So many people drive automobiles these days than at any time in the life cycle of man, that cities all around the world are subjected to traffic jams nearly every hour. What can governments do to make people less likely to own cars?

So many people drive automobiles these days than at any time in the life cycle of man, that cities all around the world are subjected to traffic jams nearly every hour. What can governments do to make people less likely to own cars?

Private vehicle ownership has expanded dramatically over recent decades, reshaping urban mobility with enormous benefits as well as significant and growing social, environmental, and economic costs. Traffic congestion, air pollution, carbon emissions, and the use of immense urban land for roads and parking all impose significant burdens on cities and their residents that require coherent public policy responses over time. Governments have quite a wealth of instruments available for discouraging private car ownership and use, and most effective strategies involve combinations of financial disincentives, infrastructure investment and regulatory measures working in mutually-reinforcing ways.

Financial levers may be the most readily available of all the tools available to governments wanting to discourage car ownership. Progressive vehicle taxation — levied in a way that hugely increases the cost of ownership for the most polluting vehicles (and especially older, larger models) while allowing people with real transport needs to keep pace at a cost they can afford. Well-designed congestion charging schemes–like the ones with proven success in London, Stockholm and Singapore–raise direct costs of urban driving during peak periods, lowering traffic volumes (and pollution) while generating revenues that can be used for public transport improvement. In this sense, fuel taxation and parking levies work similarly by raising the marginal cost of vehicle use over time to favour an economic transition towards alternative transport modes.

Facility investments in world class public transport alternatives are plainly needed too — and certainly the starting point which makes disincentive-based financial carrots work rather than become punitive. When city dwellers need a private vehicle to get to their jobs, education, healthcare and services because public transport options are limited – policies that make car ownership more expensive act as regressive taxes on mobility rather than real behaviour-change instruments. Thus local and national governments should make heavy investments in metro- and rail-network expansion, increased bus frequency and reliability, and seamless interchange infrastructure to transform multimodal public transport from a frustrating necessity into an equally-matched organisational alternative to private vehicles with respect to journey time, comfort, and predictability.

Active travel infrastructure — such as dedicated cycling lanes, pedestrian priority zones and safe walking networks — is another vital component of any extensive vehicle reduction approach. Most urban car trips are short enough to be possible on a bike or by foot if infrastructure supported this. The likes of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and more recently Seville have shown that bicycle infrastructure has the potential to achieve seismic modal shifts away from automotive modes in what can be very short periods of time (given the fact these cities were deeply car orientated).

While more long-term than technological solutions, land use and urban planning policies provide the most significant mechanism for reducing car dependency. Cities planned through mixed-use, high density development — where residential is close to employment, retail, education and leisure — inherently produce lower levels of car dependence than sprawling morno-funcational suburbia that segregates homes from destinations with distances that precludes non-motorised transport. Making systemic changes to the way we plan communities, by prioritizing walkable, transit-oriented development is perhaps the single most important contribution that governments can make toward long-term vehicle reduction— and it likely only serves such a long term effect (decades) as opposed to shorter term).

Complementary measures are therefore needed: these include employer programmes backing remote working and flexible scheduling to avoid overload during peak commuting hours, car-sharing scheme promotion that aims at creating an aggregate demand reduction in the need for individual ownership, and public campaigns reframing car-free or car-light lifestyles as aspirational rather than simply economically constrained alternatives.

Overall, these simulations show that to discourage private car ownership effectively governments need to employ a comprehensive package of financial, infrastructural and land use demand management measures in a mutually reinforcing manner. Rather than simply pricing car ownership out of reach, successful urban vehicle reduction strategies provide real alternatives to the car and improve quality of urban life for all city residents.