London, imagine a city not suffocated by cars
Growing up in Essex, just North of London, life seemed to revolve around the car. It sat at the centre of my town in the shape of a huge, brutalist concrete multi-story car park, and at the heart of our family life. The passing of time was almost measured by the succession of cars with their changing shapes and colours that my late father bought and drove for work, holidays, weekly shopping trips and weekend sports outings. But the car was also a source of immense stress: the endless search for parking places, concern about it getting scratched or dented, getting stuck in traffic jams, status anxiety about which model you had, rage at other drivers and paranoia about whether the windows had been left open and doors unlocked when it was left behind. It being Essex and the home of the ‘boy racer’, an endless procession of cars being driven into ditches always raised the stakes of a journey home from a night out.
“The passing of time was almost measured by the succession of cars with their changing shapes and colours that my late father bought and drove for work, holidays, weekly shopping trips and weekend sports outings.”
There was always something relentless and all-consuming about the car. And that was before I’d ever heard of global warming and cardio-pulmonary illnesses, or been struck that the carnage of deaths and injuries in traffic accidents were anything other than a feature of normal life. But, unlike most of my friends, I never learned to drive. And, since moving to London a long time ago I barely ever step inside a car. However, living in London, far from escaping the car obsessed culture in Essex, I find it more suffocating than ever in the capital city of the UK.
The streets outside my house are clogged with cars on both sides of the street, and often the pavement too. Since SatNav use became common, the gap, like a metal canyon in the middle of the road between the lines of parked cars, is more like a speeding rat run every day. Drivers rush down roads not designed for cars just to shave minutes of journeys regardless of the noise and air pollution and physical dangers they present, especially to the children living there. We have climate breakdown worsening urban weather extremes, a pandemic of air pollution killing thousands in London every year (and making people more vulnerable to other pandemics like Covid-19), not to mention the toll of death and injury falling on pedestrians, cyclists and other road users and, yes, drivers too.
London breaks air pollution limits set for a whole year in the first week of January, and 360 London primary schools and 78 secondary schools are in areas that break legal pollution limits. Even London’s parks and playgrounds aren’t safe – more than one quarter break international safety limits for air quality.
“London breaks air pollution limits set for a whole year in the first week of January, and 360 London primary schools and 78 secondary schools are in areas that break legal pollution limits. ”
With space for people and nature now at a greater premium in cities, a huge amount of space, estimated at 31.9 km2 in London alone, is taken by cars – that’s the equivalent of over 4000 football pitches.
Something seems to have gone horribly wrong. It’s a problem that’s crept up on us like, a road slowly filling, congested with traffic. Cars were marketed for their pleasure and convenience but now take the pleasure out of city living and create huge inconvenience. Nations came to see having a car industry as a symbol of economic virility, more efficient urban mass transit systems like the tram were actively removed to make way for private cars, a whole new lending industry came into being to encourage people to buy cars by going into debt, vast sums of public money paid for new infrastructure for the car, and cities, towns and communities were chopped and changed for the vehicles’ convenience. In short, we have been trapped into dependence on the car, just as the health of people and the planet urgently needs us to use them much, much less.
The good news, however, among the little to emerge from the traumatic experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, is that we have seen how quickly a city like London, and several of its boroughs can change. Innovative measures have shown the way ahead to improve air quality, make streets safer for walking, cycling and for children playing, and to reduce traffic where people live. At the height of the first lockdown, air pollution in some UK cities dropped by as much as 60%.
Also, the more effectively car use can be cut by those who don’t really need to drive, the better will be the roads for those who do need to drive. At the moment in the UK, even for short trips of between just one and two miles, six out of ten people still drive.
Lessons too have been learned about how best to introduce schemes. Some have protested loudly at being required to change habits for the wider public benefit, and some protests seem to have been the result of political opportunism. But there is finally a sense of a turning tide in attitudes towards urban transport, and a growing reluctance to accept the human and environmental costs of excessive car dependence. Nearly 30% of European households have no access to a private car anyway. An Amsterdam City Councillor recently won a campaign to remove 10,000 car parking spaces. In Copenhagen city centre, 80% of all journeys are made on foot, and 14% by bicycle. Oslo city centre is going fully private car free.
“An Amsterdam City Councillor recently won a campaign to remove 10,000 car parking spaces. ”
More than that, many have glimpsed how much better life could be with cities less suffocated by the car. In bringing together London, New York and Paris to show how great megacities can reimagine themselves, we hope to breathe energy and more clean air into that process of change. For a better future, I look forward to the day when the car moves from the centre to the periphery of city life.
Andrew Simms
Car Free Megacities Advocacy & Communications Director | New Weather Institute
