Authors: Brian Caulfield, Paraic Carroll, Shreya Dey, Bidisha Ghosh and Aoife Ahern
Summary: The Greening Transport project examined the behavioural response of commuters within the Greater Dublin Area, to a range of policy incentives to encourage travellers to make greater usage of sustainable travel modes for trips to places of work or education. The results suggest that policy incentives alone could lead to tangible improvements in commuting time and cost constitute valuable guidance and recommendations for policymakers.
Watch the Greening Transport project highlights video
Our dependency on single-occupancy vehicles as a transport mode for commuting and other purposes has a number of costly economic and environmental consequences in urban areas. Moreover, because of the booming transport demand, reducing emissions from road transport has gained more attention over the past few years. Several targets are now being set and policies are being implemented aimed at decreasing fossil fuel use and increasing the uptake of low or zero emission transport modes, and thereby, reducing emission levels. Ireland has strict emissions targets to achieve by 2030 and beyond and, in order for transport to meet these goals, investment and planning are required.
Project Ireland 2040 includes several ambitious strategic investment plans, totalling €21.8 billion, to accelerate Ireland’s transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient nation. It plans to have 500,000 or more electric vehicles on Irish roads by 2030, with essential improvements planned to the charging infrastructure to meet this demand. Project Ireland 2040 outlines the investment proposed to modernise and decarbonise transport in Ireland. The Greening Transport project examines a range of sustainable travel measures, designed to encourage a shift to alternative modes of transport and reduce dependency on private cars and tests a number of policies to achieve these goals.
Sustainable travel measures seek to modify travel behaviour in favour of green alternatives such as active modes (walking and cycling), public transport and smarter use of private cars, namely car-sharing and carpooling. Our research offers a unique approach to the field of transport policy, entitled “carshedding”, which exclusively centres on incentivisation strategies for sustainable modes of transport. This seeks to stimulate voluntary travel behaviour change and encourage sustainable deliberation of transport mode choice. “Car-shedding” is defined in the research as a means of encouraging the reassessment of the need to use a private vehicle for certain trip purposes. Improving walking and cycling facilities, enhanced public transport services and car-sharing are all examined in this research to determine their benefits and potential emissions reductions.
https://www.epa.ie/media/epa-2020/publications/research/Research-338-thumbnail.JPG