Soft mobility
Oil dependency and CO2-emissions by the road and air transport modes increased dramatically during the last decades, and the trend continues.What is more, the fastest transport growth is taking place in those same two sectors, which have the highest per unit output of greenhouse gases.Transport is what we need to focus on, if we are to have any chance of tackling climate change and avoiding a future energy supply crisis. Today near 30% of the EU CO2 emissions are due to the transport sector!
Traffic accidents account also each year for about 50 000 casualties throughout the EU. There are also about 300 000 too early deads due to the local air pollution, climate change, noise...
There is unfair competition between transport modes, due to different charges or taxes, and gives an advantage to trucks and aircrafts compared to more sustainable modes like public transport, trains ...
We are involved for the following measures:
- We work to decouple transport growth from economic growth.
There's no evident positive link between transport growth, economic performance and creation of jobs : for instance the European champion for road construction, Germany, is not on the top of the best performing economics in Europe;
- Avoiding, reducing and limiting volumes of road and air transport, ie: go for prevention. Reversing the increases in road and air transport volumes can influence our economies positively: Efficient land use planning, better mobility management and transport logistics will contribute to a better organisation of our society as a whole, and make road and air transport less necessary;
- Transferring a considerable part of transport to more sustainable modes (modal shift), such as inter-modal, waterborne, rail, public/collective transport and non-motorised individual mobility;
- To improve the performance of all transport modes, ie: build an energy efficient transport system via operational and technical improvements. The EU must intensify its efforts for a shift towards more energy efficient modes of transport.
