The ecological and economic wastefulness of private cars is absurdly obvious, but car ownership is so well established that – short of an outright prohibition of private cars, which no democratic government could dare contemplate – it is now virtually impossible to change this.
But, if private cars were abolished in favour of CS…..Car Density would be reduced dramatically
- If all private cars were banned in favour of CS, the car/people ratio would go from 1:2.5 (24 million cars) to approx 1:15 (4 million)
- In Obecities most car usage is for commuting, shopping, picking up kids, etc, none of which will apply in Δ.
- The elimination of most short car journeys is therefore likely to further reduce this ratio to maybe 1:30 (2 million cars).
- Δ residents will only need a car when they want to go beyond Δ environs, but that may not be very often
Why would Δ residents ever want to leave..?
Virtually all your work, education, shopping, and leisure activities will take place within Δ environs.
Δ will be attractive to vistors, therefore your outside friends/relatives would probably prefer to visit you..!
The superb Sanctuary will compensate for traditional car-clogged weekend country drives.
Δ will have excellent mass transport links with the outside via monorail, TGV, etc.
After considering all these additional factors, a car: people ratio as small as 1:50 may be sufficient.
Most of our societal problems are caused by the scandalously wasteful cancerous sprawl of Obecities.
Obecities are nurtured and sustained by OOT without which they can neither grow nor survive.
Given the typical West European car/people ratio of 2:5 (ie, 400 cars for every 1000 people), a community of 8000 people would need to provide 3200 parking spaces. Although inner-city apartment dwellers tend to have somewhat fewer cars than the average, and (assuming PC’s were allowed) even if a city-satellite arcology (qv) were to have a ratio as ‘low’ as 1:4 – this would still mean provision of 2000 car spaces.
20% of our cities given over to Vehicle Parking
If we were to calculate the total ground space, or footprint, occupied by covered purpose-built parkades, open parking lots, service station forecourts, lock-up garages, concreted-over suburban gardens, and all roadside parking spaces, I would guess that it must amount to 20% of the land area of obecities.
Although an average European car occupies only about 7.5 m2, about 30m2 needs to be allocated per car for space between cars and for maneuvering, plus entry roads and ramps, stairwells, concrete supports, etc, or 45,000m2 in total.
Surface car parks can be either vast tarmac fields or multi-storey parkades. Sub-surface carparks need to be well ventilated and are expensive.
Given more flexibility in our work/leisure habits, CSC’s might reduce the necessary parking provision to 200 spaces (at 1/25) or even as few as 100 (1/50).
Parking Paradox
[stextbox id=”info”]100 shared cars would need a fraction of the parking space needed for 100 private cars
In a fully occupied car park less only about 20% of the floor area is actually occupied by vehicles since space has to be allowed between cars, for maneuvering, and for entry and exit lanes. But shared “community cars” can be parked nose-to-tail and side-by-side on conveyer tracks, so that each car need occupy a space only slightly larger than the vehicle itself (say 8m2). 200 cars – or whatever is deemed adequate to serve the occasional car needs of 8000 people – could be lined up on 5 adjacent tracks, each one containing a different type of car. Thus, 3200 private cars (which might occupy 100,000 m2 or 10 hectares of land) could, in theory, be replaced by just 200 community cars on only 2.000 m2.