TRANSPORT, SUSTAINABILITY AND ENGINEERING

Dr George McL Hazel

 

Director of City Development, The City of Edinburgh Council, UK

 

Abstract

Concerns about the negative economic, environmental and social impacts of traffic growth are leading to the need to re-think from first principles the way in which we meet transport needs in the future. The "predict and provide" reponse to traffic growth is not sustainable, but alternatives are possible and have been successfully adopted in a number of places.

Key Words: Car, Environment, Road pricing, Sustainability, Transport policy

Introduction

Achieving sustainability means attempting to meet the needs of the current generation without prejudicing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. To translate this aim into policy and action in relation to transport and engineering, it is essential to be clear about the reasons why transport is necessary and what its function in society is.

Economic, social and scientific development is the result of the exchange of ideas, goods, knowledge, labour and services between people. These exchanges can only occur when people gather together - historically by coming from rural areas to a market - and then by living close together in towns and cities. Cities achieve a critical mass for a whole range of exchange related activities. Thus the evolution of urban areas and their role as the driving force for all forms of human development.

It is now widely recognised that current lifestyles and patterns of consumption in the ‘developed’ world are causing serious impacts on the natural environment. Some of these impacts are large enough to fundamentally threaten the stability of the natural environment. The car is a major cause of adverse environmental impacts. These impacts have to be reduced if we are to achieve sustainability.

The role of transport and the car

Transport has been, and remains a key factor in bringing people together in order to achieve exchanges. The introduction of new means of transport has facilitated the growth of larger cities and therefore played a key role in human development. But paradoxically the most flexible transport mode, the car, has generated some of the biggest barriers to efficient exchange.

The car congestion that is a feature of so much of the developed world, and now increasingly of developing countries as well, reduces the efficiency of streets as arteries, denying access to exchange opportunities (shopping, workplaces etc) in the city centre. Car dominance removes the exchange functions of residential streets such as children’s play and familiarity between neighbours, that provide the basis for cohesive communities.

Car dominance also consigns large sectors of the community, especially children and the elderly, to a second class citizenship where most trips need to be escorted for safety reasons or because local services such as shops are no longer available. As people seek to replace lost local exchange, they get in their cars to find these opportunities elsewhere, contributing further to the loss of local identity. Finally, lack of pedestrian activity on the street may contribute to crime and certainly increases the fear of crime.

In summary, a vicious circle exists, with the operation of the city causing the strangulation of the benefits that brought it about.

All the above lead to an inexorable pressure for city spreading, creating the low density cities that can certainly be found in Australia. An illustration from the USA demonstrates the problems, and in particular the damage to city centres which are the focus of the exchange activities that make cities tick.

Between 1960 and 1980 the population of Detroit grew by 8%. Over the same period its urbanised area grew by 42%. The number of jobs in the city centre fell by 33%, and the proportion of the whole city’s jobs located in the centre fell from 57% to 30%. Inner city population fell from 1.67M to 1.2M. The modal share of the private car rose from 80% in 1960 to 93.1% in 1980. In 1980 Detroit’s petrol use per capita was nearly seven times that of Amsterdam. (Newman and Kenworthy 1989) This kind of trend leads to the city becoming increasingly dysfunctional as a place of exchange, with major problems for sections of society without access to cars.

A sustainable approach to transport

As has been highlighted, transport is a key issue for sustainable development. It affects us all and impacts on our economic, social and environmental concerns. It is a major crosscutting issue:

but

Transport can mean anything from walking to flying. The extent to which the benefits gained from transport can be maximised and the damaging effects minimised depends on how we manage the mix of transport modes and the factors that give rise to transport demand. The way in which we are doing this currently is unsustainable:

The current situation is also unsustainable in economic terms. Generally speaking, the price paid for travel by road users is unrelated to the costs imposed on the community, giving rise to some of the unsustainable outcomes above. Engineers responsible for planning and developing our transport systems must recognise these issues. We cannot say that transport is simply a matter of constructing infrastructure.

This approach, known in the UK as "predict and provide" has now been discredited. A major U-turn has taken place in government policy on transport over the last five years or so, from a belief that supporting growing car use was essential for the country’s economy, to recognising that such an approach is unsustainable, not only environmentally but also financially.

So how do we take a more holistic approach to take account of the full range of economic, environmental and social objectives for transport?

A key issue is to relate supply and demand more closely. For most goods and services we expect there to be a relationship between the price we pay and the cost of supplying the product. With the exception of a limited number of toll roads, this is not the case for road use. The result is rationing by queuing (congestion), a form of economic control that in every other arena went out of fashion with the collapse of the command economies of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

I would therefore strongly advocate the gradual introduction of charging for road use in urban areas aimed at bringing the price to the user closer to the marginal cost of use. This would have a very important side-effect: it would generate very substantial sums of money that could be invested in transport and the environment. This could help overcome the difficulties in gaining public acceptance for such a policy, which it must be recognised will be very powerful.

A second key strategy is to examine how we allocate roadspace, which is a valuable and expensive resource. Conventional traffic engineering aims to maximise vehicle movements through a network. This discriminates in favour of the most inefficient user – the motor car. The objective should be to maximise the movement of people through the transport system. There are a range of ways of doing this, from reserved bus lanes to greater priority for pedestrians in crossing roads.

These rational, integrated approaches will not be easy to implement. Decision-makers need to look at transport in a new way, and need to work with the public, business, and other groups with an interest in transport in a new way. In the UK at least, we can take comfort from the consultations undertaken by government on the recent transport policy White Papers, as well as market research surveys, business surveys and travel awareness initiatives. All these have all shown increasing understanding of the issues, and pressure for change.

A number of principles can be set out:

Applied to transport this would mean:

a) Transport should be dealt with as a cross-sectoral issue - involving government departments responsible for economic development, social inclusion, health and environmental matters. These would include energy and climate change. Transport industry representatives and users must also be involved.

b) Decision-making should be based on a level playing field between different forms of transport, incorporating all impacts. Hidden costs such as congestion and pollution costs imposed by car drivers in congested urban areas, and hidden benefits such as health and environmental improvements from investment in cycling or public transport would all be incorporated.

c) Locational policies should seek to reduce the need for resource intensive movement and should favour public rather than private transport. Land use projects with major transport requirements (including hospitals, industrial complexes, retail and leisure sites) should be subject to sustainability audits.

d) The government would set and monitor targets for pollution, noise levels and accident rates. In order to break the perceived link between the economy and the quantity of transport, as has been achieved for energy, targets for reducing the "transport intensity" of the economy would be set.

e) Major educational initiatives will be needed to develop further the level of awareness and debate.

Conclusion

The crucial message is that a sustainable city cannot be created merely by reducing or eliminating pollution from cars. The mass ownership and use of private motor vehicles in cities is in fundamental conflict with vibrant and sustainable city life. Quite simply this is because, when present in large numbers, the car’s size and speed is incompatible with the limited space available in cities and the uses to which this space needs to be put to maintain successful city life. Thus in any attempt to achieve urban sustainability the link between economic growth and car growth must be broken.

To do this we need to start changing our mindset, both as individuals and as professionals. As individuals we need to consider alternative ways of making a journey before getting into the car, rather than at present where alternatives are often only considered when there is some very specific reason for not using the car. As engineers we must not consider issues as seen through the car windscreen. We need to always be thinking of people movement and exchange opportunities, not car traffic. In both contexts we should be considering when and where car use is or is not socially and environmentally appropriate and acceptable.

Such changes will not happen overnight. They will be very difficult to achieve. They require action at all levels. Central government must ensure that the statutory and fiscal framework is right. Local government needs to employ the right thinking, and ensure the right services and management at the local level. Business leaders and the general public will have to become more involved in how transport decisions are made. The development of awareness about the impacts that present travel habits are having is crucial. If we do not bring about these changes, we will become economically, environmentally and socially poorer. If we succeed, we achieve a win-win position where both the economy and the environment benefit.

This has been achieved to some extent in some economically successful European cities. For example, car traffic in Zurich has not grown since the early 1980’s. A number of German cities in particular show growth in public transport and cycling over the last 20 years. There is no reason we this cannot be achieved more widely – but we will have to grasp the nettle of difficult politics in order to succeed.

Author Biography

[ Click & paste photo ]

 

George Hazel is the Director of City Development at the City of Edinburgh Council and has worked in Local Government for 13 years. He has also spent 11 years in academia where, under his guidance, the Department of Civil Engineering at Napier grew from one of the smallest to one of the most influential in the University. He became Head of the Department of Civil and Transportation Engineering at Napier University in 1986 and became the first Professor of Transportation in Scotland in 1989.

He then moved to the private sector when he was appointed Director of TPA, now Oscar Faber TPA. Under his direction the business grew from almost nothing to a million pounds per annum fee income turnover in 3 years.

In August 1993 he became Director of Highways with Lothian Regional Council. The Department then became known as the Transportation Department. He now heads up the City Development Department of the City of Edinburgh Council. The Department has around 1200 staff and includes the functions of Planning, Building Control, Economic Development, Transportation and Property Management and Development.

He has also completed a PhD on Traffic Impact of Large Retail Developments and an MSc in Transportation.

He is a Visiting Professor at both Napier and Heriot-Watt Universities. The latter post is one of a limited number of professorships awarded nationally to "eminent" British Engineers by the Royal Academy of Engineers.

Postal Address: Dr G McL Hazel, Director of City Development, PO Box 12473, 1 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1ZJ, UK

E-mail: [email protected]

 

 

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