Cars are like 2-liter Sodas

Two-liter sodas are meant for parties: to be consumed by lots of people on special occasions and in a short period of time. If you buy a 2-liter soda under other conditions, you usually end up drinking too much yourself or letting some go to waste.

Cars are like that. Despite the fact that we usually drive alone, and that we don’t drive 24, or even 12, and not even 6 hours a day, cars are only sold in the big gulp size. And so, we consume them too much in our efforts to get our money’s worth, and lots of our car’s value goes to waste.

Traditional carsharing lets some people consume just the amount of car they want. But small-minded documents (leases and insurance documents) make it illegal to share your own car with someone else for money, or to formally pay an individual to use their car.
If we want to have fewer cars in cities and towns, and fewer cars mined out of the ground, stored on our streets, and returned to landfills, we need to create the insurance and regulatory means by which this kind of just-right consumption is possible.

Ditto for sharing car rides, for which it is also illegal in most countries to pay for the driver’s time and effort in addition to defraying some of his car costs. A California start-up Spride Ride has found a legislator who is trying to address some of these problems, but it is one state, and even that bill isn’t going far enough.

Legislators and policy-makers around the world: realize that some people want single-sized servings of cars and rides – or maybe even the opportunity to buy a 6-pack of individual servings – but only some of us want the 2-liter bottle. And unless you think the government or big business can provide those individual car-servings in every geography and to every desiring population, you’d do best to get rid of those barriers so that some us can serve up our excess car capacity and sell it to our neighbors.

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Does Everyone in America Own a Car?

I got asked to write the 500 word answer to the above question that was going in a US Information Service publication called "20 Answers" (I think). It was a very curious challenge. Anything you write, when limited to 500 words, ends up feeling biased and a bit like propaganda. There are some great paragraphs in there. I like this piece! You can also read it at its source, the america.gov website too.

It is true that 95 percent of American households own a car, and most Americans get to work by car (85 percent). It wasn’t always this way, nor is it likely to stay this way.

Until World War II and into the late 1940s, many Americans did not own cars. People lived in cities and towns, and 40 percent did not own cars but used public buses, trolleys, and trains. Soon after the war, a surge in low-cost, mass-produced houses occurred outside cities to accommodate returning soldiers and their growing families. The new housing pattern was accompanied by the National Interstate Highway System, which was started in 1956. During the next 50 years, 46,876 miles (75,440 kilometers) of highways were built across America.

Americans could live in affordable suburbs in houses built on cheap land, and they could get to distant jobs with cars. Today, only 5 percent of Americans use public transportation to get to their jobs. However, this pattern of life is changing.

It has been 50 years since America embarked on this plan that influenced how we live and travel today, and we have experienced some shortcomings. Car-dependent travel and infrastructure are poorly suited for the dense urban areas in which increasing numbers of Americans live. As in other parts of the world, Americans seek to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and address climate change through alternative-fuel and fuel-efficient vehicles, but we realize these new cars alone will not meet all travel needs of Americans: The young, the old, the poor, and those living in dense urban areas need other options.

In 2001, car ownership peaked (1.1 cars per licensed driver). By 2008, the average number of miles driven in the United States fell for the first time in history, declining 3.6 percent from 2007, and the number of trips by public transportation rose to a 50-year high. It is too early to tell if this change was the result of high fuel prices in 2008.

More people are choosing to live in cities where they don’t need a car. New York City has the lowest rate of car ownership, with only 50 percent of households owning cars. Good sidewalks and public transit and safe bicycle networks are a priority in these cities. In July 2009, New York City completed the first phase of a plan to make the city more friendly to bicycles by adding 200 miles of bike lanes separated from car traffic within the city.

During the past decade American cities have seen the rise of a service called car sharing. Shared cars owned by private companies are parked throughout dense metropolitan areas and university campuses. Members rent them by the hour or day instead of owning cars. The advantage to members is that they pay only for what they use; they don't have to worry about maintenance, parking or insurance expenses, and they can choose a car that fits a specific trip (a pickup truck, four-door, or two-door vehicle).

In New York City, more than 100,000 people are sharing about 2,000 cars. This service dramatically reduces the number of cars and parking spaces needed to satisfy the needs of a large population. Each shared car replaces 10 to 20 privately held cars and is used by 40 to 50 people.

Looking to the future, it is likely we will see a reduction in the number of car trips Americans take and a rise in the number of trips they take by foot, bicycle, public transit, or train. Car sharing will become common, and more people will take advantage of carpooling (many people sharing the same trip).

Wireless technologies and smart mobile phones will make it easy to quickly find different ways to travel; see schedules; compare speed, cost, convenience, and carbon emissions; and choose the best method for each trip. America's transportation picture once again will be highly diversified.

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What’s your plan for $5/gallon gas?

Here are some beautiful maps of why you, personally, should care. These maps show what percent of the average household income is going towards transportation. All those people who live in the pink areas are spending between 20-28% of their income on transportation! and
those dark red areas are where people are spending MORE than 28% of their income!!!!!

Here is what it looks like when gas is $1.63/gallon, as it was in 2000.

And here is what it looks like when gas was $4.18/gallon, as it was in 2008.


Yikes! and wow! and @#$!@#@#$!!!!
Note that households that are car dependent really take a huge hit. The people who are living in areas with high quality transit are doing well. So, back to the question at hand:

If you are a family, what’s your plan for $5/gallon gas?

If you are a town, what’s your plan?

If you are a state, what’s your plan?

If you are the country, what’s your plan?

You can look at these maps for many metro-areas across the US at htaindex.org, and also see what this looks like when the average cost of housing is added in. Now those maps are really scary!

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Walking & Transit Use up 25% since 2001

This is an amazing, unexpected, and very good trend, and 25% sounds like a lot. And it is, sort of. This means that today, only 82% of all trips Americans take are by car, instead of 86% of trips, which was the case in 2001. Here is the article with the highlights, and here is the original data from the National Household Travel Survey.

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