Overview
Transport policy is facing major challenges. Controlling climate change is the most significant of these. Greenhouse gases produced by the transport sector increase year after year and they now account for about a fifth of all of Finland’s greenhouse gas emissions. Targets must be set to quickly and systematically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
Other critical future challenges are preserving the competitiveness of Finland’s logistics sector in global markets and providing people with opportunities to efficient and convenient daily travel, both in the growing urban regions
and in increasingly depopulated rural areas.
The objective of transport policy is well-being for Finland. Essential journeys and business related transport operations are carried out both nationally and internationally every day, providing people with a good quality of life, making business competitive and injecting life into the regions. Travel and transport are safe and the transport system is ecologically, socially and economically sustainable.
The objective of this framework is to manage the change in direction of transport policy so that competitiveness of the logistics sector and the ease of people’s daily travel are preserved while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is possible to reconcile these challenges, but this will require new kinds of sustainable choices in transport policy, innovation in operations and cooperation between the various actors.
The transport policy framework is a comprehensive approach that will enable the amount of greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced and simultaneously ensure the ease of daily travel and the competitiveness of logistics for business. The aspects of the framework dealing with operating methods aim to improve the productivity of the transport sector and emphasise the importance of networks and cooperation in administering increasingly broader questions of transport policy. Implementing the framework will require a long-term approach and a commitment to development work from those in authority.
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, it is important to stop the dispersion of community structures and the growth in travel by private car. Transport policy in isolation will not achieve this. The support of land use planning
in particular and tax policy and other economic steering mechanisms is needed. A common will to stop the trend towards the dispersion of community structures is also required as well as effective cooperation in order to reach these goals.