The car-free movement is a social movement that advocates for car-free cities, centered on the belief that large and/or high-speed motorized vehicles (cars, trucks, tractor units, motorcycles, etc.) have become excessively dominant in modern life, particularly in urban areas such as cities and suburbs. It is a broad, informal, emergent network of individuals and organizations, including social activists, urban planners, transportation engineers and environmentalists, among others. The goal of the movement is to establish places where motorized vehicle use is greatly reduced or eliminated, by converting road and parking space to other public uses and rebuilding compact urban environments where most destinations are within easy reach by other means, including walking, cycling, public transport, personal transporters, and mobility as a service.
History
Before the twentieth century, cities and towns were usually compact, containing narrow streets busy with human activity. In the early twentieth century, many of these settlements were adapted to accommodate the car with wider roads, more car parking spaces, and lower population densities, with space between urban buildings reserved for automotive use. In 1925, Los Angeles became the first American city to adopt a traffic ordinance that subordinated pedestrians to motor vehicles on city streets, and this became a model for the whole nation.
Lower population densities caused urban sprawl with longer distances between locations. This also brought traffic congestion which made older transport methods unattractive or impractical, and created the conditions for more traffic and sprawl; the car system was "increasingly able to 'drive' out competitors, such as feet, bikes, buses and trains". This process led to changes in urban form and living patterns that offered little opportunity for people without a car. Walking as a primary means of transport fell sharply in place of driving, though this did not indicate preferences.
In the 1920s, the word jaywalker was coined, and it effectively shifted the responsibility for pedestrian safety from motorists to pedestrians. The transition towards a car society had started, but there was resistance. In 1924, W.B. wrote in the New York Times "The automobile looms up as a far more destructive piece of mechanism than the machine gun. The reckless motorist deals more death than the artilleryman. The man in the street seems less safe than the man in the trench." In 1925 Michigan created the first gas tax, and soon roads were funded through state and federal gas taxes, while sidewalks remained the responsibility of local governments.
Anti-car sentiment penetrated popular culture, with one well-known example being David H. Keller's 1928 short story The revolt of the pedestrian with Hugo Gernsback which appeared in Amazing Stories. It was set in a dystopic future where pedestrians are hunted like animals by motorists whose legs have become vestigal. The pedestrians eventually fight back, destroying electrical infrastructure and killing many motorists.
Several attempts to organize pedestrian organizations occurred, but they lacked staying power and more than a regional presence. These included the 1922 Walkers’ League in Los Angeles, the 1924 Pedestrians’ Protective League in Los Angeles, the 1927 Pedestrians’ Mutual Protective Association in Baltimore, and the 1930 Association for Protection to Pedestrians in Chicago.
By the late 1920s, complaints about the safety of streets for pedestrians became a frequent topic in letters to the editor. First the Studebaker company in 1925, and then later the American Automobile Association in the 1930s, were major players in establishing the profession of traffic engineer to incorporate car-friendly designs into urban planning. The car manufacturer and then the auto club funded the creation of the profession and established the orthodoxy that still persists today. By the 1950s, 100% of cities with a population over 500,000 had full-time traffic engineers, as well as 92% with a population between 200,000 and 500,000, 77% between 100,000 and 200,000, and 50% between 50,000 and 100,000. Cities without regulated their duties to a city engineer.
The transition to car first spaces did have opposition. In 1930, Detroit Public Works Commissioner John Reid demanded sidewalks along all Michigan highways in response to increasing traffic fatalities, saying "organized motordom has devoted the majority of its attention to the improvement of highways for vehicular use, mankind is still created with feed rather than rubber tires."
As walking in urban areas designed for driving progressively made walking less practical, the mere act of walking could be enough to raise suspicion by police. Famously, in 1949, Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian" was inspired by an experience he had walking at night in Los Angeles. A police officer stopped and questioned him to the point that Bradbury became unsettled and confused. The story describes a future where no one walks, instead staying inside glued to their screens.
In a 1958 report by the American Automobile Association, they claim that 132,270 urban traffic deaths occurred between 1937 and 1956, compared to 93,410 non-pedestrians. In the same report, they blame that "pedestrians are too apathetic" and "point to the pedestrian as a major traffic safety problem in large cities." They also foreshadow the future in their observation that "[p]edestrians have neither demanded adequate attention to date, nor have they adequately accepted their responsibility for self-protection. Does it seem curious that here in the United States, where practically every group with common occupation and interest is organized in some degree or other, this very large mass of people with serious common hazards has no organization or accredited spokesman?
Criminalization of pedestrians often exceeded that of drivers. For example, in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, 19,765 pedestrians were arrested for jaywalking, yet only 8,662 drivers were arrested for violating the pedestrian's right of way. In Cleveland, Ohio, 7,070 pedestrians were arrested in for jaywalking, but only 790 drivers for violating right of way. The biggest discrepancy among major cities was Portland, Oregon, with its 25,119 arrests for jaywalking but only 857 for violating pedestrian's right of way. Enforcement of pedestrian ordinances in 12 cities in 1956 Pedestrian jaywalkingDriver violating pedestrian right-of-way City Arrests Warnings Arrests San Francisco, California 165 0 7,304 Detroit, Michigan 19,765 0 8,662 Cleveland, Ohio 7,171 0 790 Cincinnati, Ohio 6,780 755 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin 997 3,614 - Oakland, California 3,037 0 1,398 Indianapolis, Indiana 21,455 7,557 744 Dayton, Ohio 458 215 95 Portland, Oregon 25,119 0 857 Fort Worth, Texas 1,405 054 Richmond, Virginia 2,281 0 594 Seattle, Washington 5,734 0 762
Urban design
Proponents of the car-free movement focus on both sustainable and public transport (bus, tram, etc.) options and on urban design, zoning, school placement policies, urban agriculture, remote work options, and housing developments that create proximity or access so that long-distance transportation becomes less of a requirement of daily life.
New urbanism is an American urban design movement that arose in the early 1980s. Its goal has been to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable. Other, more auto-oriented cities are also making incremental changes to provide transportation alternatives through Complete streets improvements.
World Squares for all is a scheme to remove much of the traffic from major squares in London, including Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square.
Car-free cities are, as the name implies, entire cities (or at least the inner parts thereof) which have been made entirely car-free.
Car-free zones are areas of a city or town where the use of cars is prohibited or greatly restricted.
To make the car-free zones/cities, (movable and/or stationary) bollards and other barriers are often used to deny car access.
Living streets and complete streets prioritize the needs of users of the street as a whole over those of car drivers. They are designed to be shared by pedestrians, playing children, bicyclists, and low-speed motor vehicles.
Distribution centers allow easy restocking of supermarkets, outlet stores, restaurants, and more in city centers. They rely on tractor units to unload their cargo in the suburban distribution center. The products are then placed in a small truck (sometimes electrically poweredCity depot employing a few electric trucks ), cargo bike, or other vehicle to bridge the last mile to the destination in the city center. Besides offering advantages to the population (increased safety due to truck drivers having less blind spots, reduced noise pollution and traffic, reduced tailpipe emissions and reduced air pollution, and more), it also offers financial advantage for the companies, as tractor units require a lot of time to bridge this last mile (they lack agility and consume much fuel in congested streets).
The method above however still does not reduce car use inside non-car-free city centers (customers often use cars to fetch their groceries or appliances from city stores, since they have so much storage space). This problem is solved by means of online food ordering systems, which allow customers to order online, and then have it delivered to their doorstep by the supermarket or store itself, through bicycle couriers (using cargo bikes), electric delivery robots and delivery vans. Delivery vans allow to take along more cargo and deliver to several customers on a same trip. These food ordering systems could provide for a smooth transition for those cities that wish to become car-free as it can reduce both personal car use and personal car demand in cities.
At the outskirts of towns, between the exits of the rings roads, and the car-free zones in the city center themselves, additional car parking lots can be added, generally in the form of underground car parks (to avoid it taking up surface space).Plan to make Brussels car-free includes new underground parking spaces Careful placement of these car-parking lots is needed though, ensuring that they are made far enough from the city centers (and closer to the ring roads) to avoid them attracting more cars to the city center. In some instances, near these car parking lots, Park and ride public transport (i.e. bus) stops are foreseen, or bicycle-sharing systems are present.
Community bicycle programs provide bicycles within an urban environment for short term use. The first successful scheme was in the 1960s in Amsterdam and can now be found in many other cities with 20,000 bicycles introduced to Paris in 2007 in the Vélib' scheme. Dockless bike share systems have recently appeared in the United States and provide more convenience for people wanting to rent a bike for a short time period. There has been controversy surrounding bicycle lanes impacts on lanes for traffic.
Advocacy and activism groups
Much of the modern organizing around the world for the reclaiming of the streets by pedestrians/cyclists has been community-led instead of government-led.
United Kingdom The Campaign for Better Transport (formerly known as Transport2000) was formed in 1972 in Britain to challenge proposed cuts in the British rail network and since then has promoted public transport.
Car Free Walks is a UK-based website encouraging walkers to use public transport to reach the start and end of walks, rather than using a car.
Road protests in the United Kingdom rose to prominence in the early 1990s in response to a major road building program both in urban communities and also rural areas.