The Selfish Automobile
[B' Spokes: Remember George Jetson's car and how it folded into a suitcase? Let's look at it in reverse and picture the space needed for a typical Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) of today unfolding at the the push of a button and expanding out like an inflatable raft in a department store. As it unfolds to the space it needs it does not stop at the size of a living room but keeps unfolding 9 more times till it's the size of a typical house. That's a lot of space just for one person, yet people seem to question why is there congestion when everyone "only" needs 2250sq.ft on the highway at the same time (rush hour) to move around "freely." So I'll highlight a bit from an article by Todd Litman:]
Space
Automobile travel is also space-intensive. The space requirements of different modes can be compared using time-area analysis, the product of space times time, measured in square-foot-minutes. Parking requirements depend on vehicle size. Travel space requirements depend on vehicle size and speed, since faster vehicles need more shy distance between them and other objects. For example, an automobile traveling at 30 miles-per-hour (mph) requires about 12.5 feet of lane width and 80 feet of lane length, or about 1,000 square feet in total, but at 60 mph this increases to 15 feet of lane width and 150 feet of length, about 2,250 square feet. The table below compares the time-area requirements of various modes for a 20-minute commute with 8 hours of vehicle parking. This indicates that driving requires about 15 times more space than bicycling, about 50 times more than public transport, and about 100 times more than walking.
Creating more bus, HOV and bike lanes is efficient and fair, because it allows users of these space-efficient modes (walking, cycling and public transit) to avoid delays caused by space intensive modes (single-occupant vehicles), and by making these modes more competitive it can attract travelers out of their cars which reduces traffic and parking congestion and parking problems. Yet, motorists often oppose such conversions. They only perceive congestion as a problem they face rather than a problem they cause, and they cannot imagine changing their own travel patterns to benefit others.
If motorists were generous and rational they would say things such as:
"Let's create a transportation system that serves everybody."
"Automobile travel does require a lot of road space, so it makes sense to favor more space efficient modes under congested conditions."
"I support bike and bus lane development. Even if I do not use these facilities now, I benefit if other travelers shift to these modes, and I may want to use them sometime in the future."
"I realize that the roads and parking facilities I use are costly to build and operate. It's better that we pay for them directly through user fees rather than indirectly through subsidies that everybody must bear."
[Read more for the link to the whole article.] http://www.planetizen.com/node/46570
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