What is SUTP?
A sustainable transport system should provide access to people, places, goods, and services in an environmentally responsible, socially acceptable, and economically viable manner. Mobility for communication and for enabling social contacts, as well as movement of people and goods, is to be considered as a means rather than as and end in itself.
Important prerequisites for realising an EST system in the long term are these: protect human health, ensure ecosystem integrity, respect health and ecological limits (critical levels and loads), prevent and minimise pollution, ensure sustainable use of non-renewable and renewable resources and avoid human-induced changes in global environmental systems such as the atmosphere and the oceans.
A sustainable transport system is therefore one that (i) provides for safe, economically viable, and socially acceptable access to people, places, goods and services; (ii) meets generally accepted objectives for health and environmental quality, e.g., those set forward by the World Health Organisation for air pollutants and noise; (iii) protects ecosystems by avoiding exceedances of critical loads and levels for ecosystem integrity, e.g., those defined by the UN ECE for acidification, eutrophication, and ground-level ozone; and (iv) does not aggravate adverse global phenomena, including climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and the spread of persistent organic pollutants.
Accordingly, the EST project developed the following brief definition of an environmentally sustainable transport system as one where,
transportation does not endanger public health or ecosystems and meets needs for access consistent with (a) use of renewable resources below their rates of regeneration, and (b) use of non-renewable resources below the rates of development of renewable substitutes.
This qualitative definition has been elaborated by expanding some of the generic statements and developing quantified criteria and targets based on international environmental and health criteria and objectives.
| Access, not mobility |
Movement in cities is not an end in itself. We move in order to gain ACCESS to people and things. But in car-oriented cities, activities tend to spread out. This forces people to travel further and further for the same level of accessibility as before. |
| Moving people, not cars. |
We need to focus on moving people and goods rather than vehicles. In dense cities, public transport saves valuable space and energy compared to private transport, and can make a healthy profit at the same time. But cities need to nurture their public transport by giving then some priority on the road over cars. If buses are always caught in traffic thena vicious cycle begins, with bus riders abandoning public transport and adding to the traffic jams. |
| Reclaim city space for walking and pedalled vehicles |
The healthiest and most sustainable modes of transport are walking and cycling. Even car drivers become pedestrians to complete a trip, and effective public transport depends on people being able to walk comfortably to stations and stops. But walking and cycling are vulnerable to the impacts of traffic. Many rapidly motorising Asian cities are quickly losing their walking spaces. In Bangkok, only 14% of all trips are on foot or bicycle compared to a whopping 45% in the enormous Tokyo metropolitan area! |
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