The heat is on: transport in a climate emergency
This summer’s extreme weather has brought the climate emergency into sharper focus. Wildfires in the New Forest, flash flooding overseas and record temperatures across Europe have shown how communities are already feeling the effects of a changing climate.
Climate change is a global challenge, but it demands action at every level. Transport has a particularly important role to play. It is the UK’s highest-emitting sector, with road transport accounting for the largest share of those emissions. Yet despite growing awareness of the need to cut carbon, transport emissions rose last year.
This should prompt an important question: are we doing enough to make low-carbon travel the easiest and most attractive option for everyday journeys? If the UK is serious about meeting its climate goals, a target-driven approach to decarbonising our transport system must be at the heart of the solution.
We are very British about transport targets in this country. It’s no problem to have national targets for housing, for NHS waiting lists and even for reducing migration, but it would seem sustainable transport targets are more problematic. We have agreed a Zero Emission Vehicle mandate – which must not be watered down, by the way – yet a better future for all has to involve more ambition than ‘doing the same things differently’ to quote the Transport Decarbonisation Report (2021).
There are signs of progress. The Government’s updated Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy includes targets for walking, wheeling and cycling, while the Department for Transport has recently published a new rail freight growth target. The challenge now is to apply the same target-driven approach to the overall pattern of personal travel, creating a clear national direction for how people move around the country and how transport emissions can be reduced.
At the same time, we must ensure that transport infrastructure can withstand the impacts of a changing climate, even as we work to reduce emissions. These are not either/or choices. We need both adaptation and mitigation if we are to create a transport system fit for the future.
It’s clear we need to reduce emissions from vehicles, but we also need fewer car journeys. A transport system with a high level of car dependence consumes huge amounts of energy and resources, requires vast amounts of space, congests roads and leaves people vulnerable and isolated when they cannot or do not drive.
London is one of the economic centres of the world, somewhere people want to live and visit, and is actively trying to reduce the number of car journeys. The capital’s Transport Strategy has a target for 80 per cent of all trips to be made on foot, by cycle or by public transport by 2041. Moving more people in fewer vehicles is inherently more efficient and better for the environment, and an environmental win can also be a win for people’s pockets and the wider economy. An electric bus can be charged for around a fraction of the cost of fuelling a diesel one (£30 rather than £200) for example, as the Prime Minister pointed out in his first PMQs.
But it’s not just cities that are aiming to reduce car travel:
- France has set targets to increase public transport use by a quarter and double rail freight by 2030, alongside significant increases in walking, wheeling and cycling.
- Spain‘s Sustainable Mobility Law requires mode shift, traffic reduction, electrification, and moving freight from road to rail. Spain also has a climate energy strategy requiring transport emissions to be reduced. Watch our video from Spain on Instagram.
Could the UK match these ambitions? We believe so. To help realise this vision, we brought together a coalition of 59 organisations and individuals from across the transport sector and beyond, including health, academia and civil society, alongside leading environmental voices. Together, we called on the Government to put transport at the heart of its response to the climate emergency in a public statement in the Guardian newspaper. We followed this up with an online summit to share knowledge, reflections and ideas from across the UK and beyond.
What we all agreed was that the Government should set a clear, measurable national direction of travel to ensure transport emissions fall. Its Better Connected strategy provides a framework for integrated transport and outcomes for local leaders, while devolution is creating new opportunities to reshape local networks; now we need a national vision and a way to deliver that vision. That means setting clear national goals, supporting local leaders and investing in climate-resilient infrastructure alongside the public transport, walking, wheeling and cycling networks that can help reduce emissions while improving people’s lives.
Let’s set out the world we want to see: more journeys by public transport, shared transport and active travel; more freight on rail; local communities where people can make everyday journeys without depending on a car; and streets greened up at pace, through street trees, green roofs on bus stops and grass tracks for the trams our towns and cities deserve. And let’s see how that benefits all of us: cleaner air, healthier communities, more affordable journeys, better access to opportunities and greater resilience as temperatures rise.
This should bring us together around a shared, positive vision, with better transport for all at its heart.
