Items in this blog largely come from the excellent campaigning group, Roadblock.Photos: Local bus and train
First in the first quarter of 2007 road traffic went up by 1.2% compared to last year. We are just not getting to grips with it - part of the problem is the Government sees it as the most expensive area to cut emissions - new research throws that into doubts - see below. There is also a reluctance to embrace sustainable choices...for example....
As Roadblock report the three year results are out for the three Sustainable Travel Towns and they show that "Smarter Choices" measures have had an enormous impact on reducing car trips, and encouraging public transport use and cycling and walking. The three projects at Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester mainly involved nothing more than simply telling people about public transport options, starting car share schemes and encouraging people to walk and cycle more. The first three year results show that:* Darlington - public transport trips up 14%, walking up 29%, cycling up 79%. Car trips were down 11%
* Peterborough - public transport up 13%, walking up 21%, cycling up 25%. Car trips were down 13%
* Worcester - public transport up 22%, walking up 17%, cycling up 36%. Car trips were down 12%
This is better than any road scheme could do to cut congestion, and cuts CO2 and is healthier too! And it is a fraction of the price. Now why is all that money being poured into roadbuilding...?
Transport is not most expensive sector to tackle emissions
Another piece of interesting research is by MTRU for Transport 2000 - it has challenged the findings of the Stern report that carbon emissions from transport are more expensive to tackle than other sectors. The Government has been using this claim as an excuse for allowing transport carbon emissions to rise - including through creating traffic growth through road building. It shows that we have to tackle transport CO2 as we cannot rely on other sectors of the economy to make those cuts when they already have ambitious targets. It also reveals that to change travel behaviour will be more equitable also, and has other benefits such as improving air quality. The research and a summary are available on the Transport 2000 website.
Take action
Anyhow heres an action people can take: tell the European Commission to get tough on the car industry - deadline 30 June!
Over a quarter of Europe’s carbon emissions come from transport, the majority of these from cars. Car makers have failed to deliver on their own targets on emissions and now the European Commission is proposing legally binding targets. The car industry is fighting hard to avoid these mandatory targets but these targets must be tough enough if they are going to have an impact on climate change. The commission is asking for your opinion so tell them that you want tough mandatory and long-term targets that will significantly reduce the impact of the car on our climate. Take action before 30th June here.
2 comments:
Hi Philip,
Another very interesting blog post - thanks.
Just a couple of comments.
1. Having known someone who actually worked in a company pushing so-called "soft measures" on transport, as mentioned on the GNN link you posted, I would advise extreme caution, I'm afraid, with any statistics that some such companies produce. There's a lot more to this than meets the eye of those paid to give them clean bills of health. As with multinational corporations, very close scrutiny is required, preferably from someone on the inside.
2. In my view, reducing petrol consumption/emissions from cars is a dead-end, environmentally, because of all the rest of the destruction that cars and hypermobility inevitably wreak, eg roads, habitat fragmentation, road deaths and maimings, cradle to grave damage, destruction of communities, social polarisation and so on.
Professor John Adams has done a lot of good work on this subject;
http://www.rsa.org.uk/acrobat/hypermobility.pdf
To think that there are "easy answers" to car addiction is just misleading. To properly and responsibly address the ruination caused by cars, we must cut down car ownership and car dependency.
yours,
Car-free household
I agree that 'soft measures' benefits are likely to be inflated in some cases but like reducing individual car emissions they do need to be part of the solution - the issues are complex and it is no wonder people grasp wrongly at solutions like biofuels and planting trees - as you say we need to cut down on cars seriously - we are long overdue better planning, a public transport system that works and more!
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