Comments on: Trends in car ownership

By: Our cars – saviours or stress machines? | Stop Selfish Parking

Our cars – saviours or stress machines? | Stop Selfish Parking — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 01:20:04 +0000

[...] 100 people. (For more information on this and easy to read graphs please see the first section of Charting Transport’s blog at http://chartingtransport.com/2011/08/07/trends-in-car-ownership/) This majority of the [...]

By: Bill Unkles

Bill Unkles — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:31:19 +0000

Chris,
Interesting data indicating a real shift in consumer preferences. You are right the age issues does not explain it. Looking age state specific age age graphs based on ABS estimated population the share of population aged 18 to 80 is rising but this largely driven by increases in the lower age groups for all states but WA and TAS.

WIth Public transport use rising, car use and ownership falling, maybe the explanation is more closely related to the origin destination matrices. Certainly the new jobs and (employment) growth industries are those located in the inner urban and more public transport accessible areas.

Bill

By: William McDougall

William McDougall — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 03:06:42 +0000

Hi Chris,
Certainly a useful post as always.
As an indicator of car use, car ownership is becoming less reliable than it used to be. Clearly we own more cars per head although we seem to use them less. Meanwhile car occupancy is also declining, so we apparently use them less efficiently… It would be good to explore that in more detail!
William

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:49:42 +0000

Hi Chris, another informative post as usual.

I suspect the best explanation for the lack of difference between car ownership rates in Melbourne and Victoria overall is that to some extent car ownership is not a direct response to need but simply an indicator of wealth.

It’s been observed that in many wealthy European cities, including those such as Paris and Vienna with excellent public transport and low car use, car ownership rates have been up around 60 per cent for longer than they have been in Melbourne. It appears wealthy populations like to have cars around even if they’re not being used from day to day.

It seems Sydney and Melbourne have now caught up with Europe in this regard (and it would be interesting to compare capital city with regional/rural figures for car ownership in other states). But it appears 60 per cent is the saturation level except in severely car-dependent places like the US.