Christian Lefèvre

THE URBAN TRANSPORT CRISIS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA

This book examines the urban transport crisis from an international, comparative perspective. Throughout the industrialized world car ownership and use have grown rapidly over the past few decades while, in contrast, public transport use has either fallen or stagnated. These trends have caused increasingly severe social, economic and environmental problems. The purpose of this book is not just to describe the differences in transport systems, travel behaviour and transport problems but to identify policies which will help solve the ever growing problems of urban transport. The authors examine the problems and solutions experienced by a number of countries and provide a comparative assessment of their policies and future developments.

Great Britain: Failure of Free Market Policies

Among the countries examined in this book, Great Britain occupies a special place as the only one to have enacted a complete shift in urban public transport policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Great Britain established a monopoly of the operation, management and planning of public transport both at the national and local level. Following the Parliamentary victory of the Conservatives in 1979, however, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, launched a new transport policy that dismantled the existing system, introducing deregulation and privatization as solutions to the worsening public transport crisis. Whereas the Reagan and Bush Administrations in the USA were unable to implement similar privatization measures because of Congressional opposition, the British Conservatives were successful in imposing their free market policies, helped by a political system which ensured them a reliable majority in Parliament and by the consistent support of the British electorate in successive national elections. Once considered the country of local government, Great Britain has become increasingly centralized, with local authorities losing most of their responsibilities and central government imposing strict control over the use of local revenues.

Overview of Urban Transport Systems and Land Use Patterns in Europe and North America

The countries of Europe and North America all seem to be headed in the same direction: more car ownership and use. As shown in this chapter, however, current levels of car ownership and especially use vary greatly from one country to another. For example, the car accounts for almost twice as high a proportion of urban travel in North America as in Western Europe, and four times as high as in Eastern Europe. Conversely, walking and bicycling account for roughly three to five times as high a proportion of urban travel in Europe as in either the USA or Canada. Public transport serves four to six times as high a percentage of urban trips in Canada and Europe as in the USA. Although the world-wide trend towards more automobile ownership and use has indeed produced some convergence, differences in urban transport systems and travel behaviour remain significant.

The United States: The Car-Dependent Society

No other country in the world is as dominated by the automobile as the USA. From the very beginnings of automobile travel in the early twentieth century, rates of automobile ownership and use in the USA have exceeded levels in other countries, and current rates of ownership and use are by far the highest in the world. Even countries with higher per capita incomes have fewer cars per capita than the USA.

Dealing with the Urban Transport Crisis: Comparative Policy Evaluation

In the preceding 10 chapters, we have documented the trend towards increased car ownership and use throughout Europe and North America. Although the USA led the way in the shift from public transport to the car, Canada and Western Europe have been following the American example for the past two decades, and Eastern Europe is now following the example of Western Europe. At the same time, the use of public transport, walking and cycling have been declining as modes of urban travel. There remain significant differences in travel behaviour between Europeans and Americans, and also between Americans and Canadians, with the USA still by far the most automobile dominated country in the world. The differences, however, become smaller with each passing year.

Germany: The Conflict between Automobility and Environmental Protection

Germany is a country full of contradictions, and that is also true in passenger transport. Prior to reunification in 1990, West Germany had the highest rate of car ownership in Europe, and the second highest in the world, surpassed only by the USA. East Germany had by far the highest rate of car ownership of any Socialist country. Since reunification, Germany continues to have more cars per capita than all but a few countries. Moreover, its system of limited access superhighways, the autobahns, is the most extensive in Europe and is the only highway system in the world without a general speed limit. Indeed, one sometimes has the impression that the autobahns are racetracks rather than highways. Repeated attempts to legislate a general speed limit for the autobahns have been vigorously opposed by various interest groups and the majority of German voters.

The Netherlands: A Wise Country Overtaken by World Trends

With 438 people per sq. km, the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Situated at the crossroads of Northern and Western Europe, it serves as gateway for a heavy flow of traffic and goods. Its geographical position is an important economic resource and access to transport nodes (seaports, airports, and large cities) is vital. However, the essential incompatibility of high population density and heavy traffic means that the Netherlands is currently facing dangerous levels of congestion, especially in the Randstad, the economic heart of the country. Although it is essential that people and goods be able to move easily across and within the country, the Dutch strongly resent the incursion of heavy traffic on their daily environment; thus environmental protection is a particularly sensitive issue.

The Urban Transport Crisis: Introduction

Transport problems have plagued cities from their very beginnings. Even horse drawn chariots caused congestion and safety problems in ancient Rome. Steam locomotives in the nineteenth century were both noisy and polluting, leading to the peripheral locations of railroad stations in most European cities. Tram accidents caused thousands of deaths in both America and Europe during the early twentieth century. Urban streets were filled with trams, omnibuses, pedestrians and horse drawn freight wagons, leading to frequent traffic jams. Transport problems, therefore, are not new, but they have been greatly exacerbated by the automobile, which has caused much more serious and more extensive social and environmental problems than ever before: more noise, air and water pollution, accident and injury, congestion, energy waste, urban sprawl, social segregation and inequity in mobility.

Italy: Cities without Policies

The urban transport crisis in Italy is very serious and generally considered to be an acute problem in the functioning of cities. The high degree of pollution and congestion are characteristic of the crisis but, to a far greater extent than in other countries, it seems to be a crisis of public policies or rather, absence of policies: an absence of policies designed to achieve a balance between public and private transport, and an absence of policies in the public transport sector itself. The lack of infrastructure, notably in public transport, is criticized by many. The inability of successive governments to reduce the increasing deficits incurred by public transport operators is increasingly evident today. Public bodies, from the state down to local governments, do not seem to have any policies (that is, any objectives at all), let alone any coherent policies. This is corroborated by the fact that no recent comprehensive data on urban transport is to be found. Public action is generally determined by the degree of urgency of a problem, but so far it has been sporadic, sectoral and short sighted. This situation is undeniably the result of fragmented political power and political instability over at least the last decade, which seems to indicate that it is politically less risky to do nothing than to do something. This analysis will be developed later, but we will first try to present a general picture of the state of urban transport from the scanty and incomplete information which does exist.

Eastern Europe: Transport Impacts of Political Revolution

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been undergoing profound political, social, and economic changes over the past five years. The overthrow of Communist dictatorships throughout the region from 1989 to 1991 unleashed a series of revolutions, affecting virtually every aspect of life. Among former Socialist countries, East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) experienced the most sudden transformation, thanks to its reunification with West Germany in 1990. The developments in East Germany will be discussed in this chapter because East Germany was an integral part of the political and economic system in Eastern Europe until 1989. Moreover, the situation there is useful for predicting future developments in other former Eastern Bloc countries. The rest of the chapter focuses on Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (since 1993, this has split to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Of course, political and economic changes in Bulgaria, Romania, the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union have been at least as important, but impacts on urban transport there have not yet been as large, and data for those countries are less available and less reliable than for the countries included in this chapter.