The Project

Transport policy and its challenges

Transport policy in cities is facing urgent and wicked challenges. On one hand, traffic must quickly decarbonize and reduce its negative externalities such as noise, pollution, and accidents. On the other hand, rapid population growth in cities, together with economic growth, and urban sprawl drive an ever-growing demand for car travel on already congested roads. Further demand is induced by infrastructure extensions aimed at reducing travel times, creating more sources of emissions and negative externalities. And finally, migration, liberalization of social norms, as well as other changes in the society create a growing diversity of groups with distinct activities and needs. As a result, in addition to reducing its carbon emissions and negative externalities, transport in cities must also provide enough capacity for growing urban populations and address the complex issue of social equity.

Present transport policy is caught in an approach that is unlikely to succeed in addressing these challenges:

• Electric cars and autonomous driving are unlikely to deliver sufficient improvements on the way toward decarbonization. Electrification will neither decarbonize car travel quickly and effectively enough, nor will it address scarce network capacity.
• Current demand-side measures like Mobility pricing, non-household carpooling, and working from home are also unlikely to deliver sufficiently strong improvements, either due to limited political support or because of rebound effects.
• Public transport in places where it’s currently lacking is associated with high costs, long planning horizons, and other drawbacks is expensive and difficult to implement.

Active modes are increasingly seen as a functional solution for multiple transport problems and experience a revival in many western cities. Cyclists using conventional bicycles have ~8 times lower life-cycle CO₂ emissions per km than car users (~5 times lower for private e-bikes) and a single lane can carry 5-12x more passengers per hour on bicycles than in private cars.