Car-friendly urban development supresses the improvement of public transport – but planners can help with the right support.
Many cities across the globe are looking to reduce personal car use and promote more environmentally-friendly transport options. The goal is to reduce traffic congestion and improve sustainability by encouraging more people to use public transport. Meanwhile, new research from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences confirms that Norwegian cities continue to prioritize car-friendly transport development. This reduces possibilities for increased public transport and the environmental and personal benefits that this can bring.
PhD Fellow Eva-Gurine Skartland explored how urban planning can make public transport more attractive in the Norwegian cities of Hamar, Haugesund, Trondheim, and Stavanger. Urban planners in these cities have planned improvements to the public transport systems, including changes to networks, routes, and the level of service.
Skartland found that whilst the planned changes are likely to increase the competitiveness of public transport, they are not enough to shift people away from their cars due to continued prioritisation of the private car in urban planning.
Conflicting goals
One of the biggest issues is that city plans often have conflicting goals. While some plans promote public transit, others - such as expanding roads and adding car parks - encourage private car use. Due to a sectorized planning system, these conflicting goals and plans are not always identified and problematized.
Unless car-friendly measures are restricted, people will continue to opt to drive rather than use public transport, argues Skartland. Her findings reveal that urban planners are aware that the possible impacts of planned improvements in public transport systems are limited unless car access and land use development that encourages driving is constrained. Planners strive to inform decision-makers about this conflicting development with varying success.
Better coordinated policies needed
The results gave different findings according to the size of the cities. “In smaller cities, it is likely that public transport will compete with walking and cycling in central areas. Competing with private cars is, however, challenging since the built environment and development patterns are likely to encourage car use,” explains Skartland. “In central areas of medium-sized cities, where private car-use is more discouraged by less car-friendly land-use and transport development, public transport is more competitive,” says the researcher at NMBU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning.
Even well-designed bus routes can’t overcome car-friendly land use and transport development. Whilst adjusting public transport systems might help, bigger changes - such as limiting car use and better coordinating land and transport policies - are necessary to make public transport more attractive than private cars in small and medium-sized cities.
“Urban planners have updated knowledge and can contribute to changes by making conflicting development visible to decisionmakers and the public,” says Skartland. “However, such agency requires supportive conditions for planners – something that varies across the cities I studied. It is therefore likely that structural changes are necessary for urban planning to contribute to increase public transport competitiveness versus the private car,” she concludes.
This research contributes new knowledge on urban transit planning in a Norwegian context. During the study, a new method was developed to recognize counteractive development in urban planning. The research was part of the Norwegian Centre of Transport Research (TØI) project Improving public transport competitiveness versus the private car (IPTC).
Eva-Gurine Skartland will defend her doctoral thesis Urban planning practice and transit competitiveness versus private car use on 16th December at NMBU. See the event webpage for more information.