The world is moving away from road vehicles through ride-sharing and cheap public transport. The benefits are incalculable, says environment writer John Vidal
Accidents and pollution are making road vehicles untenable. With public transport and ride-sharing, their demise can’t come soon enoughn 1989 a group of Chinese government urban planners came to Europe on a fact-finding mission. They were widely praised for curbing car use – the country of 1 billion people, after all, had just a few million vehicles; the bicycle was king; its city streets were safe and the air mostly clean.
“But you don’t understand,” replied one of the delegation. “In 20 years, there will be no bicycles in China.” He was nearly right. China’s breakneck development has been led by mass car ownership. It now has 300m cars – and what was once the kingdom of bikes is now the land of 20-lane motorways, more thanand scrap metal yards. Beijing, Shanghai and most other cities are choked with traffic, their air is some of the worst in the world, and their hospitals are full of children with asthma and respiratory diseases. China, like every other country, is having to rethink the car.
The worldwide love affair with the car, which promised consumers convenience, status and freedom, is over. The reality from Hotan to Hull and Lagos to Lahore is that the car is now a social and environmental curse, disconnecting people, eroding public space, fracturing local economies, and generating sprawl and urban decay. With UK temperatures hitting highs of 40C this summer, this reality has become impossible to ignore.
‘Beijing, Shanghai and most other cities in China are choked with traffic.’ Heavy pollution hangs over elevated motorways in Shanghai.But we may be reaching “peak car”, the point at which the world is so saturated with vehicles – and cities and individuals are so fed up or financially stretched by them – that they are banned or voluntarily given up.
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The age of the ‘car is king’ is over. The sooner we accept that, the better | John VidalThe world is moving away from road vehicles through ride-sharing and cheap public transport. The benefits are incalculable, says environment writer John Vidal
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