Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1.3
Growth in car and vehicle ownership
Area
1995 (1000s)
2020
2030
Cars
Vehicles
Cars
Vehicles
Cars
Vehicles
OECD
383,329
536,174
574,241
782,361
621,091
842,257
Rest of world
111,255
340,357
283,349
580,288
391,755
781,130
Total
494,584
776,531
857,590
1,362,649
1,012,846
1,623,387
Source
: OECD, 1995.
by 2030, and hence vehicle populations become very large. If North American motorisation
levels are reached then the vehicle populations become seriously unmanageable (
Figure 1.15
).
Mumford (1968, p. 93) points to the central problem here:
As long as motorcars were few in number, he who had one was a king: he could go where
he pleased and halt where he pleased; and this machine itself appeared as a compensatory
device for enlarging an ego which had been shrunken by our very success in mechanisation.
That sense of freedom and power remains a fact today in only low density areas, in the
open country; the popularity of this method of escape has ruined the promise it once held
forth. In using the car to flee from the metropolis the motorist finds that he has merely
transferred congestion to the highway; and when he reaches his destination, in a distant
suburb, he finds that the countryside he sought has disappeared: beyond him, thanks to
the motorway, lies only another suburb, just as dull as his own. To have a minimum
amount of communication and sociability in this spread-out life, his wife becomes a taxi
driver by daily occupation, and the amount of money it costs to keep this whole system
running leaves him with shamefully overcrowded, under-staffed schools, inadequate police,
poorly serviced hospitals, underspaced recreation areas, ill-supported libraries. In short,
the American has sacrificed his life as a whole to the motorcar, like someone who,
demented with passion, wrecks his home in order to lavish his income on a capricious
mistress who promises delights he can only occasionally enjoy.
450
800
400
700
350
600
300
500
250
400
200
300
150
200
100
100
50
0
0
2005 2008 2015 2025 2035 2005 2008 2015 2025 2035 2005 2008 2015 2025 2035 2005 2008 2015 2025 2035 2005 2008 2015 2025 2035 2005 2008 2015 2025 2035
Southeast Asia
*
China
India
OECD North America
OECD Europe
OECD Pacific
Total Vehicles (millions) (Left Axis)
Motorisation Index (V/1000 P) (Right Axis)
Figure 1.15
Regional motorisation trends and vehicle population
Note
:
*
Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam
Source
: CAI-Asia et al., 2009.
