Sir Peter Lampl, the private equity financier who founded the Sutton Trust and has spent nearly three decades campaigning for social mobility, has left Britain for the United States. Plenty of wealthy people have left lately, and most point to tax. Sir Peter’s reason was different. He told The Sunday Telegraph that it had simply become too hard to get around London. Being able to move quickly between meetings had underpinned his business and charitable work for decades, and low-traffic neighbourhoods and cycle lanes had taken that away. It is easy to dismiss as a rich man’s complaint. I am not sure we should.
A declaration of interest first. I love driving. I grew up on a farm in Australia and was behind the wheel at eight. When I arrived in London twenty years ago I went eight years without a car and happily used what remains one of the best public transport networks in the world. Today my car mostly sits idle, because I walk nearly everywhere. I am not arguing for the car over transit. I am arguing about how a city manages the two.
Japan and car culture
I have just returned from two weeks in Japan, and the contrast has stayed with me.
The first thing an Australian notices is what is on the road. Growing up, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Suzuki were household names, so the brands were familiar. What surprised me was that they were almost all you saw: Toyota, Daihatsu, Suzuki, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, street after street. I assumed protectionism. It isn’t. Japan has charged no import duty on passenger cars since the late 1970s, yet foreign brands still account for only around one new car in twenty. American manufacturers have long complained about non-tariff barriers, but the simpler explanation is that Japanese buyers prefer Japanese cars, and Japanese manufacturers have given them every reason to. It is a market choice, and a reminder of how strong an industry a country can build when its home customers back it.
The second thing is harder to quantify. Japan has some of the best public transport anywhere: the shinkansen (Bullet Trains), dense suburban rail, extensive metros in every major city, and buses and taxis filling the gaps. Yet the private car is everywhere too. And in a fortnight, across cities and countryside, I barely saw a queue of traffic. Roads were either flowing or empty. I heard a car horn twice. Car, train and pedestrian seemed to coexist without the sense of grievance that defines the same relationship here.
So what is Japan’s policy? As far as I can tell, two things do most of the work, and neither sets out to stop people owning a car.
The first is the shaken, the roadworthiness inspection: three years after a new car is registered, then every two years. It is thorough and not cheap, and the cost climbs with age. Older cars need more work to pass, and vehicle taxes step up once a car passes thirteen years. Its purpose is safety, but its effect is a younger, cleaner fleet and a steady flow of buyers back into showrooms. Good for road safety, good for air quality and very good for the domestic car industry.
The second is the garage certificate. You cannot register a car in Japan without proving you have an off-street parking space close to home, and overnight parking on the street is not allowed. That is it. Nobody tells you not to own a car. The state simply says the car is your responsibility, not the kerb’s, and the price of a parking space does the rest. In central Tokyo, where space is scarce, it is expensive and car ownership is low. In the suburbs and the regions it is cheap and most households have one. The outcome adjusts to place, through price, without a single extra rule.
Now compare London
We have the congestion charge, ULEZ across all 32 boroughs, low-traffic neighbourhoods, widespread 20mph limits, bus gates, controlled parking zones, permit restrictions, cycle lanes, and a London Plan that makes car-free development the default for most new homes in well-connected areas. Each has a rationale and some have real merit. Taken together, they are an unambiguous statement of intent: the private car is a problem to be designed out.
And yet London regularly ranks among the most congested cities in Europe. Journeys that should take twenty minutes take an hour. Vans, buses, taxis and private cars compete for less and less road space, tempers fray, and the horn is the soundtrack. Ask a London driver whether the relationship between the car and the city is harmonious and you will get a short answer.
There is an irony here that any planner will recognise. London and Tokyo are aiming at similar ends: get cars off the street and keep the dense centre for walking and transit. Japan does it by making the owner pay for the space their car occupies, and then leaving them alone. London does it by making driving as unpleasant as possible, and then wondering why everyone is cross.
This is not apples with apples. Japanese cities were rebuilt after the war on different street patterns, land for parking outside the core is cheaper, the culture of compliance is different, and Tokyo has its own rush-hour jams on the Shuto Expressway. Nor would I unpick everything London has done. The congestion charge is, in principle, a price signal, and our rail network is extensive.
Lessons from other countries
But the broad lesson is hard to miss. Japan sets a few clear, light-touch rules, lets the market price the scarce thing, which is space, and accepts that people will make their own choices. The result is a society where the train and the car each have their place. London has chosen control: a layered stack of interventions designed to discourage. The result is neither free-flowing roads nor a population that has given up on the car. It is the worst of both.
For those of us in property, this matters. How people move shapes where they want to live, what they will pay and whether a scheme works. We spend a great deal of time on parking ratios and highway objections, and very little asking whether the policy framework behind them achieves what it claims.
Sir Peter Lampl has gone to America. When one of the country’s leading philanthropists says London has become too hard to get around, and nobody at City Hall seems surprised, it is worth looking at how other cities manage the balance.
