Resumen de Transport Policy and the Car Divide in the UK, the US and France: Beyond the Environmental Debate
Sylvie Fol, Gabriel Dupuy, Olivier Coutard
Public aid programs to subsidize the automobility of poor households are at the heart of a trade-off between three different types of concern: economic (promoting access to employment for active members of these households), environmental (cutting greenhouse gas emissions from cars) and social (ensuring that policies to control car usage do not penalize poorer households disproportionately). This article analyzes comparative research into the origins and development of such programs in three countries characterized by different levels of car dependence (France, the UK and the US). It shows that these programs, which are obviously useful to the households that benefit from them and, surprisingly, have largely escaped criticism despite running counter to policies that restrict the use of cars, remain of marginal importance in all three countries. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, auto programs are not an appropriate solution to the difficulties encountered by a significant portion of poor households and, secondly, wider development of such policies would constitute a considerable political gamble, especially as they risk destabilizing the mechanisms for funding public transit and weakening their social legitimacy. In the longer term, however, multiplying economic and fiscal methods of restricting car use that weigh disproportionately on the budgets of more modest households may necessitate a considerable increase in programs to aid automobility.
