
modern technological society.

During this period, developing new transport methods topped Japan’s to-do
list. The country built a network of modern rail and road systems to
connect an urbanising nation. But the Allied bombings of World War II sent
the Japanese back in time. By 1945, infrastructure was in such a sorry
state that workers were commuting over vast distances on bicycles
<http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/how-japan-realized-her-impossible-dream>.

Soon after the war, however, the country’s development kicked back into
high gear. Led by Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda in the early ’60s, Japan
embarked on the fastest modernisation effort in the history of the world.
Through innovative public financing schemes and economic policies —
including an audacious income-doubling plan
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/284835/Income-Doubling-Plan> —
Japan would match and ultimately surpass the transportation achievements of
the world’s largest superpowers.

The transformation wasn’t just technological, it was cultural. Now, rather
than the simple rural life, middle-class Japanese were working to keep up
with the Tanakas
<http://www.colorado.edu/cas/tea/curriculum/imaging-japanese-history/late-20th-century/essay.html>.
Families dreamt of attaining the “three K’s”: *kūrā, karā terebi, kā* (air
conditioner, color television and car). With a newly wealthy population
clamouring for the latest manufactured goods, the government saw the most
expensive of these goods as the key to unlocking an economic boom.

To encourage more people to buy cars, Japan went on a road-building frenzy.
Bridges and highways materialised overnight. Gun factories were transformed
into automobile plants. In 1956, only 2% of the country’s roads were paved.
The Japan Highway Public Corporation was formed to change all that. In the
1960s and ’70s, road building absorbed an astounding 40% of all public
works spending. At the same time, manufacturers and banks introduced
extended warranties and auto loans, all of which allowed more and more
households to buy a car.


But then something unusual happened: The government looked a few decades
into the future and realised that encouraging the public’s obsession with
cars, while a powerful short-term economic stimulus, was a dangerous and
unsustainable plan for a country with no domestic oil and little space to
expand. There was also the simple fact that financially strapped post-war
Japan just couldn’t afford to sprawl
<http://www.citylab.com/commute/2011/10/why-tokyos-privately-owned-rail-systems-work-so-well/389/>,
with suburbs — and all the many layers of infrastructure that accompany
them — being too expensive to build and maintain.

The 1964 Olympics provided the pivot point toward a major mass transit
buildout. The 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo were the first that had ever been
held in Asia. It was a huge opportunity to not only invest in a series of
massive public works projects, but to gear those projects in a direction
that would show the world how far Japan had advanced since losing the war.

The Shinkansen
<http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/japans-bullet-train-the-worlds-first-and-still-best-high-speed-rail-network>
became
the centerpiece of this display. Just 10 days before the Olympic torch
entered Tokyo, the world’s first high-speed train, the Tokaido Shinkansen,
sped at 210 kilometers per hour
<http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2005-02-27/news/27492500_1_high-speed-bullet-train-fastest-trains>
from
Tokyo to Osaka in less than four hours, a trip that previously took seven.
“When it opened, the Shinkansen … was a sign that Japan was starting to
advance technologically very quickly and modernising very quickly,” says
Christopher Hood, author of *Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of
Modern Japan*. “As part of the process of everything else that was going on
during this time in terms of having the Olympics and Prime Minister Ikeda’s
income-doubling plan, it just gave the Japanese that little bit of extra
swagger and confidence, which clearly they had lost as a result of losing
World War II.”

Japanese and the world alike were dazzled by the sleek, powerful rail
system, and rail networks and urban metros became the focus of major
investment. While the U.S. was doing everything possible to encourage car
culture, Japan began speeding in the opposite direction, making cars more
expensive and annoying to use, and pouring piles of money into transit.

Today, the country that makes the world’s bestselling car, the Toyota
Corolla, has done an outstanding job of discouraging its own residents from
driving it. In Japan, you may be able to afford to buy a car, but using it
costs a fortune. First, there’s the compulsory 60-point safety inspection,
called a *shaken*, required every two years. The inspection has been in
place since 1951, and can set owners back anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000.
The exhaustive test inevitably turns up multiple failures, which then cost
even more to fix. The shaken also comes with a compulsory insurance and a
weight tax. The endless circle of tests, fixes and fees is a perpetual
source of grumbling in Japan.

Hefty tolls are also a deterrent. Every part of Japan’s highway system is
tolled at an average of ¥24.6 (21 cents U.S.) per kilometer, compared to
¥10.8 to ¥13.45 per kilometer in France and ¥7.01 in Italy. Driving
America’s vast interstate highway system, by contrast, is mostly free
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/white-house-opens-door-to-tolls-on-interstate-highways-removing-long-standing-prohibition/2014/04/29/5d2b9f30-cfac-11e3-b812-0c92213941f4_story.html>.
Bridges in Japan are even more expensive. The Akashi Kaikyo suspension
bridge, the longest in the world, charges drivers $25 U.S. to cross.

Thanks to measures like these, Japanese drive less than a third
<http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR600/RR636/RAND_RR636.pdf>
as
much as Americans do. The average American clocked 14,000 kilometers behind
the wheel in 2008. The average Japanese drove just 4,000 kilometers. Heavy
taxes and fees on car usage as well as more densely planned cities in Japan
have sent the country in a vastly different direction than the
car-dependent U.S.

*Straphangers in Prada*

When Japan stormed onto the scene as a major world power in the 1980s,
Singapore was only just ramping up its economic ascent. When it gained
independence from British rule in the 1960s, it was described
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/07/10/what-makes-an-asian-tiger-singapores-unlikely-economic-success-lies-in-its-history/>
by
one visitor as a “poor little market in a dark part of Asia.” Today it’s a
slick, affluent hub for international finance. Over the course of a few
decades, this small, sovereign city-state just north of the equator has
seen GDP per capita grow to be “comparable to the United States and
exceeding most Western countries.”


cont,............................