Making Transportation Sustainable: Insights from Germany

Abstract

This paper compares various aspects of transportation policy between the United States and Germany. It looks at car ownership, exhaust gas emissions, differences in travel behavior (especially automobile use versus transit ridership, walking and bicycling), gasoline prices, highway user tax and fees, costs of car ownership (including sales tax, driver license costs, gas taxes, fuel efficiency and its regulation, and other costs), policies to improve and integrate public transit systems, policies promoting safe cycling and walking, and policies that discourage suburban sprawl and encourage mixed land use. In every case, the policies in Germany tend to encourage walking, bicycling and transit ridership, over automobile use; and United States policies reward driving and tend to punish transit ridership, walking and bicycling. Lessons to be learned from Germany are discussed.