Is Americans a “car culture” or are they “car dependent”? Do they drive because they love driving, or are they in an unhealthy relationship with a substance it would be happy to do without? Obviously there are plenty of Americans who do love their cars, but here’s more evidence that there are fewer of them than you might think, and that the common “car culture” frame is misleading us.
A new study by Nicole Corcoran and others did a nationwide survey with a striking finding:
We find that nearly one fifth of urban and suburban US car owners express a definite interest in living car-free (18 %), and an additional 40 % are open to the idea. This is in addition to the small share (10 %) of urban and suburban US residents currently living without a car.
Five key factors are associated with interest in car-free living: having prior experience living without a car, using alternative modes of transportation for at least five percent of trips, lower car dependence, riding transit regularly, and having less enjoyment of travel by private car. Further, we find that car owners interested in car-free living are a diverse group, with few significant associations between interest in car-free living and key socioeconomic or demographic variables.
Given the sizable unmet demand for car-free living, we conclude that planners should allow and facilitate car-free and car-lite developments. In practice, this can be done by embracing zoning reform, investing in alternative transportation infrastructure, lowering parking requirements for development, and encouraging mixed land uses, including in residential neighborhoods.
I wish they had dropped the word “infrastructure,” because the fastest things we can do to make car-free live possible for more people is to expand the provision of public transit service. That means actually running more buses and trains, not just building facilities for them.
I expect to refer to this study frequently, because it pierces the illusion that public transit faces a “cultural” challenge in the US. Public transit’s problem in the US is that it isn’t very useful. That’s something we can measure, and change.
Don’t worry about trying to change a culture. Change the facts and the culture will follow.
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