In 1986, Margaret Thatcher’s decision to privatise and deregulate our buses took effect. In the same year, she is reputed to have said that anyone travelling on a bus at the age of 26 could count themselves a failure.
Today, many 26 year olds beg to differ. Car use and ownership by young people peaked in the early 1990s – each new cohort owns and uses cars less than the one before.
There are a number of reasons for this. However, the existence of a group like the New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens (NUMTOTS), which boasts nearly 150,000 members on Facebook, shows that this is at least partly a cultural shift. Many young people are ready to leave cars behind, given the opportunity.
