Travelling the sustainable path
Public transport could replace millions of cars in tomorrow’s future planet. Giles Crosse spoke to Heather Allen, Sustainable Development Senior Manager for the International Organisation for Public Transport, about the future.
“We must take a systems approach and consider transport as a system rather than a modal battle ground,” she says, describing the key change we should make to get sustainable public transport working.
“This means that where the car is the most efficient transport it is attractive but where public transport is a more efficient option then this should be made to be more attractive. This is not the case yet, although where it works it has made good ground. We can see that in places like Vienna where they have a high per capita car ownership level but also one of the most integrated and used PT systems.”
“Surprisingly there is also much new and green technology not only available but being used in the public transport sector, even more than the car sector.” She continues.
“We have had hydrogen buses in use for many years now, and there are two main barriers to them becoming more widespread, a lack of hydrogen infrastructure and their cost. Hybrid buses are in use or on trial in many cities and this is quite a promising technology as it is relatively affordable, about 1.6 times more expensive than a standard urban bus.”
“At the moment one of the problems is that mobility is in general underpriced, car drivers do not pay for their full external costs that they cause in terms of congestion, accidents and local pollution. We now spend less on getting around in terms of percentage of disposable income than we did thirty years ago, this also means that people tend to use it more than they need to.”
Allen suggests we need to adopt strategies to avoid some unnecessary journeys, shift some trips to the most efficient mode for that journey and improve in terms of energy and system efficiencies, information and awareness about the effects of our present transport habits.
“A combination of improved land use planning instruments alone can bring 15 to 20 per cent reductions in emissions, as there are simply less trips made and if you combine this with better mass transit and affordable new technologies this goes some way to reducing GHG emissions and energy consumption.” she explains.
New tech
“I have mentioned hybrid technologies and there are other interesting new technologies such as stop start, engine cuts out when not moving technologies, improved battery technology would make a big difference and there should probably be more investment in this area.”
“New types of transport will take many years to develop and there have not been such huge changes in the last 30 years, certainly there are some interesting possibilities, but there is also really a lot of ‘low hanging fruit’ and improvements that can be made even with quite low tech solutions and present day technology.”
“In the short and medium term, 2010 to 2030 is only a 20 year period - not long enough to make a technology revolution when we need to not only plateau emissions but start a steep decline, we will have to accept a combination of new technology and behaviour change.”
“This will require some ambitious carrot and stick policies and measures in order to get people to accept modifying their behaviour.” she explains.
“This should not be viewed as all pain and no gain, but it will be different to today’s pattern, it has to be in some respects. One of these is in terms of congestion, no matter how clean you make cars unless we also address behaviour we will still end up stuck in traffic, but it will at least be clean congestion.”
What must the international policy making community do to help move things on? “There are several areas that are inconsistent with sustainable development goals, development aid at the moment in general does not take wider issues into account.” says Allen.
“This means that in the developing world countries may request funds for projects such as roads and bridges as these are ‘easily understood’ and there are existing appraisal and evaluation processes in place for them.”
“However urban transport does not feature so well. Yet if the developing world is not encouraged to build their transport infrastructure in such a way that it takes issues such as climate change into account, so transport infrastructure is designed to be adapted to climate changes, any decision that is taken today on transport infrastructure and land use will ‘lock’ that place into a certain type of behaviour associated with the infrastructure.”
“In other words in order to achieve low carbon, sustainable transport we need to ensure that new infrastructure is designed for this to occur.”
“We need to show more clearly how transport hampers growth and development, and make sure that our money is well spent.” she reveals. “Wealth is generated from economic activity and if you cannot access jobs, production facilities and markets with efficient transport networks then there is waste. Our present patterns are not very sustainable as they are based on fossil fuels.”
“Our figures for Europe show that 560b € is lost through accidents, pollution and congestion in EU 25 whilst under 200b€ is spent on investments in public transport.”
So how will we travel differently in 25 or 50 years time?
“Unfortunately I cannot see into the future, I am sure I would be making a lot of money if I could, so my guess will be that there will be more use of electricity for LDV, with plug in hybrids and electric vehicles. I think that hydrogen will still be marginal mainly die to infrastructure issues.”
“There will be a greater use of renewables and some biofuel, as the second generation of these fuels starts to have a more robust sustainable life cycle profile. The use of information technology will revolutionise the way we plan and think about transport a little as internet has done for knowledge.”
“Already tickets, travel information and positioning has become more available, this will probably continue. The concept of owning a car as a private vehicle will probably change and there will be much more sharing than today, this will be driven by both the use of resources and a price on carbon which will change our thinking about personal transport.”
“UITP has an ambitious strategy to double market shares by 2025, I would see achieving this as some sort of revolution!” she concludes.
“This would mean significant investment in public transport in particular in medium sized cities and in suburbs where there are gaps in networks today. Urban transport would become a choice between a variety of modes that is made easy to use through technology with public transport being the backbone of a low carbon system.”
“Rural transport will become more of a challenge and therefore the link between land use and transport will be critical in keeping transport intensity in check.”
