Sustainable Transport

Sustainable Transport

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 more energy and creates pollution and declining service levels despite increasing investments. It delivers poor service for specific social and economic groups.

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, therefore, to forecast, then build to meet that projection.

Similarly, in public transportation planning, the supply and efficient operation of vehicles received the most attention. As a result, many analysts and observers now claim that most places have heavily overbuilt their physical transportation infrastructures. In fact, this over building has led to unsustainable levels of traffic and resource use.

The overbuilt roadways have also led to other unintended consequences, such as 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 many residents who could not flee to the suburbs were abandoned. As schools were closed their mega-school replacements in outlying areas forced more auto-centric traffic. Up to 30% of all peak hour traffic is now school related (up from 7% a few years ago).

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

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. In all cases the values of heightened respect of 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.

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. 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.