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Page added on June 19, 2013
More Evidence We’ve Reached the Era of Peak Cars
The recession knocked down the urge to buy cars in the United States, but that actually masked a longer-term trend that points to a less motorized future.
We’ve all heard of peak oil, which the gallant knight Sir Fracking has slain for the time being. But in the United States, perhaps for all the rich world, we may have already passed into a related period of transition, peak cars.
Globally, of course, that’s bosh. India and China and other newly embiggened economies with growing middle classes will continue to sate that class’ taste for personal vehicles for decades to come. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote last year:
Even if the rate of growth of passenger cars in circulation in China and India remains very high—such as the near 10 percent average annual growth rate projected by the International Energy Agency for these two countries—it would take about twenty-five years for China and more than forty years for India, where the number of cars in circulation is much lower and population growth is higher than China, to reach the current penetration rates in advanced countries.
(That same report, by Uri Dadush and Shimelse Ali, also made the counter-intuitive observation that car ownership per capita is higher is Western Europe—home of the really expensive gas—than in the U.S. It’s actually not though, since the authors excluded the light trucks, vans, or sport utility vehicles that are wildly popular as personal vehicles in the States.)
A new study from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute looking at cars and car ownership data between 1984 and 2011 argues that while the total number of cars and other light vehicles in the U.S. is almost certainly going to rise from its pre-recessionary peak of 236.4 million in 2008, the rate of ownership among individuals has stalled and likely will remain in a lower gear down the road.
As the author Michael Sivak writes:
Each of the three rates (the number of vehicles per person, per licensed driver, and per household) reached a maximum (to date) between 2001 and 2006—prior to the start of the current economic downturn in 2008. In other words, these rates started to decline not because of economic changes but because of other societal changes that influence the need for vehicles. (The changes in the rates from 2008 on reflect both the postulated societal changes and the economic downturn.) Thus, in contrast to the absolute numbers, the recent maxima in the rates have a better chance of being long-term peaks as well.
Sivak’s isn’t the only indicator that the era of peak cars has arrived, even factoring out artifacts from the downturn. In a neat little data mash-up last year, The Economist noted that total road miles driven in the 20 countries of the “rich world” had reached saturation, and that even before the recession. It also noted—based on more work by Sivak—that younger people are getting their drivers licenses later and later in life. (As a native Californian I find that a very dramatic demographic shift.)
In the new paper, Sivak expects that as the economy perks up and the population grows that the absolute number of vehicles will drive past that 2008 peak. But a raft of societal changes, not to mention expensive fuel, are likely to depress individual ownership rates. Among those are growing rates of telecommuting and use of public transportation and the aging out of getting a license or indeed, a car itself.
6 Comments on "More Evidence We’ve Reached the Era of Peak Cars"
DC on Thu, 20th Jun 2013 1:05 am
Peak car, well, I’ll believe it when I see it first-hand. All I see is endless traffic, noise, stink, and danger from cars. If its not getting worse, it sure aint getting any better, I can tell you that. That ‘trend’ btw, is basically 2 things.
-Over-saturated Road networks*
-Demand Destruction.
Sure, people may be , slowly getting sick of cars, but that does not necessarily translate to ‘peak cars’ either. That is because, no matter how much one may think cars suck-the system in Carmerica forces you to own and use them no matter what your feelings. Put another way, living a ‘car-free’ lifestyle, by choice, is still, extremely rare and hard to do-certainly in N.A. and other car-dependencies. Im not saying its impossible, but its far from easy.
So the only thing still really affecting car-dependency, is demand destruction, and not amerikans, or canadians suddenly realizing cars are deadly, toxic liabilities. If your driving less, chances are you doing so because your broke, or near enough.
*Over-saturated roads offer no place ‘new’ to go to in any event. All places now, are more or less look the same, and offer the same homogenized corporate landscape with the same McFranchised sprawl no matter where you go. So, what is the point of going from nowhere to place that looks identical is most every respect.
DC on Thu, 20th Jun 2013 1:12 am
To add:
Those overpopulated countries may be selling lots of gas-burners now. But the sheer weight of population of China\India alone will quickly put the brakes on too many cars. China saturated its roads in about 2 decades. It took Carmerica nearly a century. Nor can that open toilet India add many more cars either. Gas-burners , and their infrastructure displace So many people(+are so expensive)-those overpopulated countries will have little choice but to place severe limits on cars-no matter how much they want otherwise. If India plans to add three or four hundred million new dirt-poor eaters in the next decade or so AND millions of ‘cars’, they better think again.
BillT on Thu, 20th Jun 2013 3:02 am
Shrinking paychecks.
Student debt
Increasing unemployment
High fuel/maintenance/insurance costs
Internet/phone/pad connections
I would say that this article is mostly correct. Having a car costs over 20% of your income if you are middle class. If you cannot afford it, you learn to live without it. You live where there is public service or where you can bike/walk where you NEED to go. The peak in developing countries will be hit before 2020 for the same reasons as stated above. Growth is about over for the world, not just the West.
Beery on Thu, 20th Jun 2013 2:49 pm
“living a ‘car-free’ lifestyle, by choice, is still, extremely rare and hard to do-certainly in N.A. and other car-dependencies.”
It may be rare, but I don’t think it’s hard to do. I’ve been doing it for 35 years. How hard it is depends on where we choose to live and the jobs we choose to do. If we choose to live a modest lifestyle within a couple of miles of a town, it’s easy. It’s only hard if we insist on commuting more than 5 miles and owning a virtual McMansion.
I reckon many people think living car-free is hard because they’re afraid to try it. Many people who are being forced into it are finding it’s nowhere near as limiting as they feared.
DC on Thu, 20th Jun 2013 8:20 pm
It IS hard to do in N.A. where a century of top down corporate run cars-only land use and industrial policies make it so. There are NO car-free developments, policies except by accident in N.A. You are basically on your own. And while you may be able to pull it off, govt\corporate policy throws its car-only garbage in your way at every turn. Getting away from cars in near impossible in most places-and almost no one is pursuing this goal as a matter of deliberate public policy-that is the point I was trying to make.
When we live in a society where ‘development’ is centered around people first, and not the cars, which is the case now, Ill agree with you. ALL ‘developments’ here start with the first step accommodating the needs and movement of cars-then everything else. That has to end.
Kenz300 on Fri, 21st Jun 2013 12:24 pm
Highway Expansion Encourages More Than Just Driving – NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/a-highway-projects-focus-discouraging-driving.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130621&_r=0
We need to diversify our transportation options away from cars and toward more mass transit and bicycle use.