Tag Archives: peak car

Interesting transport trends

16 Jul

Here are a bunch of recent motoring and transport trends based on published government data that build up a picture that despite having to cope with more and more vehicles cluttering up our lives, they are being used less and less and younger adults turning away from cars in very significant numbers.

Notice how the slope of this first graph reduces after 2005. Even with this reduction the number of vehicles on our roads has increased by a remarkable 8 million units between 1994 and 2013. No wonder it is hurting!

Registered vehicles on GB roads

The population has of course also been rising fast and this graph shows the ratio of cars to population which leveled off at 45-46% in 2005. This is one of the indicators that lead an increasing number of academics to suggest that something significant is changing in our relationship to car ownership who are now looking carefully to see if this as a ‘pause’ to be followed by renewed growth, a ‘saturation’ which will now be maintained, or a peak that will  be followed by a decline.

registered cars per head of GB population

This next chart shows the number of cars registered for the first time each year, most of then new vehicles coming into the fleet. This peaked in 2002 and 2003 with 2.5 million vehicles added in each of those years, with a low in 2011 of about 1.7 million before renewed growth recently with 2 million units sold in 2013.

New car registrations by year for GB

Needless to say, the size of the fleet is also linked to the number of cars scrapped or otherwise removed from use each year. This next chart shows the change in the number of cars on GB roads having accounted for these scrapped vehicles. This also shows the reduction in the rate of growth since 2006 but the number of vehicles has increased in each year including the 418,000 added last year. Ouch!

Change in number of registered cars on GB roads

It is also worth looking at the age of the fleet given that the above graph indicates that people are not scrapping cars at the same rate as they are buying new ones. This next chart below is my estimate of how old the oldest cars would be if car were all kept for a uniform time before being scrapped. Although this not hugely accurate it is probably good enough for our purposes. What is shows is that we now appear to be keeping our vehicles for four years longer than we did until 2005. This does fits with my experience. We have a pretty old car and it still looks very shiny and hasn’t let us down. No sign of the rust that used to finish off earlier models.

average age of GB car fleet

Even with all these cars, we are actually driving less miles each year, with average vehicle utilisation falling by 20% since 1994 from a bit over 10,000 miles per year per car in 1994 to 8,000.

Miles driven per car per year on GB roads

Another trend over the past 10 years has been the growing number of vehicles that pay next to nothing in car tax from virtually none in 2001 to 4 million last year. This low tax band has encouraged people to buy cars with low emissions for sure, but has also created a significant fleet of cars which cost less to tax for a year than to fill up with fuel!

Growth in number of vehicles with very low car tax

Finally, here is evidence that young adults are just not getting into the driving habit in the way that they did only recently. The number of 17 year olds who learn to drive has dropped 24%, (or 46,000 people) over the past six year. The only group where there is a noticeable increase has been women between 30 and 35, but that is no where  near enough to compensate for the earlier reductions. Academics are now watching carefully to see if this is simply that 17-20 yer olds are delaying for a few years and will learn to drive a few years later, or if a significant number will lead their lives without ever gaining a driving license.

Change in number of driving test passes 2013 v 2007

Zipcar did this interesting research into young adults attitudes to motoring. Parliament published a briefing paper in 2013 looking at the possibility of Peak Car use in Britain and Professor Phil Goodwin has produced this very approachable introduction on these changes. In the mean time I will leave you with a spokesman from the Society of Motor Manufacturers saying how delighted the industry is with all the new cars that they are selling at the moment, many of which will end up on our pavements!

 

Lobbying ahead (continued)

21 Nov

The RAC Foundation has published another doom-laden but impressive report (60 pages this time). This one published last week was promoted with the heading ‘Millions more cars, billions less investment, much greater delay’ and goes on to detail how bad transport in the UK is and that it is going to get worse. They claim that there will be far more cars coming onto the road, that motorists are ‘over taxed’ and that there is not enough investment in roads. Do also check out my post about their last report and road lobbying generally which puts out the same general message.

RAC fears over lack of roads spending as cars increase

Here is a key graph they reproduce in the document as evidence for their case. The DfT, who produced the figures, clearly believe that the leveling off is a minor disturbance in a graph that will soon start romping upwards again. Others believe that this graph shows a peak and the possible beginnings of a decline – this theory is called ‘peak car‘.

Traffic projections (DfT as reported by RAC Foundation)

So… is this a pause in an upward trend, is it a permanent leveling off or is it about to turn down (peak car)? This is clearly a very important question  for planners.  Peak car is mentioned briefly on page 20 before being dismissed with the comment “But, significantly, ‘peak car’ does not remove the impact of ten million more people – who between them will drive four million more cars30 – in the UK in little more than two decades’ time. Whichever way you look at it, the result will be: more congestion“. What they are failing to acknowledge is that ‘peak car’ is about decline not leveling off.

They mention car clubs briefly (car sharing the North America) before dismissing it with the comment: “the impact on car usage, however, is not yet fully understood. Car sharing, car clubs and car rental are all growth areas and are likely to make their mark, mainly in large urban areas“. Others, including the founders of Zip Car, are delighted with the explosive growth of car clubshaving created a business with a valuation of $1 billion in just 11 years.

They also fail the growth of the express coach network and the phenomenal success of Megabus both in the UK and in the USA (a £400 million turnover business created from scratch in under 10 years according to Brian Souter). Greyhound is also doing well in this country and usage of National Express services are also increasing.

And of course they certainly do not quote Professor John Urray from Lancaster University who has predicted that “petroleum car system will finally be seen as a dinosaur (a bit like the Soviet empire, early freestanding PCs or immobile phones). When it is so seen then it will be dispatched for good and no one will comprehend how such a large, wasteful and planet-destroying creature could have ruled the earth. Suddenly, the system of automobility will disappear and become like a dinosaur, housed in museums, and we will wonder what all the fuss was about… changes in existing firms, industries, practices and economies. Just as the Internet and the mobile phone came from ‘nowhere’, so the tipping point towards the ‘post-car’ will emerge unpredictably“.

On a positive note they do talk up ‘pay-as-you-go’ driving, saying “‘Pay As You Go’ is a concept we are all deeply familiar with and find wholly acceptable. Phone charges are based on how much we talk and when we do so. Electricity and gas bills are calculated on the amount of energy consumed and the time of day it is used. Increasingly, water usage is also metered. Even in the transport sphere – on trains and planes, buses and coaches – we are comfortable with, or at least understand, the idea of differential pricing related to when we travel, and where we travel to“. What I don’t understand is why ‘pay-as-you-go’ won’t reduce the amount of driving if it was applied across the board. If the amount is driving is reduced then why would new roads be needed?

 

Young men and fast cars – a thing of the past?

28 Aug

Exploring the idea of ‘peak car‘ a little further, here is a chart showing the percentage of people with full driving licences by age and how this has changed over time. It seems that driving is morphing from something that younger people do to one that older people do and from a male thing to a much more gender-neutral thing. Notice how the percentage of 17-20 and 20-30 year olds has fallen since the mid 1990s and how the number of 50-60, 60-70 and 70+ year olds has been rising steadily; the percentage of people 60-70 year olds overtook the percentage of 20-30 year olds in 2001 and the 70+ year olds are about to do the same.

The two smaller charts break this data down by gender. The percentage of 70+ men overtook 20-30 men in about 2003. The percentage of women with driving licenses grew fast from a much lower base in 1975 getting much closer to parity with men over time. The recent decline in licences held by younger women has been less pronounced than for younger men. Source data from the Department for Transport.

Regional trends in car owership

26 Aug

Here are an interesting set of charts created from data published by the DfT showing car ownership levels in each of 11 areas making up GB (the nine English regions together with Scotland and Wales). These figures have been adjusted to changing populations within each region. What is interesting is to see how some areas with high ownership levels already are continuing to add more every year (South East and South West for example),but that levels are much more stable in the East of England and West Midlands with percentages decreasing significantly in London and in the North West. Is this an effect of the recession, of regional economic issues or ‘peak car‘? I suspect that all of these issues are relevant to different degrees in different places. The total increase in registered vehicles in the period 2000 and 2010 for Great Britain was an impressive 4,015,328 units or of which have had to go somewhere, mainly in the south it seems.

Car ownership levels 2000-2010

Update

I have updated the above chart to include population changes within the period using this data.