vforbidden to drive in the city. The increase in the cost of entering the Milanese Area C, announced by the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala (toll from 5 euros to 7.5, from 7:30 to 19:30, seven days a week, weekends included), in this direction. If today it is estimated that there are 49 out of 100 inhabitants, the declared objective of the Municipality is to reach around forty in ten years. Even at the cost of unpopular and classist provisions such as Area B, which already excludes older vehicles from the urban circle. Actually the idea of truly car-free city is global. In other words, mass motorization could be doomed to disappear.
Cities without cars, between toll increases and public transport
And the thesis is contained in a document entitled The Urban Mobility scorecard tool: benchmarking the transition to sustainable urban mobility presented last May by the World Economic Forum. The assumption is that by 2050 almost 70% of the population will live in urban areas. And the move towards more sustainable urban mobility, especially in the most densely populated urban areas, will play a key role in our journey to limit global warming at less than 1.5°C.
By mid-century, the demand for urban travel will double. If nothing changes, this would mean 2.1 billion passenger vehicles that will emit 4.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. Instead the increased use of shared, electric, connected and automated modes of transport could reduce the projected number of vehicles in 2050 to about half a billion. This could reduce emissions from passenger vehicles by 80% while reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 3.9 billion tonnes per year.
Replace the internal combustion engine with an electric one? No, that won’t be enough. It is necessary to reduce the number of private cars by 75%, at least in the big cities. Between toll cost increases and other initiatives to promote public transport.
More public transport and car taxes in the city
Will the driver therefore be expelled outside the city walls? Well yes, this is the goal. But how this can happen is open to debate. The risk is that only those who can afford it can live and work in the centre. In general, the “popular” trend everywhere is to increase public transport. And not just to tax motorists.
In New York The green light has just arrived first traffic tax. Motorists who want to enter Manhattan will have to pay from $9 to $23 during peak hours and $5 in the evenings. The plan aims to reduce the number of cars entering Manhattan by 15%-20%, with an improvement in air quality, an increase in local public transportation and an estimated $1-1.5 billion revenue each year.
London instead, it has already created one of the largest restricted traffic zones in the world, with two different types of toll. On one side Congestion charge, large paid area, in force since 2003, valid every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, at a cost of 15 pounds per day. But in all districts of London, 24 hours a day, drivers of polluting vehicles are subject to an additional toll of 12.50 pounds (it is the Ultra Low Emission Zone, created in 2023).
In Genevain Switzerland, there is a plan for the gradual pedestrianization of the city centre. In Paris and in other French cities a vignette system is in force which divides cars according to environmental class. However, the goal of the Parisian metropolis is to ban access by 2030 to all petrol and diesel cars.
Asia and the case of Tokyo, the city without cars (or almost)
In Hong Kong there are just 76 cars for every thousand inhabitants. In Singapore, where the road tax is part of the vehicle ownership tax which consequently costs a lot more, 120. Japan is the home of Mitsubishi, Toyota and Nissan, and exports vehicles to every corner of the planet. And indeed many Japanese own a car – there are approx 590 owned vehicles for every thousand inhabitants. But less than in the United States (eight hundred per thousand), almost the same as in many European countries.
Among the richest cities of the world, Tokyo is the one where the car is used the leastas Daniel Knowles recounts in an article in Internazionale which takes up his book Carmageddon: how cars make life worse and what to do about it (Abrams 2023). Here there are only 0.32 cars per family. According to the consulting firm Deloitte in Tokyo, only 12 percent of journeys are made with private cars. Bicycles prevail (used for 17 percent of journeys) and the public transport system (thirty million commuters who travel by train every day).
How come? For planning reasons (35 percent of Japanese roads are not wide enough for a car to pass and 86 percent are not wide enough for a car to stop without blocking traffic). But mostly because Japan does not encourage (indeed, discourage) car ownership. Having a car in good condition checked costs a lot, especially if they are not new. The annual road tax and petrol excises cost. And then you have to demonstrate that you have a place to park it (“garage certificate”): only 42 percent of condominiums have parking spaces for residents. Hence the success in Japan of the so-called, tiny, Kei car.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED