TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORTATIONOECD International Conference, Vancouver Canada
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORTATION
The reader is invited to assume incredible technological 'progress' in endeavours to solve problems of energy scarcity, pollution and congestion. Imagine a super Super Car powered by a pollution-free perpetual motion engine. Imagine a super Internet to which everyone in the world is connected, which permits anyone anywhere to contact anyone else free by cordless videophone, and which also provides free and efficient access to all the databases and libraries in the world. The result, I argue, would be a social and environmental disaster - unless at the same time humankind manages to curb the appetites which are driving the steeply rising growth curves of material consumption and physical and electronic mobility.
The technological enterprises that are currently consuming the lion's share of resources directed to the solution of transport problems are relaxing important constraints on these appetites. The most worrying transport problems are not congestion, pollution and shortage of energy. They are the consumption of space for the means of travel, the despoilation of rural landscapes and historic towns, the growing disparities in access to opportunities between those who can drive and those cannot, the danger that denies children their traditional freedoms, and the paranoia, anomie and social disintegration that result from a level of mobility that is creating a world of strangers. The principal barrier to a morally and politically sustainable transport policy is the belief that there are technical fixes for these problems.
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