Reducing car dependence in the heart of Europe: lessons from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, and Zurich – the largest cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – have significantly reduced the car share of trips over the past 25 years in spite of high motorisation rates. The key to their success has been a coordinated package of mutually reinforcing transport and land-use policies that have made car use slower, less convenient, and more costly, while increasing the safety, convenience, and feasibility of walking, cycling, and public transport. The mix of policies implemented in each city has been somewhat different. The German cities have done far more to promote cycling, while Zurich and Vienna offer more public transport service per capita at lower fares. All five of the cities have implemented roughly the same policies to promote walking, foster compact mixed-use development, and discourage car use. Of the car-restrictive policies, parking management has been by far the most important. The five case study cities demonstrate that it is possible to reduce car dependence even in affluent societies with high levels of car ownership and high expectations for quality of travel.

KEYWORDS:

• Car dependence
• sustainability
• public transport
• walking
• cycling
• parking management
• Western Europe

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Alan Altshuler (Harvard University), Prof. David Banister (Oxford University), Prof. Gerd Sammer (University for Natural Resources of Vienna), Prof. Hermann Knoflacher (Technical University of Vienna), Dr Måns Lönnroth (Volvo Foundation), Prof. Robert Cervero (University of California at Berkeley), Dr Uwe Kunert (German Economic Institute), Dr Reinhard Merckens (City of Hamburg), and Dr Markus Ossberger (Vienna Public Transport System) as well as three anonymous referees, for their detailed suggestions for improvement of this article. We also thank the many transport planners in Vienna, Zurich, Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich for their cooperation in sharing information and data about transport trends and policies in each of their cities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ralph Buehler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1254-2224

John Pucher http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9499-2383

Regine Gerike http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8063-6636

Thomas Götschi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1202-7863

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was funded in part by the multi-year international project “Transforming Urban Transport: The Role of Political Leadership” coordinated by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and sponsored by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (OP-2012-03).