| The effectiveness of public transport is significantly affected by the population density. Without sufficient people per unit area, you won’t have enough passengers to make the public transport work, depending on all the obvious factors like cost/quality of the public transport, proximity to housing without parking, the existence of housing without parking, etc. I would view the existence of housing that doesn’t come with parking to be a forcing function, it on average only gets built where public transportation is viable, and once built it ensures ongoing continued demand for that transportation which keeps public transport more viable around that location. Not a lot of housing development (even removing suburban homes where driving is basically a necessity) in Australia or New Zealand gets built without at least one parking space per dwelling be it a town house an unit or even a studio apartment… it does happen but it’s kind of rare. In large part due to the conflict between inner city real estate where public transport density is high enough to make car free living practical for normal people, is sufficiently expensive that the market selects for people who are rich and thus you’ll see apartments built where the entire first few floors are a multi story carpark squashed in under the actual living space because no one that can afford the apartments would even consider not having room to park their luxury car. It’s sort of a vicious cycle, the cost also helps drive realestate speculation and the ongoing rise in prices and the continued cyclical rise in real estate prices year on year. |
A kind of corollary of this is that people living in places where where public transport doesn't exist build a lifestyle around private vehicles (obviously). This then leads to people becoming incredulous that life without a car is possible.
Without a car how do you take your two kids to Saturday morning sports in separate far-flung suburbs? How do you cart home a weeks worth of groceries? Get to your workplace 30km away? Stop in on your fiends who live in the countryside for afternoon tea on the weekend? etc...
The answer is mostly you don't. And believe it or not, that's okay. You don't establish that sort of lifestyle to start with. You live a different lifestyle with its own compromises and benefits. Closer family, friends, and acquaintances. Nearby amenities, serendipitous meetings, smaller (or common) gardens, a closer workplace, frequent public transport, nature walks you can actually walk to from your house. And - ironically - time. So much time! People really underestimate what is possible and attainable if you don't start with the assumption that you will own a car.
The fact that 20,000km is a typical distance traveled in a year by a driver is astounding to me. That's over 50km per day. That has to be an indication of a very inefficient society. Try explaining what it's all for to a time traveler from 100 years ago.
The suburban house really is the siren song of modern civilization.