A carfree North Point vs. conventional car access: the difference in costs

It is becoming apparent to city planners worldwide that the high cost of providing automobile access to all points in a dense urban environment is not a good use of resources - especially in urban environments like Cambridge where a majority of residents go without cars regularly.

The following lists the costs to residents and city government of accomodating cars in a new developement that are absent from a carfree development. By contrast, the few costs associated with carfree development that are not associated with car-oriented development are far smaller.

City planners have a choice: spend resources on the expensive task of making all parts of an urban neighborhood accessible by car, or spend these resources on things which can improve residents' quality of life.

Costs to residents (externalities) which would be eliminated:

• Cost of the mandated parking spaces per residence. This cost is borne by residents whether or not they own a car.
  
  
• Air pollution from the extra cars
  
  
• Injuries to pedestrians
  • Medical care
  • Lost work time
    
    
• Noise pollution from cars - traffic noise constitutes much of the ambient sound in cities.
  
• Aesthetic costs resulting in reduced property values
  • Visual clutter associated with cars
  • Coherence of urban design - most great urban spaces were planned as carfree

Costs to the city which would be eliminated

• Roads
  • Building roads for automobiles and pedestrians (as opposed to pedestrian streets), along with traffic signals, markings, etc.
  • Maintaining roads (by far the most infrastructure damage is caused by trucks and cars)
  • The cost of improving Cambridge roads outside the neighborhood to absorb more car-dependent residences.
• Parking - building parking spaces on roads and maintaining them (full cost of garage spaces paid for by those residents who use them)
  
  
• Capital and operating expenses for police vehicles - police would be on foot
  
  
• Police time responding to accidents, ticketing, and directing traffic
  

"Parking is expensive. According to some estimates, the total cost of parking facilities exceeds the total cost of motor vehicles. This implies that each purchase of an automobile burdens society with an equal or greater cost of parking. Just as there is no free lunch, there are no free roads or parking facilities. Consumers pay for these facilities through higher rents (for residential parking), lower wages and benefits (for employee parking), higher taxes (for roads and government funded parking facilities), higher prices for retail goods (for commercial parking), and environmental degradation."

-Todd Litman. Pavement Busters Guide: Why and How to Reduce the Amount of Land Paved for Roads and Parking Facilities. Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1999