We should not plan our cities for cars, but for humans. A big share of the future transport can be moved from cars to bikes, walking and public transport. As a benefit the cities can become greener, it can improve the health of the citizens and create space for bikes, electric scooters and other new solutions.
Nowadays, cars take up an incredible amount of space in our cities. All streets in Copenhagen have parked cars on both sides of the roads, which take up space from potential bike paths and recreational areas. If we can halve the number of cars in the cities, it will free up huge areas that can be used creatively.
In 2012, the Danish Council of Technology released a report “Danish transport without coal and oil – how?”. It was carried out in close collaboration with a steering committee representing the entire transport sector in Denmark. The report shows how the transport work from cars can be reduced by partly limiting the need for transport with better planning of the urban space and by partly shifting to walking, cycling and public transport.
The figure below is from the report mentioned above and it shows how much the expected transport work can be limited and in particular how it can be lowered for cars.
In March 2018, the Swedish Transport Authority released a similar report “Review of the Swedish Transport Administration’s Climate Scenarios”. In this study, it is estimated that transport work from cars can be reduced by 45% in 2050 compared to a reference projection. The main contribution is from improved urban planning, but also improved public transport and car-sharing schemes, e-commerce and teleworking.
In a project funded by Nordic Energy Research called “Sustainable Horizons in Future Transport”, we looked at the consequences for the transport and energy system in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, of limiting the transport work from cars. One of the obvious consequences is that we do not need nearly as many cars, which means that, for instance, in Denmark we can save DKK 3-7 billion in investments in cars per year – Money, which instead can be spent on sustainable urban planning and alternative infrastructure. If we get a breakthrough with self-driving car, the number of cars can potentially be reduced even further.
Below are a few graphs from the SHIFT project results website that anyone can go and check out. The first graph shows the expected development in transport work in a reference scenario (first pillar) and in the scenario where car transport is reduced (second pillar). Car transport is the purple part of the pillar and it is greatly reduced over time in the alternative scenario, partly because the total transport work is reduced as a result of better urban planning, more teleworking and a shift from car to train, bus, bikes and walking.
The figure also shows how much our air travel takes on the total transport work (the light green).
The next graph shows the evolution of the car stock in the two scenarios. In both scenarios, there is a shift towards hybrid cars and electric cars, but the big difference is the number of cars. In the alternative scenario, the number of cars is less than half compared to the reference. This is partly due to the shift away from cars as mentioned above, but also because of an increased share of car-pooling.
