Lee Schipper on Hyper-Motorization

Lee Schipper's recent piece on hypermotorization in Global Asia.

[January, 2010] [ Printed Version] Car Crazy: The Perils of Asia’s Hyper-Motorization By Lee Schipper Asia’s love of vehicles is chokingly and noisily apparent. The number on the roads seems to rise inexorably, so fast in many places that it far outstrips the ability of governments to plan roads and infrastructure for them. But Asian nations desperate to find ways to cope with the clogged roads and foul air in their cities should not despair, says transport scientist Lee Schipper. Asian car ownership overall is tiny compared with the US and Europe. With the right planning and bold vision, it is possible to reclaim the streets and find more sustainable and more efficient transport systems.

Asia is crazy about its wheels. China’s Geely Automobile is set to buy Volvo as auto sales in China boom. In India, Tata Motor has rolled out the Nano, a mini-car for the middle class, while Japan’s Honda sells top-of-the-line two-wheelers in Vietnam. Even rural Laos and Cambodia are abuzz with motorcycles. The world’s most populous region is taking to the road, and many are overjoyed. Motorcycle or motorcar, personal vehicles are a pillar of development and for many a way to escape poverty. But are rapid increases in vehicle ownership a solution to poverty, or are they leading Asia, particularly its cities, to even greater problems? Will Asia’s wheels grind to a halt? The answer is that for many Asian cities, wheels already have ground to a halt. The rapid increases in Asian motorization are no surprise to those of us who study transport. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s “Sustainable Mobility” project, backed by a host of major auto and oil companies, foresaw this boom. Concerned about the impact on both carbon dioxide emissions and the oil market, the group’s 2003 report, “Mobility 2030: Meeting the Challenges to Sustainability,” recommended that the developing world adopt strategies already in use in the West, such as road pricing, vehicle emissions controls, better highways and car pooling as a way to cope with an inevitable rise in vehicle numbers. More recent work by the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects more rapid growth in vehicle ownership in Asia, but it has sounded alarms. Will Asians be better off with far more cars than today? The problem is not individual transportation itself — i.e. vehicle ownership. Rather, it is what I call hyper-motorization, which occurs when individual vehicle ownership rises so fast that authorities cannot cope with the associated problems — traffic fatalities, air pollution, congestion and noise — or more subtle yet difficult issues such as when whole sections of cities are cut off from pedestrian and cycle traffic by the kind of congested highway networks familiar to anyone who has tried to take a stroll through downtown Jakarta, Metro Manila or other mega cities.