Tag: sustainable mobility

Simply transposing EU environment and transport rules into national law is not enough and governments must take care to free up the money necessary for the implementation of EU objectives, insists Austrian MEP Reinhard Rack, rapporteur on the Commission’s Green Paper on urban mobility.

Klaus Bondam, chairman of EuroCities' Mobility Forum, a major partner of the annual European Mobility Week and Car Free day, and vice-mayor of one of Europe's best performing cities in terms of sustainable mobility, shares his beliefs with EurActiv on how to deal with growing congestion and pollution in Europe's urban areas.

To read a shortened version of this interview, please click here.

The Commission set out a ten-year strategy on sustainability in the transport sector in its 2001 White Paper on Transport Policy. The strategy focused predominantly on balancing the different modes of transport, harmonising legislation within specific sectors, and enhancing transport safety. But, in an enlarged EU, under pressure from accelerating globalisation, high oil prices and transport-targeted terrorist attacks, the EU is looking to adapt its initial strategy.

MEP Gyula Hegyi, who has drafted a Parliament Report on the EU urban environment strategy, says in an interview with EurActiv that improving mobility should be cities' number-one priority and that the EU must do more to encourage this. 

The EU can contribute to improving urban mobility through harmonisation, research and benchmarking, but re-directing investment and citizens' mindsets towards public transport will also be critical, according to urban-mobility actors.

In an interview with EurActiv.com, European Transport Safety Council Executive Director Jörg Beckmann urges more political leadership to enforce existing road-safety measures, especially across borders, and to introduce "crucial" new technologies, in order to reduce the number of accidents on European roads.

As 771 European cities prepare to launch the 2006 European Mobility week, Stockholm’s inhabitants must vote on a system of road tolls aimed at reducing traffic in the city centre.

In 2001, the Commission presented a White Paper proposing 60 measures to overhaul the EU’s transport policy in order to make it more sustainable and avoid huge economic losses due to congestion, pollution and accidents. A 2006 mid-term update attempts to re-balance the policy towards economic objectives.

Initiatives to promote cycling, walking, public transport and car-pooling in cities are at the centre of this year's European Mobility Week from 16 to 22 September.

Green cities were the focus of the United Nation's Environment Day 2005 in San Francisco. An environment atlas with satellite pictures of sprawling cities was shown to the 50 mayors attending the event.

Europe's grand project to make transport sustainable in the long run is simply being abandoned, warns the Parliament's transport committee vice-president Gilles Savary in an interview (in French) with EurActiv.

Launched on the day the Kyoto Protocol comes into force, the campaign will promote the environmental and life-style benefits of public transport. The global warming impact of transport is causing growing concern among EU policy-makers.