Trapped behind the wheel

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The places we live in and how we get around are key ways in which the economy shapes our everyday lives. Each is dependent on the other. But far from moving our economy towards sustainability and improved wellbeing, England’s new homes in recent years have increasingly encouraged car-dependent lifestyles. As the new government embarks on a period of increased housebuilding, it is vital to understand what is going wrong and how to change course in the coming five years. 

The experience of the past 15 years shows us that, without substantial changes, there is a major risk of locking in increased car dependency for decades to come. These changes are vital if the government is to deliver on other priorities, such as bringing the cost of living down to more manageable levels, reducing spatial inequality, and responding adequately to the climate emergency.

In this paper, we construct a Car Dependency Index (CDI) by combining data from every neighbourhood in England on car ownership, the share of residents commuting to work by car, the relative travel times to jobs, and key amenities by car and by public transport and population density. We find that the CDI of new homes has risen steadily since 2009 (Figure 1). New builds have become more and more car-dependent relative to existing homes, and this trend is present in all regions outside London. 

One factor in this change has been the outsized share of new homes being built in rural areas, which has risen continually across the country in recent years. There has also been an increase in the CDI of new builds located in small and medium-sized urban areas since 2009, reflecting that new homes have tended to be located in peripheral areas without good connections to nearby cities and towns.

We continue by digging deeper into what is driving the three different factors that create increasing car dependency.

The location of new homes is tending increasingly towards car-dependent places, driven by:

• Land value and condition, which favour cheaper greenfield land in a profit-driven housing development system.
• Relatively lower levels of local political opposition to new developments in more remote areas.
• A lack of early, integrated planning of transport, housing, and development sites, reinforced by substantial underfunding of public planning departments.
• Top-down local housing targets that act in combination with the factors above to produce development in the wrong places for sustainable transport.

The provision of public transport and active travel for new homes is affected by:

• The insufficiency of Section 106 funds to cover the public transport needed, together with the lack of negotiating power for councils tends to see transport provision lose out in a trade-off against social housing, community facilities, and other items.
• The use of large amounts of public funding on expensive road infrastructure alongside new developments, encouraged by a lack of advance transport planning and car-centred approaches.
• The provision of public transport and active travel for new homes, which is affected by poor public transport and active travel provision in adjacent neighbourhoods, due to congestion and a lack of safe walking and cycling routes.

The design of new places tends to encourage car dependency through: 

• The role of land value in encouraging estate layouts that are not well-suited to sustainable travel.
• The car-centric design of local retail and amenities that encourages driving to them.
• Parking policies that in some cases encourage excessive car travel and the inability of councils to set maximum parking space rules for new homes.

An understanding of these parameters informs our proposals for what needs to change to reverse the rise in car dependency. There is a need for ambitious policies because the many second-best solutions that present themselves are unlikely to fully solve the problem. We outline some suggestions to replace a haphazard geography of new builds determined by crude public policies, an atrophied public planning function, and private profit and land value. Instead, we propose a move towards a system where the public sector delivers public benefit via a strong planning system that intervenes early on, creating plans democratically and using holistic evidence and integration of transport, housing and land plans at a regional scale. To achieve this we propose the following:

• Integrating regional strategic planning informed by a thorough data analysis considering housing needs alongside ways of minimising car dependency. This should occur at the region or city-region level, involving a wide range of stakeholders including democratic input from residents. It would replace housing targets as a means of allocating new development sites within each region.
• Ensuring any release of green belt or grey belt land within the strategic spatial planning process is conditional on achieving a good minimum standard of sustainable transport in the resulting developments. Current green belt areas have higher car dependency and our analysis suggests that without careful consideration, grey belt developments will be car-dependent unless they deliver a significant improvement in the quality of public transport infrastructure and urban design.
• Allocating powers for the sub-national government (combined authorities, their mayoral development corporations, and councils) for the compulsory purchase of land at, or close to, use value for development. Also, upfront public funding to these bodies for master planning and delivery of infrastructure, layout, active travel routes, public transport integration, mixed uses, and green space, applying a similar model to what was used in the first wave of new towns.
• Setting missions for mayoral development corporations or similar bodies for the sustainable transport mix and quality of homes and places that they aim to achieve in new developments. This could be shaped with residents’ input, eg through local voting on master planning or design.
• Restoring funding and improving capacity and capability within local authority planning departments, providing the means to deliver the planning and strategic spatial planning proposals already outlined.
• Providing capital funding for city-regions to invest in new public transport capacity to unlock sustainable transport provision for new homes, eg additional light rail networks.

By approaching the next few years with fresh thinking, there is an opportunity to reshape the pattern of development to make a lasting impact on sustainable transport, fulfilling the potential of new homes and towns and developing great places in which to live well.

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