In March of 2007, the European Commission launched its Green Paper on Urban Transport, which will examine ways to address transit efficiency and congestion in Europe’s urban areas.
Advertisement
Although the Green Paper will examine many aspects of urban transit, almost every issue on the Green Paper’s agenda relates to the use of personal vehicles. Nearly half of Europeans own a car(s), and will likely continue to do so for reasons of comfort, status and convenience. To a great extent this behaviour is encouraged by the fact that consumers often do not pay the full price of operating their car when accounting for infrastructure maintenance and the urban and environmental impact of personal vehicles. Also, public policy is, for many reasons, focused on building roads and parking facilities, which arguably increases the number of cars on the road.
The European Commission is keen to develop urban areas as part of its revised Lisbon Strategy and under the auspices of the 2007 Green Paper, with much focus on methods to make European cities more attractive places to live, work and invest. Indeed, 75-85% of the EU’s GDP is generated in cities. But while cities contribute the bulk of EU funding, they are experiencing increasing problems with pollution, noise, congestion and accidents, all a result of 75% of metropolitan travel being undertaken in cars. Congestion in London is said to be worse than in the days of horse-and-cart travel and EU wide, it is estimated that the cost of traffic congestion consumes up to 1% of annual GDP, along with increased fuel-use, air and noise pollution and aggressive behaviour. With increasing populations and thus increased car use, rising oil prices and instability in oil-supplying countries, and direct links between cars and the EU’s environmental and energy initiatives, including emission caps, the development of biofuels and road congestion, the EU faces many potential problems with automobiles.
The Commission has several strategies to deal with this, including the 2001 Biofuels Directive, which was reinforced by the 2007 Spring Summit, and plans for more fuel-efficient and green-powered vehicles; a proposal for green propulsion is expected to be presented in 2009. Many of the problems with urban transit are related to the way cities are planned in general, especially as land becomes scarce while cities are expanding at unprecedented rates. The CIVITAS and STEER initiatives are organised to provide support and funding for sustainable transport, with proposals to dissuade car use through the removal of parking spaces, the pedestrianisation of city-centres, higher parking rates and tolls for car entry into congested parts of the city. Half of all road trips are 5 km or less, and so bicycling and walking are encouraged by the construction of special lanes and paths.
The Greening Transport Package: July 2008
With this package the Commission aims to move transport further towards sustainability. This three-pronged proposed Commission package seeks to steer the European transport sector towards enhanced sustainability. It includes a strategy to ensure that the prices of transport better reflect their real cost to society in terms of environmental damage and congestion; a proposal to enable Member States to help make this happen through more efficient and greener road tolls for lorries; and a proposal for reducing noise pollution from rail freight.
The package has five parts:
- Greening Transport Communication: summarises the whole package and sets out what new initiatives the Commission will take in this field until the end of 2009
- Greening Transport Inventory: describes the large amount of EU action already taken to green transport and on which this package builds
- Strategy to Internalise the External Costs of Transport: focuses on making transport prices better reflect their real cost to society so that environmental damage and congestion can be reduced while boosting the efficiency of transport and ultimately the economy as a whole.
- Proposal for a Directive on road tolls for lorries: would enable Member States to reduce environmental damage and congestion through more efficient and greener road tolls for lorries. Revenue from the tolls would be used to reduce environmental impacts and cut congestion.
- Rail Transport and Interoperability communication: sets out how to reduce the perceived noise from existing rail freight trains by 50% and the measures the Commission and other stakeholders will need to take in the future to achieve this
Source: European Commission
