NO CARS WITHIN THE URBAN CORE

No cars within the village walls

 
Cars turn towns to mincemeat. While they are wonderful machines of freedom when going longer distances because they go point to point on your schedule, they make little sense in a local community.
They command space as they require wide roads, garages, on and off-street parking, fuel and repair stations. They are dangerous especially for children, pets, the infirm and the elderly.

In the VillageTown, they are kept in the transport center for use when villagers need to drive somewhere else. Inside the VillageTown most people will walk, some will ride single gear bikes and when luggage or goods need to be transported, they will use small electric vehicles that look like golf carts or even pedal-powered vehicles.

Now, don't panic. We're not taking your car away.

 

The VillageTown eliminates the need for cars

You can bring as many cars as you want to the VillageTown and keep them in the motorpool by the village gate. What we change is the distance to your destinations. You won't need to drive to accomplish the mundane chores of daily life. You can bring your collection of Ferraris & your faithful old Ford pickup and keep them ready to go as soon as you need to hit the open road; although after a year of paying insurance, registration & pumping up the tires since they sit so long, we reckon you will prefer to rent from the motorpool when you need a car.

The only thing you cannot do is drive a car inside the village walls. As Christopher Alexander wrote in A Pattern Language, cars turn towns into mincemeat. As soon as you take cars off the local streets, children can safely play outside without parents worrying. Not only have you removed the threat of being run over by a car, but predators lose their anonymity. As soon as you move the destinations so everything you need on a day-to-day basis is within a 10-minute walk, you no longer need to allocate 15% of your annual income to running a car. If you are older and lose your license to drive, nothing changes.

As soon as we create a no-car zone, the streets can be narrower, more intimate and more beautiful. Businesses no longer require off-street parking; land use is more efficient. In fact, we can list 20 reasons why the VillageTown is better off being carfree, and not one of them has to do with global issues like Climate Change or Peak Oil.

What is the impact of a car-free village?

1. People connect - when not cocooned in a steel & glass chamber, people connect better
2. Children, pets and elders safer - no risk of getting run down by a car
3. Elders need not leave when they lose their licence to drive - everything within walking distance

You don't give up your car, you give up the need to use it all the time.

5. Dining alfresco - (outside) eating outdoors in cafes on the street becomes far more enjoyable
6. Daily life is quieter - no cars passing by, especially when one is sleeping
7. The air is cleaner - no tailpipe and fuel tank emissions, no tire and brake dust
8. Save money - no need to buy, finance, depreciate, insure, license, inspect, run, fix & fuel a car.
9. Destinations closer - Everything easier to get to; the village takes up less space
10. Village uses less land - roads narrower, no parking for businesses, no driveways/garages
11. Village costs less to build - no need for on-street parking, parking meters, parking enforcement
12. Homes cost less - no funds needed for a garage, driveway, or the extra land to provide for them
13. Workplaces cost less - no funds needed for off-street parking or large truck bays
14. Roads are cleaner - no dripping oil, no tire-tread marks
15. Roads last longer - less weight (and wear & tear) on the streets on a day-to-day basis
16. Roads are more attractive - paverstone roads easy to access, lift pavers - no patches
17. Buildings remain cleaner as the dust and grit from tires and diesel smoke are eliminated
18. No social pressure on status about what kind of car one drives
19. Eliminates anonymous predatory behaviour enabled by the car; fear is reduced
20. Safety issues around the fuel storage are eliminated (fuels kept only at the motorpool)

 
Life improves.

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In the above list, all these positive effects are local and personal. None of them have to do with climate change, peak oil or global economic crisis. For those who want to look at that big picture however, creating a car-free village has positive effects on the region and the globe:

Fact: The US Dept of Energy reports that for every 1,000 people in America own 840 cars; probably more in the suburbs. Thus, we can reasonably say that for every 10,000 population VillageTown, approximately 7,000 cars are eliminated for day-to-day use because workers commute on foot, parents take children to school on foot, people go to shops, cafes and recreation on foot. Bicycles and NEV's (neighbourhood electric vehicles) provide wheeled mobility, but the speed is limited to walking pace. Some people will continue to own cars, but will have no need to use them day-to-day.

Fact: According to NADA the average price of all used cars in the USA 2011 was $11,850 and the average sale price of a new car in 2012 was over $30,000. If the need for 7,000 cars is eliminated and replaced, say with 500 rental cars for those occasional trips away, this frees up (on average) over $77 million in capital (6,500 cars x $11,850 each). Taking the 2012 new car baseline, if cars depreciate at 15% a year, the depreciation on 6,500 cars at $30,000 comes to almost $30 million per year, just in depreciation, not including fuel, maintenance, repairs, property tax on an attached garage, insurance on car and garage, etc. While the statistics can be argued, the fact is that eliminating the need to drive saves a lot of money.

Fact: The average American driver drives 35 miles a day, of which about 15% is commuting. That may not seem like a lot, but for a 10,000 population community that works out to over 250,000 miles a day. A quarter million miles of driving to the same destinations day after day. When we drive like this, we just switch off, we hardly notice what we drive by, we do not experience those 35 miles, we just do it. We not only burn fuel and money, we burn time; we waste life.

Regional impact: A local or regional authority that approves a 10,000 population suburb must spend considerable time determining the impact on their roads. Studies must be done to determine if the roads are adequate from the 6-8,000 additional cars. The impact of a VillageTown is markedly less. There will be supply trucks and there can be expected to see regional residents as well as visitors attracted to the village. Some villagers will travel to outside destinations, especially those who need to get to the airport. But the vast majority of daily transport, the part that requires both study and expense by the local or regional authorities is not part of a VillageTown.

Global impact: It is difficult to find a reputable study that shows the true and total impact of burning a tankful of petrol. We read that a liter of gasoline dumps 2.39 kg (20 lbs per gallon) of CO² in the air, but this is only the end of a very long supply line. Exploring, drilling, pumping, refining, transporting (several stages), wholesaling and retailing of petroleum all require energy, much of it polluting, and then there is the intangible costs to humanity and the Earth in terms of health and the occasional war fought over oil. To this one must add the cost of manufacturing cars and the whole infrastructure required to keep them on the road.

The industry's answer is to develop cars that travel further on a litre of petrol, or to develop second generation biofuels where the plant or algae extract the CO² from the atmosphere, so when it is burned, it only returns CO² borrowed a while earlier. These are admirable aspirations, and should be pursued, especially because the VillageTown still relies on vehicular transport to connect with the outside world. However, while solutions such as using less fuel or biofuel to solve the global problems, on a local level they still result in machine-scaled local communities, when in fact many people want to live in human-scaled ones.

In a VillageTown, the immediate impact is not carbon neutral it is zero carbon. No drive, no emissions.  Just think about what you could save every week by not having to drive in an Eastern Missouri Village Town.  Join us!