JAN 07

Two interesting pieces of news came out this week showing that Americans are becoming more open to car-less travel:  (1) the Earth Policy Institute released a study showing that car ownership dropped by 4,000,000 vehicles in 2009 and (2) the Upper West Side of New York City will be converting 240 parking meters into bicycle racks.

During 2009, 14 million cars were scrapped while only 10 million new ones were purchased.  The U.S. fleet of cars declined by 2 percent from 250 million to 246 million within the year.  This marks the first time since WWII that the number of cars scrapped was greater than those purchased.

The study attributes the decline to us reaching market saturation for vehicles.  There are five cars to every four Americans (even with the drop), which is more than plenty.  The analysts also cite "ongoing urbanization, economic uncertainty, oil insecurity, rising gasoline prices, frustration with traffic congestion, mounting concerns about climate change, and a declining interest in cars among young people" as reasons.   Wouldn't it be wonderful if we've reached "peak vehicle" and the fleet number will continue to drop?

In the other news, 40 blocks of the Upper West Side in NYC will have their old parking meters converted to bike racks.  The community board voted to make the change after local businesses said they wanted the 185,000 cyclists in the city visiting their shops and restaurants.  Logical and bike-friendly!

via Inhabitat and Gothamist

Comments (8)

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written by Luis, January 07, 2010

Thanks goodness not everyone thinks like you, many people think more positively towards change.

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Having a car provides freedom to some degree,
written by Josh, January 08, 2010

but you do have to keep paying those pesky car payments, insurance, registration fees, parking fees, maintenance, and fuel costs. So liberating!

That's not my point though...

To be fair, public transit is NOT awful all over the world. It's awful in some locations and EXCELLENT in others. The challenge is to make cars cleaner and more sustainable (because I won't fancy giving up mine either) and public transport more attractive where it sucks (to help get me interested in using it more).

Why can't we just have cleaner cars AND good public transportation at the same time?

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Progress
written by Chris, January 08, 2010

Progress may just lead full circle. There are still choices and it is good that there are examples such as these which are working. This is interesting as the progress simply leads back to a time when there where no cars for transportation.

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Since when have trends in New York been an indicator of national ones?
written by Umlud, January 08, 2010

So NYC is going to change street parking to bike parking. Okay. So? NYC has a mayoralty that has a lot of power, and a mayor who wants to do this. In many ways, NYC is anomalous, and this is just one more way.

Do I applaud it? Sure. Would I want it here in (so-called) liberal Ann Arbor? Sure, because I exclusively ride my bike, even in the winter, and feel that more bike parking would help with having more bike ridership in this city.

Do I think the action taken in NYC will have any impact on A2? No, but I can hope.

On the up side, with all the snowfall, few people are riding their bikes to work, and I have a greater ability to choose where I want to park.

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public transit v. cars
written by Cherie, January 14, 2010

Josh is right -- what is needed is public transit that works as well as cleaner automobiles for the places you can't get to via public transit. Most bigger cities have some form of public transit; I can't speak to all the good ones, but certainly Boston's system is a model for a city that should keep as many folks off the road as possible! Here in Raleigh we have a bus system, but not enough routes to really make it work.

It is the independent nature of Americans that means we don't want to wait 5 minutes for a bus when we can just hop in a car and go. That impatience with not getting what we want immediately has to be overcome in order to make some of these changes happen.

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Maybe
written by Vicki, January 15, 2010

Market saturation and a broken economy means that Americans are more open to car-less travel? That is quite a leap in logic.....

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