A closer look at transport vehicle statistics

I've been getting a lot of comments, arguments mostly, on previous articles where we tried to paint the car as the main cause of most of traffic congestion, not only in this part of the globe, but the whole world actually.  Suffice to say, most, if not all of these came from friends who own cars, or those who are about to buy one, in the near or far future.  I have not received any contrary opinion from anybody who have been riding jeepneys or buses all their lives, or especially from those who love to walk or bike their way to work.  Very revealing.

This is not surprising because in many international conferences on transportation, especially those on public transportation or sustainable transportation, we get basically the same complaint.  One young lady in a forum in Singapore a few years back complained why the speakers were demonizing the car.  The panel of experts tried to appease her by pointing out that even the speakers themselves rode cars on the way to the event.  It's not as if these transport experts see the car as evil, it's just a professional assessment of congestion.

Maybe the biggest mistake of those who are in the transport sector who are the "decision- or policy-makers" is ignoring transport statistics, mis-interpreting them, or worse, acting not based on those statistics and not with the direction of influencing them.  One needs just to look at the transport plans that we have in the country, past and present, and see that not one of the made car ownership, motorization rate, or modal split, as targets.  Instead, we see road densities in kilometer per 1,000 population or per square kilometer.

In last Thursday's column, we touched on how car-centric the North American society has become, ever since the automobile appeared on the road, coupled by the American Dream of the mid-20th century resulting on suburban sprawl in US cities.  This was followed to a greater extent by Australia, resulting in the two being today, the top carbon emitters in the world, followed by China and India.  The number of cars in these countries is of the same statistical positions worldwide.  Again, this is not about the car being bad.

Last Thursday, I said 8 out of 10 Americans own a motor vehicle, in contrast to less than 1 out of 10 Filipinos.  But if we look at the individual US states, we find a very interesting phenomenon.  The top six states have more than 1,000 vehicles per 1,000 population - Wyoming (1,140), Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, and Nebraska.  Alaska is the 7th with 960.  In the other extreme, the lowest motorization rate is Colorado with 340, and a bunch of states which includes Nevada, New York, Indiana, North Carolina, and New Jersey.

Washington D.C., the country's capital, though it's not a state, came in second at 350, less than half of the country's average.  What is surprising in the above is that the states with most of the U.S. major mega and metropolitan cities have much lower motorization rates than states with less populated or less dense urban areas.  This is opposite what we have in the Philippines where the most densely populated cities have the most number of cars, the highest number of cars per 1,000 population, and the worst congestion.

The explanation? - Predominance of public transportation.  While I had always complained of the lack of public transportation in my visits to Charlotte, Las Vegas, and L.A., it's often worse in other less populated cities, where people simply rode cars anywhere.  It would not be surprising if the most dense cities with highly developed public transportation will have the highest incidence of walking, too.  Even New York, one of the mega-cities of the world (cities with more than 10 million population) is exerting efforts in establishing bike lanes.

We are not demonizing the car.  But the fact remains that urban congestion especially in mobility builds up when a country has no policy on regulating car use.  Many jurisdictions already recognize this policy issue, the Philippines included, and attempt to increase the modal share of public transportation.  Yet, many shy short of forcing the issue and declaring that it's the country's policy to curb car use.  Maybe we can have plenty of discussion material on the need for greater transport vehicle efficiency, like the car pool lanes in L.A.

But maybe the concept that we need to reiterate is the differentiation between car ownership and car use, if only to appease those who believe this is simply car-bashing.  (to be continued)