Sustainable transportation
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Sustainable transport, also commonly referred to as Sustainable Transportation or Sustainable Mobility, has no widely accepted definition. Since it is a sector-specific sub-set to the post-1988 sustainable development movement, it is often defined in words such as this: “Sustainable transportation is about meeting or helping meet the mobility needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” But this is only a starting point.

The concept of sustainable mobility is a reaction to things that have gone radically and visibly wrong with current transportation policy, practice and performance over the last half of the twentieth century. In particular, unsustainable transportation consumes excessive energy, creates pollution and service levels decline despite increasing investments. It delivers poor service for specific social and economic groups.

Colloquially, sustainable transport is used to describe all forms of transport which minimize emissions of carbon dioxide and pollutants. It can refer to public transport, car sharing, walking and cycling as well as technology such as electric and hybrid cars and biodiesel and Personal Rapid Transit and other green transport. In particular the phrase has been adopted by environmental campaign groups and the British and Australian national and local governments, though both the phrase and the concepts have now spread around the world.

Contents

Aims

The sustainable transport movement, which has gradually gained in force over the last decade and a half, has in the process started to shift the emphasis in public spending and actions away from building and supply, to management and demand. The values of respect for the environment and prudent use of natural resources are central, with varying degrees of urgency expressed by different actors and interests. That said, it is still very much a minority movement and most actual expenditures in the sector are determined by criteria other than sustainability.

What remains clear is that sustainable transportation mainly refers to human behavior, not to technology. In that sense, a behavioral approach considers not only a set of non-polluting and human scaled travel behaviors, regardless of the means and technology used, but also a set of reinforcers both individual and social to promote that sort of behaviors.

Contemporary history

Throughout much of the world, over most of the Twentieth Century, it was assumed that adequate transportation infrastructure needed to be built, since it provided an essential underpinning to growth and economic health. Accordingly the main concern of transport planners and policy makers was in the “supply” of transportation, and specifically in ensuring that supporting infrastructure was going to be adequate to support all projected requirements. The dominant approach was to "predict and provide" - forecast future traffic, then build to meet that projection. Similarly, in public transportation planning, the supply and efficient operation of vehicles received the most attention.

Major cities - per capita petrol use vs. population density
Major cities - per capita petrol use vs. population density[1]

Yet the cities that have invested most heavily in car-based physical transportation infrastructures are now experiencing the most unsustainable levels of traffic and resource use. This pattern is observable globally; an average U.S. urban dweller uses 24 times more energy annually for private transport as a Chinese urban resident, and around five times as much as a a European urban resident of similar economic status. [2]. Within the United States, residents of sprawling cities make more and longer car trips, and residents of traditional urban neighbourhoods make a similar number of trips, but travel shorter distances and walk, cycle and use transit more often.[3]

Cities with overbuilt roadways have experienced unintended consequences, linked to radical drops in transit, walking, and bicycling. In many cases, streets became void of “life.” Stores, schools, government centers and libraries moved away from central cities, and residents who did not flee to the suburbs experienced a much reduced quality of public space and of public services. As schools were closed their mega-school replacements in outlying areas forced more auto-centric traffic; the number of cars on US roads between 7:15 and 8:15 a.m. increases 30% during the school year.[4]

Yet another impact was an increase in sedentary lifestyles, causing and complicating a national epidemic of obesity, and accompanying dramatically increased health care costs [5]

Evolution of concept: 1988-present

Understanding of sustainable transport has steadily advanced in the last fifteen years. One early and often cited definition offered back in 1994 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defined sustainable transport as: "Transportation that does not endanger public health or ecosystems and meets mobility needs consistent with (a) use of renewable resources at below their rates of regeneration and (b) use of non-renewable resources at below the rates of development of renewable substitutes". This provided a conservative benchmark view of what sustainable transport is all about which is still often put forward in the public debate.

The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment offers this more widely shared and practical definition of transport that is 'more sustainable' (but still falls short of being truly sustainable in the long term). This definition extends the scope of sustainable transport and defines it in terms which more accessible to business, communities and government:

“Sustainable transport is about finding ways to move people, goods and information in ways that reduce its impact on the environment, the economy, and society. Some options include:
  • Improving transport choice by increasing the quality of public transport, cycling and walking facilities, services and environments
  • Using cleaner fuels and technologies
  • Using telecommunications to reduce or replace physical travel, such as tele-working or tele-shopping
  • Planning the layout of our cities to bring people and their needs closer together, and to make cities more vibrant and walkable
  • Developing policies that allow and promote these options, such as the New Zealand Transport Strategy.”[6]

A shorter definition by the Sustran network does a good job in one paragraph of summarizing the consensus view from the vantage of transport activists and many NGOs:

Sustainable transportation concerns systems, policies, and technologies. It aims for the efficient transit of goods and services, and sustainable freight and delivery systems. The design of vehicle-free city planning, along with pedestrian and bicycle friendly design of neighborhoods is a critical aspect for grassroots activities, as are telework and teleconferencing. It is more about accessibility and mobility, than about 'transportation'.[7][8]

In general the phrase is used to encourage more attention to “softer transport options” such as improved provision for cycling, walking, public spaces, rail and other forms of public transport, together with more aggressive control of car use in central areas. It can also cover “movement substitutes” such as telework, telecommuting and smart growth redevelopments which improve the mix of activities and reduce the need for motorized transport.

Sustainable transportation, with its focus on people, differs from Transportation Demand Management, which is a complementary effort to manage transportation systems in ways that reduce the impacts of single occupancy commuter travel and improve the provision of other transport choices.

Whereas it started as a movement driven by environmental concerns, over these last years there has been increased emphasis on social equity and fairness issues, and in particular the need to ensure proper access and services for lower income groups and people with mobility limitations, including the fast growing population of older citizens. Many of the people exposed to the most vehicle noise, pollution and safety risk have been those who do not own, or cannot drive cars, and those for whom the cost of car ownership causes a severe financial burden.[9]

The automotive and energy industries increasingly use the term Sustainable Mobility to describe and promote their technology developments, primarily in the areas of new motive and engine technologies and advances. The impact of these advances, however, requires at least one or two decades to make a perceptible difference in terms of sustainability, and may not have benefits for the groups of people who benefit most from sustainable transportation policies.

Sustainable transport vs sustainable mobility

The concept of "sustainable transport" has been increasingly replaced by the concept of "sustainable mobility", with sustainable mobility expanding the original concept, which does not take social dimensions of mobility into account and focuses more on operational aspects of sustainability.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development defines "sustainable mobility" as "the ability to meet the needs of society to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade, and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological values today or in the future."[10]

This definition encompasses the following dimensions:

  • Accessibility
  • Financial outlay required of users
  • Travel time
  • Reliability
  • Safety
  • Security
  • Greenhouse gas emissions
  • Impact on the environment and human well-being
  • Resource use
  • Equity implications
  • Impact on public revenues and expenditures
  • Prospective rate of return to private business[11]

Short history of international action

The terms ‘sustainable transport’ is an almost accidental follow-on to the earlier term Sustainable Development whose origins in turn were the 1987 Our Common Future (1987, World Commission on Environment and Development of the United Nations). In the years following publication of the Brundtland Report, there was considerable discussion of a variety of issues that are part of the sustainable development nexus, but transportation considerations were not in the front line in those early years.

One of the first international organizations to have a closer look at the concept of sustainable transport from the vantage of government policy was a small international working group led by Peter Wiederkehr at the OECD in 1994, that agreed that a new policy approach is needed which places environmental criteria up front along with other policy goals. Recognizing this need, the OECD initiated in 1994 an international project to define and chart a path towards Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST). The overall objectives of the EST project are to provide an understanding of EST, its implications and requirements, and to develop methods and guidelines towards its realization. The core of the EST approach was to develop long-term scenarios and identify instruments and strategies capable of achieving it. To this end the OECD organized with the Government of Canada the 1996 International Conference: Towards Sustainable Transportation in Vancouver, Canada. One result of this were the 1996 Vancouver Principles towards Sustainable Transportation. (The OECD project shut down its operation in July 2004, though the members of the original working group continue to communicate and collaborate at the specific project and policy level under the leadership of the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Environment.)

Examples

The EU Directorate-General for Transport and Energy (DG-TREN) has launched a programme which focusses mostly on Urban Transport. Its main measures are:

  • Collective passenger transport
    • Accessibility
    • Flexibel mobility services
    • Intermodality
    • Marketing
    • Network development
    • Park & Ride
    • People with reduced mobility
    • Public private co-operation
    • Quality Corridors / lines
    • Quality of service
    • Security
    • Ticketing and tarification
    • Travel information
  • Less car intensive lifestyle
  • Urban Goods Transport
    • Clean vehicles / clean fleet
    • Distribution scheme
    • Fleet management & route planning
    • Loading and uploading
    • Loading Zone
    • Public private co-operation
    • Urban distribution center
  • Soft measures
    • Child / school / student mobility
    • Cycling
    • Integrated policies /Integrated planning strategie
    • Intermodal mobility services
    • Mobility center
    • Mobility management (for Events)
    • Mobility management (for housing areas)
    • Mobility management for companies and organisation
    • Mobility marketing and awareness
    • People with reduced mobility
    • User/Citizen Participation
    • Walking
  • Transport management
    • Access management / Enforcement
    • Guidance Systems
    • Multi modal travel information
    • Real time travel information
    • Smart card
    • Traffic control / management center
    • Traffic information
    • Vehicle location based services

See also

Context

Demand management

Supply management

Other

Synonyms and related terms

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ Newman & Kenworth 1989, Andrew White Associates, DETR
  2. ^ "Transport Energy Use and Greenhouse Emissions in Urban Passenger Transport Systems : A Study of 84 Global Cities". Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
  3. ^ Ewing, R and R Cervero (2001). "Travel and the Built Environment: A Synthesis". Transportation Research Record 1780,87-114. Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
  4. ^ U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Active Transportation to School Then and Now — Barriers and Solutions". Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
  5. ^ "An interview with Dr Reid Ewing". Relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity. American Journal of Health Promotion 18[1]: 47-57 (September-October 2003). Retrieved on 2008-07-25.
  6. ^ http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/transport/sustainable/
  7. ^ http://www.gdrc.org/uem/sustran/sustran.html
  8. ^ http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm67.htm
  9. ^ "Making the Connections: Final report on transport and social exclusion". UK Social Exclusion Unit (February 2003). Retrieved on 2008-07-22.
  10. ^ World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) (2001-08-01). "Mobility 2001 - World mobility at the end of the twentieth century and its sustainability Report".
  11. ^ World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) (2004-06-01). "Mobility 2030 - Meeting the challenges to sustainability Report".

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Print sources

Related journals

  • International Journal of Sustainable Transportation[1]
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