Mega-cities and the sustainable transport of the future

 

  
A debate in the House of Lords on sustainable transport in a world of megacities ended in a resounding victory for the continued existence of “personal transport”, yesterday afternoon.

The debate, run by APDIG and Frost & Sullivan, and chaired by Lord Palmer, pitched academic and industry experts against one another to debate the motion: “in the megacities of the future, personal transport solutions will never be as sustainable as public”. The end vote was 30 in favour of the motion; 48 against.

 

“A green traffic jam is still a traffic jam” was the argument put forward in favour of public transport by Alex Burrows at Centro, the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority. Neil Walker from Bombardier Transport stated that only public transport could provide the extra capacity needed in our burgeoning cities while addressing rising CO2 emissions and congestion. Moreover, he argued that in the megacities of 2020, personal demand will be for mobility, not ownership. In younger generations, he suggested that cars are no longer seen as a status symbol, who are more ecologically aware, so public transport will be the preferred, sustainable solution. 

 

Meanwhile, Andrew Everett from the Technology Strategy Board argued that individuals’ demands are multi-faceted and can only be answered by personal transport. People need transport to be available on demand, to go non-stop from start to destination, to be easily accessible from many locations, environmental friendly, safe, integrated with other modes of transport and low cost.  Oliver Paturet from Nissan proposed that electric vehicles were the solution; “driving electric vehicles – its our duty”. Stating that electric vehicles are “not the future, they’re happening today”, he argued that it was unfeasible to imagine a family living in any European city centre without access to their own personal transport. Electric Vehicles however could cater to this need, while combating emissions. 

 

And so at the end of the debate, votes were taken, and personal transport won out. Surely an outcome shaped by the prominence of personal transport in today’s western world. However, there were some interesting ideas from both the audience and Dr Bernhard Blättel (BMW), that didn’t fit the binary vote – a more integrated approach combining both personal and public transport. Dr Blattel gets the last word: “as time runs out… …we need to use every lever we have to get towards sustainable transport solutions. …the future is more about a joint effort of these two means than having a battle between them”.