By Alan Parker
Transport and ecologically sustainable cities
In the next 40 years, 1.8 million additional people will need to be accommodated in Victoria — mainly in urban areas. Predicted Victorian population growth is 1.4% per annum. The predicted growth rate for trucks and cars is 2% or more. This will put a million more cars and trucks on the roads of the Melbourne conurbation and exceed the environmental capacity of the region. Air pollution will become a major health hazard, and greenhouse gas emissions from transport will double.
The most suitable means for coping with large increases in population were developed in postwar Europe: the greensite development of satellite "new towns" linked by rail rapid transit routes to existing cities.
The European "new town" policy was very successful between 1950 and 1975. When populations stabilised and then declined in the 1980s, few "new towns" were built. While "new towns" did not satisfy all expectations, they did provide low-cost opportunities for an energy efficient infrastructure and transport systems. They also allowed the development of green belts around some crowded cities.
Because most European "new towns" have well-planned public transport systems and bikeway networks, a larger proportion of the population can dispense with using cars. The bicycle is a sustainable form of transport that needs a separate routing system, which is very easily provided in "new towns".
While the European cities did not avoid the motorisation of outer suburban transport, they avoided the Los Angelisation of their central areas. Per capita use of transport energy in European cities is less than half that of Australian cities.
Among European planners, there is a near universal consensus that no amount of juggling by engineers and architects is capable of adapting long-established cities to large traffic flows and vast highways, except at a prohibitive cost.
Ecologically sustainable cities require reducing the need to travel and the inefficient use of cars. This is feasible without denying the individual right to own a car, providing that much better use is made of cars and passenger vans through pooling and the provision of affordable high-efficiency cars for essential single occupant use.
There is an urgent need for consolidation of Australian cities, the provision of "new towns" and the integration of public transportation and bikeway networks in these developments. Public transport has to be upgraded and made more user-friendly. Tax incentives for company cars need to be replaced by incentives to share cars. Public and private car parking need to be restricted. All new industries need to be located along accessible rail links provided as part of the federal-state commitment to upgrade the national rail infrastructure. Transport and land use planning must be integrated. At present many state road planning and urban planning agencies pursue contradictory goals. One group assumes that the car is a political "sacred cow", and another has read too much science fiction and imagines everyone driving around in solar/electric cars!
The Environmentally Sustainable Development consultation process remains a farce. The weakest part of the greenhouse/ESD strategy documents are their failure to recognise the central importance of ecologically sustainable transport systems. Meanwhile decisions about our future are being made on strictly economic grounds.
Alan Parker is vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association of Victoria.