Business group calls for States to lead sustainable mobility drive
Governments, including EU Member States, must take action to lead the drive for greener transport, concluded a report issued on 11 October by oil company Shell on behalf of the World business council for sustainable development (WBCSD). The 'Mobility 2001' report said that while businesses were willing to take the initiative to reduce growing problems such as congestion, poor infrastructure, accident rates, noise and pollution, political institutions must act to tackle mobility issues effectively. The chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell Group's committee of managing directors, Philip Watts, one of the co-chairs of the sustainable mobility project, described the report as 'research that confirms what I think many people suspected - that if we are to avoid a continuing descent towards unsustainable gridlock and environmental degradation then the way we move ourselves about is going to have to change.' The research team behind the report named seven main challenges to sustainable mobility: - ensuring transport systems serve essential human needs; - adapting vehicles to evolving requirements on emissions, fuel use, capacity, ownership structure; - reinventing public transport to provide a reasonable alternative to those who do have access to cars; - reinventing the process of planning, developing and managing mobility infrastructure; - reducing carbon emissions; - resolving the competition for use of infrastructure between personal and freight transport; - tackling congestion. The report, sponsored by 11 global automotive and oil companies, of which seven are based in Europe, assesses the state of the world's mobility at the end of the twentieth century. It constitutes the first phase of the WBCSD's sustainable mobility project, which aims by 2003 to devise sustainable mobility strategies for the coming decades.