C8 (NRP 41) - Interactions transport/land use
Overview
Background & policy context:
The NRP 41 was launched by the Federal Council at the end of 1995 to improve the scientific basis on which Switzerland's traffic problems might be solved, taking into account the growing interconnection with Europe, ecological limits, and economic and social needs.
The NRP 41 aimed to become a think-tank for sustainable transport policy.
Each one of the 54 projects belongs to one of the following six modules:
- A Mobility: Socio-institutional Aspects
- B Mobility: Socio-economical Aspects
- C Environment: Tools and Models for Impact Assessments
- D Political and Economic Strategies and Prerequisites
- E Traffic Management: Potentials and Impacts
- F Technologies: Potentials and Impacts
- M Materials
- S Synthesis Projects
Objectives:
Current production methods and style of living in our highly developed societies - with complex, distributed working structures - are far from being sustainable.
The entire deployment of resources (economic, ecological, social) is linked with the provision and the return (to nature by so-called 'disposal') of goods and services. Provision and return can be allocated entirely to production and transport processes.
This leads to the first conflict of objectives.
If one sets an upper limit for the deployment of resources then the question arises as to what is the proportion conceived to production and what is conceived to transport. As more resources are deployed for transport, so fewer resources remain for production. More of the one means less of the other.
We know that we will have to lower energy deployment by a factor of between four and ten. 30% of energy production and as much as 60% of fossil energy are consumed by transport.
In other areas the relationship is hardly different - transport uses approximately 30% of developed space. A sustainable society without a sustainable transport system is hardly feasible.
Transport is a question of distribution of people, goods, services and activities, or in a word - regional planning. A sustainable transport system can hardly be implemented without sustainable regional planning. Regional planning, in turn, is partly the result of transport provision.
This means that without considering the interaction between transport systems and regional planning, we cannot find ways to a more sustainable transport system. A sustainable transport system is characterised by a number of different qualities.
The question as to whether a transport system becomes more sustainable may be evaluated, in a simplified way, by means of three indicators:
- Fewer motorised trips
- Shorter distances of motorised trips
- Reduced deployment of resources for motorised trips – generally true for public transport. All regional planning favouring one of these processes will be more sustainable and will represent a step towards a more sustainable transport system. But what is sustainable regional planning?
Methodology:
Not available
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