“It demonstrates that in low-density, sprawling cities like Brisbane, people cannot be expected to permanently give up driving unless there is significant investment in public transport.”

However, researchers found given participants were likely to slightly reduce their reliance on cars, it showed experiencing car-free living, even briefly, could help people break away from automobility.

In Brisbane, 89 per cent of households own at least one car and 48 per cent of commuters drive to work.

This was essentially the goal of the study, to demonstrate that more investment is needed in public transport to increase public buy-in, and that even just being forced to try it for a few weeks increases usage and lowers car use longer term - so if there can be incentives to try public transport that could also increase its use long term and reduce cars on the road.

The headline is not what people here (myself included) wanna read, but the study succeeded in its demonstration and will hopefully drive positive govt policy outcomes.

The same was done in Vienna. People did not use their car for 3 months.

Results

• 2/3 could imagine living without a car
• 25% have sold or are planning to sell their car

German source

A researcher asked people who live in car dependent areas to go without theirs for 20 days, none of them were able to overcome the poor infrastructure.

Fixed Headline for them.

20 days isn't really enough to judge. If you didn't own a bike at the start of those 20 days, could you really get a bike and all the clothes, safety gear, etc. you need and get used to biking before the end of the experiment? If you're using public transit, can you really learn the routes and schedules for the places you need to go in just 20 days?

Also, assuming these people all owned cars, they were still essentially paying for their cars the whole time. They might not have paid for gas, and the wear and tear would have been very slightly less, but any car loan they had still had to be repaid on schedule. If they rented a monthly parking pass or something, that would have to be paid. Not only that, but when you don't own a car, you tend to make different decisions on where to live, and sometimes where to work too. So, they're living in a place that's car friendly (and maybe not public transit friendly).

I would bet that if you took someone who didn't own a car and intentionally lived next to a major transit hub and asked them to get around by car for 20 days, they wouldn't like it either. They wouldn't have a place to park at home, rush hour traffic would probably be extremely stressful for someone who didn't do it every day, and so-on.

What this really needs is something like what you get in one of those "wife swap" TV shows. Someone goes to live in a completely different place with people who live very different lives. Instead of living in the sprawling suburbs and getting around everywhere by car, you now live downtown in a high-rise right near a great public transit location. In addition, calculate how much someone would save without a car, and give that to them as a cash payment every day/week so they understand that positive side of not owning a car as well.

"However, researchers found given participants were likely to slightly reduce their reliance on cars, it showed experiencing car-free living, even briefly, could help people break away from automobility."
I think this is an important secondary take away here. Reducing car use is still much better than continuing at current rate. (Similar to eating less meat vs going vegan cold turkey).
Owning a car does come with large sunk-costs tho - so you won't feel the full financial benefit from just reducing car use (still have to pay rego, insurance, maintenance etc.)

Yeah, that's bcz most towns/cities are not set up to be walkable. And nobody wants to carry groceries miles back to their house. We've set up society in a way that not owning a car is a nonstarter.

Ive been car free my entire life and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life

I think this small experiment simply demonstrates that ditching cars is not a matter of personal preferences, but a community effort

I went without a car until my very late thirties. Then I got married, had a kid, moved to a suburb and the city I'm in can't unfuck its public transportation to save its life and thus I was forced into buying a car.

I live in Ottawa, Canada and the polite term of our public transit (OC Transpo) is NO C Transpo or OCCasional Transpo. Seriously, they bought a train that doesn't work in ice/snow and also doesn't work in summer heat. They don't have enough resources to perform proper maintenance on the buses. And final cherry on top is that they went with the decision to buy zero-emission buses (a good idea I'm supportive of) but had no plan to transition between the gasoline powered ones which are now at end of life while their replacements are still years away from becoming operational.

The only other organization I've seen fuck up major projects this bad is our Department of National Defense.

Brisbane is a shit city for cycling. Who is surprised?

The system is rigged. If you're dependent on the bus in a city where everything is miles apart, the buses run every hour and only daytime hours, of course it's going to suck.

Ask 10 people in Amsterdam and half would tell you they already haven't used a car in weeks. The only ones who'd have a problem with it are those who work far away from Amsterdam.

The average claim per person for all their travel expenses during the experiment in Brisbane was $125 – but they saved $300 in car costs. “I hadn’t realised how much money my car eats up,” a 43-year-old man from Brisbane said.

Those $300 for 20 days look like just fuel costs. Add the yearly depreciation value of the car (especially bad for new cars), insurance and maintenance costs and it gets even worse.

Even limiting oneself to only a financial viewpoint (which is quite reductive since the are also big Environmental, Health and Social costs), for most people (especially those who live in cities) cars are stupidly expensive for the utility value that they deliver.

As someone who has been without a car for a decade now I'm not sure I could go back. I love walking and biking too much.

Hopefully they got action items out of it - what do they need to work on.

Personally I loved the freedom of not having to deal with a car on a daily basis, but there was too much I couldn’t do.

One of the shortcomings that seems to surprise people is a lack of long term car storage. There will be an extended transition where many people can not give up their cars or think they cannot. Why not help with that? At one point I was driving my car mostly to move it for street cleaning because there was no permanent place to store it. We want the cars off the street to make room for more important road users. Garages in apartment blocks are too convenient and for-profit garages too expensive

You’ll get more people willing to try car-free if you give them a slightly inconvenient place to store their car, until they realize how little they need to use it. I wonder if making it cheap and easy to leave your car at a park and ride at the end of a transit line would work

The Brisbane public transport is pretty bad, but there are more reasons: the bus network is owned by the council while the train network is owned by the state government. As a result both tend to compete with each other. This is especially bad when the busses don't even cover some areas. Partner went for a course there recently and their best option to reach the place on public transport was to just walk 40 minutes from the train station! I can't think of a single area in Sydney that wouldn't get a bus service at least once a day on a work day. (You know things are bad if you're comparing to Sydney busses because these things are terrible)

NYers' "I've been doing this my whole life"

10 is not a statistically significant sample size

paywall removed

There's about 4 million people in Brisbane-Gold Coast, 10 is not very representative...

I went without a car for 8 almost 9 years. Bus, train, biking. Etc. everywhere. It's honestly such a limited existence compared to having a car. When I can just jump in and go anywhere I want. I regularly go on long road trips I go visit multiple states. In the first year I had a car I visited probably eight different states. Where is in the previous 8 years the farthest trip I had taken was bumming a ride up into the mountains to do a camping trip and waiting in the rain for my friend to show back up to pick me back up. As much as I love my bike and as much as I love walking and I honestly don't even mind the bus system having a car is something I'll never go without again.

Last time I looked at using public transport to get to work it would take about 3.5 hours. Takes 30 minutes to drive. Housing is too expensive near there for me to move.

None wanted to continue what? Driving cars? Continue the trial? I can't read the article due to a pay wall

As a working Brisbane based dad with two University aged kids living with me, we use the car on average once every week or two. I intentionally got a house near a transport hub and several major routes stop at the end of my driveway. If you're within 15km of the CBD transit is very acceptable for primary use. I've also got two electric scooters and bikes and yes the cycling infrastructure could use work but I did a 25km round trip for years into the CBD without too many issues.

There's a bit of NIMBY punishing people who made bad transport choices. I chose not to be one of them.

It depends on where you live. I wouldn't be able to get around without my whip.

We went involuntarily car-free for a month after a heavy rain flooded my family's car. It was much more manageable than expected, due to both the walkability of our suburban neighbourhood and commutes that aligned with nearby bus routes. But if we lived even 1km further from the bus stops, it would have been unpleasant. The alternatives to driving need to exist with reasonable frequency before more suburbanites consider ditching their cars. But I also believe that people need to be receptive to trying something different that may not always be as comfortable as getting into a climate controlled, sound insulated private box to get around.

Despite how close we are to amenities, almost everyone drives to the grocery stores or to work regardless of age or physical health. One factor is 30+ minute bus headways even at peak times. Another is that 2+ buses are needed to get to the nearest commuter rail station, which has free parking and again 30+ minute headways. So to make it to the station on time, people just choose to drive there. That lack of integration with regional rail schedules is another thing that may be limiting bus ridership. An interim solution to low built densities affecting bus routes is more bike infrastructure that is transit compatible, like bike racks at bus stops instead of awkwardly using utility poles. (Also, why are we not allowed to use both bus bike rack slots when they clearly have the space for it? It seems asinine.)

While we are not really a car-lite household, many grocery and commuting trips have been replaced by transit. I realize there's a degree of discomfort that comes with a change in travel patterns when the alternatives are not as maturely developed. Waiting 30 minutes for a bus or walking 20 minutes to another bus route because the last bus came early can be unpleasant, but on the flip side, the ride itself unlocks the ability to relax or get work done that driving does not permit. Walking or biking to the grocery store can be a workout on the way back, but it's free cardio through 'the gym of life,' as Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes would say. We need to be okay with some discomfort before ridership can increase enough to improve transit frequencies. Or, you know, hope that 40% increases in gas prices in 2 weeks is enough of a price shock that people start embracing the alternatives on their own accord.