Source for your statistics?
This is something we deal with frequently when doing development plans & have to predict car ownership / parking requirements.
56% of households in London do have at least one car compared to approx 80% nationally. Ownership in London peaked at 60% in the 1980s
If you look at the detailed breakdown of London ownership, an extremely high proportion of those that don’t own cars are single people living in rented flats. Over the whole country 67% of households use a vehicle for getting to work compared to only 29% of Londoners.
Using the above it’s easy to come to the conclusion that :
A) the difference in car ownership isn’t actually that much between London and the rest
B) Proportionaly twice as many people in London don’t need actually need a car but still have one.
C) poor people in rented flats can’t justify the cost of a car when alternative transport is available
D) 2/3 of the country do actually need a car
The source of my statistic was memory: fewer than 50% of inner London households having a car has been true for a decade or more.
But here is some more detailed information. Page 11 has a detailed breakdown of car ownership by London Borough. A cursory look suggests that there are no inner London boroughs where household car ownership exceeds 50% except my home Borough of Greenwich, and Greenwich isn’t always considered an inner London Borough.
The report summary is reproduced below:
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Summary
• There are 2.6m cars registered in London. 54 per cent of London households have at least one car.
• The proportion of households with one or more cars appears to have declined slightly over the last few years, so in 2005/06 around 57 per cent had at least one car.
• Londoners are more likely to own a car if they live in outer London, live in an area with poor access to public transport, have a higher income, have a child in the house, and are of Western European nationality.
• Personal car ownership increases with age to a peak of 58 per cent amongst 55-59 year olds, after which it declines again.
• Car ownership is higher amongst men than women (46 per cent compared to 34 per cent). This gap is greater in lower income households.
• Up to household incomes of £75k, household car access rises as income increases, flattening off after that point.
• People in households with at least one child are nearly a third more likely to own a car than those without.
• Car ownership (households with access to a car) varies substantially across London: at a borough level it ranges from 26 per cent in Islington to 75 per cent in Richmond Upon Thames, outer London boroughs generally seeing higher levels than inner London boroughs.
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No where in this report is a breakdown of car ownership by household size, but it seems logical that a household with two or more adults is more likely to have one or more cars than a single person household. Neither is there a breakdown by housing type, but again logic suggests that a house owner is more likely to own a car than a flat renter.
But looking at the report as a whole, it looks like your assertion that “an extremely high proportion of those that don’t own cars are single people living in rented flats” is likely to be false. But that might depend on how you define “extremely high”. But even if by some convoluted logic you define it as a majority (over 50%) it seems likely to be false.
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