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Yearly Archives: 2011

World Vehicle Population Tops 1 Billion

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by John Sousanis – jsousanis@wardsauto.com
Wards Auto

The number of vehicles in operation worldwide surpassed the 1 billion-unit mark in 2010 for the first time ever. According to Ward’s research, which looked at government-reported registrations and historical vehicle-population trends, global registrations jumped from 980 million units in 2009 to 1.015 billion in 2010.  – By John Sousanis. WardsAuto.com, Aug 15, 2011 9:00 AM

The figures reflect the approximate number of cars, light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses registered worldwide, but that does not include off-road, heavy-duty vehicles.

The 3.6% rise in vehicle population was the largest percentage increase since 2000, while the 35.6 million year-to-year unit increase was the second-biggest increase in overall volume ever.

The market explosion in China played a major role in overall vehicle population growth in 2010, with registrations jumping 27.5%. Total vehicles in operation in the country climbed by more than 16.8 million units, to slightly more than 78 million, accounting for nearly half the year’s global increase.

The leap in registrations gave China the world’s second-largest vehicle population, pushing it ahead of Japan, with 73.9 million units, for the first time.

India’s vehicle population underwent the second-largest growth rate, up 8.9% to 20.8 million units, compared with 19.1 million in 2009.

Brazil experienced the second largest volume increase after China, with 2.5 million additional vehicle registrations in 2010.
China vehicle registrations jumped 27.5% last year, more than any other country.

U.S. registrations grew less than 1% last year, but the country’s 239.8 million units continued to constitute the largest vehicle population in the world.

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A Little Humor for a Serious Subject

Sunday, July 31st, 2011 | Editor | No Comments

Came across these sayings on a quotes and teen driving website. It never hurts to take a little time to quietly giggle over a serious subject. Please don’t complain  to AMC, we don’t mean to offend or stereotype and certainly didn’t make these up ourselves! 🙂

  • When buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio.  If all the stations are rock and roll, there’s a good chance the transmission is shot. ~Larry Lujack
  • Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth. ~Erma Bombeck
  • Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car. ~E.B. White, One Man’s Meat, 1943
  • The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires. ~Dorothy Parker
  • Mother Nature is providential.  She gives us twelve years to develop a love for our children before turning them into teenagers. ~William Galvin
  • The best substitute for experience is being sixteen. ~Raymond Duncan
  • The invention of the teenager was a mistake.  Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don’t have to pay taxes – naturally, no one wants to live any other way. ~Judith Martin
  • Adolescence is a period of rapid changes.  Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years. ~Author Unknown
  • You can tell a child is growing up when he stops asking where he came from and starts refusing to tell where he is going. ~Author Unknown
  • Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. ~Steven Wright
  • A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

AMC Learns from Arthur Orsini – Urbanthinkers

Thursday, July 21st, 2011 | warai03p | No Comments

Aimee Ward (Otago), Arthur Orsini (Urban Thinkers) and Charlotte Flaherty (DCC)

Arthur Orsini, Active Transportation Planner Stantec Consulting Ltd. in partnership with Urbanthinkers

Earlier this month, the Greater Wellington Regional Council held a series of workshops by noted school travel planning expert and youth engagement authority Arthur Orsini, the developer of Urbanthinkers, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Charlotte Flaherty (Safe and Sustainable Travel Co-ordinator for Dunedin City Council … and an AMC Advisory Board Member) and I were lucky enough to be invited along for the proverbial ride.

On 14 July we attended an all-day seminar by Orsini, “Adult Facilitator Workshop in Youth Engagement”, and were inspired.

Arthur is a pioneer in his field, and has been developing innovative and effective youth and community engagement projects since 1991. His work helps local authorities support students and community-leaders become local champions for travel behaviour change. His secondary school program, Off Ramp, received an OECD award for Sustainable Transport: Education and Youth in 2000. Arthur has worked and presented across Canada, and in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. He places particular importance on empowering youth to become peer-mentors. He has never owned a car.

During the facilitator workshop, we performed planning/evaluation exercises – hallmarks of the Orsini Model for Child and Youth Engagement – as if we were the adolescents themselves, and found ourselves enthralled. Ultimately, the AMC aims to affect the driving and licensing habits of secondary-school aged adolescents through the promotion of active transport and transportation demand management (TDM).  Thus, we have a keen interest in Arthur’s ability to capture attention and collaborate with a variety of stakeholders, especially youth themselves.

Both Arthur and the AMC have similar long-term goals: increased child and adolescent health, TDM that supports lower emissions, a reduction in crash-related injury, and an overall travel environment that supports active transport alternatives. After meeting and working a bit with Arthur, these goals seem within closer reach.

6 Reasons Driving Has Peaked in U.S. Cities

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– By Eric Jaffei
The Infrastructurist

“Driving in major cities has reached an unexpected plateau — a phenomenon known as “peak car use.” The Brookings Institution discovered this trend a few years back, Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper confirmed it earlier this year, and just last month a pair of Australian scholars reported that peak car use appears to be a global trend that’s here to stay.”

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Young People Are Losing Interest in Cars…

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– by Matthew DeBord
Huffington Post

“Young People Are Losing Interest in Cars, But That Doesn’t Mean the End of the Road for Automakers”

Increasingly, young people don’t care about cars, according to surveys and forward-looking market analysis. Roland Berger Strategy Consultants recently published a study of the 2025 auto market that documented the car’s decline.

For example, among current Japanese students and graduates in their 20s and 30s, cars rank well below fashion, music, and video games in terms of interest. Young Germans are expressing a declining enthusiasm for driving, but an increasing desire to ride a bike or take public transportation. Even In China, where car sales are surging, youths are expected to begin losing their interest in automobiles by 2015.

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