MASS MOTORISATION IN SPAIN

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2006 by Volti, Rudi

Along with making use of individualised transport in the form of motor cycles and scooters, Spaniards also relied on public transport. This raises the possibility of a substitution effect: as ownership of automobiles grows we might expect to see a relative or even absolute decline in the use of trains, buses, trolleys and subways. This is exactly what happened in the United States from the 1920s onwards; with the exception of air travel, public transport use has declined in both absolute and relative terms. But a substitution effect is much less evident in Spain (Figure 10).

Prior to a recent upsurge in ridership, the peak years for public transit use were the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Transit use slipped to a low point ten years later but then recovered during the 1990s. In order to explain the resurgence of public transit use in the face of rising automobile ownership, it may be hypothesised that privately owned automobiles initially served as a substitute for public transport, but increases in the automobile population began to diminish individual mobility as congestion and parking problems mounted, motivating many motorists to return to public transport. From this point on, in those parts of Spain with adequate public transport, the automobile has served as a supplement to mass transit rather than as a replacement for it.

Conclusion

Researchers always hope that surprising, counter-intuitive results will emerge form their studies. Such has not been the case here. The diffusion of automobile ownership in Spain followed a predictable path: increases in per capita income have been strongly associated with the expansion of car ownership, while population density may be significant only in as much as high densities are associated with relatively high incomes. With regard to alternatives to the automobile, at one point an expansion in car registrations was associated with an initial diminution of motorcycle ownership and public transit ridership, but neither trend was permanent. Equally important, the increasing usage of transport alternatives that occurred in the mid-1990s did not signify a reduction in Spain's car population; indeed, quite the opposite was the case.

Anyone who has driven in Spain in recent years can recite a litany of traffic congestion, inadequate roads, misleading or non-existent signage, expensive fuel and urban parking horrors. Yet in the face of all of these dif- ficulties the automobile population continues to increase, as Spain has been one of Europe's fastest-growing markets for new automobiles at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Perhaps the most important lesson that can be extracted from a history of automotive diffusion in Spain is that the desire to own an automobile is an elemental force limited only by the financial capacity of nations and individuals.

Notes

1 Banco Urquijo, Evolución a largo plazo de la industria del automóvil en España (The longterm evolution of the automobile industry in Spain) (Madrid, 1970), p. 40.