Clean Transport 101: Reduce

Last time, we discussed why the Reduce, Replace, Repower framework is the key to cleaning up the transport sector. Today let's go into the details of how we can Reduce travel demand. 

Let's just get it out of the way - one way we can reduce travel demand is to avoid trips entirely. This line of thinking is particularly applied to overseas travel in an Australian context - since we're an island, international travel invariably means flying, and many people feel guilty about taking trips (especially holidays) that bloat their carbon footprints. 

To be sure, there are people who fly excessively (particularly for business) and it's a good idea for us as individuals to be intentional about whether and how we fly, and for governments to set policies that make us think twice. Certainly, in the post-COVID era it's clear that a lot of business meetings and conferences could be held online (or at least partly online). And certainly, there's no shortage of fantastic holiday destinations we could all visit within Australia. 

Tourism Australia are keen for us to "Holiday Here", and it has carbon benefits too

But I want to stress that a kind of austere, "personal sacrifice" mindset is not what this framework is about. It's about systemic change, creating a world where the green thing to do is not only the ethical thing to do, it's the easiest and best thing to do. Rather than "Unfortunately I can't do that any more", it's "Geez I'm glad I don't have to do that any more". 

With that in mind, an increase in working from home has some potential. Many people hated WFH during the pandemic (probably in part because it coincided with other things, like home schooling and pubs being closed) but others have loved it, and still others will favour a blended model - at home some days, in the office others. Giving people the option to WFH as much or as little as they like (within the practicalities of their role) could combine marginal reductions in transport emissions with significant improvements in mental health and work-life balance, so it should be encouraged. 

Mostly, though, Reduce is about urban planning, and making it so that when we do have to travel, we don't have to travel as far. 

Urban planning in the second half of the 20th century, and to some extent still to this day, emphasised a number of fairly destructive principles. One was as much separation of uses as possible - eg people should live in one part of the city, and work in another part of the city, and never the twain shall meet. Another was that the car and its driver were the absolute highest priorities - walking, cycling and public transport were at best a low priority, and at worst not considered at all. These two things combined have resulted in cities where most people have to travel quite a long way to get where they need to go, and where driving is the most practical (or only) option to make those trips. 

Modern planners, however, are starting to recognise that this was a mistake. If we plan for a wider range of transport options, higher densities, and mixed uses, people can have access to more of the things they need on a daily basis within a short walk of their home - and for the things further afield, the cycling and public transport options mean they don't have to drive there. 

The features of a 20 (or 10) Minute City (via DELWP)

In a "10 Minute City" people should be able to get to things like shops, health facilities, schools, parks and sporting facilities, within a ten-minute walk (1) of their home. One common misconception is that you'd need a lot of hospitals to meet the "health facilities" criterion, but to be clear, this is talking about things like GPs and pharmacies (the kinds of places you'd go several times a year when you need a medical certificate or prescription) not full-blown hospitals (the kinds of places you'd go very rarely for surgery). COVID has probably provided a good rule of thumb for this - if you had somewhere to get a COVID vaccine within ten minutes' walk of your house, your neighbourhood meets this standard. 

Another misconception is that jobs should also be within a ten-minute walk from home. It's nice when that happens (and of course if you have shops spread throughout the city then retail jobs will spread too) but it's not strictly necessary. The reason, to use a term people will have no doubt become familiar with in the last twelve months, is that jobs aren't fungible, while most of the other destinations are. If I need to go to the supermarket, I'm almost certainly going to go to the one that's closest to my house. If I move to a different suburb, I'm not going to keep travelling back to my old supermarket on the other side of town, I'll go to the one closest to my new house; one supermarket is interchangeable with another, hence they're fungible. Jobs, broadly, aren't - you get employed at a particular location, and you usually have to go to that location, not just whichever office building is closest to your house. (2) What should be within walking distance, though, is a public transport network that can get you to that job location. 

If we reduce the distance that people need to travel to daily amenities, and put them within walking distance of public transport that can take them further afield, we can substantially reduce transport emissions. Even if people still do drive, the distances they drive will be shorter, which obviously shrinks their carbon footprint; but the big advantage of this is that it makes walking, cycling and public transport options much more viable, and so more people will choose them. 

Mixed-use development in London (via Lars Ploughmann)

One way we can reduce the distances people need to travel is through higher density, and through mixed-use zoning - for example, buildings with shops or cafes on the ground floor and a few storeys of residences above, or even just having a bunch of two-storey townhouses within a block or two of a retail strip, to ensure as many people as possible are within walking distance of it. We shouldn't be afraid of big towers, in the right contexts, but for the most part our best bet is widespread "gentle density" - think of cities like Paris, Amsterdam or Barcelona, with street after street of 3-6 storey buildings. Our planning laws currently make this kind of thing much more difficult to build than suburb after suburb of detached single-family houses (and big towers in the few places they're allowed) so it's urgent that we fix these laws and make this kind of thing more common. 

But we definitely don't have to have higher densities everywhere - we can even do this to some extent in suburbs full of detached houses. This is the kind of environment where corner stores and milk bars used to thrive, and although plenty of them have closed in the last few decades, we can have that type of convenience again. 

Squiggly streets make even short distances unwalkable (via Streetsblog USA)

Street layouts are also surprisingly important. Squiggly, curving roads and cul-de-sacs often make walking very impractical, because even if you're within a short distance from shops or public transport as the crow flies, you might need to travel twice that distance via the road network - and these layouts are notoriously hard to route buses through, too. Ideally we should just not have these kinds of squiggly layouts at all, except where the topography demands it (around creeks and so on). But even where the roads are squiggly, we can give pedestrians and cyclists a more direct journey by giving them cut-throughs, linking one cul-de-sac or dead-end street to another. 

Cheviot Ct in Alfredton has cut-throughs for foot and cycle traffic (via Google Maps)

Retrofitting existing suburbs to meet these ideals will, in many cases, be a slow and difficult process. But new suburbs are being built around the country every single day - and there is absolutely nothing stopping us from building those new suburbs without the mistakes of the past. When we aim to reduce travel, we're definitely playing the long game - but all our wins are big wins. 

For the trips we can't Reduce, we need to Replace - next instalment here. 

1. Confusingly, the 10 Minute City is sometimes known as the 20 Minute City, with the idea being that it's a ten minute walk to your destination and then a ten minute walk back home. Also, sometimes people talk about the 15 Minute City, which is the same only less strict; probably a good first step. 

2. I will admit that the increase in WFH/remote work during the pandemic might change this. Some workplaces are surprisingly resistant to WFH and are demanding people return to the office full-time as soon as it's safe, but others seem quite accepting of the idea that staff might not spend much time in the office any more. So maybe this will support a bunch of fungible hotdesk/WeWork-style arrangements popping up throughout the suburbs, and people will just pick the closest one? Who knows.