“Focus on access instead of traffic”

His ideas may seem idealistic at first glance, but one could argue that there is a compelling trend towards the future Professor Udo Becker lays out. Dr Becker is head of the chair for Transport Ecology at the Technical University Dresden, Germany, since 1994. “This is not just adding some green leaves to transport,” he says. Political decisions to make people 'pay to pollute', gaining ground in ever more countries, could cause a snowball effect and change societies. Then again, the trend may stop at simple 'pay-per-kilometre' systems, the modern toll levying.

People-oriented
He's had them on his desk: ministry reports stating the objective is to maximise passenger kilometres and tonne kilometres. They go against everything Dr Becker stands for. “This chair is truly 'ecological' only if we concentrate on systematic and dynamic effects of transport and transport planning.”

But he knows what he is up against. “So instead of trying to fight traffic, we had to come up with a positive benefit of travelling: satisfying needs, or 'access'.” He even works together with 'transport psychology' to ask how to present his theories. The term 'people-oriented' wraps it up.

Misleading
We asked Dr Becker to elaborate on this. “'Sustainable mobility' is a field wide open to personal interpretation, misunderstandings and misleading,” he says. “In my perception, it includes essentially two key aspects.

Access versus traffic
First of all: we have to make the distinction between 'access' on the one hand and 'traffic' on the other hand. Access may be measured for instance by 'personal mobility needs satisfied' (being able to buy bread, see a doctor, that sort of things), whereas 'traffic' may be measured by vehicle kilometres, travel time, costs, resources or other cost indicators.

The purpose of all our activities in society and in the transport sector should never be to maximize traffic but to guarantee a certain level of access, for all parts of the population, with least traffic costs and thus least traffic. This is economically, socially and environmentally efficient.

True prices
The second key aspect is that, in order to achieve this, travel costs have to mirror the true price of transport. Today, travellers pay only for part of the total costs. All environmental costs are left out of consideration. This has to change because it causes us to behave inefficiently, to pollute and to produce more travel kilometres than in an efficient society. This is anti-innovative, wasting, economically bad, environmentally bad and socially bad because lower income parts of the population suffer most.”

In a second article on Dr Becker's views on the future of mobility, soon to be published here on MindsinMotion.net, we will go into the consequences of different scenarios for various income groups and into their international implications.

Car lobby
Earlier this year, Dr Becker commented on the views of Dutch sustainability expert Mr Wouter van Dieren, saying: “[W]e will not be limiting mobility but we will be limiting traffic (...).” Will car drivers have to settle for less access then? It seems highly unlikely that decision makers will go against the car lobby.

“This is a good question,” Becker replies, “and it brings me back to dynamic aspects. Let us assume that some environmental costs are included (internalised) in car driving. Well, then, of course, travelling by car will first become more expensive per kilometre. But users will react. So there will be more biking, walking, public transport, ride-sharing, relocating to centres, and so on.

All of this brings down costs, and new city and regional and global structures develop: more shops nearby, more internet communication, buses in one-minute-frequencies, with lower fares (because of many more users), less accidents, less costs for new highways, lower damage costs, less taxes, quieter neighbourhoods, and so on. In the end, car users will conclude:

• Yes, driving for me alone in my old polluting car is more expensive,
• but there is much less need to drive: better public transport, shops nearby
• plus: I benefit from better air quality, less accidents, lower taxes, and innovation everywhere.
• And in the end we did achieve an even higher level of access than before with total lower costs because many things are just nearby. This really worked well!”

Not happening
In Western Europe, where car driving is much more expensive than in the United States, there is indeed more bicycling and shops are nearer. But regions are a lot smaller as well. And there is a point where urban planning doesn't get any more efficient because people are willing to pay for inefficient behaviour. In Western Europe we may be closer to that point than Dr Becker thinks.

Good old-fashioned enlightenment
Politicians are not always thinking along efficient lines either. In spite of compelling arguments to improve public transport in rural areas, we have not seen that happening yet. So how does Becker try to convince decision makers of his views?

“Sometimes I feel it is hopeless because short-term-aspects bury all long-term considerations,” Becker confesses. “But being at a university, I still feel information and good old-fashioned enlightenment may have some effects – even though it may not look like it at the moment. What we try to do is:

• develop tools and publish results on how to measure access
  
• develop tools consumers can use to measure external costs and to internalise them
• spread the idea that externalisation is unfair.

PhD positions
The Dresden faculty is, with 27 professors and over two thousand students, larger than all other German transport faculties combined. Still there is room for more students. “Just these days,” says Becker, “we've installed a program for five PhD research grants in Dresden from 2009-2012. We will build a team of five people to model and calculate equity effects of externalised costs: who creates how much damage, who pays for it? The inequalities are striking, and I do hope, that 'social parties' will look into cheap fuel prices again.”