Individual road vehicles, including passenger cars and motorcycles, are one of the greatest benefit of our modern civilization.
They enable to freely travel anywhere at anytime, comfortably and without effort.
However, cars are responsible for significant adverse effects, mainly:
traffic and parking congestion,
oil dependency,
greenhouse gas emissions,
casualties,
and
urban pollution and noise.
There are several ways of reducing these adverse effects while keeping the benefits of individual conveyances:
BEV and EREV technologies are well mature enough to replace conventional vehicles in all light vehicles segments. They could spead fast if sufficient charging infrastructure and initial incentives for car manufacturers and consumers were available. While we cannot predict how many EVs will be sold sold in 2020, we are confident that electric cars will become the norm sometimes between 2030 and 2040. More...
Obviously, the energy consumption of a vehicle increases with its size and weight. Also, bigger vehicles occupy more space and therefore increase traffic and parking congestion.
Therefore, small vehicle such as motorcycles and very small light cars should be promoted for short commuting distances and urban use, for which the size, power and comfort of a large car are not really beneficial. But the development and cost of such cars in impeded by stringent occupant safety regulations, which are less necessary for urban cars which usually drive at low speeds. Hence, we advocate that:
Special lanes and parking spaces should be created for ultra-narrow vehicles such as motorcycles and UNECs in order to favour them while increasing their occupant safety. More...
3. Cars safe for other users
Until now, car safety regulations have concentrated on occupant safety (crash-test, airbags...). While this has a positive effect by reducing casualties for car occupants, it has resulted in bigger and heavier cars, which not only increases fuel consumption and emissions, but also increases the risk of casualties for small vehicles involved in accidents with big cars. It makes smaller car users feel unsafe and deters consumers from buying them.
We therefore advocate that safety regulations also address crash impact onto other vehicles. This would be an effective way of reducing road casualties. Also, it would make small car users feel safer, which should be an incentive towards the purchase of smaller cars, thereby reducing emissions and energy consumption.
4. Increasing cars occupancy
Most cars carry only one person for most of their mileage. If all cars were carrying at least two persons, the number of cars on the road would be halved, as well as the mileage covered and the related pollution, noise and CO2 emissions.
Therefore, we favour measures increasing car occupancies, such as carpooling and High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) lanes, which have successfully been implemented in the USA for over 20 years.
5. Improving city planning
Better city planning would also also contribute to reducing the need for transport. Under construction...
6. Public transport
Just as cars, public transports are only sustainable when their occupancy rate is high enough. This is often the case for long range transport (such as high speed trains and airplanes), as well as for urban transport in large and/or densely populated urban areas.
On the other hand, public transport in small scattered towns (such as Brussels) can be less sustainable than individual cars.
