TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORTATIONOECD International Conference, Vancouver Canada
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORTATION
This talk reviews the underlying trends that have boosted energy use for transportation and travel in ten OECD countries. We also show how these trends have affected emissions of CO2. We draw on a unique analysis that tracks each fuel for each mode (cars, bus, rail, domestic air travel). We focus on the automobile, but provide important information on factors affecting energy use of complementary modes. We touch briefly om factors that affect travel, modal splits, and car characteristics and use: fuel prices, incomes (and company-car tax policies), demographics, urban structure and density, and other factors. We discuss some of the policy instruments that have affected mobility and energy use. We speculate briefly how changes in some policies might affect these variables in the future, concluding that only a broad framework that integrates concerns for CO2 with strategies to solve other problems related to transportation can be successful.
We advance a definition of "sustainable transport" that suggests that transportation where the beneficiaries pay their full social costs, including those paid by future generations, is sustainable. We note how the observed changes in travel are related to a number of prominent "externalities" arising from travel, including accidents, air pollution,congestion, noise, damage to species habitat, CO2, and importing of oil. It is these externalities, and not transportation or travel per se that threaten the sustainability of the system. We suggest that strategies to reduce the costs of these externalities should recognize that each has both a behavioral and a technical component. We assert that any policies or strategies to reduce the problems of transport without strong pricing components will only produce weak results.